LIBRARY 
 
 UHIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 GERARD 
 
 OB 
 
 THE WOELD, THE ELESH, AND THE DEVIL 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "VIXEN," " ISHMAEL," 
 "THE DAY AVILL COME" 
 
 ETC. 
 
 ^tcvcotjjycti lEOitiott 
 
 LONDON 
 SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO. 
 
 LiailTED 
 STATIONERS' HALL COURT 
 
 1892 
 
 '^AU rights resetved ]
 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PEIXTED Br WILLIAM CLOWES ANT) SOXS, LIMITED, 
 
 STAMFORD STREET AXD CHAEISG CROSS.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. "I LOOK DOWN TO HIS FeET, BUT THAT'S A FaELE " 1 
 
 II. "Oh, Pitiful Young Man, struck Blind with 
 
 Beauty" ... ... ... ... 12 
 
 III. "Through a Glass darkly" ... ... ... 16 
 
 IV. "We are such Stuff as Dreams are made of" 30 
 V. Life upon New Lines ... ... ... 45 
 
 VI. The Face in the Vision ... ... ... 61 
 
 VII. "It is an Oath," she said ... ... G8 
 
 VIII. A Shadow across the Path ... ... ... 77 
 
 IX. "I built my Soul a Lordly Pleasure-House" 90 
 
 X. "Still One must lead some Life beyond" ... 105 
 XI. "Earth being so Good, would Heaven seem 
 
 Best?" ... ... ... ... ... 116 
 
 XII. "Fob such Things must begin some Day" ... 120 
 
 XIII. " Out went my Heart's Xew Fire, and left it 
 
 Cold" 134 
 
 XIV. " For Some must stand, and Some must fall or 
 
 flee" ... ... ... ... 149 
 
 XV. " A Man can have but One Life and One Death " 164 
 
 XVI. "He is the very Soul of Bounty" ... 177 
 
 XVU. "So, Quiet as Despair, I turned from him" ... 182 
 XA'III. " Lost, lost ! One Moment knelled the Woe of 
 
 Years" ... ... ... ... ... 190 
 
 XIX. All along the River ... ... ... 196 
 
 XX. "Some Dim Derision op Mysterious Lau<jhter" 211 
 
 XXI. "As Gentle and as Jocund as a Jest" ... 221 
 
 XXII. " Compare Dead Happiness with Living Woe "... 226 
 
 XXIII. "Alas, why cam'st thou hither?"... ... 239
 
 IV 
 
 Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER „ 
 
 XXrV. "Alas, fob me, then, my Good Days aee done 
 
 XXV. "How COULD IT END IN ANY OTHEK WaY ? " ... 
 
 XXVI. " Sing while he may, Man hath no Long Delight " 
 XXVII. "Some Little Sound of Uneegaeded Teaks" 
 XXVin. "Could Two Days live again op that Dead 
 Yeae" 
 XXIX. "And all shall Passe, and thus take I my 
 Leave" ... 
 XXX. "Fbom the Wakm Wild Kiss to the Cold" 
 XXXL "The Love that caught Strange Light from 
 Death's own Eyes" 
 Epilogue ... 
 
 PAGE 
 
 2i7 
 253 
 269 
 283 
 
 297 
 
 30i 
 313 
 
 328 
 344
 
 GERARD; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE WOELP. THE FLESH, AND THE DEVIL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " I LOOK DOWN TO HIS FEET, BUT THAT's A FABLE." 
 
 There were low brooding clouds and a feeling of thunder in the air 
 as Gerard Hillersdon's cab rattled along the King's Road, past squalid 
 slums and shabby gentilities, towards quiet rural Parson's Green. 
 Only a few years ago Parson's Green had still some pretension to 
 rusticity. Where now the speculating builders' streets and terraces 
 stretch right and left in hollow squares and close battaUons, there 
 were fine old Georgian and pre-Georgian mansions, and stately 
 sweeps of lawn and shrubbery, and avenues of old-world growth, 
 shutting out the hum and hubbub of the great city. 
 
 To one of those respectable old mansions, that one which was 
 second only to Peterborough House in the extent and dignity of 
 its surroundings, Gerard Hillersdon was driving under the heavy 
 sky of a July afternoon, the lowering close of a sunless and oppres- 
 sive day. Never, not even in mid-winter, had the smoke-curtain 
 hung lower over London than it hung to-day, and if the idea of fog 
 seemed impossible in July there at least prevailed that mysterious 
 condition of the atmosphere, commonly known as " blight," a thick 
 yellow haze, unpierced by a single sun-ray. 
 
 To Gerard Hillersdon, ordinarily the most sensitive of men, the 
 atmosphere on this particular afternoon made no difference. He 
 had got beyond that point in which atmosphere can raise a man's 
 spirits or depress them. He had made up his mind upon the great 
 question of life or death ; and this kind of day seemed as good to
 
 2 Gerard ; or, 
 
 him as any other, since he meant it to be his last day upon earth. 
 He had made up his mind that Hfe and he must part company ; 
 that for him at least hfe was not worth hving : thus the grey and 
 yellow of the atmosphere, and the threatening thunder-clouds to 
 windward suited his temper far better than the blue sky and west 
 wind which Lady Fridohne would have desired for her garden- 
 party. 
 
 Incongruous as the thing may seem the young man was going to 
 spend his last earthly afternoon at Lady Fridoline's garden-party ; 
 but for a man utterly without rehgious feeling or hope in the Here- 
 after such a finish to existence seemed as good as any other. He 
 could not devote his last hours in preparing for the world that was 
 to come after death, as he had no behef in any such world. To him 
 the deed that was to be done before midnight meant swift, sudden 
 extinction, the end of all things for him, Gerard Hihersdon. The 
 curtain which was to fall upon the tragedy of his life to-night would 
 rise upon no afterpiece. The only question which he had taken 
 into serious consideration was the mode and manner of his death. 
 He had made up his mind about that. His revolver was lying in 
 its case in his lodging-house bedroom, under the shadow of St. 
 James's Church, ready loaded — a six-shooter. He had made no 
 will, for he had nothing to leave behind him, except a heavy burden 
 of debt. He had not yet made up his mind whether to write an 
 explanatory letter to the father he had sorely tried, and a brief 
 farewell to the mother who fondly loved him, and whom he loved 
 almost as fondly; or whether it were not better to leave only 
 silence. 
 
 Not in sheer frivolity was he rattling along the road to Parson's 
 Green. He had a stronger motive in going to Fridoline House than 
 the desire to get rid of his last afternoon in the bustle and excite- 
 ment of a herd of idle people. There would be some one there 
 most likely whom he ardently desired to meet, were it but to touch 
 her hand and say good night — good night for ever — as she stepped 
 into her carriage, or were it but for one httle smile across the 
 crowd. 
 
 She had told him only the night before, sitting out a waltz in the 
 tropical heat of a staircase in Grosvenor Square, that she meant to 
 be at Lady Fridoline's omnium gatherum. 
 
 " One meets such queer people," she said, with the regulation 
 insolence, " I would not miss Lady Fridoline's Zoological Varieties 
 for worlds."
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 3 
 
 A feather blown across her pathway might be enough to divert 
 her fancy into another channeh He knew her well enough to know 
 that there was no such thing as certainty where she was concerned ; 
 but on the off chance he went to Parson's Green, and his eye ran 
 eagerly along the double Ime of carriages, looking for Mrs. 
 Champion's liveries. 
 
 Yes, it was there, the barouche with its sober colouring, and the 
 men in their dark brown coats, black velvet breeches, and silk 
 stockings, and the fine upstanding Cleveland bays, strong enough 
 to pull a Carter-Patterson van, yet with enough breeding for beauty. 
 Wealth expressed itself here in that chastened form which educa- 
 tion has imposed even upon the cit. The money that had bought 
 that perfect equipage had all been made amidst the steam and din 
 of the Stock Exchange, but the carriage and its appointments were 
 every whit as perfect as those of her Grace of Uplandshire, which 
 stood next in the rank. 
 
 She was there — the woman he wanted to see and speak with on 
 this his last day. 
 
 " I am coming, my love, my sweet," he muttered to himself, as 
 he wrote his name in the big book in the hall, the record by which 
 Lady Fridohne was able to find out how many strangers and out- 
 siders had been imposed upon her hospitality in the shape of friends' 
 friends. 
 
 The crowd was tremendous ; the house and grounds buzzed with 
 voices, through which from the bosquet yonder cut the sharp twang- 
 ing notes of a Tyrolese Volkslied, accompanied on the Streichzither; 
 while from an inner drawing-room sounded the long-drawn chords 
 of a violin attacking a sonata by De Beriot. On the left of the 
 great square hall v;as the dining-room filled with a gormandising 
 crowd ; and on the lawn outside there was a subsidiary buffet under 
 a pollarded Spanish chestnut which spread its rugged venerable 
 limbs over a wide circle of turf, and made a low-roofed tent of leaves 
 that fluttered and shivered in the sultry atmosphere. 
 
 Every class was represented at Lady Fridoline's garden-party ; or 
 rather it might be said that everybody in London whom any one 
 could care to see was to be found on her ladyship's lawn or was to 
 be hunted for jn her ladyship's extensive shrubberies. Literature 
 and the Stage were not more conspicuous than Church and Bar — 
 Church represented by its most famous preachers, Bar by its most 
 notorious advocates, to say nothing of a strong contingent of popular 
 curates and clever stuff gowns.
 
 4 ■ Gerard ; or, 
 
 Every noteworthy arrival from the great world of English-speak- 
 ing people across the Atlantic was to be seen at Lady Fridoline's 
 from the scholar and enthusiast who had written seven octavo 
 volumes to prove that Don Juan was the joint work of Byron's valet, 
 Fletcher, and the Countess Guiccioli, to the miniature soubrette, the 
 idol of New York, who had come to be seen and to conquer upon 
 the boards of a London theatre. Everybody was there, for the 
 afternoon was late, and the throng was thickest just' at this 
 hour. 
 
 Gerard Hillersdon went about from group to group, everywhere 
 received with cordiaHty and emjyre&sement, but lingering nowhere 
 —not even when the tiny soubrette told him she was just dying 
 for another ice, and she reckoned he'd take her to the tree over 
 there to get one— always in quest of that one somebody who made 
 it worth his while to run the gauntlet of everybody. One of his 
 oldest friends seized upon him, a man ^'ith whom he had been at 
 Oxford seven years before, with whom he had maintained the 
 friendship begun in those days, and who was not to be put off 
 with the passing hand-shake which served for other people. 
 
 "I want a talk with you, Hillersdon. Why didn't you look me 
 up last Tuesday? We were to have dined and done a theatre 
 Don't apologise ,• I see you forgot all about it. By Jove, old fellow' 
 you are looking dreadfully washed out. Wliat have you been 
 doing with yourself? " 
 
 "Nothing beyond the usual miU-round. A succession of late 
 j)arties may have impaired the freshness of my complexion." 
 
 " Come up the river with me. Let me see, to-morrow will be 
 Saturday. We can go to Oxford by the afternoon express, spend a 
 couple of nights at the ]\Iitre, look up the dons whom we knew as 
 undergrads, and row down to Windsor by Tuesday night." 
 
 "I should adore it ; but it's impossible. I have an engagement 
 which will keep me in London. I shall see you again presently." 
 
 He slipped out of the little group in which his friend figured. He 
 had made tlio circuit of the lawn, looking right and left for that tall 
 and graceful form which his eye would have recognised even afar 
 off; and now he i^lunged into the shrubberied labyrinth which lay 
 lietween the fine, broad lawn and the high walls which secluded 
 Lady Fridoline's domain from the vulgar world. 
 
 He passed a good many couples sauntering slowly in the leafy 
 shade, and talking in those subdued accents wliich seem to mean 
 very much, and generally mean vejy little. At last, in the dia-
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 5 
 
 tance, he saw the form and face he was seeking — a tall, dark 
 woman, with proudly poised head and splendid eyes, who walked 
 with leism-ely step, and tossed her parasol to and fro with a move- 
 ment eminently expressive of ennui. 
 
 She was walking with a young man who was supposed to be a 
 fast ascending star in the heaven of literature — a young man who 
 was something of a journalist, and something of a. poet, who wrote 
 short stories in the magazines, was believed to contribute to Punch, 
 and was said to have written a three-volume novel. But however 
 brilliantly this young gentleman may have been talking, Edith 
 Champion had evidently had enough of him, for at sight of 
 Hillersdon her face lighted up, and she held out her hand in eager 
 welcome. 
 
 They clasped hands, and he turned back and walked on her 
 right in silence, while the journalist prattled on her left. Presently 
 they met another trio of a mother and daughters, and the journalist 
 was absorbed and swept along by this female brood, leaving Mrs. 
 Champion and Hillersdon tete-a-tete. 
 
 " I thought you were not coming," she said. 
 
 " Did you doubt I should be here after you had told me I should 
 sec you ? I want to see as much of you as possible to-day." 
 
 " Why to-day more than all other days ? " 
 
 " Because it is my last day in town." 
 
 " What, you are leaving so soon ? Before Goodwood ? " 
 
 " I don't care two straws for Goodwood." 
 
 " Nor do I. But why bury one's self in the country or at some 
 German bath too early in the year? Autumn is always long 
 enough. One need not anticipate it. Is your doctor sending you 
 away ? Are you going for your cure ? " 
 
 " Yes, I am going for my cure." 
 
 " Where ? " 
 
 " Immerschlafenbad," he answered, inventing a name on the 
 instant. 
 
 " I never heard of the place. One of those new springs which 
 doctors are always developing, no doubt. Every fashionable 
 physician has his particular fad in the way of a watering-place. 
 And you are really going to-morrow ? '' 
 
 " To-morrow I shall be gone." 
 
 "How shall I live without you?" she sighed, with the prettiest 
 skin-deep sentiment, which wormded him almost more than her 
 disdain could have done. " At least I must have all your society
 
 6 Gerard ; or, 
 
 till YOU are gone. You must dine with me and share my opera-box. 
 ' Don Giovanni ' is an opera of which one can never have too much, 
 and a new soprano is to be the Zerlina, a South American girl of 
 whom great things are expected." 
 
 "Is Mr. Champion at home? " 
 
 " No, he is in Antwerp. There is something important going on 
 there— something to do with raOways. You know how he rushes 
 about. I shall have no one but my cousm, Mrs. Gresham, whom 
 you know of old, the Suflblk vicar's lively wife. We shall be almost 
 tete-a-tete. I shall expect you at eight o'clock." 
 
 " I will be punctual. What a threatening day ! " he said, looking 
 up at the gathering darkness which gave a wintry air to the summer 
 foliage. " There must be a storm coming." 
 
 " Evidently. I think I had better go home. Will you take me 
 to my carriage ? " 
 
 "Let me get you some tea before you go." 
 
 They sti-oUed across the gi-ass to the leafy tent. A good many 
 people had gone, scared by the thunder-clouds. Lady Fridoline 
 had deserted her post in the portico, tired of saying good-bye, and 
 was taking a hasty cup of tea amidst a little knot of intimates. She 
 was lamenting the non-arrival of some one. 
 
 " So shameful to disappoint me, after distinctly promising to be 
 here," she said. 
 
 "Who is the defaulter, dear Lady Fridoline?" asked Mrs. 
 Champion. 
 
 " Mr. Jermyn, the new thought-reader." 
 
 " Jermyn I " echoed a middle-aged man, who was attending to 
 Lady Fridoline's tea, " Jermjm, the mystery man. I should hardly 
 call him by the old name of thought-reader. He marks a new 
 departure in the region of the uncanny. He is not content with 
 picking up pins, or finding unconsidered trifles. He unearths 
 people's secrets, reads their hidden lives in a most uncomfortable 
 way. I have seen a large party reduced to gloom by half an hour 
 of Mr. Jermyn, I would as soon incite Mephistopheles to a garden- 
 party. But people are so morbid, they will hazard anything for a 
 new sensation." 
 
 "It is something to touch only the fringe of other worlds," 
 replied Lady Fridoline, " and whatever Mr. Jermjm's power may be, 
 it lies beyond the plummet line of our thought or touch. He told 
 me of circumstances in my own life that it was impossible for him 
 to have discovered except by absolute divination."
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 7 
 
 " Then you believe ia his power of divination ? " asked Mrs. 
 Champion, with languid interest. 
 " I can't help believing." 
 
 " Yes, because you have not found out the trick of the thing. 
 There is always a trick in these things, which is inevitably found 
 out sooner or later ; and then people wonder that they can have 
 been so foolish as to believe," said Mrs. Champion. 
 
 The curtain of leaves parted as she spoke, and a young man 
 came through the opening — a young man whom Lady Fridoline 
 welcomed eagerly. 
 
 •• I was just telling my friends how disappointed I should be if 
 you did not come," she said, and then, turning to Edith Champion, 
 she introduced the new-comer as Mr. Jermyn. 
 
 ■' Lady Fridoline has been tr\-ing to make us feel creepy by her 
 description of your occult powers, Mr. .Jermyn," said jMrs. Champion, 
 " but you do not look a very alarming personage." 
 
 " Lady Fridoline exaggerated my poor gifts in her infinite kind- 
 ness," replied Jermyn, with a laugh that had a gnome-like sound to 
 Mrs. Champion's ears. 
 
 "Mr. Jermyn was a pleasant-looking young man, tall, slim, and 
 fair, with a broad, strongly marked brow, which receded curiously 
 above the temples, and with hair and moustache of that pale 
 yellowish hue which seems most appropriate to the faun and satyi- 
 races. Something in the way this short curling hair was cut about 
 brow and ears, or in the shape of the ears themselves, suggested the 
 satyr type ; otherwise there was nothing in the young man's 
 physiognomy, bearing, or dress which made him different from other 
 well-bred and well-dressed men of his age. His laugh had a fresh 
 and joyous ring, which made it agreeable to hear, and he laughed 
 often, looking at the commonest things in a mirthful spirit. 
 
 Lady Fridoline insisted upon his taking some refreshment, and 
 when he had disposed of a lemon-ice, she carried him off for a stroll 
 round the lawn, eager to let people see her latest celebrity. There 
 was a little buzz of talk, and an obvious excitement in the air as he 
 passed group after group. He had shown himself rarely in societj', 
 and his few performances had been greatly discussed and written 
 about. Letters exalting him as a creature gifted with superhuman 
 powers had alternated with letters denouncing him as an impostor 
 in one of the most popular daily papers. The people who are 
 always ready to believe in the impossible were loud in the assertion 
 of his good faith, and would not hear of trickery or imposture.
 
 S Gerard ; or, 
 
 There was an eager expectation of some manifestation of liis 
 powers this afternoon, as he walked across the lawn with Lady 
 Fridohne, and people who had been on the point of departui-e 
 Hngered m the hope of being thrilled and frightened, as thev had 
 heard of other people being thrilled and frightened, by this am'iable- 
 lookmg youth with the fak complexion and yellow hair. The very 
 incongruity of that fair and youthful aspect ^\dth the ghastly 
 or the supernatural made Justin Jermyn so much the more 
 interesting. 
 
 He walked about the grounds with his hostess for some time, all 
 her duties of leave-taking suspended, and she to all appearance 
 absorbed m earnest conversation with the Fate-Revealer, every one 
 watchful and expectant. Hillersdon and Mrs. Champion were sitting 
 side by side upon a rustic bench, the lady no longer in a hurrv to 
 depart. 
 
 " You don't believe in any nonsense of this kind, I know," she 
 said, in her low, listless voice, without looking at her companion, 
 
 "I believe in nothing but disillusion, the falsehood inherent* in 
 all thmgs." 
 
 " You are in an unhappy mood to-day, 1 think," she said, with a 
 touch of interest. 
 
 "■ Atmospherical, perhaps,'' he answered, with a laugh. *• You 
 can hardly expect anybody to feel very happy under "hat leaden 
 sky." 
 
 Lady Fridoline and her companion had separated. He was 
 walking towards the house ; she was going rapidly from group to 
 group, talking and explaining with animated gestures, 
 
 '• There is going to be a performance," said Mrs. Champion, 
 rising. " If there is any excitement to be had let us have our share 
 of it." 
 
 " You want the secrets of your hfe to be read ? " asked Gerard. ; 
 
 " Yes, yes, yes, I want to see what modern magic can do," 
 
 «' And you are not afraid ? That is because yours is only a 
 surface life— an existence that begins and ends in wealth and 
 luxury, fine clothes and fine horses. What have you to fear from 
 sorcery? There are no more secrets in your life than in a doll's 
 life." 
 
 " You are very impertinent." 
 
 " I am going away, and I can afford to quarrel with you. Would 
 to God I could stir some kind of feeling in you— yes, even make 
 you angry before I go."
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 9 
 
 "I am afraid you are an egotist," she said, smiling at him with 
 lovely, inscrutable eyes. 
 
 She went across the lawn to Lady Fridoline. 
 
 " Are we going to have any magic ? " she asked. 
 
 "You must not utter that word before Mr. Jermyn, unless you 
 want to offend him. He has a horror of any idea of that kind. He 
 calls his wonderful gift only insight, the power to look through the 
 face into the mind behind it, and from the mind to the life which 
 the mind has shaped and guided. He claims no occult power — 
 only a keener vision than the common run of mankind. He is 
 going to sit in the library for tlae next half-hour, and if anybody 
 wants to test his powers they can go in — one at a time — and talk 
 to him." 
 
 Anybody seemed likely to be eA-erybody in this case, for there 
 was a general and hurried movement towards the house. 
 
 '' Come," said Edith Champion peremptorily, and she and 
 Hillersdon followed the crowd, getting in advance of most people, 
 with swift, vigorous steps. 
 
 The library at Fridoline House was a large room that occupied 
 nearly the whole of one ■n'ing. It was approached by a corridor, 
 and ^Irs. Champion and her escort found this corridor choked with 
 people, all eager to interview Mr. Jermyn. 
 
 The approach to the oracle was strongly defended, however, by 
 two gentlemen, who had been told off for that purpose, one being 
 a Colonel of Engineers and the other a Professor of Natural Science. 
 
 " We shall never get through this herd," said Gerard, looking 
 with infinite contempt at the throng of smart people, all panting for 
 a new sensation. " Let us try the other door." 
 
 He was an intimate at Fridoline House, and knew his way to the 
 small ante-room at the back of the Mbrary. If the door of that 
 room were unguarded he and his companion might surprise the 
 wizard, and steal a march upon all that expectant frivoHty in the 
 corridor. The whole thing was beneath contempt, no doubt, and 
 he, Gerard Hillersdon, was not even faintly interested in it, but it 
 interested Edith Champion, and he was anxious to gratify her 
 whim. 
 
 He led her round by the hall and Lady Fridoline's boudoir, to the 
 room behind the librarj-, opened the door ever so gently, and listened 
 to the voices within. 
 
 " It is wonderful, positively wonderful," said a voice in awe- 
 stricken undertones.
 
 lo Ge7'ard ; or, 
 
 "Are you satisfied, madam? Have I told you enougli? " asked 
 Jermyn. 
 
 •' More than enough. You have made me utterly miserable." 
 
 Then came the flutter of a silken skirt, and the opening and 
 closing of a door, and then Jermyn looked quickly towards that 
 other door which Hillersdon was holding ajar. 
 
 " Who's there ? " he asked. 
 
 " A lady who would like to talk with you before you are exhausted 
 by that clamorous herd in the corridor. May she come to you at 
 once?" 
 
 " It is Mrs. Champion," said JermjTi. "Yes, let her come in." 
 
 " He could not possibly have seen me," whispered Edith Cham- 
 pion, who had been standing behind the door. 
 
 " He divined your presence. He is no more a magician than I 
 am in that matter," said Hillersdon, as she passed him, and closed 
 the door behind her. 
 
 She came out after a five minutes' conference, much paler than 
 when she entered. 
 
 "Well, has he told the lovely doll her latest secret, the mystery 
 of a new gown from Fehx or Eaunitz ? " asked Gerard. 
 
 "I will see you now, if you have anything to say to me, Mr. 
 Hillersdon," said Jermyn airily. 
 
 '' I am with you in a moment," answered Gerard, lingering on 
 the threshold, and holding Mrs. Champion's hand in both of his. 
 "Edith, what has he said to you? you look absolutely frightened." 
 
 "Yes, he has frightened me — frightened me by telling me my 
 own thoughts. I did not know I was so full of sin. Let me go, 
 Gerard. He has made me hate myself. He will do as much for 
 you, perhaps. He will make you odious in your own eyes. Yes, go 
 to him ; hear ah. that he can teU you." 
 
 She broke from him, and hurried away, he looking after her 
 anxiously. Then, with a troubled sigh, he went to hear what this 
 new adept of a doubtful science might have to say to him. 
 
 The hbrary was always in shadow^at this hour, and now, with 
 that grey threatening sky outside the long narrow Queen Anne 
 \\nndows, the room was wrapped in a wintry darkness, against 
 which the smiling countenance of the diviner stood out in luminous 
 relief. 
 
 "Sit doAVTi, Mr. Hillersdon, I am" not going to hurry because of 
 that mob outside," said JermjTi gaily, throwing himself back in 
 the capacious arm-chair, and turning his beaming face towards
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 1 1 
 
 Hillersdon.. " I am interested in the lady who has just left me, and 
 I am still more interested in you." 
 
 " I ought to feel honoured by that interest," said Hillersdon, " but 
 I confess to a doubt of its reality. What can you know of a man 
 whom you have seen for the first time within the last half-hour ? " 
 
 " I am so sorry for you," said Jerm}Ti, ignoring the direct question, 
 " so sorry. A young man of your natural gifts — clever, handsome, 
 well-bred — to be so tired of life already, so utterly despondent of the 
 future and its infinite chances, that you are going to throw up the 
 sponge, and make an end of it all to-night. It is really too sad." 
 
 HUlersdon stared at him in blank amazement. Justin Jermyu 
 made the statement as if it were the most natural thing in the world 
 that he should have fathomed another man's intention. 
 
 "I cannot accept compassion from any one, least of all from a 
 total stranger," said HUlersdon, after that moment of surprise. 
 " Pray what is there in my history or my appearance that moves 
 you to this wUd conjecture ? " 
 
 " No matter by what indications I read your mind," answered 
 Jermyn lightly. " You know I have read you right. You are one 
 of my easiest cases ; everji;hing about you is obvious — stares me 
 full in the face. The lady who has just left us needed a subtler 
 power of interpretation. She does not wear her heart upon her 
 sleeve ; and yet I think she will admit that I startled her. As for 
 you, my dear fellow, I am particularly frank with you because 4 
 ■want to prevent your carrying out that foolish notion of yours. 
 The worst thing that a man can do Avith his life is to throw it 
 away." 
 
 •' I admit no man's right to offer me advice." 
 
 "You think that is out of my line. I am a fortune-teller, and 
 nothing else. Well, I wUl tell you your fortune, Mr. Hillersdon, if 
 you hke. You will not carry out your present intention — yet 
 awhile, or in the mode and manner you have planned. Good 
 afternoon." He dismissed his visitor with a careless nod as he rose 
 to open the door communicating with the corridor, whence came a 
 buzz of eager voices, mixed with light laughter. People were 
 prepared to be startled, yet could but regard the whole business in 
 a somewhat jocular spirit. It was only the select few who gave 
 Justin Jermyn credit for occiilt power.
 
 t2 Gerard ; or. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 "oh, pitiful YOUXG man, STKUCK blind tt'ITH BEAUTi'." 
 
 Edith Champion was one of the handsomest women in London, a 
 woman whose progress was followed at all great parties and public 
 gatherings by the hum of an admiring multitude, whispering her 
 praises, or telling the uninformed that the dark-eyed woman Avith 
 the tall, Juno-like form was the Mrs. Champion. Four years ago 
 she had been one of a trio of lovely sisters, the daughters of an 
 impecunious Yorkshire squire, a man who had wasted a fine fortune 
 on the turf, and was ending his days in debt and difficulty at a 
 moated grange in the West Riding. The three lovely sisters were 
 such obviously marketable property that aunts and uncles were 
 quick to compassionate their forlorn condition, and they were duly 
 launched in London society. The two elder were young women of 
 singular calmness and perspicuity, and got themselves well married, 
 the first to a wealthy baronet, the second to a marquis, without 
 giving trouble to anybody concerned in the transaction; but the 
 3'oungest girl, Edith, showed herself wayward and wilful, and 
 expressed an absurd desire to marry Gerard Hillersdon, the man 
 she loved. This desire was frustrated, but not so promptly as it 
 should have been, and the young lady contrived to make her attach- 
 ment pubHc property before uncles or aunts could crush the 
 flowers of sentiment under the hoof of worldly wisdom. But the 
 sentiment was crushed somehow, the world knew not with how 
 many tears, or wnth what girlish pleading for mercy, and the season 
 after this foolish entanglement Edith Champion accepted the 
 addresses of an elderly stockbroker and reputed millionaire, who 
 made a handsomer settlement than the middle-aged marquis had 
 made upon her elder sister. 
 
 Mr. Champion was good-natured and unsuspicious, his mind 
 being almost entirely absorbed in that exciting race for wealth 
 which had been the business of his life from boyhood. He wanted 
 a beautiful wife as the solace of his declining years, and the one 
 tiling needed to complete the costly home which he had built for 
 liimself on a heathy ridge among those romantic hills where Surrey 
 overlooks Sussex. The wife was the final piece of furniture to be 
 chosen for this splendid mansion, and he had chosen that crowning
 
 Xhe World, the Flesh, and the Devil, i 
 
 J 
 
 ornament in a deliberate and leisurely manner. He was the last 
 man to plague himself by any subtle questionings as to the senti- 
 ments of the lady so honoured, or to be harassed by doubts af her 
 fidelity. He had no objection to seeing his wife surrounded bv 
 youthfid admirers. Was she not meant to be admu'ed, as much as 
 his pictures and statues ? He found no fault with the chosen band 
 of " nice boys " who attended her afternoon at home, or crowded 
 the back of her box when the curtain was dowm at opera-house or 
 theatre ; and if Gerard Hlllersdon were more constant than all the 
 others in his attendance, the fact never presented itself in any 
 unpleasant light to Mr. Champion. Had he given himself the 
 trouble to think about his wife's relations wnth her cavaliere servente 
 lie would most assuredly have told himself that she was much too 
 well placed to overstep the limits of prudence, and that no woman 
 in her right senses would abandon a palace in Surrey and a model 
 house in Hertford Street for the caravanseries that lodge the 
 divmxee. He would have remembered also with satisfaction that 
 his wife's settlement, liberal as it was, would be made null and void 
 by a divorce. 
 
 And thus for three years of his life — perhaps the best and 
 brightest years in a man's life, from twenty-five to twenty-eight — 
 Gerard Hillersdon had given up all his thoughts, aspirations, and 
 dreams to the most hopeless of all love affairs, an attachment to an 
 irreproachable matron, a woman who had accepted her lot as an 
 unloving wife and who meant to do her duty, in her own cold and 
 measured way, to an unloved husband; yet who clung to the 
 memory of a girlish love and fostered the passion of her lover, 
 caring, or at least seeming to care, notliing- for his peace, and never 
 estimating the wrong she was doing him. 
 
 To this passion everything in the young man's life had been 
 sacrificed. He had begun his career on fire with ambition, believin"- 
 in his capacity to succeed in more than one profession ; and in the 
 first flush of his manhood he had done some really good work in 
 imaginative literature, had written a novel which took the town, 
 and had made his brief success as an original writer, romantic, light 
 of touch, unconventional ; but he had been drifted into idleness by 
 a woman who treated him as some queen or princess in the days 
 of chivalry might have treated her page. She spoilt his career, 
 ]ust when a lasting success was within his reach, needing only 
 earnestness and industry on his part. She had wasted the golden 
 days of his youth, and had given him in exchange only smiles aud
 
 14 Gerard ; or, 
 
 sweet words, and a place at her dinner-table in a house where he 
 had lost all prestige from being seen too often, the one inevitable 
 guest whose presence counted for nothing. He had been in all 
 things her slave, offending the people she disliked, and wasting 
 his attention and his substance on her favourites, faithful to her 
 caprice of the hour, were it never so foolish. 
 
 And now after three years of this fond slavery the end had come. 
 He was ruined, and was worse than ruined. He had been living 
 from hand to mouth, writing for magazmes and newspapers, earning 
 a good deal of money in a casual way, but never enough to keep 
 him out of debt ; and now he saw bankruptcy staring him in the 
 face, and with bankruptcy dishonour, for he had gambling debts 
 which, as the son of a country parson, he ought never to have 
 incurred, and which it would be disgrace not to pay. 
 
 Had this dread of disgrace been his only trouble, he might have 
 treated it as other men have treated such dark episodes. He 
 might have told himself that England is not the world, and that 
 there is always room for youth and daring under the tropic stars^ 
 and that the name with which a man has been labelled at starting 
 in life is not so interwoven with his being that he need mind 
 changing it for another, and giving himself a fresh start. He might 
 have reasoned thus had he still felt the dehght in life which makes 
 the adventurer live down shame and set his face to untrodden worlds 
 across the sea. But he had no such delight. The zest of life had 
 gone out of him. Love itself had lost all fervour. He hardly 
 knew whether he cared any more for the woman to whom he had 
 sacrificed his youth, whether the flame of love had not expired 
 altogether amidst the vacuity of two conventional existences. The 
 only thing whicih he knew for certain was that he loved no other 
 woman, and that he took no interest in life adequate to the 
 struggle it would cost him to Hve through the crisis that was 
 coming. 
 
 And thus, with all serious consideration, he had decided upon 
 a sudden exit from a scene which no longer interested him. Yet 
 with a curious inconsistency he wanted to spend his last hours in 
 Edith Champion's society, and never had he seemed gayer or 
 happier than he seemed that evening at the triangular dinner in 
 Hertford Street. 
 
 They were dining in a little octagon room at the back of the 
 house, a room upholstered like a tent, and furnished in so Oriental 
 a fashion that it seemed a solecism to be sitting upon chairs, and
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the DeviL 15 
 
 not to be eating pillau or kibobs with one's fingers. The clerical 
 cousin was a very agreeable personage — plump and rosy, strongly 
 addicted to good living, and looking upon the beautiful Mrs. 
 Champion as a being whose normal state was to be adored by 
 well-bred young men, and to dispense hospitality to poor 
 relations. 
 
 Not a word was said about Justin Jermyn throughout the dinner, 
 but while Gerard was helping Mrs. Champion to put on her cloak, 
 she asked suddenly — 
 
 " How did you get on with the Fate-reader? " 
 " Very badly. He struck me as an insolent farceur. I wonder 
 society can encourage such a person." 
 
 *' Yes, he is decidedly insolent. I was rather scared by the things 
 he said to me, but a few minutes' thought showed me that his talk 
 was mere guess work. I shall never ask him to any party of 
 mine." 
 
 "You must have rushed away in a great hurry. I was only five 
 minutes closeted with the oracle, but when I went to the hall you 
 and your carriage had vanished." 
 
 " I had an irresistible desire to get out of the house. I felt as if 
 I were escaping from Tophet; and then I had to call for Mrs. 
 Gresham " — the cousin — " at the Knightsbridge Eiding School, 
 where the poor thing had been slaving at Lady Penniddock's 
 refreshment stall." 
 
 " It was abject slavery," protested Mrs. Gresham. " I'm afraid 
 I shall detest tea and coffee all the days of my life, and I was so 
 fond of them " — with profound regret. " The very look of a bath 
 bun ■will make me ill." 
 
 " Depediom,'" said Mrs. Champion. " We shall hear very little 
 of the new Zerlina if we go on dawdling here." 
 
 And so in a feverish hurry she led the way to her carriage, where 
 tber$ was just room enough for Gerard on the front seat.
 
 1 6 Gerard ; or, 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY." 
 
 The opera house was not brilliantly filled. There were a great 
 many important functions going on that evening, events thickening 
 as the season sloped towards its close, and it may be that the new 
 ZerHna had not been sufficiently puffed, or that those enthusiasts 
 who can never have too much Mozart are only the minority among 
 opera-goers. There were a good many blank spaces in the stalls, 
 and a good many untenanted boxes, nor was the display of diamonds 
 and beauty as dazzling as it might have been. 
 
 In an audience at half power Mrs. Champion's commanding 
 loveliness and Mrs. Champion's tiara of diamond stars shone con- 
 spicuous. She was dressed with that careless air which was her 
 speciality, in some filmy fabric of daffodil colour, which was 
 arranged in loose folds across her bust and shoulders, caught here 
 and there, as if at random, with a diamond star. A great cluster 
 of yellow orchids was fastened on one shoulder, and there were 
 yellow orchids pinned on her black lace fan, while long black 
 gloves gave a touch of eccentricity to her toilette. Her one object 
 in dressing herself was to be different from other women. She 
 never wore the fashionable colour or the fashionable fabric, but 
 gloried in opposition, and took infinite pains to find something in 
 Paris or Vienna which nobody was wearing in London. 
 
 The aw^e-inspiring music which closes the second act, and seems 
 to presage the horror of the scenes that are coming, was hurrying 
 to its brilliant finish, when Gerard, looking idly down upon the 
 stalls, started at sight of the man who had mystified him more than 
 any other human being had ever done. There, lounging in hia 
 place between two unoccupied seats, he saw Justin Jermyn, 
 apparently enjoying the music with that keen delight which only 
 the real music-lover can feel. His head was thrown back, his thin 
 pale lips were slightly parted, and his large blue eyes beamed with 
 rapture. Yes, a man who passionately loved music, or else a 
 consummate actor. 
 
 The very presence of the man recalled Gerard Hillersdon to the 
 business which was to be done after the green curtain had fallen, 
 and his fair companions had been handed into their carriage. Ten
 
 The World, tJic Flesh, and the Devil. 1 7 
 
 minutes in a hansom, and he would be in his lodgings, and there 
 would be no excuse for delay. His time would have come before 
 the clock of St. James's Church struck midnight. He had looked at 
 his pistol-case involuntarily while he was dressing for the eveninp;. 
 He knew wdiere it stood ready to his hand ; and close beside the 
 pistol-case was a business-like letter from his landlord requesting 
 the settlement of a long account for rent and maintenance — only 
 such breakfasts and casual meals as a young man of fashion takes at 
 his lodgings — which had mounted to formidable figures. And an 
 oimce of lead Avas to be the sole settlement. For the first time in 
 his life Mr. Hillersdon felt sorry for those eminentlj' respectable 
 people, his landlord and landlady. He began to consider whether 
 he ought not at least to shoot himself out of doors, rather than to 
 inflict upon an old-established lodging-house the stigma of a suicide ; 
 but the inconvenience of self-destruction &ul) jove was too apparent 
 to him, and he felt that he must be selfish in this final act of a 
 selfish life. 
 
 Yes, there sat Justin Jermyn, complacent, full of enjojTuent; the 
 man who had told him what he was going to do. How the modern 
 sorcerer w^ould pride himself upon that fore-knowledge to-morrow 
 •when the evenmg papers told of the deed that had been done. 
 There would doubtless be a paragi-apli in the papers — three lines at 
 most — and perhaps a line on the contents bill: Distressixo 
 Suicide of a Gextlemax. Suicides are always described as 
 distressing when the self-slaughterer is of gentle blood. 
 
 He felt angry with Jermyn for having contrived to haunt these 
 closing hours of his life. He sat watching the sorcerer all througli 
 the last act of the opera, noting his elfin enjoyment of all that was 
 diabohcal in the music and the hbretto. How he gi-inned at the 
 discomfiture of Don Giovanni ! how he rocked himself with 
 laughter at the abject terror of Leperello ! No one approached him 
 as an acquaintance. He sat in complete isolation, but in supreme 
 enjoyment, apparently the happiest man in that great theatre, the 
 youngest and the freshest in the capacity to enjoy. 
 
 " And that laughing fool read my purpose as if my. brain had 
 been an open book," mused Hillersdon savagely. 
 
 His anger was not lessened when he glanced round while he was 
 conducting Mrs. Champion to her carriage, and saw the Fate- 
 reader's slim, supple figure behind him, and the Fate-reader's 
 gnome-like countenance smiling at him under an opera hat. 
 
 ''I am so sorry you are leaving London so soon," said Edith 
 
 o
 
 1 8 Gerard; or, 
 
 Champion, as he lingered at the carriage-door for the one half- 
 minute allowed by the Jack ui office at his elbow. 
 
 She gave him her hand, and even pressed the hand which held 
 hers, with more sentiment than she was wont to show. 
 
 "Drive on, coachman," shouted the Commissionaire. "Now 
 then, nest carriage." 
 
 No time for sentimental partings there ! 
 
 Hillersdon walked away from the theatre, meaning to pick up 
 the first hansom that offered itself. He had not gone three steps 
 along the Bow Street pavement when Jermyn was close beside him. 
 
 " Are you gomg home, Mr. Hillersdon ? " he asked, in a friendly 
 tone. " Delightful opera, ' Don Giovanni,' ain't it ? The best out 
 and away. ' Faust ' is my next favomite ; but even Gounod can't 
 touch Mozait." 
 
 "I dare say not; but I am no connoisseur. Good night, Mr. 
 Jermyn. I am going home immediately." 
 
 " Don't. Come and have some supper with me. I only half told 
 your fortime this afternoon, you were so infernally impatient. I 
 have a good deal more to tell you. Come and have some supper 
 in my chambers." 
 
 " Some other night, perhaps, Mr. Jermyn. I am gomg straight 
 
 home." 
 
 " And you mean there shall be no other nights in your life ? " 
 said Jermyn, in a low, silky voice that made Hillersdon savage, for 
 it jarred upon his irritated nerves more than the harshest accents 
 could have done. 
 
 " Good night," he said curtly, turning on his heel. 
 
 Jermyn was not to be repulsed. 
 
 " Come home with me," he said ; " I won't leave you while you 
 have the suicide's line on your fc^ehead. Come to supper with me, 
 Hillersdon. I have a brand of champagne that will smooth out that 
 ugly wrinkle, if you'll only give the stuff a fair trial." 
 
 " I don't know where you live, and I don't care a jot for your 
 wines or anybody else's. I am leaving town to-morrow morning, 
 and I want my last hours in London for my own purposes." 
 
 Jermyn put his arm through Hillersdon's, wheeled him round in 
 the direction of Long-acre, and quietly led him away. That was 
 his answer to Hillersdon's testy speech, and the young man sub- 
 mitted, feeling a vis inertice, a languid indifference which made him 
 consentient to a stranger's will, having lost all will-power of his 
 own.
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 19 
 
 He was angry with Jermyn, yet even more angry with himself, 
 and in that perturbation of mind, tempered curiously with supine- 
 ness, he took but little note of which way they went. He 
 remembered going by Lincoln's Inn Fields and the Turnstile. He 
 remembered crossing Holborn, but knew not afterwards whether the 
 shabby, squalid looking Inn, beneath whose gloomy gate-house 
 Jermyn led him, did, or did not, open directly out of the great 
 thoroughfare. 
 
 He remembered always that it was a most dismal assemblage of 
 tall, shabby houses, forming a quadrangle, in whose stony centre 
 there was a dilapidated basin, which might once have been a 
 fountain. The summer moon, riding high and fast among wind- 
 tossed clouds, shone full into the stony yard, and lit up the shabby 
 fronts of the houses, but not one lamp-lit window cheered with the 
 suggestion of life and occupation. 
 
 "Do you mean to say you live in this ghastly hole?" he 
 exclaimed, speaking for the first time since they left Bow Street ; 
 " it looks as if it were tenanted by a company of ghosts." 
 
 " A good many of the houses are empty, and I dare say the 
 ghosts of dead usurers and dishonest lawyers and broken-hearted 
 clients do have a high time in the old rooms now and again," 
 answered Jermyn, with his iiTepressible laugh; "but I have 
 never seen any company but rats, mice, and such small deer, as 
 Bacon says. Of course, he was Bacon. We're all agreed upon 
 that." 
 
 Hillersdon ignored this frivolity, and stood dumbly, while Jermyn 
 put his key into a door, opened it, and led the way into a passage 
 that was pitch dark. Not a pleasant situation to be alone in a 
 dark passage at midnight in a sparely inhabited block of buildings 
 quite cut off from the rest of the world, in company with a man 
 whose repute was decidedly diabolical. 
 
 Jermyn struck' a match and lighted a smaU hand-lamp, which 
 improved the situation just a little. 
 
 "My den is on the second floor," he said, "and I've made the 
 place pretty comfortable inside, though it looks rather uncanny 
 outside." 
 
 He led the way up an old oak staircase, narrow, shabby, and 
 unadorned, but oak-panelled, and therefore precious in the eyes of 
 those who cHng fondly to the past and to that old London which ia 
 so swiftly vanishing off the face of the earth. 
 
 The little lamp gave but just light enough to make the darkness
 
 2o Gerard ; or, 
 
 of the staircase visible, till they came to a landing where the moon 
 looked in through the mm-ky panes of a tall window, and anon to 
 a higher landing, where a vivid streak of lamplight under a door 
 gave the first token of habitation. Jermyn opened this door, and 
 his guest stood half-blinded by the brilliant light, and not a little 
 astonished by the elegant luxury of those two rooms, opening into 
 each other with a wide archway, which Mr. Jermyn had denomi- 
 nated his " den." 
 
 Hillersdon had been in many bachelor-rooms within the precincts 
 of The Albany, in Piccadilly, St. James's, and Mayfair, but he had 
 seen nothing more studiously luxurious than the Fate-reader's den. 
 Heavy velvet curtains, of darkish green, draped the shuttered 
 windows. The ingle-nook was quamt, artistic, comfortable; the 
 glistening tiles were decorated with storks and sea-birds, which 
 might have been painted by Stacey Marks himself. The furniture 
 was all that is most rare and genuine in the relics of the Chippendale 
 era. The carpet was a marvel of Oriental undertones, and Oriental 
 richness of fabric. The few pieces of pottery which made spots of 
 vivid colour here and there amidst the prevailing sombreness of hue, 
 were choicest specimens of Indian and Italian ware. The pictures 
 were few. A Judas, by Titian; a wood nymph, naked and 
 unashamed, against a background of dark foliage, by Guido ; and 
 three curious bits of the early German school, made up the show of 
 art, save for a bust of the Fate-reader in black marble, a curiously 
 faithful likeness, in which the faun-like character of the head, and 
 the elfin smile, were but slightly accentuated. This bust stood 
 upon a pedestal of dark red porphyry, and seemed to command the 
 room. 
 
 The inner room was furnished as a library. There the lampg 
 were shaded and the light subdued. Here, under the centre lamp 
 that hung low over the small round table appeared all the arrange- 
 ments for a dainty little supper. Two covered dishes on a chafing 
 dish ; a trufHed pullet and a miniature York ham, a lobster salad, 
 strawberries, peaches, champagne in a brazen ice-pail, ornamented 
 with Bacchanalian figures in repouss^ woi'k. 
 
 " My servant has gone to bed," said Jermyn, "but he has left 
 everything ready, and we can wait upon each other. Cutlets, 
 salmi aux olives," he said, lifting the covers ; " which will you start 
 with?" 
 
 " Neither, thanks. I told you 1 had no appetite." 
 
 " Discouraging to a man who is as hungry as a hunter," retorted
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 21 
 
 Jcrmyu, helping himself. " Try that Madeira, it may give you an 
 appetite." 
 
 Hillersdon seated himself opposite his host and took a glass of 
 wine. His curiosity was stimulated by the Fate-reader's surround- 
 ings; and, after all, the thing which he had to do might remain 
 undone for a few hours. He could not help being interested in 
 this young man, who, either by instinct or by a subtle guess, had 
 fathomed his purpose. The luxury of these rooms piqued him, so 
 striking a contrast with the shabbiness of his own West End lodging, 
 albeit that lodging was far from cheap. He was supposed to pay 
 for " situation." Of luxury he had nothing, of comfort very little. 
 How did Jermyn contrive to be so well off, he wondered ? Did he 
 live by fate-reading, or had he means of his own ? 
 
 Jermyn was eating his supper all this time with a fine appetite 
 and an epicurean gusto. After a couple of glasses of Madeira, his 
 guest helped himself to lobster salad, and when Jermyn opened the 
 champagne the two men were hobnobbing comfortably, and, that 
 wine being choice of its Idnd and admirably iced, HiUersdon drank 
 the best part of a bottle, and found himself enjoying his supper more 
 than he had enjoyed anything in the way of meat and drink for a 
 long time. 
 
 The conversation during supper was of the lightest, Jermyn 
 letting oft' his criticisms, mostly unfavourable, upon people known 
 to them both, and laughing tremendously at his own wit. He was 
 careful not to mention Mrs. Champion, however, and Hillersdon had 
 110 objection to spatter mud upon the ruck of his acquaintance. 
 Supper over, and a box of cigars open between them, with a silver 
 epirit-lamp, shaped like a serpent offering its flaming jaws for their 
 use, the men grew more serious. It was past one o'clock. They 
 had been a long time over their supper, and they seemed no longer 
 strangers — intimates, rather, not united by any particular esteem for 
 each other, but one in their contempt for other people. 
 
 '' The champagne has wiped out that ugly wrinkle alreadj'," said 
 Jermyn, with his friendly air ; " and now tell me what could induce 
 you to contemplate such a thing." 
 
 " What thing? " asked Hillersdon, waxing moody. 
 
 Jermyn's reply was pantomimic. He passed his hand across his 
 throat, significant of a razor ; he turned his hand towards his open 
 mouth, suggestive of a pistol ; he tossed off an imaginary poison 
 draught. 
 
 "You insist upon suggesting '' began Hillersdon, angrily.
 
 22 Gerard ; or, 
 
 " I tell you I saw it in your face. The man who contemplates 
 suicide has a look which no man who reads the human countenance 
 can mistake. There is a fixed horror in the eyes, as of one who 
 stares into the unknown, and knows that he is nearing the mystery 
 of life and death. There are perplexed lines about the brow, ' shall 
 I, or shall I not ? ' and there is a nervous hurry, as of one who wants 
 to get a disagreeable business over as soon as may be. I have never 
 been mistaken yet in that look. AVhy, my dear fellow, why? 
 Surely Hfe at eight and twenty is too precious a thing to be frittered 
 away for a trifle." 
 
 " ' You take my life when you do take the means by which I live,' " 
 quoted Hillersdon. 
 
 " Bacon again ! Tliat fellow has something to say about every- 
 thing. You imply that you are impecunious, and would rather be 
 dead than penniless." 
 
 "Take it so, if you please." 
 
 " Good. Now, how can you tell that fortune is not waiting for 
 you at some turn in the road you know not ; that road of the future 
 which no man knows till he treads it? So long as a man is alive 
 he has always a chance of becoming a millionaire. So long as a 
 woman is unmarried there is always the possibility of her marrying 
 a duke." 
 
 " The chance of fortune in my case is so remote that it is not 
 worth considering. I am the son of a country parson. I have no 
 relative living likely to leave me the smallest legacy. Unless I 
 could make a fortune by literature, I have no chance of making one 
 by any exertion of my own, and my second book was so dire a 
 failure that I have it not in me to write a third." 
 
 " Fortunes drop from the clouds sometimes. Have you never 
 done any rich man a service which might prompt him — when dis- 
 tributing superfluous thousands — to leave a few to you ? " 
 
 " Never, within my recollection." 
 
 " Come, now, looking back at your life, is there no act in it of 
 which you might fairly be proud, no touch of the heroic, no deed 
 worthy a paragraph in the papers ? " 
 
 " None. I once saved an old man's life ; but I doubt if the life 
 were worth saving, since the old wretch did not trouble himself to 
 thank me for having risked my own life in his service." 
 
 "You saved an old man's life, at hazard of your own! Come, 
 that sounds heroic," cried . Jermyn, flinging his fair head back against 
 the blackish green of the velvet cliair cover, and laughing with all
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 23 
 
 his mi'^'ht. The black bust showed a little to the left, above the 
 level of his head, and it seemed to Hillersdon that the black face 
 •was laughing as broadly as the white one. 
 
 "Tell me the whole story— pray now— it sounds absolutely 
 heroic," urged Jermyn. 
 
 " There is very little to tell," replied Hillersdon, coolly. " Nothing 
 either to laugh at or to be thrilled by. I did only what any other 
 active young man would have done in my position, seeing a feeble 
 old man in peril of immediate death. It was at Nice. You know 
 what a wilderness of iron the railway station there is, and how one 
 has to hunt about for one's train. It was at carnival time, dusk, 
 and a great many people were going back to Cannes, I myself among 
 them. The old man had arrived from another train going eastwards, 
 and was making for the platform, when a great high engine bore 
 steadily down upon him, by no means at express speed, but fast 
 enough to paralyse him, so tliat, instead of getting out of the way, 
 he stood staring, hesitating, helpless. An instant more, and that 
 vast mass of iron would have cut him do\vn and dashed the hfe out 
 of him. I had but time to drag him out of the track before the 
 engine passed me, brushing my shoulder as it went by. I took him 
 to the platform. Hardly any one had seen our adventure. I had 
 a friend with me at the station, with whom I had bnched at the 
 Cosmopolitan, and who had insisted on seeing me ofl. 1 rold him 
 briefly what had happened, left the old man in his care, and rushed 
 back to look for my ovi-n train, which I caught by the skin of my 
 teeth." 
 
 " And the old churl never thanked you? " 
 
 "Not by one civil word. His only remark was an inquiry about 
 his umbrella, which had fallen out of his hand when I plucked him 
 from the jaws of death. I beheve he felt himself aggi-ieved because 
 I had not rescued his umbrella as well as himself." 
 
 "Was he English, do you think? " 
 
 " Distinctly British. A Frenchman or Itahan would at least have 
 been loquacious, if not gratehil." 
 
 "The shock may have made him speechless." 
 
 " He found speech to inquire after his umbrella." 
 
 "True, that looked black! " said Jermjm, laughing; "I'm afraid 
 he must have been a thankless old dog. And you took no trouble 
 to find out who he was, I suppose — what manner of man you had 
 snatched from sudden death ? " 
 
 " I had not the slightest interest in his identity."
 
 24 Gerard ; or, 
 
 '• So ! Well, uo\v, let us talk still further of yourself and 3'our 
 prospects. You know that people call me the Fate-reader. Now, 
 I have a fancy that your fortunes are on the threshold of a great 
 change — and that, apart from the foUy of anticipating Death, the 
 inevitable enemy, in }'our case it may be very much worth while to 
 hve." 
 
 "You are vague and general. What form of good fortune do 
 you predict for me ? " 
 
 " I pretend to no gift of prophecy. I only profess the power of 
 insight. I can read what men are — not what is going to happen to 
 them ; but as in many cases character is fate, I have been able to 
 hazard some shrewd guesses about the future." 
 
 " And in my case, what are your guesses ? " 
 
 '• I would rather not tell you." 
 
 " The outlook is not satisfactory', then ? " 
 
 "Not altogether. The character of a man who at eight and 
 twenty can contemplate suicide as the shortest way out of his 
 embarrassments is not a character that promises well. I am frank 
 you see." 
 
 " Vastly frank." 
 
 "Don't be angry," laughed Jermyn. "I pretend to be no hero 
 myself, and if I were very hard up, or very much bored, I dare say 
 I too might think of a bullet or a dose of prussic acid. Only that 
 kind of idea argues a character at once weak and selfish. The man 
 wlio takes his own life runs away from the universal battle, and 
 shov,-s a selfish indiflerence to those he leaves behind, in whoso 
 minds the memory of his deatli will be a lasting pain." 
 
 "My poor mother," sighed Ilillersdon, recognising the truth of 
 tliis assertion. 
 
 " You would have killed yourself because you were ennuied and 
 unhappy; because you have wasted opportunities, and given the 
 ])est years of your life to a hopeless passion. Yom* reasons were 
 not strong enough ; and even if I were not here to demonstrate your 
 folly, I think your hand must have faltered at the last moment, and 
 you would have asked yourself — Is the outlook so very black after 
 all ? Does not one gleam of light pierce tlie darkness ? " 
 
 " The outlook is as black as pitcli," answered Ilillersdon, expand- 
 ing under the influence of the wine he had been drinking so freely, 
 ready now to talk to this acquaintance of a day as if he were his 
 liosom friend and companion of years; "there is not a gleam of 
 light, not one! I have wasted my chances; I have frittered a\vay
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 25 
 
 whatever talent or capacitj- 1 may liave possessed when I left the 
 University. I am a dependent upon a father who can ill afford to 
 support a son in idleness, and to whom I ought to be a help rather 
 than a burden. I have been — and must be as long as I live — the 
 glave of a woman who exacts servitude and gives nothing— whose 
 heart and mind after years of closest association are still mysteries 
 to me; who will not own that she loves me, yet will not let 
 me go." 
 
 *' Mrs. Champion is a remarkably clever woman," said Jermyn, 
 coolly ; ' ■ but there are depths which you have never fathomed 
 under that calm and virtuous surface. Leave her for another 
 divinity, and you will see of what she is capable. If that hopeless 
 attachment is your only trouble, I snap my fingers at the necessity 
 of suicide. A day, an hour may bring you face to face with a 
 woman whose influence wUl make you forget Edith Champion." 
 
 " You have no right to make free with Mrs. Champion's name. 
 How do you know that she has any influence over my life ? " 
 
 " I know what all the world knows — your world of Ma}-fair and 
 Belgravia, Hyde Park and South Kensington — and I know what I 
 read in the lady's face. A dangerous woman for you, ]Mr. Hillers- 
 don ; witness these wasted years of which you complain. But 
 there are women as fair, to love whom would be a less abject 
 servitude. Do you remember the vision that Mephistopheles showed 
 Faust in the witch's kitchen ? " 
 
 '■ Gretchen at her spinning-wheel ! " 
 
 "Gretchen at her wheel belongs to the opera, I foncy. The 
 vision Faust saw in the witch's looking-glass was the vision of 
 abstract beauty. You may remember that when he sees Gretchen 
 in the street there is no recognition of that supernal face he had 
 just seen in the glass. He was only caught by a pretty girl tripping 
 modestly home from church. The vision may have been Aphrodite 
 or Helen, for aught we know. A clever trick, no doubt, that vision 
 in the glass. Look yonder, Hillersdon, look at that face there, 
 kno\vn to you in the past — the face of a girl steeped in poverty, 
 beautiful as a dream, yet no better off in this world for her loveli- 
 ness. Look at that fragile form bending over a se^-ing-machuae, 
 our modem substitute for the spinning-wheel. Look at me, Hillers- 
 don," repeated Jermvn, fixing him with those cold, calm, blue 
 eyes, from which there radiated a sudden influence that steeped 
 Gerard Hillersdon's senses in a dreamy light, as of another world 
 and atmosphere ; '■ and now look yonder."
 
 26 Gerard ; or, 
 
 He waved Ms hand carelessly towards the inner room, where in 
 the subdued light Hillersdon saw the figure of a girl, shadowy, dim, 
 and vague at first, and then developing gradually from pale grey 
 shadow into luminous distinctness. The face was turned to him, 
 but the eyes saw him not ; they gazed sadly out into space, full of 
 hopeless melancholy, while the hands moved monotonously back- 
 wards and forwards across the table of a sewing-machine. A girl 
 in a grey cotton frock, sitting at work at a sewing-machine. That 
 was the vision Gerard HUlersdon saw against the dark background 
 of Mr. Jermyn's library ; but the girl's pinched and palHd face was 
 as beautiful in form as the face of EaffaeUe's loveliest Madonna, 
 and in its profound melancholy there was a sweetness that melted 
 his heart. Something, too, in that fair Gretchen-like countenance 
 struck him as strangely familiar. He had seen the face before, not 
 in a picture or in a statue, but in commonplace everyday life. 
 When or where he knew not. 
 
 Jermjm threw his half-smoked cigar up into the air, and burst 
 into his elfin laugh. The vision faded on the instant, as if he had 
 laughed it away. 
 
 " There is your modern Gretchen," he said, " a poor little semp- 
 stress, slaving from dawn to dark for daily bread, as beautiful as 
 a Greek goddess, and virtuous enough to prefer poverty to degra- 
 dation. There is your true tj^e of a nineteenth-century Gretchen. 
 How would you like to be Faust? " 
 
 "I should like to possess Faust's power; not to betray Gretchen, 
 but to secure my own happmess." 
 
 "And what is your idea of happiness? " asked Jermyn, lighting 
 a fresh cigar. 
 
 " Wealth," answered Hillersdon, quickly. " For a man who has 
 lived under the goad of poverty, who has felt day by day, and hour 
 by hour, the torment of being poorer than his feUow-men, there 
 can be but one idea of bliss. IMoney, and plenty of it. From my 
 school days upwards I have lived among men better off than my- 
 self. At the University I got into trouble because I exceeded my 
 allowance. My father could just afford to give me two hundred a 
 year, I spent from three to four hundred ; but the excess, though 
 it caused no end of trouble at home, left me still a pauper among 
 men who spent a thousand. I had been sent to an expensive 
 college, and told to economise ; to enjoy all the privileges of con- 
 tact with men of rank and position, to be among them but not of 
 them. I happened to be popular, and so could not altogether
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 27 
 
 sedude myself from my fellow-men. I was pinched and harassed 
 at every tm-n, and yet plunged in debt, and a malefactor to my 
 family. I came to London, studied for the Bar, ate my dinners, 
 wasted my father's substance on fees, and never got a brief. I 
 wrote a book which won instantaneous success, and for the moment 
 I was rich. I thought I had opened a gold mine, bought my 
 mother a pair of diamond earrings which she did not want, and 
 sent my father a iine set of Jeremy Taylor, which he had been 
 longing for ever since I could remember. I fell in love with a 
 beautiful girl, who reciprocated my aifection, but was not allowed 
 to marry a man whose only resources were in his inkstand. She 
 was not inconsolable, and our engagement was no sooner broken 
 than she married a man old enough to be her gi-andfather, and rich 
 enough to make her a personage in the smart world. My next 
 book, •written while I was writhing under the sting of this dis- 
 appointment, was a dead failm-e. I had no heart to begin another 
 book. I have lived since, as a good many young men contrive to 
 live in this great city, from hand to mouth, and the emptiness and 
 hopelessness of my life have been known to me for a long time. 
 Do you wonder that I began to think actual nothingness better 
 than this middle state between life and death — this perpetual 
 weariness of an inane and purposeless existence ! " 
 
 " And you think that wealth would open up a new future, and 
 that life would be no longer aimless?" 
 
 " Wealth means power," answered Hillersdon. " "With wealth 
 and youth no man should be unhappy, unless racked with physical 
 pain. A rich man is master of the universe." 
 
 "Yes, but while he enjoys the power wealth gives, his life is 
 ebbmg. Every day of enjoyment, every ardent hope satisfied, 
 every extravagant wish realised, is a nail in his cofiin. The men 
 ■who Kve longest are men of moderate means — not worried by 
 poverty nor elated by wealth — men in whose obscure and retired 
 lives society takes very httle interest — scholars, thinkers, inventors, 
 some of them perhaps, whom the world hears of only after they are 
 dead — men who think, and dream, and reason, but experience 
 nothing of Hfe's feverish movement or man's fiercer passions. Do 
 you remember Balzac's story of the Peau de Chagrin? " 
 
 " Not very clearly. It was one of the first French novels I read ; 
 a kind of fairj' tale, I think." 
 
 " It is more an allegory than a fairy tale. A young man. tired 
 of life, like you, is on the brink of suicide — has made up his mind
 
 28 Gerard; or, 
 
 to die, as you made up your miud to-day — wlien, to beguile the 
 time betwixt afternoon and night, he goes into a bric-a-brac shop 
 and turns over the wonders of worlds old and new. Here, amidst 
 treasures of art and relics of extinct civilisations, he finds the 
 queerest cmio of all in the person of the bric-a-brac dealer, a man 
 who boasts of his century and more of life, the quiet passionless 
 life of the thinker. This man shows him the Peau de Chagrin, the 
 skin of a wild ass, hanging against the wall. With that talisman 
 he offers to make the intending suicide richer, more powerful, and 
 more renowned than the king of the French. ' Read,' he cries, and 
 the young man reads a Sanscrit inscription whose letters are so 
 interwoven in the metallic lustre of the skin that no knife can 
 eradicate the faintest line. The Sanscrit translated ru;is thus : — 
 
 'If you possess me j'cu possess all, 
 
 But your life will be mine. Wish, 
 
 And your wishes will be fulfilled, 
 
 I5ut rule your wishes hy 
 
 Your life. At every wish 
 
 I shall dwindle like 
 
 Your days. Would'st 
 
 Have me. 
 
 Take.' 
 
 " This inscription is the allegory of life. The old man told the 
 youth how he had offered the talisman to many, but how, though 
 one and all laughed at its possible influence over their future 
 destinies, all had refused to traffic with that unknown power. And 
 for the owner of the talisman, why had he never tested its value ? 
 The old man answered that question by expounding his theory of 
 life." 
 
 " And what was his theory ? " 
 
 " ' The mystery of human life lies in a nutshell,' said the cen- 
 tenarian. ' The life of action and the life of passion drain the 
 sources of existence. To will, to do, to desire ardently, is to die. 
 With every quickening of the pulse above normal health, with 
 every tumult of the heart, with every fever of the brain, fired by 
 ardent hopes and conflicting wishes, a shred is torn off the fabric 
 of a man's life. The men who live to age like mine are the men 
 whose passions and desires, ambitions and greed of power have 
 been rigiJly suppressed, the men of calm and contemplative tem- 
 perament, in whom mind rises superior to heart and senses, who 
 are content to reason, to know, to see, and understand the world
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 29 
 
 in which they live.' And that old man was right. There is a 
 hidden meaning in that sentence of Holy Writ — The race is not to 
 the swift. If you would live long take hfe largo, not presto." 
 
 '• Who cares for length of years ? " exclaimed Hillersdon. " What 
 a man wants is to live, not to crawl for a century on the face of 
 this planet, afraid to lift his head from the earth lest a thimderbolt 
 should strike him. I wish I could stroll into a bric-a-brac shop and 
 find the peau de chagrin. I would be content to see the talisman 
 dwindle daily, if every diminution marked an hour of happiness, a 
 wish realised." 
 
 " Well, I suppose that is the only philosophy of life congenial 
 to a young mind," said Jermyn lightly. " The centenarian whi> 
 never really lived boasts of length of days, and cheats himself with 
 the idea that he has had the best of the bargain ; but to live for 
 ten joyous, reckless years must be better than to vegetate for a 
 century." 
 
 " Infinitely better," said Hillersdon, rising in a fever of excite- 
 ment, and beginning to walk about the room, looking at this and 
 that, the bronze idols, the enamelled vases and old ivory carvings 
 in the niches and recesses of a Bombay blackwood cabinet. 
 
 " You have the peau de chagrin hidden somewhere in your rooms, 
 perhaps," he suggested laughingly, " or, at any rate, some taUsman 
 which enables you to make light of life — to see a jest where other 
 men see a problem only to be solved by death." 
 
 " No, I have no talisman. I have nothing but will — will strong 
 enough to conquer passion — and insight by which I can read the 
 mystery of mankind. You who have a stronger individuality — a 
 passionate, exacting personality, an intolerable ego which must be 
 satisfied somehow — are created to suffer. I am created to enjoy. 
 For me life, as you say, is a jest." 
 
 '' So it was for Goethe's Devil," answered Hillersdon. "I believe 
 there is a touch of the diabolical in your composition, and that you 
 have about as much heart and conscience as Mephistopheles. 
 However, I am beholden to you for your persistence in bringing 
 me here to-night, for you have amused me, mystified me, stimu- 
 lated my curiosity, and routed thoughts which I confess were of the 
 darkest." 
 
 " Didn't I tell you a supper and a bottle of wine would be your 
 best counsellor ? " exclaimed Jermyn, laughing. 
 
 " But tlie dark thoughts will return in a day or two, no doubt, 
 Biuce you have no talisman to offer me which will pour gold into
 
 50 Gerard ; or, 
 
 empty pockets, and you do not even propose to buy my shadow. 
 I would run the risk of being as conspicuous as Peter Schlemihl, 
 for the same power to create illimitable heaps of sterling coin." 
 
 "Ah, those are old stories — allegories all, be assured. If I were 
 to say I saw the promise of fortune on that perplexed brow of yours 
 you would laugh at me. AH I ask is that if Fortune does pour her 
 gifts into your lap you wiU remember that I bade you tarry at the 
 gate of death." 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " WE ARE SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS ARE MADE OF." 
 
 The domes and steeples of the great city, towers and warehouses, 
 roofs old and new, showed dark against a saffron sky, as Gerard 
 Hillersdon set his face to the west in the freshness and quiet of 
 early morning. He had drunk enough and talked enough to exalt 
 his spirits with an unwonted elation, as if life and the world were 
 new, and all his troubles and perplexities cast off like a slough, and 
 flung behind him into the universal dust-heap men call the Past. 
 There is no Nepenthe like a night's debauch for obliterating worldly 
 cares. Unhappily the efiect is but transient, and Memory will 
 resume her sway. In this summer dawning Gerard walked through 
 the empty streets with a tread as light as if his youth had never 
 been shadowed by a care. In this mood of his he accepted Justin 
 Jermyn as a serious fact, a man of unusual gifts and faculties ; a 
 man who by fair means or foul had plucked him by the sleeve and 
 held him back from the brink of a dark gulf which he ^shuddered to 
 think upon. 
 
 " To be or not to be? " he muttered, slackening his steps in the 
 morning solitude of Lincoln's Inn, where there were faint odours of 
 fohago and flowers freshened by the dews of night. " To be or not 
 to be ? I was a fool to think that my choice was inevitable. Faust 
 had the poison at his lips, when the Easter joybells stayed his hand. 
 And after that burst of heavenly gladness — and after that thrilling 
 chorus, ' Christ is risen ' — came the fiend with his worldly-wise
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 31 
 
 philosophy, and his gifts of wealth and power. Is the influence 
 that stayed my hand from heaven or from hell, I wonder ? " 
 
 His thoughts reverted to the face of the girl at the sewing- 
 machine. He was in no mood to trouble himself as to the nature of 
 the vision he had seen ; whether it were hypnotic, or some juggler's 
 trick produced by mechanical means. It was of the face that he 
 thought, for it was a familiar face ; a face out of the long ago ; and 
 he tried in vain to fix it in his memory. It floated there, vaguely 
 mixed with the vision of his vanished boyhood— a dream of summer 
 and sunny days, of woods and waters, in the far-off west, which 
 seemed as another and half-forgotten world in the midst of this 
 grey, smoke-stained city. 
 
 He let himself into the dark and airless lodging-house passage 
 with his latchkey, a privilege he could scarcely hope to enjoy many 
 days longer, imless he could comply with, or compromise, the 
 demand in his landlord's letter. Yet even the possibility of being 
 turned out of doors seemed hardly to trouble liim this morning. At 
 the worst he could go down to his father's rectory, and bury him- 
 self among green leaves and village faces. And if he must be 
 bankrupt, see his name in the Gazette, shameful as the thmg 
 would seem to the rural rector and liis wife, he would not be the 
 first. Among the youthful scions of the nobility bankruptcy is as 
 common as scarlet fever ; nay, almost as inevitable as measles. 
 
 His sitting-room and the adjoining bedi'oom looked shabbier than 
 usual in the clear morning light, after those luxurious rooms of 
 Justin Jermyn's. The furniture had been good enough once upon 
 a time, for its specific purpose — brass bedstead, bird's-eye-maple 
 wardrobe and dressing-table in the bedroom, walnut-wood and 
 cretonne in the sitting-room — but everything in the rooms had 
 grown shabby and squalid with the wear and tear of successive 
 lodgers ; and the landlord, crippled by bad debts, had never been 
 rich enough to renew the cretonne, or improve upon the Phihstinism 
 of the walnut-wood. A sordid den, repulsive to the eye of a man 
 with any feehng for the beautiful. 
 
 Hillersdon was tired and exhausted, but slumber was far from his 
 eyehds, and he knew it was useless to go to bed while his brain was 
 working with a forty-horse power, and his temples were racked with 
 neuralgic pain. He flung himself into an arm-chair, lighted a cigar 
 which Jermyn had thrust upon him at parting, and looked idly 
 round the room. 
 
 There were some letters upon the table, at least half a dozen, the
 
 32 Gerard ; or, 
 
 usual thing no doubt — bills and threatening letters from law^'ers of 
 obscure address, calling his attention to neglected apphcations from 
 tradesmen. Common as such letters were, it was always a shock to 
 him to find that the bland and obliging purveyor had handed him 
 over to the iron hand of the solicitor. He was in no haste to open 
 those letters, which would supply so many items in his schedule, 
 perhaps, a few days later. Insolvency had been staring him in the 
 face for a long time, and there was no alternative between death 
 and the Gazette. 
 
 He finished his cigar, and then began to open his letters, delibe- 
 rately, and as it were with a gloomy relish. 
 
 The first was from his hatter, piteously respectful ; the second was 
 from a solicitor in Bloomsbury, calling attention to an account of 
 three years' standing with a Bond Street hairdresser ; and the third 
 and fourth were those uninforming yet significant documents, bill 
 delivered, bearing date of the vanished years, and with a footnote 
 requesting his earliest attention. Bill delivered. What value had 
 he received for the sums demanded ? A scarf, a pair of gloves, now 
 and again, bought casually 'pour passer le temps, a set of shirts, 
 perhaps, ordered to please the tradesman rather than from any need 
 of his own, a dressing-jacket or two, and behold the man was 
 clamouring for thirty-seven pounds odd shillings and pence ! 
 
 He opened the fifth letter, which announced itself upon the 
 envelope as from Lincoln's Inn Fields, and which, by the thickness 
 of the paper and style of the address, was at least from a soHcitor 
 of position and respectability. Yet doubtless the tune was only the 
 old tune, played upon a superior instrument. No, by Heaven ! it 
 was not the old formula. 
 
 " 190, Lincoln's Inn Fields, W.C. 
 
 "/«/y 17, 188— 
 " Sm, 
 
 " If you are the same Mr. Gerard Hillersdon who in 1879 
 rescued an old gentleman from an approaching engine in the station 
 at Nice, we have the honour to inform you that our late client, Mr. 
 j\Iilford, banker, of London, Marseilles, and Nice, has bequeathed 
 the bulk of his large fortune to you, as residuary legatee. Our 
 cUent was of somewhat eccentric habits, but we have no reason to 
 doubt his disposing power at the date of the will, nor do we at 
 present apprehend any attempt to dispute the said will, since Mr. 
 Milford leaves no near relations.
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 33 
 
 " We shall be glad to see you, either here or at your own resi- 
 dence, at your earliest convenience. 
 
 " We have the honour to be, sir, 
 "Yours, etc., etc., 
 
 "Ckafton and Ceanberky." 
 
 Hillersdon turned the letter over and over in his hands, as if 
 expecting that solid sheet of paper to change into a withered leaf 
 imder his touch ; and then he burst into a laugh, as loud but not as 
 joyous as Jermyn's gnome-like mirth. 
 
 " A trick," he cried, " a palpable trick, of the fate-reader, hypno- 
 tist, whatever he may please to call himself. A cruel jest, rather ; 
 to mock parched lips with the promise of the fountain ; to exercise 
 his fancy upon a destitute man. Well, I am not to be caught so 
 easily. The churl whose remnant of life I saved at Nice was no 
 wealthy banker, I'll be sworn, but some impecunious nobody who 
 was soured by losses at Monte Carlo." 
 
 He looked at his watch. Half-past five. A good many hours 
 must pass before it would be possible to discover the existence or 
 non-existence of Grafton and Cranberry, and the authenticity of the 
 letter on the table there, where he had flung it, a most respectable 
 looking letter assuredly, if looks were anything to the purpose. 
 
 " Easy enough for him to get a lawyer's clerk to write on tho 
 firm's paper," he thought. Yet it were a hazardous thing to be 
 done by any clerk, unless a discarded servant. 
 
 "How did he know?" mused Hillersdon. "It was after mid- 
 night I told him my adventure at Nice, and this letter was delivered 
 by the last post at ten o'clock." 
 
 It was not impossible, though, for Jermyn to have heard of the 
 old hunks at the Nice Station from Gilbert Watson, Hillersdon's 
 friend, who had seen the end of the adventure, and heard the old 
 man clamouring for his umbrella. Watson was a man about town, 
 and might have been in contact with Jermyn, who was a season 
 celebrity, and went everywhere. 
 
 Gerard threw himself dressed upon his bed, slept a troubled sleep 
 in briefest intervals, and lay awake for the rest of the time between 
 half-past five and half-past eight, when his servant Dodd — an old 
 retainer, who had married and outlived the rectory nurse — brought 
 him his early cup of tea and prepared his bath. He was dressed 
 and out of doors by half-past nine, and a handsom took him to 
 Lincoln's Inn Fields before the stroke of ten.
 
 34 Gerard ; or, 
 
 The office was evidently just opened, a most respectable office. 
 An elderly clerk showed Mr. Hillersdon into a handsome waiting- 
 room, where the newly-cut newspapers were systematically arranged 
 upon a massive mahogany office table. Neither of the principals 
 had arrived from their West End houses. 
 
 Gerard's impatience could not brook delay. 
 
 " Do you know anything about this letter ? " he asked, showing 
 the open document. 
 
 '' I ought, sir, for it was I who wrote it," answered the grey-haired 
 clerk. 
 
 " By way of a practical joke, I suppose," said Hillersdon grimly, 
 " to oblige a facetious friend." 
 
 "Messrs. Grafton and Granberry do not deal in practical jokes, 
 sir," replied the clerk, with dignity. " I wrote that letter at Mr. 
 Grafton's dictation, and if you are the Mr. Hillersdon there referred 
 fo it really ought to be a very pleasant letter for you to receive." 
 
 " Very pleasant, if I could venture to take it seriously." 
 
 " "Why should you suspect a jest, sir, in so grave a matter, and 
 coming to you from a firm of undoubted respectability ? " 
 
 Hillersdon sighed impatiently, and passed his hand across his 
 forehead with a troubled gesture. How did he know that this scene 
 of the lawj'er's office, the letter in his hand, the grey-haired, grave 
 old clerk talking to him, were not part and parcel of some hypnotic 
 vision, no more real than the figure of the girl at the sewing- 
 machine which those same eyes of his had looked at last night. 
 He stood irresolute, incredulous, silent, while the old clerk deferen- 
 tially awaited his pleasure. The outer door opened as he stood 
 there, and the measured footsteps of dignified middle-age crossed 
 the hall. 
 
 "Mr. Grafton," said the clerk. "He will be able to assure you 
 that there has been no jesting, sir." 
 
 Mr. Grafton entered, tall, broad, bulky, imposing, faultlessly 
 dressed for his role of man of the world, not imaccustomed to 
 society, and trustworthy family lawyer. 
 
 " Mr. Hillersdon, sir," said the clerk. " He has been disposed to 
 think that the letter from the firm was a practical joke." 
 
 " I am hardly surprised at your incredulity, Mr. HUlersdou," said 
 the solicitor, in an unctuous and comfortable voice, calculated to 
 reassure desponding chents. "That letter may well take your 
 breath away. A romance of real life, isn't it ? A young man does 
 a plucky thing on the spur of the moment, thinks no more about it,
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 35 
 
 and some years after wakes up one morning to find himself — a very 
 rich man," concluded Mr. Grafton, pulling up suddenly, as if he 
 might have used a much bigger phrase. " Kindly step into my 
 private room. You can bring us the copy of the will, Coxfield." 
 
 The clerk retired, and Mr. Grafton ushered his visitor into a large 
 front office, as imposing as his own figui'e. 
 
 " Pray be seated, Mr. Hillersdon " — waving his hand towards a 
 spacious arm chair. " Yes, the whole story comes within the region 
 of romance ; yet it is not the first time in testamentary history that 
 a large fortune has been left to a stranger as a reward for some 
 service barely acknowledged when it was rendered. Our late client, 
 Mr. Milford, was a cm-ious man. I'll warrant now he took very 
 Mttle trouble to show his gratitude when you had hazarded your life 
 in his service." 
 
 " The only trouble he took was about his umbrella, which he was 
 vociferously anxious to recover." 
 
 " So hke him, dear old man. A character, my dear sir, a 
 character. You wouldn't have given twenty shillings for the 
 clothes he wore that day, I dare say — umbrella included." 
 
 " If clothes and umbrella had been on my premises, I would have 
 given ten shillings to get them taken away." 
 
 "Precisely," exclaimed the lawyer, with his genial chuckle. "A 
 very remarkable man. I doubt if he paid his tailor ten pound a 
 year — or five. Yet a man of large benevolence, a man whose left 
 hand knew not what his right hand gave. But now we have to 
 come to the crucial question. Can you establish your identity with 
 the Gerard Hillersdon whose name our late client took down from 
 Mr. Gilbert Watson's dictation in the station at Nice." 
 
 " Very easily, I think. In the first place, I doubt if there is any 
 other Gerard HUderson in the directory, as the name Gerard comes 
 from my mother's side of the house, and was not in the Hillersdon 
 family before I was christened. Secondly, my friend Watson is 
 now in London, and will readily identify me as the man about whose 
 name your cUent inquired when I had left the platform. Thirdly, 
 it would be easy, were fuilher evidence needed, to establish the 
 fact that I was residing at the Hotel Mont Fleuri, Gannes, at 
 that date, and that I went to Nice on the first day of the 
 Carnival." 
 
 "I do not think there will be any difficulty as to identity," Mr. 
 Grafton replied suavely. "Your present address is the same a3 
 that which Mr. Watson gave our lamented client, and he fui-ther
 
 36 ■ Gerard ; or, 
 
 described you as the son of the Hector of Helmsleigh, Devon, a 
 detail no doubt elicited by Mr. Milford's inquiry. Here is a copy 
 of the will. You would like to hear it, perhaps," suggested Mr. 
 Grafton, as the clerk entered and kid the document before him. 
 " Very much." 
 
 Mr. Grafton read in a clear, distmct voice and with great unction. 
 The will was dated six months previously, and was made at Nice. 
 It opened with a long list of legacies, to old servants, to the clerks 
 in three banking-houses, in London, Marseilles, Nice, to numerous 
 charities, to Mr. Grafton and his partner, Mr. Granberry. HiUers- 
 don sat aghast as he heard thousands and fives and tens of thousands 
 disposed of in this manner. To the Hospital for Children, Great 
 Ormond Street, ten thousand; five thousand to St. George's 
 Hospital ; a thousand each to ten Orphanages ; five thousand to a 
 Gonvalescent Hospital ; three thousand to an Asylum for the Blind. 
 Would there be anything left for him after this lavish distribution ? 
 The passage in the will which concerned himself came at last, and 
 was simple and brief. " Finally, I bequeath the residue of my 
 estate, real and personal, to Gerard HiUersdon, younger son of the 
 Rev. Edward HiUersdon, Eector of Helmsleigh, Devon, in recogni- 
 tion of his generosity and courage in saving my life at the hazard 
 of his own in the railway station in this place, on the 14th of 
 February, 1879, and I appoint James Grafton, SoHcitor, of 190, 
 Lincoln's Inn Fields, sole executor of this my will." 
 
 "It is a noble reward for an action to which I never attached 
 the slightest importance," said HiUersdon, pale to the lips with 
 suppressed emotion. " I saw a young man at Newton Abbot do 
 almost as much to save a dog, which was running up and down the 
 line, scared by the porters who shouted at him. That young man 
 jumped down upon the metals and picked up the dog in front of 
 the engine — somebody else's cur, not even his own property. And 
 I_because in common humanity I plucked an old man from instant 
 death— yes, it was a near shave, I know, and might have ended 
 badly for me— but it was only instinctive humanity, after all— I 
 am left a fortune. It is a fortune, I suppose ? " 
 
 "Yes, Mr. HiUersdon, a large fortune— something over two 
 millions, consisting of lands, houses, consols, bank stock, railway 
 and other shares, together with the sole interest in the firm of 
 Milford Brothers, Bankers, of London, MarsciUes, and Nice. 
 
 HiUersdon broke down utterly at this point. He turned his face 
 from the spectators, principal and clerk, and fought hard with
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 37 
 
 himself to keep back a ^burst of hysterical tears mixed with 
 hysterical laughter. 
 
 " It is too ridiculous," he said, when he had recovered his speech. 
 " Yesterday I was in the depths of despair. It is real, isn't it ? " he 
 asked piteously. " You are not fooling me — you are real men, you 
 two, not shadows ? This is not a dream ? " 
 
 He struck his hand on the table so heavily as to produce severe 
 pain. 
 
 " That is real, at any rate," he muttered. 
 
 Solicitor and clerk looked at each other dubiously. They were 
 afraid their news had been too sudden, and that it had turned this 
 possible client's head. 
 
 " Advance me some money," asked Hillersdon abruptly. " Come, 
 Mr. Grafton, give me your cheque for a good round sum, and when 
 I have cashed that cheque I shall begin to believe in Mr. Milford's 
 will and in your good faith. I am up to my eyes in debt, and it 
 will be a new sensation to be able to pay the most pressing of my 
 creditors." 
 
 Mr. Grafton had his cheque-book open and his pen dipped in the 
 mk before this potential chent had done speaking. 
 
 " How much would you like ? " he asked. 
 
 " How much ? Would five himdred be too large an advance ? " 
 
 " A thousand, if you Hke." 
 
 "No, five hundred will do. You will act as my soHcitors, I 
 suppose — carry through this business for me. I am as ignorant of 
 the law as the sheep who provide your parchment. I shall have 
 to prove the will I suppose. I haven't the faintest notion what 
 that means." 
 
 " That wiU be my duty as executor. Our firm will settle all 
 details for you, if you have no family lawyer whom you would 
 prefer to employ." 
 
 " I dont care a rap for our family lawyer. He has never done 
 anything to endear himself to me. If you were good enough for 
 Mr. Milford — my benefactor — you are good enough for me. And 
 now I'll go and cash this cheque." 
 
 " Will you allow our messenger to do that for you ? " 
 
 "Thanks, no. I hke the sensation of a bank counter when I 
 have money to receive. How will I have it ? A hundred in tens, 
 the rest in fifties. How I shall astonish my worthy landlord ! 
 Good day. Send for me when you want me to execute deeds, or 
 sign documents."
 
 38 Gerard ; or, 
 
 He went out on to the sunny pavement where the hansom was 
 waiting for him ; went out with a step so Hght he was scarcely 
 conscious of the pavement under his feet. Even yet he could 
 scarcely divest himself of the idea that he was the sport of dreams, 
 or of some strange jugglery worked by the man with the Hght-blue 
 eyes and the uncanny laugh. 
 
 He drove to the Union Bank, in Chancery Lane, cashed hig 
 cheque, and then drove about the West End, to tailor, hatter, hair- 
 dresser, hosier, paying fifties on account. He had only a hundred 
 and fifty left when he got back to his lodgings, and out of this he 
 paid his landlord a hundred. The remaining fifty was for pocket- 
 money. It was such a new sensation to have satisfied his creditors, 
 that he felt as if he were made of air. He was convinced of the 
 fact now. This thing was a reality. Fortune had turned her wheel — 
 turned it so completely that he who had been at the bottom was 
 now at the top. What would his own people think of this wonder 
 that had befallen him ? A millionaire ! he, the thriftless son, 
 who had until now been only a burden and a care to father and 
 mother. He would not write. He would run down to Devonshire 
 in a day or two, and tell them this wonderful story with his own 
 hps. 
 
 And but for Justin Jermyn's interference he would have shot 
 himself last night, and would have been lying stark and stiff this 
 morning. Yet, no, the letter was delivered at his lodgings last night, 
 at ten o'clock. Fortune had turned her wheel. The tidings of her 
 bounty were waiting for him while he was foohng in the Fate- 
 reader's room, the sport ot a shallow trickster. 
 
 " And yet he seemed to know," thought Hillersdon ; " he hinted 
 at a change of fortune — he led me on to talk of the old man at 
 Nice." 
 
 He felt a sudden desire to see Jermyn, to tell him what had 
 happened ; to talk over his monstrous luck ; to see what effect the 
 news would have upon the Fate-reader. There were other people 
 he wanted to see — most especially Edith Champion — but the desire 
 to see Jermyn was the strongest of all. He got into a cab, and 
 told the man to drive to Holborn. 
 
 He hadn't the remotest idea whereabouts in Holborn that old 
 Inn was situated, or whether in any adjacent thoroughfare. He 
 dismissed his cab at Warwick Court, and went about on foot, in and 
 out of dingy old gateways, and in all the " dusty purlieus of the 
 law," as existent in the neighbourhood of Holborn ; but nowhere
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 39 
 
 could he find gate-house, or semi-deserted inn that in any wise 
 resembled the place to which Jermyn had taken him last night. 
 
 After nearly two hours of ineffectual exploration he gave up the 
 search, and drove to the West End, where, at the Sensorium, a 
 smart dilettante club of which he was a member, he hoped to hear 
 Jermyn's address. It was tea-time, and there were a good many 
 men in the reading-room and adjacent smoke-room, and among 
 them several of Hillersdon's friends. 
 
 He sat down in the midst of a little knot of acquaintances, and 
 ordered his tea at a table where he was welcomed with marked 
 cordiahty — welcomed by men who knew not that they were 
 welcoming a millionaire. 
 
 "You know everything that's going on, Vane," he said, to one of 
 these ; " so of course you know Jermyn, the Fate-reader? " 
 
 "Intimately. It was I who secured him for Lady Fridoline 
 yesterday. He doesn't, as a rule, show liimself at the common or 
 garden-party, but he went to Fridoline House to oblige me." 
 " Will you tell me where he lives ? " 
 
 "Nowhere. He is much too clever to put an address on his 
 card, like a commonplace individual. He is to be heard of here, or 
 at the Heptachord. He is a member of both clubs, though he 
 rarely shows at either — ^but as to an address, a vulgar lodging-house 
 address, like yours or mine. Pas si hete ! If he put anjiihing on 
 his card it would be Styx, or Orcus." 
 
 " My dear fellow, I supped with him last night at his chambers." 
 " Then you know where they are ? " 
 
 *' That is exactly what I do not know. Jermyn insisted upon 
 my going to supper with him last night after the opera. We 
 walked from Covent Garden to his chambers. We were talking all 
 the time, and except that we passed through Queen Street and 
 Lincoln's Inn Fields, I haven't an idea as to what direction we took, 
 or where the curious shabby old Inn is situated." 
 Youth's frank laughter gi'eeted this avowal. 
 " Then aU I can say, my dear Hillersdon, is that you were rather 
 more ' on ' than a man generally is when he leaves the opera. You 
 were very lucky to get out of Bow Street." 
 
 " Would you be surprised to hear that I had taken nothing 
 stronger than Salutaris at dinner, and nothing whatever after dinner? 
 No, wine had nothing to do with my mental condition. Jermyn 
 and I were talking. I was iu a somewhat dreamy mood, and 
 allowed myself to be piloted without taking any notice of the way
 
 40 Geraf'd ; or, 
 
 ■we went. I will own that when I left him at four o'clock this 
 morning my head was not quite so clear, and London might be 
 Bagdad for all I know of the streets and squares through which I 
 made tracks for Piccadilly." 
 
 " So Jermyn entertains, does he ? " exclaimed Roger Larose, the 
 assthetic architect, and elegant idler, a man who always looked as if 
 he had just stepped out of one of Marcus Stone's pictures; ''this 
 must be inquired into. He has never entertained me. Was your 
 drunkenness a pleasant intoxication? Was his wine irreproach- 
 able ? " 
 
 " More, it was irresistible. He gave me some old Madeira that 
 was hke melted gold, and his champagne had the cool freshness of 
 a viTldrose, an aroma as dehcate as the perfume of the flower." 
 
 "I beheve he hj-pnotised you, and that there was nothing; or 
 perhaps bread and cheese and porter," said Larose. " Where are 
 you going, and what are you going to do this afternoon? I've 
 some Hurlingham vouchers in my pocket. Shall we go and see 
 the polo match, or shoot pigeons, and dine on the lawn ? " 
 
 A thrill went through HiUersdon's heart at the thought that 
 yesterday, had Larose made such a proposition, he would have been 
 obliged to dechne, with whatever excuse he might invent on the 
 spur of the moment. Yesterday the half-guinea gate-money and 
 the risk of being let ia to pay for the dinner would have made 
 Hurhngham forbidden ground. To-day he was eager to taste the 
 new joy of spending money •uathout one agonising scruple, one pang 
 of remorse for extravagance that meant dishonesty. 
 
 " I am going to call on some ladies," he said. " If you can give 
 me a couple of ladies' tickets and one for^ myself, I will meet you ia 
 time for dinner." 
 
 " Do I know the ladies ? Is Mrs. Champion one of them? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Delightful — & parti carre. It is going to be a piping night. We 
 will dine on the lawn, hear the chimes at midnight, steahng softly 
 along the river from the great bell at Westminster. We will fancy 
 we see firefhes and that Fulham is Tuscany — fancy ourselves in the 
 Casciue Gardens, which are not half so pretty as Hurhngham or 
 Barn Elms, when all is said and done. Get along with you, 
 Hillersdon. In spite of your debauch you are looking as happy as 
 if you had just had a fortune left you."; 
 
 Gerard Hillersdon laughed somewhat hysterically, and hurried 
 out of the club. He had cot the courage to tell any one what had
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 41 
 
 happened to him — not yet. That word hypnotism frightened him, 
 even after this seemingly substantial evidence of his good luck. 
 The lawyer's office, the bank, the notes, and tradesmen's receipts ! 
 Might not all these be part and parcel of the same hj^pnotic trance. 
 He pulled a bundle of receipted accounts out of his pocket. Yes, 
 those were real, or as real as anything can be to a man who dares 
 not be sure that he is not dreaming. 
 
 He drove to Hertford Street. Mrs. Champion was at home, and 
 alone. Her carriage was at the door ready to take her to the Park- 
 Mrs. Gresham was again engaged in the cause of the AngUcan 
 Orphans, serving tea and cake to the shilling people on the second 
 day of the bazaar at the Riding School, and was to be called for at 
 six o'clock. 
 
 Mrs. Champion was sitting in a darkened drawing-room, in an 
 atmosphere of tropical flowers, dressed in India muslin, the room 
 and the lady alike suggestive of coolness and repose after the glare 
 and the traffic of the streets. She looked up from her book with a 
 start of surprise at hearing Hillersdon's name. 
 
 " I thought you were half way to Germany by this time," she 
 said, evidently not ill-pleased at his return, as it were a bird flutter- 
 ing back to the open door of his cage, " but perhaps you missed 
 your train and are going to-morrow." 
 
 " No, Mrs. Champion, I changed my mind, and I am not going 
 at all." 
 
 " How nice ! " she said sweetly, laying aside her book and pre- 
 paring to be confidential. " Was it to please me you stayed? " 
 
 He made up his mind that he must tell her. His mouth grew 
 dry and hot at the very thought ; but he could no* keep the know- 
 ledge of his altered fate from this woman who had been, who was 
 still, perhaps, the other half of his soul. 
 
 " For once in my life," he said quietly, " or let me say for once 
 since I first met you — your wish was not my only law. Some- 
 thing has happened to me— to change my life altogether since 
 yesterday." 
 
 That hoarse broken voice and the intensity of his look scared her. 
 Imagination set off at a gallop. 
 
 " You are engaged to be married," she cried, rising suddenly out 
 of her low chair, straight as a dart, and deadly pale. "These 
 things always end so. You have been loyal to me for years, and 
 now you have grown weary, and you want a wife — Elaine instead 
 of Guinevere — and you meant to run away to Germany and break
 
 42 Gerard ; or, 
 
 the thing to me in a letter— and then you changed your mind and 
 took courage to tell me with your own false hps." 
 
 This burst of passion— her white face and iiashing eyes— were a 
 revelation to him. He had thought her as calm and cold as a snow 
 fi.gure that children build in a garden; and behold he had been 
 playing with fire aU this time. 
 
 He was standing by her side in an instant, holdmg her icy hands, 
 drawing her nearer to him. 
 
 " Edith, Edith, can you think so poorly of me ? Engaged ! Why, 
 you know there is no other woman I care for — have ever cared for. 
 Engaged, in a day, in an hour! Have I not given you my hfe? 
 What more could I do ? " 
 
 "You are not! Oh, thank God. I could bear anything but 
 
 that." 
 
 "And yet— and yet— you hold me at arm's length," he said 
 
 fondly, with his lips near hers. 
 
 She was the snow figure again in a moment, standing before him 
 in her matronly dignity, cold, proud, unapproachable. 
 
 " I was foohsh to put myself in a passion," she said, " and, after 
 all, whenever you want to marry I shall have no right to hinder 
 you. Only I should hke to know your plans in good time, so that 
 I may accustom myself to the idea. The horses have been at the 
 door ever so long, and that hard working Kosa will be waiting for 
 me. Will you come for a drive round the Park V " 
 
 " I shall be charmed ; but I want you and Mrs. Gresham to dine 
 with me at Hurlingham. We can go on there when you have done 
 
 your Park." 
 
 " I don't care a straw for the Park. Let us go straight to Hurl- 
 ingham and see the Polo. But I am so carelessly dressed; shall I 
 do° do you think, or must I put on a smarter gown? " 
 
 She stood up before him in a cloud of muslin and lace, a gown so 
 flowing and graceful in its draping over bust and hips, that it might 
 have been a cloud of spray clothing a nymph at a fountain. 
 
 " Your careless costume is simply perfection. Only be sure and 
 bring a warm wrap, for we may be sitting late upon the lawn." 
 
 She touched a spring bell, and her maid appeared with a white 
 Gainsborough hat and a pair of long suede gloves. Wraps were 
 sent for the butler was informed that his mistress would not dine at 
 home, and the barouche drove oif with Gerard on the front seat, 
 opposite Mrs. Champion. 
 
 « What can have happened to change yoiu- life, if you arc not
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 43 
 
 going to be married ? " she asked, as they turned into Piccadillj'. 
 " You mystify me. I hope it is nothing bad — no misfortune to any 
 of your people ? " 
 
 "No, it is something distinctly good. An eccentric old man, 
 whom I was once so fortunate as to oblige, has left me the bulk of 
 his fortune." 
 
 " I congratulate you," she said ; but there was a troubled look in 
 her face that surprised him. 
 
 Surely she ought to be glad. 
 
 " Does that mean that you are a rich man ? " she asked, after a 
 pause. 
 
 " Yes, I am a rich man." 
 
 "How rich?" 
 
 " As rich as anybody need care to be. I am told that the fortune 
 left me is something over two millions." 
 
 " Two millions of francs ? " 
 
 " Two millions sterling." 
 
 " Good heavens ! Why, Champion is a pauper compared with 
 you. This is too absurd ! " 
 
 " It does savour of the ridiculous, I admit," said Hillersdon, some- 
 what piqued by her manner of treating the subject. " Povertv was 
 my metier no doubt. I was born to be a hanger-on upon the great 
 world ; to taste its pleasures by the favour of other people ; to visit 
 in smart houses on sufferance ; to live in a shabby lodging and find 
 my warmest welcome at a club." 
 
 " Two millions ! " repeated Edith. " I am sure James has not 
 as much. Two millions ! You will have to marry now, of 
 course." 
 
 " Have to ! "V\Tiy should I be constrained to marry just when 
 I have the means of enjoying a bachelor's Hfe ? " 
 
 " You will be made to marry, I tell you," she answered im- 
 patiently. '' You don't know what women are who have daughters 
 to marry. You don't know what girls are — hardened worldly girls 
 in their third or fourth season — who want to secure a rich husband, 
 Y"ou can't possibly estimate the influences that will be brought to 
 bear upon you. All the spinsters in London will be at your feet." 
 
 " For the sake of my two millions. Are women so mercenary ? " 
 
 "They are obliged to be," answered Edith Champion. "We 
 Hve iu an age in which poverty is utterly intolerable. One must 
 be rich or miserable. Do you think I would have consented to 
 marry Mr. Champion, in spite of all the pressure my family put
 
 44 Gerard ; or, 
 
 upon me, if I had been brave enough to bear poverty with you? 
 No, to be well born means the necessity of wealth. One's birth- 
 right is to belong to the smart world, and to be poor in that world 
 is to be a social martyr. I have often envied the women born 
 at Camberwell or Islington ; the women who go to the butcher's to 
 buy the dinner, and who wear cotton gloves." 
 
 "Yes, there is an independence in those lower depths. One can 
 be poor and unashamed, if one belongs to the proletariat. But be 
 assured, my dear Mrs. Champion, that I shall not fall a victim to 
 a manoeuvring mother or an enterprising young lady. I shall know 
 how to enjoy wealth and freedom." 
 
 Edith sighed. Would not the independence of unlimited wealth 
 tempt her slave to throw off the yoke ? Could he ever be again — 
 he the millionaire — what he had been to her ? Would he be content 
 to dance attendance upon her, to be at her beck and call, an 
 inevitable guest at all her parties, to hand tea-cups at her afternoons 
 when he was perhaps the only man present, to fetch and carry 
 for her, find her the newest books in French and German, taste 
 them for her before she took the trouble to read them, keep her 
 posted in the gossip of the clubs, so far as such gossip was fitting 
 for a lady to know? For the last three years he had been her 
 second self, had supplemented her intellect and amused her leisure. 
 But would he be content to play the satellite now that wealth would 
 give him power to be a planet, with moons and satellites of his 
 own? 
 
 "He will marry," she told herself. "There is no use talking 
 about it. It was easy to keep him in leading-strings while he was 
 too poor to be worth any marriageable girl's attention. But now he 
 will be forced into marriage. The thing is inevitable." 
 
 The carriage stopped at the Riding School, and the footman went 
 in to look for Rosa Gresham, who came tripping out presently, 
 airily dressed as befitted the summer solstice, and somewhat purple 
 as to complexion. 
 
 " We are going to take you to dine at HurUngham," said Edith. 
 
 " How awfully good of you ! I am dead beat. The shilling 
 people were too honid — staring, and pushing, and squabbling for 
 their right change, and gobbling cake in a revolting mamier. I 
 don't think our stall can have cleared its expenses. How well you 
 are looking this afternoon, Mr. Hillersdon ! and yesterday I thought 
 you looked dreadful, so hollow under the eyes, so pale and 
 haggard." i
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 45 
 
 " I thought I was going away, to part company with all I cared 
 for," said Gerard. 
 
 " And now you are not going? " 
 
 " No," Edith answered, with a laugh which was not altogether 
 joyous. " He may well look different. Though form and feature 
 are unchanged he is a different man. Kosa, you are sitting 
 opposite a millionaire." 
 
 " Heavens ! Do you really mean it, or is it a joke? " 
 
 "I hope and believe that it is serious. I have the assurance 
 of a dry-as-dust solicitor that there is as much money in the world, 
 and that it belongs to me. And I cannot even thank the man who 
 gave it me, for the hand that gave it is in the dust." 
 
 •' And to think that you never came to our Bazaar, never gave 
 one thought, in the midst of your prosperity, to the Anglican 
 Orphans ! " exclaimed Rosa. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 LIFE UPON NEW LINES. 
 
 The nightingales 'were gone, but the roses were left, and it was 
 pleasant to sit on the lawn and hear the plash of the tide, and see 
 the stars come slowly out, large and red in the smoke-tainted 
 atmosphere, above the tufted elms of Hurlingham. Roger Larose 
 talked his best in that dim light, and Gerard, who had been silent 
 and moody at the little dinner in Hertford Street yesterday, was 
 to-night as joyous as the thrushes that were singing their evening 
 hymn in the cool dusk of deserted shrubberies. And all the 
 difference — the difference between despair and gladness, between 
 gloom and mirth, between eager delight in life and dull disgust, had 
 been brought about by the most sordid factor in the sum of man's 
 existence — filthy lucre. 
 
 No matter the cause when the effect was so enchanting. Gerard's 
 elation communicated itself to his companions. More champagne 
 was consumed at that little table in the garden than at any other 
 party of four in the club, and yet the house was crowded with 
 diners, and there were other groups scattered here and there, 
 banqueting under the roof of heaven. Ligb.test talk and gladdest
 
 4^ Gerard ; or, 
 
 laughter beguiled the hours till nearly midnight, when Mrs. Gresham 
 remembered an early celebration at a ritualistic temple in Holborn, 
 and entreated to be taken home at once, so that she might secure 
 certain hours of pious seclusion before dawn. 
 
 Gerard had requested that no word of his altered fortunes should 
 be spoken before Eoger Larose. Koger and the rest of the world 
 would hear all about his good luck in due course ; but he shrank 
 from the idea of endless congratulations, very few of them cordial 
 and disinterested. Time enough when the inexorable Illustrated 
 London Neios had acquainted society with the particulars of Mr- 
 Milford's will. 
 
 The two women behaved with discretion, and although Larose 
 wondered a little at the superb indifference with which Hillersdon 
 paid for the dinner, and left the change of a ten-pound note to the 
 waiter, knowing that of late his friend had suffered from youth's 
 common malady of impecuniousness, he ascribed this freedom only 
 to some windfall which afforded temporary relief. 
 
 On their way to the carriage Mrs. Gresham contrived to get 
 Hillersdon all to herself, while Larose and Mrs. Champion walked 
 in advance of them. 
 
 "Dear Mr. Hillersdon, a fortune such as yours is a vast re- 
 eponsibility for a Christian," she began solemnly. 
 
 " I haven't looked at it in that light, Mrs. Gresham ; but I own 
 that it wUl take a good deal of spending." 
 
 " It will, and the grand thing will be to secure good results for 
 your outlay. There is one good work I should like to introduce 
 to your notice before you are beset by appeals from strangers. 
 The chief desire of my husband's heart, and I may say also of mine, 
 is to enlarge our Parish Church, now altogether unarchitectural 
 and inadequate to the wants of the increased congregation which 
 his eloquence and strength of character have attracted. In the late 
 incumbent's time the church used to be half empty, and mice ran 
 about in the gallery. We want to do away with that horrid gallery, 
 build a transept which would absorb the existing chancel, and add 
 a new and finer chancel. It will cost a great deal of money, but 
 we have many promises of help if any benefactor would give a 
 large donation — say a thousand guineas— to start the fund in a 
 Bubstantial manner." 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Gresham, you forget that I am a parson's son. 
 Dog doesn't eat dog, you know. I have no doubt my father's 
 church needs enlargement. I know it has a pervading mouldmess
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 47 
 
 which calls for restoration. I must think of him before I start 
 your fund." 
 
 "If you have not yet learnt how to spend your fortune, you 
 certainly seem to know how to take care of it, Mr. HUlersdon," 
 said Mrs. Gresham, with some asperity; and then recovering 
 herself, she continued airily, " It was rather too bad of me perhaps 
 to plague you so soon, but in the cause of the Church one must ask 
 in season and out of season." 
 
 They went through the house and waited in the vestibule while 
 the carriage was brought to the door, and they all went back to 
 town together in the barouche, and wound up with an after-midnight 
 cup of tea in Mrs. Champion's drawing-room, a labyrinth of luxurious 
 chairs, and palms, and Indian screens, and many-shaped tables, 
 loaded with bric-a-brac of the costhest kind, glimmering in the 
 tempered hght of amber-shaded lamps. 
 
 "I like the French custom of midnight tea," said Larose. "It 
 stretches the thread of life and shortens the night of the brain." 
 
 Mrs. Gresham shpped away with ostentatious stealthiness after 
 a hasty cup of tea ; but the others sat late, beguiled by the reposeful 
 atmosphere — they three alone in the spacious room, with its perfume 
 of tea-roses and shadow of dark fan-shaped leaves. Edith Champion 
 was not a person of many accompUshments. She neither played 
 nor sang, she neither painted pictures nor wrote verses, preferring 
 that such things should be done for her by those who made it the 
 business of their lives to do them well. But she was past-mistress 
 of the decorative art, and there were few women in London or Paris 
 who could approach her in the arrangement of a dra-^dng-room. 
 
 " My drawing-room is part of myself," she said ; " it reflects 
 every shade of my character, and changes as I change." 
 
 It was past one o'clock when HUlersdon and Larose left Hert- 
 ford Street. Piccadilly and the Park looked almost romantic in the 
 moonlight. That cup of strong Indian tea had worked the usual 
 efiPect of such potions, and both men were disinclined to go home 
 to the uninviting seclusion of a lodging-house bedroom. 
 
 " Shall we go to the Petunia ? " asked Larose, suggesting one of 
 those after-midnight clubs where the society is decidedly mixed, 
 and where the champagne costs twice as much as at the Carlton or 
 the Reform." 
 
 " I detest the Petunia." 
 
 "The Small Hours, then? They are giving really good music 
 now, and we can get devilled bones or a lobster to our supper."
 
 48 
 
 Gerard ; or, 
 
 " Thanks, no ; I have had enough of society — even yours, which 
 is always delightful. I am going for a long walk." 
 
 " That is a safe way of getting rid of me," answered Larose. 
 "I never walk a furlong further than I am absolutely obliged. 
 Hansom." 
 
 His lodgings were in George Street, Hanover Square, hardly a 
 profitable shilling's worth, but it was not in Larose's temperament 
 to consider shillings, until he had spent his last. There were 
 intervals when he was without even the indispensable shilling for a 
 hansom. 
 
 " And a good thing, too," said one of his friends, on hearing that 
 hansoms were impossible, " for then you are obhged to walk." 
 
 " Obliged ! " cried Larose. " Marry ! what should oblige me to 
 do anything I don't like doing? No lesser person than ' the blind 
 fury with the abhorred shears.' When I can't aflford cabs I take 
 to my bed, lie a-bed all day reading Euskin, or dreaming of Coptic 
 churches and Moorish interiors, and get up at dusk and make a 
 ground plan or sketch a fafade, in my dressing-gown, while the 
 housemaid arranges my room. In these intervals I live upon 
 biscuits and soda-water, like Byron, and I emerge from my retire- 
 ment a renovated and rejuvenated man. Thus do I make necessity 
 my nurse, and profit by propulsion," concluded the architect, who 
 had a knack of sham quotation. 
 
 HiUersdon was glad to see the cab go swinging round into Bond 
 Street with his vivacious friend. He wanted to be alone. He had 
 taken a curious fancy into his head, which was to renew his search 
 for the curious old Inn where he had supped last night. He fancied 
 that he might be able to hit upon the place if he approached it 
 under the same conditions of darkness and the comparative solitude 
 of night. He had failed utterly to find the old gate-way in the 
 glare of day ; yet the fabric must exist somewhere within naiTow 
 limits. The whole thing — the house to which he was taken — 
 the room in which he sat — the wine he drank — could not be a 
 vision of the night. Granted that the face of the girl was a hallu- 
 cination put upon him by a clever mesmerist, other things must 
 have been real. lie could not have wandered in the streets of 
 London for three or four hours in a mesmeric trance, full of vain 
 imaginings. No, his memory of every detail, of every word they 
 two had spoken, was too distinct to be only the memory of a dream. 
 
 He walked to Bow Street, and from Bow Street went in the 
 direction in which he had gone on the night before with Justin
 
 The Woi'ld, the Flesh, and the Devil. 49 
 
 Jermyn. After he left Lincoln's Inn Fields he tried to abstract his 
 mind and to walk without thought of the way he was going, hoping 
 that mstinct might direct his steps in the way they had gone last 
 night, the same instinct by which a horse who has travelled a 
 road only once will make every turn accurately upon a second 
 journey. 
 
 Instinct gave him no help. He wandered up and down Holborn, 
 he explored the side streets that he right and left of Gray's Inn 
 Lane, he threaded narrow courts and emerged mto Hatton Garden, 
 he went back to the Lane and hugged the dingy wall of Verulam 
 Buildings; but nowhere did he see gate-house or archway that 
 bore the faintest resemblance to the gate-house beneath which he 
 passed last night. He began to think that he had been verily upon 
 enchanted ground, and that the champagne he had drunk with 
 Justin JermjTi was akin to that juice of the grape which Mephis- 
 topheles drew from an augur hole in a wooden table. There was 
 devilry in last night's business somewhere or somehow. 
 
 He went back to his lodgings mystified and dispirited. He for- 
 got that he was a millionaire, and over the scene of life there crept 
 once again that dreary neutral hue which it had worn when he 
 contemplated making a sudden irrevocable exit from the stage. It 
 was three o'clock before he got to Church Court, half-past three 
 before he flung himself wearily upon his jingling brazen bed. 
 
 "I must move into better rooms on Monday," he said to himself 
 " and I must thmk about getting a house of my own. What is the 
 use of wealth if one doesn't enjoy it ? " 
 
 There was very httle enjoyment in him this summer mornin"- 
 when the clear bright light stole into his room, and accentuated the 
 shabbiness of the well-worn furniture, the hideous PhiUstinism of 
 the maple wardrobe, with its Corinthian columns and tall strip of 
 looking-glass, glass in which he had critically surveyed his dress 
 suit the other evening, wondering how long it would hold out 
 against the want of confidence among west-end taUors. He could 
 have as many dress suits as he liked now, and could pay as muck 
 as the most egregious tailor cared to demand. He could live where 
 he liked, start his house and his stable on a footing worthy of Nero 
 or Domitian. He could do what he liked with his life, and the 
 world would call it good, would wink at his delinquencies and flatter 
 his follies. All that the world has of good lay m the hollow of his 
 hand, for are not all the world's good things for sale to the highest 
 bidder ? He reflected upon this wondrous change in his fortunes, 
 
 s
 
 50 Gerard; or, 
 
 and yet in this morning hour of solitude and silence the conscious- 
 ness of illimitable wealth could not bring him happiness. 
 
 There had always been a vein of superstition in his nature, per- 
 haps ; or superstitious fears would scarcely have troubled him in 
 the midst of his prosperity. His double attempt to find Jermyn's 
 chambers and his double failure had disconcerted him more than 
 such a thmg should have done. The adventure gave a suggestion 
 of diablerie to his whole history since the moment when Jermyn 
 read his secret design in the library at Fridoline House. 
 
 He could not sleep, so he took down the " Peau de Chagrin " 
 from the bookcase which held his hmited library, composed of only 
 that which he held choicest in literature. One could have read 
 the bent of his mind by looking at the titles of those thirty or forty 
 books. Goethe's Faust, Heine's poetry and prose, Alfred de Musset, 
 Owen Meredith, Villon, Gautier, Balzac, Baudelaire, Kichepin ; the 
 literature of despair. 
 
 He read how when the lawyer brought Kaphael the news of his 
 fortune, his first thought was to take the " Peau de Chagrin " from 
 his pocket and measure it against the tracing he had made upon a 
 table-napkin the night before. 
 
 The skin had shrunk perceptibly. So much had gone from his 
 life in the emotions of a single night of riot, in the shock of a 
 sudden change in his fortunes. 
 
 " An allegory," mused Hillersdon. " My life has been wasting 
 rapidly since the night before last. I have been hving faster, two 
 heart-throbs for one." 
 
 He breakfasted early after two or three hours of broken sleep, 
 and dawdled over his breakfast, taking up one volume after another 
 with a painful inability to fix his mind upon any subject, until the 
 inexorable church bells began their clangour close at hand, and 
 made all thought impossible. 
 
 Then only did he remember that it was Simday morning. He 
 changed his coat hurriedly, brushed his hat, and set out for that 
 fashionable temple in which Edith Champion was wont to hear the 
 eloquent sermons of a " delicate, diUetante, white-handed priest," in 
 an atmosphere heavy with Ess bouquet, and the warm breath of 
 closely-packed humanity. 
 
 The choir was chanting the " Te Deum " when he went in, and 
 secured one of the last rush-bottomed chairs available in the crowded 
 nave. His night wanderings had fatigued him more than he knew, 
 and he slept profoundly through one of the choicest discourses of
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 51 
 
 the season, and was not a little embarrassed when Mrs. Champion 
 and Mrs. Gresham insisted upon discussing every point the preacher 
 had made. Happily, both ladies were too eager to state their own 
 opinions to discover his ignorance, or to guess that for him that 
 thrilling sermon had been as the booming of a bumble bee in the 
 heart of an over-blown rose — a soimd of soothing and pleasantness. 
 
 *' He goes to the Eiviera every winter," said Mrs. Champion, 
 slipping from the sermon to the preacher ; " he is more popular 
 there than in London. You should hear his thrilling denunciation 
 of Monte Carlo, and his awful warnings to the people who go 
 there. There is hardly standing room in any church where he 
 preaches." 
 
 HUlersdon walked ia the Park with the two ladies, patiently 
 enduring that customary church parade which always bored him, 
 even in Edith Champion's company, and even although his pride 
 was stimulated by being seen in attendance upon one of the hand- 
 somest women in London. 
 
 The Park looked lovely in the summer noontide, the people were 
 smart, weU-dressed, admirable ; but the park and the people were 
 the same as last year, and they would be the same nest year — the 
 same and always the same. 
 
 " It is the constant revolution stale 
 And tasteless, of the same repeated joys, ' 
 That palls and satiates, and makes languid life 
 A pedlar's pack, that bows the bearer down." 
 
 He dined with Mrs. Champion, and went to a musical party with 
 her, and that Sunday seemed to him one of the longest he had ever 
 spent, longer even than the Sabbath days of his boyhood, when he 
 was allowed to read only good books, and forbidden all transactions 
 with rat-catchers and ferrets. 
 
 He was glad when he had handed Mrs. Champion to her carriage 
 under an awning in Grosvenor Place, glad to go back to his bachelor 
 loneliness, and impatient of Monday morning. He was up betimes, 
 and hurried oflf to Lincoln's Inn Fields as soon as it was reasonable 
 to expect Mr. Crafton at his office. He wanted agaia to assure 
 himself that Ebenezer Milford's fortime was a reality, and not a 
 dream. 
 
 The solicitor received him with unimpaired graciousness, and 
 was ready with oifers of assistance in any plans of his client. AU 
 that had to be done about the inheritance was in progress ; but as
 
 52 Gerard ; or, 
 
 all processes of law are lengthy it would be some little time before 
 Mr. Hillersdon would be in actual possession of his wealth. 
 
 " The succession duties will be very heavy," said Grafton, shaking 
 his head ; and HUlersdon felt that in this respect his was a hard case. 
 
 " Have you communicated with your friend, Mr. Watson ? " the 
 lawyer asked presently. 
 
 " No, I forgot to do that." 
 
 " It would be as well that you should look him up at once, and 
 test his memory of the occurrence in the railway station," suggested 
 Grafton. " His evidence would be very useful in the — most un- 
 likely — contingency of any attempt to upset the will." 
 
 This remark had the effect of a douche of cold water upon 
 Hillersdon. 
 
 " You don't apprehend " he faltered. 
 
 " No, I have not the slightest apprehension. Poor old Milford 
 was an isolated being. If he had any relations I never heard of 
 them. But, as a precautionary measure, I advise you to see your 
 friend." 
 
 " Yes, yes, I wUl go to him at once," said Hillersdon feverishly, 
 getting up and making for the door. 
 
 " There is no need for hurry. Is there nothing that I can do for 
 you?" 
 
 " Nothing. I have been thinking of changing my lodgings — but 
 that can stand over for a few days. I must see Watson — and then 
 I must go down to the country to see my own people. It wouldn't 
 do for them to hear of my good luck from any one else. I may tell 
 them, I suppose ? I am not likely to find myself thrust out of this 
 inheritance after a few weeks' possession ? I am not going to be a 
 kind of Lady Jane Grey among legatees ? " 
 
 " No, no ; there is really no danger. The will is a splendid will. 
 It would be very difficult for any one to attack it, even the nearest 
 blood relation. I have not the slightest fear." 
 
 " Give me your cheque for another five hundred, by way of 
 backing your opinion," said Hillersdon, still feverishly, and with a 
 shade of fretfulness. 
 
 He was irritated by the mere suggestion that a will is an instru- 
 ment that may be impeached. 
 
 " With pleasure," replied Mr. Grafton, ready with his cheque 
 book ; " shall I make it a thousand ? " 
 
 " No, no, a monkey will do. I really don't want the money, 
 only I like to see you part with it freely. Thanks ; good day."
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 53 
 
 His hansom was waiting for him. He told the man to drive to 
 the Albany, where he might utilise his call upon Watson by making 
 inquiries about any eligible rooms. 
 
 It was early in the day, and Watson was lingering over his break- 
 fast, which had been lengthened out by the skimming of half-a- 
 dozen morning papers. He had not seen HOlersdon for some time, 
 and welcomed him with frank cordiality. 
 
 "What have you been doing with yourself all this time?" he 
 asked, as he rang for fresh coffee. " YouVe been moving in Mrs. 
 Champion's charmed circle, I suppose, and as her orbit ain't mine 
 we don't often meet, and now we do meet I can't compliment you 
 on your appearance. You are looking uncommonly seedy." 
 
 "I have been sleeping badly for the last few nights. That's my 
 only ailment. Do you remember that evening at Nice when Jyou 
 ■went to the station with me after the battle of flowers? " 
 
 " And when you picked a churHsh old fellow from the front of an 
 advancing engine, and to all intents and purposes saved his life ? 
 Of course I remember. A curious old man, that. I believe he 
 means to leave you a legacy of some kind. Nineteen pounds nine- 
 teen, perhaps, to buy a mourning ring. He was monstrously 
 particular in his inquiries about — your name and parentage, and 
 usual place of abode. He walked half the length of the Avenue de 
 la Gare with me, and he was very much troubled in mind about his 
 umbrella." 
 
 " Did he tell you his name ? " 
 
 "He gave me his card at parting, but I lost the card and forgot 
 the name." 
 
 " And you really believe that I saved his life ? " 
 
 " I don't think there's the slightest doubt about it. The thing 
 was as near as a toucher. I expected to see you killed in an 
 unsuccessful attempt to save him." 
 
 " And you would put as much as that in an affidavit, or say as 
 much in the witness-box? " 
 
 " In a dozen affidavits, or in a dozen witness-boxes. But why 
 these questions ? " 
 
 Hillersdon told him the motive, and the fortune that was at 
 
 Btake. 
 
 " Then the legacy comes to two millions ? " cried Watson. " By 
 Jove, you are a lucky fellow, and upon my honour you deserve it ! 
 You hazarded your life, and what can any man do more than that, 
 and for an unknown traveller. The good Samaritan goes down to
 
 54 Gerard; or, 
 
 posterity on the strength of a little kindly feeling and twopence. 
 You did a great deal more than the Samaritan. Why cannot I 
 pluck a shabby Croesus out of the iron way, or rescue a millionaire 
 from drowning? Why should this one lucky chance come your 
 way and not mine ? You were only ten paces in advance of me 
 when the crucial moment came. Well, I won't grumble at your 
 good fortune. After all, the accession of one's bosom friend to 
 miUions makes one's self no poorer. Yet there is always a feeling 
 of being reduced to abject poverty when a friend tumbles into 
 unexpected wealth. It will' take me months to reconcile myself to 
 the idea of you as a millionaire. And now what are you going to 
 do with your life ? " 
 
 " Enjoy it if I can, having the means of enjoyment given me." 
 
 " All that money can do you can do," said Watson, with a 
 philosophic air. " You will now have the opportunity of testing 
 the power of wealthy its limitations, its strictly finite natiu-e." 
 
 " I will not moan if I find there are some things gold cannot buy," 
 said HOlersdon. " There are so many things it can buy which I 
 have been wanting all my life." 
 
 " Well, you are a lucky fellow, and you deserve your luck, because 
 you did a plucky thing without thought or fear of consequences. If 
 you had paused to consider your own peril that old man would 
 have been smashed." 
 
 The servant came in with the coffee, a welcome interruption to 
 Hillersdon, who was tu-ed of being complimented on his pluck. His 
 early breakfast had been only a cup of tea, and he was not sorry to 
 begin again with Watson, who prided himself upon living well, and 
 was a connoisseur of perigord pies and York hams, and took infinite 
 pains to get the freshest eggs and best butter that London could 
 supply. 
 
 " Well, you are going to enjoy your life ; that is understood. 
 Imprimis, I suppose you will marry ? " said Watson, cheerily. 
 
 " I told you, I meant to enjoy my life," answered Hillersdon. 
 " The first element of happiness is Hberty. And you suggest that I 
 should start by surrendering it to a wife ? " 
 
 " Oh, that's all bosh. A man with a big income does not lose 
 his freedom by taking a wife. In a millionau-e's household a wife 
 is only an ornament. She has neither control nor ascendancy over 
 his existence. You remember what Beckford said of the Venetian 
 nobility at the close of the eighteenth century. Every great man 
 in that enchanting city had his secret tabernacle — a snug little nest
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 55 
 
 in the labyrintli of narrow streets, or in some shadowy bend of a 
 rio, known only to himself and his intimates, where he might live 
 his own Ufe, while his ostensible existence as Grand Seigneur was 
 conducted with regal pomp and publicity in his palace on the Grand 
 Canal, Do you suppose the Venetian nobleman of that golden age 
 was governed by his wife ? " Fas si bete.'" 
 
 "I shall never marry till I can marry the woman I love," 
 answered Hillersdon, 
 
 Watson shrugged his shoulders significantly, and went on with 
 his breakfast. He knew all about Llrs. Champion, and that romantic 
 attachment which had been going on for years, and which seemed 
 as hopeless and almost as unprofitable upon Gerard Hillersdon's 
 Bide as Don Quixote's worship of Dulcinea del Toboso. Watson, 
 who was strictly practical, could not enter into the mind of a man 
 who sacrificed his life for a virtuous woman. He could understand 
 the other thing — life and honour, fortune and good name, flung at 
 the feet of Venus Pandemos. He had seen too much of the influence 
 of base women and ignoble love to doubt the power of evil over the 
 hearts of men. It was the namby-pamby devotion, this lap-dog 
 love, the desire of the moth for the star, in which he could not 
 beheve. 
 
 Hillersdon left him in time to catch the Exeter express at 
 Waterloo. He had made up his mind that he must no longer keep 
 his own people in ignorance of the change in his fortunes. He had 
 given the hard-worked father and the long-suS'ering mother too 
 much trouble in the past, and now the hour of compensation must 
 be no longer delayed. Yes, his father's church should be restored, 
 and the dear old tumble-down Rectory renovated from garret to 
 cellar without injury to its tumble-downness, which was of all things 
 beautiful — a long, low house, with bow windows belljTug out un- 
 expectedly; a house so smothered with banksia roses, myrtle, 
 flowering ash, and wistaria that it was not easy to discover whether 
 its walls were brick or stone, rough-cast or cob. 
 
 It was a relief to Gerard HiUersdon to turniis back upon London, 
 to feel that his face was set towards green pastures and summer 
 woods, to see the white fleeces of rural sheep instead of the dark- 
 lings of the Park, and the froHcs of joyous foals in the meadows 
 instead of smart young women bucketting along the Row. 
 
 " God made the coimtry and man made the town," he said to 
 himself, quoting a poet whom his father loved and often quoted. 
 It was still early in the afternoon when he went in at the open
 
 56 Gerard ; or, 
 
 gate of the Kectory garden. The estuary of the Exe lay before 
 him, with crisp wavelets dancing in the sun. His father's parish 
 was midway between Exeter and Exmouth, a place of quietness 
 and fertile meadows, gardens brimming over with flowers, thatched 
 cottages smothered with roses and honeysuckle, beehives, poultry- 
 yards, and all rustic sights and sounds ; a village in which a rector 
 is a kind of king, exercising more influence than parliaments and 
 potentates afar oS". 
 
 Two girls were playing tennis on the lawn to the right of the 
 long low verandah that screened the drawing-room windows, two 
 glancing figures in white gowns that caught the sunHght. One he 
 knew for his sister Lilian ; the other was a stranger. 
 
 Lilian faced the carriage-drive by which he approached, recognised 
 him, flung down her racquet with a joyful exclamation, and ran to 
 meet him, heedless of her antagonist, 
 
 "I thought you were never coming near us again," she said, 
 when they had kissed. " Mother has been full of anxieties about 
 you. It was time you came ; yes, high time, for you are looking 
 dreadfully ill." 
 
 " Every one seems bent upon telling me that," he said, with a 
 vexed air. 
 
 " You have been ill, I believe, and you never let us know." 
 " I am as well as I ever was in my hfe, and I have not been iU 
 Two or three bad nights seem to have played havoc with my 
 looks." 
 
 " It is the horrid life you lead in London — parties every day and 
 every night ; no respite, no repose. I hear of your doings, you see, 
 though you so seldom write to any of us. Miss Vere, who is staying 
 with me, knows all about you." 
 
 " Then Miss Yere possesses all knowledge worth having — from 
 my point of view. I dare say she knows more about me than I 
 know of myself. You shall introduce me to her, after I have seen 
 my mother." 
 
 "You shall see mother without one moment's waste of time. 
 Poor mother, she has so pined for you. Mother," called Lilian, 
 addressing her fresh young voice to the verandah, " Mother, come 
 out and be startled and dehghted in a breath." 
 
 Gerard and his sister were moving towards the house as ehe 
 called. A tall matronly figure emerged from the verandah, and a 
 cry of gladness welcomed the prodigal son. In the next minute he 
 was clasped to his mother's heart.
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 57 
 
 " ]\Iy dearest boy." 
 
 " My ever dear mother," 
 
 " I have been so anxious about you, Gerard." 
 
 "Not "without cause, dear mother. I -was in very low spu-its, 
 altogether at odds with fortune a few days ago. But since then 
 I have had a stroke of luck. I have come to tell you good 
 news." 
 
 " You have written another book," she cried delightfully. 
 
 " Better than that." 
 
 " Nothing could be better than that, to my mind." 
 
 " What would you say if a good old man, whom I only saw once 
 in my Hfe, had left me a fortune ? " 
 
 " I should say it was like a fairy tale." 
 
 " It is hke a fairy tale, but I believe it is reality. I beUeve, 
 because a London solicitor has advanced me a thousand pounds 
 with no better security than my expectations. I have not sold 
 my shadow, and I have not accepted the Feau de chagrin. I 
 am substantially and realistically rich, and I can do anything in 
 the world that money can do to make you and father and Lilian 
 happy for the rest of your Hves." 
 
 "You can give me a new racquet," said his sister. "It is a 
 misery to play with this, and Barbara has the very latest improve- 
 ment in racquets." 
 
 " ' My mother had a maid called Barbara,' " quoted Gerard, 
 laughing. " Jliss Vere is your Barbara, I suppose ? " 
 
 He went into the drawing-room with his mother, while Lilian ran 
 to apologise to Miss Vere for her sudden desertion. Mother and 
 eon sat side by side, hand clasped in hand, and Gerard told her the 
 strange history of his altered fortunes. He told her of his debts 
 and of his despair, his utter weariness of life ; but he did not tell 
 her that he had contemplated suicide ; nor did he fling across her 
 simple thoughts the cloudy mysticism which has become a factor in 
 modem life. He did not tell her of the scene in Jermyn's chambers, 
 or of his vain endeavours to discover the whereabouts of those 
 chambers ; nor did he talk to her of Edith Champion, albeit she 
 had some inkling of that romantic phase of his life. 
 
 She was enraptured at the thought of his good fortune, without 
 one selfish consideration of the prosperity it would bring to her. 
 In the midst of her rejoicing she began to talk to him about hi3 
 health. 
 
 " You are not looking well, dearest," she said earnestly. " To
 
 5 8 Gerard ; or^ 
 
 those who love you your health is of far more importance than your 
 fortune." 
 
 This harping on an unpleasant strain irritated him. This was 
 the third time within the day that he had been told he looked iU. 
 
 " You women are all morbid," he said. " You poison yom- lives 
 with unrealised apprehensions. If any one gave you the Koh-i-noor 
 you would make yom-selves miserable by the suspicion that it was 
 only a bit of glass. You would want to break it up in order to be 
 sure of its value. Suppose I have a headache — suppose I have 
 had two or three bad nights, and am looking haggard and pale, 
 what is that against two millions ? " 
 
 " Two millions ! Oh, Gerard, is your fortune anything like that ? " 
 asked his mother, in an awe-stricken voice. 
 
 "I am told that it is very much like that." 
 
 " It sounds hke a dream. There is something awful in the idea 
 of such wealth in the possession of one young man. And oh, 
 Gerard, think of the thousands and tens of thousands who are 
 almost starving." 
 
 "I suppose everybody wiU teU me that," exclaimed her son 
 irritably. " "Why should I think of the starving thousands ? Why, 
 just because I have the means of enjojang life, am I to make myself 
 miserable by brooding upon the miseries of others ? If it comes to 
 that a man ought never to be happy while there is a single ill-used 
 cab-horse in the world. Just think of all the horses in London and 
 Paris that are underfed and overdriven, and have galled shoulders 
 and cracked heels. There is madness in it. Think of the iU-treated 
 children, the little children, the gutter-martyrs, whose lives are a 
 burden. If we are to think of these things our choicest luxuries, 
 our most exalted pleasures, must turn to gall and wormwood. For 
 every pair of happy lovers there are women in degradation and 
 despair, and men whose lightest touch is defilement. If we stop to 
 consider how this world we live in — so fuU of exquisite beauty and 
 eager, joyous life — is just as full of want and misery and crime, the 
 sharp anguish of physical pain, and the duU agony of patient, joyless 
 lives, there can be no such thing as pleasure. We must not give 
 way to pity, mother. Since we cannot heal all these gaping wounds 
 ^since there is no possible panacea for the suQerings of a universe, 
 we must narrow our thoughts and hopes to the Hmits of home and 
 family, and say ' Kismet, Allah is good.' But for you, dearest, for 
 you and all whom you want to help, my wealth shall be as potent 
 as the four-leaved shamrock. You shall be my almoner. Yoa
 
 TJie World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 59 
 
 shall find out which among all the never-ending schemes for helping 
 the helpless are really good, and sound, and honest, and I will aid 
 them with open hand." 
 
 "My dear son, I knew your heart was fiill of pity," murmured 
 his mother tenderly. 
 
 "Oh, but I don't want to pity any one. I want you, with your 
 clear, calm mmd, to think and act for me. Everybody tells me 
 I am looking haggard and iH, now just when life is worth cherishing. 
 I want to avoid overmuch agitation. Let us talk of happier things. 
 How is the dear governor, or the Eector, as he prefers to be 
 called?" 
 
 "He has not been very well of late. Last winter tried him 
 severely." 
 
 " He must spend next winter at San Remo or Sorrento. It will 
 be only for you both to choose your locality." 
 
 " And I may see Italy before I die," gasped the Rector's wife, 
 whose peregrinations hitherto had rarely gone beyond Boscastle on 
 the one side and Bath on the other, with a fortnight in London 
 once in two years. 
 
 " Yes, you shall see all that is fairest in this world," answered 
 Gerard. 
 
 " Your father is spending the day in Exeter. What a delightful 
 Burprise for him when he comes home to dinner ! But you must 
 not wait for eight o'clock, Gerard. You must have something after 
 your journey. Shall I order a chop, or a grilled chicken ? " 
 
 " No, dear mother, I am too happy in your company to want such 
 substantial food. I think I saw cups and saucers in the garden, 
 under our favourite tree — 
 
 ' And thou in all tliy breadth and height 
 Of foliage, towering sycamore.' " 
 
 " Oh, Gerard, it is a tulip-tree. Your father would be dreadfully 
 offended to hear it called a sycamore. Yes, you shall have some tea, 
 dearest." She rang the bell, and ordered new-laid eggs, hot cakes, 
 a regular Yorkshire tea, to be taken out to the garden. "What 
 happiness to be sitting there with you once again. It is ages since you 
 have been with us, except for just that hurried visit last Christmas." 
 
 Gerard sighed as he acknowledged the force of this reproach. 
 AH his summers of late years had been spent far afield. In the 
 Tyrol, in Scotland, in Sweden, in Westmoreland, at Carlsbad, any- 
 where whither Mrs. Champion's caprices or Mr. Champion's " cure "
 
 6o Gerard ; or, 
 
 led the lady and her satellite. He had enjoj'ed no more inde- 
 pendent existence than one of Jupiter's moons, but had been con- 
 strained to revolve in the orbit of his planet. 
 
 He went into the garden with his mother. Every shrub was a 
 reproach, for all had grown with the growth of years since he had 
 seen them in their summer glory, A flying visit at Christmas or 
 the New Year had been as much as his goddess allowed him. And 
 now — albeit his chain was unbroken — he had a feeling that it was 
 lengthened, and that he was going to do as he hked henceforward. 
 
 The stout, comfortable-looking butler, whom he remembered a 
 lad in buttons, brought tea, and toasted cakes, and poached eggs, 
 and clouted cream, and other rustic luxuries ; and the tennis players, 
 who had taken one tea at four o'clock, were very glad to take 
 another at six. Gerard was introduced to Miss Vere, otherwise 
 Barbara — a girl with a handsome face and a commanding figure, 
 but who looked as if she had vecu, Gerard thought, and who at once 
 began to talk of the houses at which they had met in London, which 
 were all the smartest houses, be it remarked. The young lady sunk 
 any lesser mansions at which they might have rubbed shoulders. 
 
 " I think you know Mrs. Champion," Miss Vere remarked inno- 
 cently. " She and my cousin, Mrs. Harper, are great chums." 
 
 " Mrs. Theodore Harper ? " 
 
 " Yes, Mrs. Theodore." 
 
 " I know her well, a very pretty woman." 
 
 " Yes, she is by way of being a beauty," said Miss Vere, who was 
 much handsomer, and no doubt was fully aware of her superiority ; 
 "but don't you think she's rather silly about that boy of hers — 
 taking him everywhere ? " 
 
 " Upon that point I consider her positively imbecile. A child in 
 an Eton jacket should not be obtruded upon the society of reason- 
 able men and women. I believe she only takes him about with her 
 in order that people may exclaim, ' Your son, Mrs. Harper? Impos- 
 sible ! How could you have a son of twelve years old, when you 
 can be at most two and twenty ? ' " 
 
 " And then she smiles — carefully — through her magnolia bloom, 
 and is perfectly happy for the rest of the afternoon, while the boy 
 Bits turning over illustrated books, and boring himself to death." 
 
 " Or sucldng surreptitious lollipops, till some prosy old Etonian 
 goes and sits beside him, and talks about the playing fields and the 
 river," said Gerard. 
 
 Lilian and her mother sat smiling at this conversation, happily
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 6i 
 
 nnconscious of its artificiality. Lilian, who was lily-fair and guile- 
 less as a child, looked up to Barbara Vere with eyes of admiring 
 wonder. Miss Vere's exquisitely fitting gowns, her aplomb, and her 
 knowledge of the side scenes of life commanded the vOlage maiden's 
 respect. To talk to a girl who had the peerage at her fingers' ends, 
 knew to a shade every important person's pohtical opinions, was 
 familiar with all the society scandals and all the approaching alli- 
 ances, was a privilege for the Kector's daughter. She wondered how 
 the brilliant Barbara could endure the jog-trot domesticity of the 
 Rectory, and it had never occurred to her that Barbara Vere put in 
 for repairs at this quiet little harbour after the wear and tear of her 
 annual voyage on the high seas of London society. 
 
 " I feel so fresh and so happy when I am with you," said Barbara. 
 •' I leave my French maid and my powder-box in London, and steep 
 myself in the atmosphere of Milton's ' Allegro.' " 
 
 She might have added that in this clerical seclusion she did not 
 trouble to make up her eyebrows, or to put on just that one artistic 
 touch of rouge upon the cheek-bone, which in London drawing- 
 rooms gave lustre to her fine dark eyes. Here her hfe was spent for 
 the most part in a garden, and she was wise enough to know 
 how ghastly all artificial embellishments become under such 
 conditions. 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 THE FACE IN THE VISION. 
 
 The little party of four sat long at the tea-table under the leafy 
 branches of the tulip-tree. The Rectory garden was on a level 
 stretch of ground ; but beyond the shrubbery that girdled lawn and 
 parterre, the glebe meadows sloped towards the low, irregular cliil'; 
 and below the undulating line of the cliff danced the bright wavelets 
 of the estuary. The garden and its surroundings were alike lovely, 
 fertile, smiling — not the grand scenery of North Devon, nor the still 
 bolder coast-line of North Cornwall, by that steep rock where once 
 uprose Tintagcl's crown of towers, but a placid and pastoral region
 
 62 Gerard ; or, 
 
 which seems to invite restftdness and content with things that be 
 rather than soaring aspirations or heroic endeavour. 
 
 Landward of the Rectory garden and orchard there rose a wooded 
 hill, whose sununit commanded a fine view of the chaimel. and the 
 white-winged ships saiUng away towards Start Point. That hill, 
 with its wood and coppice, had been Gerard's dehght in the summer 
 holidays of boyhood. He had read there in his long vacations — and 
 there were spots which to. this hour recalled certain passages in 
 Homer and VirgU, and certain difficulties in higher mathematics. 
 
 He thought of that far-off time as he sat, sipping a third oup of 
 tea, in a dreamy mood, after having done scanty justice to the 
 plethora of rustic fare. The two girls had gone indoors, leaving 
 mother and son tete-a-tete, Mrs. Hiilersdon sitting sUent, plying those 
 busy needles which knitted socks for half the old men and children 
 in the parish, and Gerard lost in reverie. He was the first to break 
 the silence. 
 
 " Mother, I saw a face the other day which reminded me of home 
 — and of — ever so many years ago — five or six years, at least — and 
 yet I can't associate the face with any one in this parish. I can't 
 tell you how familiar it seemed, or how I have worried my brains 
 to find out where and how I saw it." 
 
 " A man's face, or a woman's ? " 
 
 " A girl's face— or rather say the face of a woman of three or 
 four and twenty — a woman in humble life. It must have been one 
 of your cottagers, but I can't identify her. It is a very lovely face." 
 
 ''But where did you see this young woman? Why didn't you 
 question her ? " 
 
 " The face flashed upon me and was gone. There was no time 
 for asking questions. I want you to help me, if you can. So lovely 
 a face must have made some impression upon you. Think of the 
 prettiest girls you have known in this village and the surrounding 
 neighbourhood." 
 
 " There are so many pretty girls. Devon is famous for "beauty- 
 A good many of the cottagers about here have given me their 
 photographs. People are very fond of being photographed now that 
 the luxury is bo cheap. I have an album that I keep on purpose 
 for my parish friends. You can look through it this evening, if you 
 like, and see if you can identify your young woman." 
 
 " She would not be one among a herd," Gerard answered irritably. 
 " I know what Devonian beauty means — bright blue eyes, fine car- 
 nations. This girl is utterly unlike the type. Surely you can
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 63 
 
 remember a girl of exceptional beauty, with whom we had some 
 kind of association any time within the last ten years, but whom I 
 must have seen seldom, or I should be able to identify her." 
 
 "Exceptional beauty!" repeated Mrs. Hillersdon, thoughtfully. 
 *' I can recall nobody in the parish whom I should call exceptionally 
 beautiful. But men have such odd notions about beauty. I have 
 heard a girl with a snub nose and a wide mouth extolled as if she 
 were Venus. Why are you so anxious to know more about this 
 young woman ? " 
 
 " I have reason to think she is in distress, and I should like to 
 help her — now that I am rich enough to do foolish things," 
 
 " It would not be fooKsh if she is a good girl — but beware of 
 exquisite beauty in humble life, Gerard. It would make me 
 miserable if " 
 
 " Oh, my dear mother, we have all read ' David Copperfield.' I 
 am not going to imitate Steerforth in his treatment of httle Emily. 
 I am mystified about this girl, and I want to learn who she is and 
 whence she came." 
 
 " Not from this parish, Gerard, I am sure, unless you can find her 
 in my album." 
 
 " Let me see your album, this minute," cried Gerard. 
 
 The parlourmaid approached as he spoke, and began to clear the 
 tea-table. 
 
 " Bim to my room and bring me the big brown photograph 
 album," said Mrs. Hillersdon, and the brisk young parlourmaid 
 tripped away and presently returned with a brown quarto which 
 had seen long service. Gerard turned the leaves eagerly. He 
 beheld a curious collection of old-fashioned finery, mushroom hats, 
 crinolines. Garibaldi shirts, festoons, flounces, and Mariafolds, polo- 
 naises, jackets, mantles, of every style that has been worn within 
 the last thirty years — old men and maidens, fathers, mothers, 
 chUdren, babies in abundance. 
 
 There were plenty of pretty faces — faces which even the rustic 
 photographer could not spoU ; but there was not one which offered 
 the faintest resemblance to the face he had seen in Justin Jermyn's 
 chambers. 
 
 " No ! " he exclaimed, flinging the book upon the table in disgust, 
 " there is no sign of her among your bumpkins." 
 
 "Please don't sneer at my bumpkins. You don't know what 
 good, bright, patient, hardworking creatures there are among them, 
 or how proud I am to know that they are fond of me."
 
 64 Gerard ; or, 
 
 " The girl I saw has an ethereal face — not flesh, but spirit^ 
 dreaming eyes, kr§e and soft, shadowed by long dark lashes — fair 
 hair, not golden, mark you — but distinctly fair, a pale soft brown, 
 like the coat of a fallow deer. Her features are exquisitely deUcate, 
 modelling of nose and chin like a Madonna by EaffaeUe — yes, it is 
 a Raffaelle face, so soft in colouring, so spiritual — but sad, unutter- 
 ably sad." 
 
 ".Hester Davenport," exclaimed Mi's. Hillersdon, suddenly. 
 " You have described her to the life. Poor girl. "Where did you 
 meet her? I thought she was in Australia." 
 
 " Perhaps only in a dream. But who is Hester Davenport? " 
 
 " Don't you remember the cm^ate, Nicholas Davenport, the man 
 whom your father engaged without adequate scrutiny into antece- 
 dents or character, on the strength of his fine manner and appear- 
 ance, and his evident superiority to the common run of Churchmen 
 — a man of great theological learning, your father told me ? He 
 had been tutor to Lord Eaynfield's son — in Cumberland — and he 
 gave your father a letter of recommendation from Lord Raynfield, 
 dated some seven years before he came to us. You know how 
 unsuspicious your father is. It never occurred to him that the 
 man's character might have changed since that letter was written. 
 He was with us a year and a half, and towards the end of that time 
 his daughter came from Hanover, where she had been sent for a 
 year or so to learn German. "We were all struck with her beauty 
 and sweet gentle manners." 
 
 " Yes, yes, I remember now. I was at home when she arrived. 
 How could I forget ? She came to tea with Lilian one afternooa 
 ■when I was loafing about the garden, and I talked to her for five 
 minutes or so, not more, for I had to hurry off to catch the train 
 for Exeter. I saw her once after that — met her on the sands one 
 morning. Yes, the face comes back to me as it was then — ^in all 
 the freshness of girlhood." 
 
 " She was only seventeen when she came from Germany." 
 
 " And Davenport went wrong, turned out an incorrigible drunkard, 
 did he not ? " 
 
 "Yes; it was unspeakably sad. He used to have occasional 
 lapses — never during his church work — but when he was about in 
 the parish. He told your father that he suflered from slight attacks 
 of epilepsy ; so slight as to be of no hindrance to his duty. This 
 went on for over a year, and then, on AU Saints' Day, he had an 
 attack in the reading-desk — a lapse of consciousness as your father
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 65 
 
 called it. He seemed very strange. We were puzzled — but none 
 of us guessed the dreadful truth, till one Sundaj^ evening, about a 
 month after his poor daughter came home from Germany, he went 
 up into the pulpit, reeling, and clutching at the balustrade, and 
 began to preach in the wildest language, uttering dreadful blasphe- 
 mies, and bursting into hysterical laughter. Your father had to go 
 up into the pulpit with one of the churchwardens and bring him 
 down by main force. He was perfectly mad; but it was drink, 
 Gerard, drink, that had caused all the evil. He had been taking 
 brandy or chloral for years — sometimes one, sometimes the other. 
 He was a secret drinker — that learned, intellectual man, a man who 
 had taken the highest honours at Oxford, a man whom Oxford men 
 remembered as a hght among them." 
 
 " What became of him after that ? " 
 
 " He had to leave us, of course, and as your father dared not 
 recommend him to anybody, and as the scandal of his behaviour 
 had been heard of throughout the diocese, there was no hope of his 
 getting any further employment in the Church. Your father was 
 very sorry for him, and gave him a little money to help him to 
 emigrate. His old pupil. Lord Wolverley, helped him, and old 
 college friends contributed, and he and his daughter sailed for 
 Melbourne. I went to Plymouth to see them off, for I was very 
 eony for the poor motherless girl, in her deep distress, and your 
 father and others wanted to be sure that they really got oflf, as 
 Davenport was a shifty kind of man, and might have let the ship 
 sail without him. They went out in a sailing vessel, crowded with 
 first, second, and third-class emigrants. They went second-class, 
 and I can see her now as I saw her that day, standing in the bows 
 with her hand through her father's arm, while he waved his hand- 
 kerchief to me. She was white and wan, poor child, but exquisitely 
 loveh'. I could not help thinking of what her life might have been 
 if she had had good and prosperous parents ; yet I know she adortd 
 that unhappy father." 
 
 " Exquisitely lovely, yes," mused Gerard, " and going out to a 
 new world in an emigi-aut ship, and with a di-unken old man for her 
 only guardian and stay. A hard fate for exquisite loveliness, is it 
 not, mother ? And now, I believe she is in London, working at a 
 sewing-machine for starvation wages." 
 
 "But how came you to learn so much, and yet not to know 
 more?" 
 
 " Did I not tell you that it was a dream ? " he asked, with a 
 
 K
 
 66 Gerard ; or, 
 
 mocking smile! "But I mean to know more, mother; I mean to 
 find this girl by hook or by crook, and to help her ! " 
 
 "You must not mix yourself in her life, Gerard," said Mrs. 
 Hillersdon, gravely ; " that might end badly." 
 
 " Oh, mother, you are full of fears ! One would think I were 
 Mephistopheles, or Faust ; while all I want is that my money may 
 be of some use to a friendless girl. Hester Davenport ! I remember 
 how lovely I thought her, but I was no more in love with her than 
 with the Venus of the Capitol. Strange that I should have failed 
 to identify the face, till you helped me ! " 
 
 He went indoors with his mother, and found his room — the room 
 which had been his ever since he left the nursery — ready for 
 occupation. The old nursemaid, whom he had teased and joked 
 with in the old Marlborough hohdays, had bustled and hurried to 
 get Mr. Gerard's room aired and dusted, and his portmanteau 
 unpacked, and all things arranged before the di-essing-bell rang out 
 from the old wooden cupola that crowned the low roof. Everything 
 had the odour he knew so well — a perfume of lavender and dried 
 rose leaves, mixed with some strange Indian scent which was an 
 inheritance from his mother's side of the house, her people ha\'ing 
 been civilians of good standing in Bengal for half a century. It was 
 a curious composite perfume, which for him meant the atmosphere 
 of home, and brought back memories of childhood. 
 
 The Rector received the news of his son's altered fortunes at first 
 with incredulity, and then with gladness mingled with awe. 
 
 " The whole business seems too wonderful to be true, Gerard," 
 he said; " but if it really is true, you are just the luckiest fellow I 
 ever heard of — to inherit an old man's wealth without ever having 
 cringed to him or fawned upon him while he was alive — to receive 
 two milUons sterling, without having to say thank you, except to 
 Providence ! " 
 
 The Rector was by no means a selfish man, and he had been an 
 indulgent father, bearing \vith a good deal of extravagance and some 
 perversity on the part of his son, but he was not slow to see that 
 this fortune must needs mean comfort and luxury for him in liia 
 declining years, and a freedom from financial cares which would 
 be new to himself and his wife, liberally as the. Rectory was 
 administered. His living was worth seven hundred a year, and he 
 and his wife between them had about four hundred of independent 
 income ; and it is not easy for a man of good family and with reiined 
 tastes to live within an income of eleven hundred a year; especially
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 67. 
 
 ■when he is rector of a rural parish in which the lower orders look 
 to him for aid in all their necessities, while the surrounding gentry 
 expect him to play an equal part in all their sports and hospitaUties. 
 
 Gerard stayed with his people just two daj's. That was as much 
 time as he could spare for inaction, since there was upon him the 
 natural restlessness of a man whose fortunes have undergone a 
 Budden and wondrous change, and who is eager to put newly acquired 
 power to the test. Father, mother, and sister would gladly have 
 kept him longer in that rural paradise, and Barbara Vere, havin"- 
 got wind of his inheritance, exercised all her blandishments, her 
 spells of woven paces and of weaving hands, to bind him to her 
 side. Garden, and hiUs, and rustic lanes, and summer sea, were all 
 suggestive of restfulness and oblivion of the busy world ; — but a 
 young man who has just come into a fortune is no more to be 
 satisfied with indolence in a garden than Eve was. He too, like 
 Eve, longs to taste the fruit of the fatal tree. 
 
 " I have seen what life is like to a man who never has a spare 
 five-poimd note," Gerard told his sister; "I want to find out how 
 life tastes to a millionaire. And when I have furnished rooms or 
 a house, and have settled down a Httle, you must come and keep 
 house for me, Lilian " 
 
 "Nonsense, dearl You will be marrying before the year is 
 out," 
 
 " I have no idea of marrying. There is nothing so unlikely aa 
 my marriage. You shall be mistress of my house." 
 
 " I couldn't leave mother — at least, not for ever so long," said 
 Lilian. 
 
 "Li years to come she will need you more than she needs 
 you now. I begin to understand you, Lilian. That tall, LU- 
 looking curate — Mr. Cumberland — has something to do with your 
 hesitations." 
 
 " Do you think him so very ugly ? " asked Lilian, with a distressed 
 look. 
 
 " I didn't say very ugly ; but I certainly don't think him hand- 
 some. That knotted and bulging brow means brains, I suppose." 
 
 " He was fifth wrangler, and he is a splendid musician," said his 
 sister. " X wish you would stop till Sunday to hear what he has 
 made of the choir." 
 
 ■' If he has made them sing in tune he must be a wonderful man. 
 And so he is the person whose merits and fortunes arc to colour your
 
 68 Gerard ; or, 
 
 future, Lilian. I had no idea of it when I saw him hanging over 
 your piano last night. I thought he was only a pis-aller. I suppose 
 he is just the type of man girls in country parsonages admire — 
 tall, athletic, with fine eyes, and dark overhanging brows, large 
 strong hands, thick wavy hair, and a powerful baritone voice. I 
 can quite understand your liking Mr. Cumberland ; but what does 
 the governor think of it all ? " 
 
 " Father does not mind," Lilian answered naively. " Jack is of 
 very good family, but he will have to get a living before we are 
 married." 
 
 " He shall have a living — if he is worthy of my sister," said 
 Gerard. " Money will buy livings — he shall be a pluralist if be 
 likes." 
 
 " Oh, Gerard, he is the last man to like that. He has such a 
 strong idea of duty. He would like a big parish in a sea-port, I 
 think, with plenty of work. His best gifts are wasted in such a 
 place as this, but all our people adore him. Father owns that he 
 never had such a helper." 
 
 " My sweet enthusiast, we will look out for a big sea-port. You 
 t^hall be a ministering angel to sailors and sailors' wives — you shall 
 temper the cruelties of life in a crowded city — and, perhaps, by 
 way of reward I shall hear some day that my sister's husband has 
 been struck down by a malignant fever and that she has done herself 
 to death while nursing him." 
 
 CHAPTER Vn. 
 
 "it is an- oath," she said. 
 
 Gerard went back to London, but eager as he was to return he 
 felt a pang of regret as he bade his mother good-bye in the fresh 
 early morning, and turned his face towards the gi-eat city. His brief 
 visit to the old home had been an interval of rest in a life that lately 
 liad been all unrest. He fancied that peau de chagrin could hardly 
 liave shrunk by a hair's breadth during those hours of calm affection, 
 of interchange of thought and feeling, without vehemence or excite-
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 69 
 
 ment. To go back to IVIrs. Champion and her set was like going 
 back to the crust of a volcano. The rage of spending was upon 
 him. He wanted to do something with the money which he had 
 scarcely dared to calculate. He drove straight from Waterloo 
 Station to Lincoln's Inn, and went through the schedule of his 
 possessions with Mr. Cranberry, who was a little, dry old man, like 
 the Princess Ida's father, and had none of the prestige and unctuous- 
 iiess of his junior partner Mr. Crafton. One could divine easily that 
 while Mr. Crafton Uved in a handsome " place " at Surbiton, grew 
 pines and peaches, and prided himself upon his stable and garden, 
 Mr. Cranberry was content with a dingy house in one of the Blooms- 
 bury Squares, and restricted his pride of life to a few Dutch pictures, 
 a good plain cook, and a cellar of comet port and old East Indian 
 sherry. 
 
 From this gentleman Gerard Hillersdon elicited — together with 
 much detail — the main fact that his capital, in and out of the bank- 
 ing-house of Milford and Co., summed up to a little over two millions, 
 and might be taken to yield an average four and a half per cent., 
 whereby his annual income amounted to ninety thousand pounds. 
 
 His cheek paled at the mere mention of the sum. It was too 
 much undoubtedly, almost an evil thing to acquire such riches with 
 a suddenness as of an earthquake or an apoplectic stroke. The 
 magnitude of his wealth overawed him ; and yet he had no desire 
 to lessen it by any large act of benevolence or philanthropy. He 
 had no inclination to give the London slums another breathing 
 ground, or to sink a hundred thousand poimds upon a block of 
 dwelHngs for the abjects of the great city. He was at once scared 
 and elated. 
 
 " Let me have a few thousands immediately," he said ; " open an 
 account for me at Milford's bank. Let me feel that I am rich ! " 
 
 " It shall be done," said Mr. Cranberry ; and then he explained 
 that there were certain formalities to be gone through, which could 
 be completed without delay, if his chent would give his mind to tlie 
 business. 
 
 The two men di-ove round to the bank together. Cranberry 
 opened his chent's account with his own cheque for five thousand 
 pounds, and a clerk handed Mr. Hillersdon a cheque-book. His 
 first act on returning to his lodgings was to write a cheque for a 
 tliousand pounds, payable to the Rev. Edward Hillersdon, and this 
 he enclosed in a brief scrawl to his mother : 
 
 " Ask the Rector to buy Lilian a new pony to replace poor Tiny
 
 70 Gerard ; or, 
 
 Tim, who has taken to stumbling rather badly," he wrote, " and beg 
 him to do just what he likes with the rest of the money. I shall 
 send 3'ou my little gift upon your birthday next week. Alas 1 I let 
 the date slip by last year, unmarked by so much as a card." 
 
 It was too late to begin his search for a new domicile that after- 
 noon, so he called on Mrs. Champion, who had gone to Charing 
 Cross Station to meet her husband on his return from the Continent, 
 and then he went on to the pretty little Sensorium, with its old- 
 fashioned low-ceiled rooms, and bow windows looking into Birdcage 
 Walk, and there he took tea with Eoger Larose, who was generally 
 to be found there at tea-time. 
 
 " I hear you have come into a fortune," said Larose, with his 
 easy languor. "You have been trjnng to keep the fact dark, I 
 know, but these things always ooze out." 
 
 "Who told you?" 
 
 " Nobodj\ It is in the air. I think I read a paragraph in the 
 Hesperus. There are always paragraphs. I congi-atulate you upon 
 your wealth. Is it much '? " 
 
 " Yes ; it is a good deal. My old friends needn't be afraid of 
 borrowing a few pounds of me when they are hard up." 
 
 " Thanks, my dear Gerard. I will bear it in m.ind. And what 
 are you going to do ? Shall you really be content to hve among us, 
 and know us still ? " 
 
 " The world and the people I know are quite the best world and 
 people I have ever imagined; only I mean to have pleasant sur- 
 roundings. Give me your counsel, Larose, as an architect and a 
 man of taste. Shall I have chambers in the Albany, or a house and 
 garden of my own ? " 
 
 " A house, by all means ! The Albany is old-fashioned ; it savours 
 of Pelhara and Coningsby. You must have a house near the south 
 side of Hyde Park, — a house in a walled garden. There are few 
 Buch houses left now, and yours will be fabulously dear. That, of 
 course, is a necessity. You must get an R.A. to decorate your walls. 
 The President won't do it, but you must have an R.A." 
 
 " Thanks, I have my own ideas about decoration and furniture." 
 
 "And you don't want an R.A.? Extraordinary young man I 
 However, your garden will be the grand point,— a garden in which 
 you can entertain, a garden in which you can breakfast or dine 
 tete-a-tete with your chosen friend, or with the select few. In 
 London there is nothing hke a garden for distinction. The costli- 
 ness of it always tells. Sit down and write to a house-agent at
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 71 
 
 once : some one near the Park. Messrs. Barley and Mennet ? Yes, 
 they will do. Tell them exactly what you want." 
 
 The letter was written at Larose's dictation — a house of such 
 and such elevation ; between Knightsbridge and the Albert Hall ; 
 stabling ample, but not too near the house ; garden of at least an 
 acre indispensable. 
 
 Messrs. Barley and Mennet's answer came by the eleven o'clock 
 post on the following morning. They were pleased to state that 
 by a happy conjunction of events — namely, the sudden death 
 of a client, and his widow's withdrawal to the Continent — they 
 had now at their disposal just such a house and grounds as Mr, 
 HiUersdon required. Such houses, Messrs. B. and M. begged to 
 remind ^"ix. H., were seldom in the market ; they were as precious 
 and as rare in their line as the Koh-i-noor or the Pitt diamond. 
 The price asked for the beneficial lease of seventy-three and a 
 quarter years was thirty thousand pounds, a very reasonable amount 
 under the circumstances. The annual ground rent was two hundred 
 and fifty pounds. The auctioneers enclosed a card to view, and 
 HiUersdon set ofif at once, eager to see if the house realised their 
 description. When he found hunself in Piccadilly he thought he 
 would ask Edith Champion to go and look at the house with him. 
 The attention would please her, no doubt; and he had a vague 
 feeling of remorse on her account, as if — although he had called 
 on her yesterday — he had neglected her. Certainly under the old 
 conditions he would have gone back to Hertford Street in the 
 evening, instead of wandering from theatre to music-hall, and from 
 music-hall to post-midnight club, with Roger Larose. 
 
 There were two carriages, a victoria and a pair-horse brougham, 
 standing before Mr. Champion's house : a curious circumstance at 
 that early hour. It occurred to Gerard that they looked like 
 doctors' carriages, and the idea struck him with a sudden dread. 
 Could anything evU have happened? Covdd she, whom he last 
 saw splendid in health and beauty, have been stricken with sudden 
 illness ? 
 
 He asked the servant who answered his ring if Mrs. Champion 
 was ill. 
 
 "No, sir, not Mrs. Champion," the man answered promptly; 
 "Mr. Champion came 'ome out of 'ealth, and there's been two 
 doctors with 'im for the last 'arf-hour. Will you step up to the 
 drawing-room, sir ? My mistress is in the libery with the doctors, 
 but I dare say she'll see you presently."
 
 72 Ge^'ard ; or, 
 
 " Yes, I'll wait. I hope Mr. Champion is not seriously ill ? " 
 
 "No, sir. Only a general derangement, I believe. He has 
 been complaining for some time. Master is getting on in years, 
 you see, sir," added the butler, with the privilege of an upper 
 servant. 
 
 Getting on in years ? Yes, James Champion was no doubt upon 
 the downward slope of the hill, but until this moment Gerard had 
 never thought of him as mortal, as a factor that might some day 
 vanish out of the sum of Edith's life. The man seemed fenced 
 round and protected by his wealth, and no more subject to sickness 
 or death than a money-bag. 
 
 He was shown into the drawing-room, where the palms and 
 flowers and innumerable prettinesses scattered about the tables 
 were dimly seen in the tempered hght. No broad sunshine ever 
 glared into Mrs. Champion's rooms. Only under the lower edge 
 of the festooned silken blinds was the brightness of the summer day 
 allowed to filter tlu-ough a screen of yellow marguerites that quivered 
 and glanced in the noon-day hght. 
 
 Gerard had the room to himself for nearly twenty minutes by the 
 clock, and was beginning to lose patience, and to contemplate 
 departure, when the portiere was pushed aside and Edith Champion 
 came into the room, dressed in a white muslin breakfast-gown, and 
 with a face that matched her gown. 
 
 She came slowly towards him, as he advanced to meet her, 
 looking at him with a curious earnestness. 
 
 " How pale you are 1 " he said. " I was shocked to hear that Mr. 
 Champion was ill. I hope it is nothing serious ? " 
 
 " It is serious ; very serious ! " she said, and then she put up her 
 hands before her face, and tears streamed from between her jewelled 
 fingers. " I am thinking how good he has been to me — how liberal, 
 how indulgent, and how httle I have ever done for him in return," 
 she said, with unaifected emotion. " I am full of remorse when I 
 think of my married life." 
 
 " My dear Edith," he said, taking her hand; " indeed you wi'ong 
 yourself. You have done nothing of which you need be ashamed." 
 
 " 1 have always tried to think that, on my knees in church," she 
 said. " I have taught myself to believe that there was no guilt in 
 my life. Indeed, it seemed blameless compared with the lives of 
 women I know ; women with whom tlie world finds no fault. But 
 I know now that I have been a wicked wife." 
 
 '•I3ut, Edith," returning naturally to the Imbit of a former time
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 73 
 
 in his compassion for her grief, "you have never failed in your 
 duiy. There has been no shame in our friendship. It was natural 
 that you and I, -who are young, and who were once lovers, should 
 take pleasure in each other's society. Mr. Champion has seen us 
 together ; he has never suspected evU." 
 
 '• Xo ; he is utterly without jealousy or suspicion. Perhaps that 
 is because he has never really cared for me," she said, as if reason- 
 ing with herself. "But he has been always kind and indulgent, 
 ready to gratify my h'ghtest whim. And now I feel that I have 
 been cold and ungrateful, indifferent to his feelings and inclinations, 
 going my OAvn way in blind self-indulgence." 
 
 " My dear Edith, be assured this remorse is imcalled-for. You 
 have been an excellent wife for Mr. Champion, who — who is not 
 an emotional person, and would be only bored by a romantic 
 aflection. But is the case really so bad ? Is your husband danger- 
 ously ill?" 
 
 '' The case is hopeless. He cannot live long — perhaps a year, 
 at most two years. He has known for some time that he was out 
 of health. He consulted a doctor in Bnissels, who rather scared 
 liim by his hints of eviL He came home out of sphits, verv 
 desponding about himself, and last night he sent for his doctor, 
 and arranged a consultation with a specialist for this morning. 
 Both doctors have been with me, telUng me much more than thev 
 dared tell my husband. They have spoken fair words to him, poor 
 dear man, but they have told me the truth. He cannot last more 
 than two years. AH that their science can do, all that healing 
 springs and mountain air, and severe regimen, and careful nursing 
 can do, is to spin out the weak thread of life for a year or two at 
 most. He is only fifty-nine, Gerard, and he has toUed hard for his 
 wealth. It seems cruel for him to be taken away so soon." 
 
 ''Death is always cruel," Gerard answered vaguely. "I never 
 thought of Mr. Champion as a man hkely to die before the Scrip- 
 tural three-score and ten." 
 
 " Nor I," said Edith. " God knows, I have never calculated upon 
 his death." 
 
 There was a silence, as they sat side by side, her pale cheeks wet 
 with tears, her hands clasped upon her knee, he sorely embarrassed, 
 feeling all that was painful in their position, 
 
 '' Is it true about this fortune of yours ? " she asked, after a long 
 pause. 
 
 "Yes, the thing is a reality. I am beginning to believe in it
 
 74 Gerard ; or, 
 
 myself. I came to you this morning to ask you to help me choose 
 a house." 
 
 " You are going to take a house ! " she exclaimed. " That means 
 vou are sroing to be married." 
 
 "Nothing of the kind. Why should not a bachelor, -who can 
 afford it, amuse himself by creating a home and a fireside ? " 
 
 " Oh, I am afraid, I am afraid," she murmured. " I know all the 
 Avomen -will run after you. I know how desperate they are when 
 a rich marriage is the prize for which they are competing. Gerard, 
 I think you have cared for me always — a little — in all these 
 years." 
 
 " You know that I have been your slave," he answered. " With- 
 out any pretensions that could wrong Mr. Champion, I have gone 
 on blindly adoiing you— as much your lover as I was before you 
 jilted me." 
 
 "Oh, Gerard, I was not a jilt. I was made to marry Mr. 
 Champion. You can't imagine what influences are brought to bear 
 upon a girl who is the youngest member of a large family — the 
 preaching of mother and father, and aunts and uncles, and worldly- 
 wise cousins, and elder sisters. It is the constant dropping that 
 wears out a stone, the everlasting iteration. They told me I should 
 spoil your life as well as ray own. They painted such awful pictures 
 of our future — cheap lodgings — exile — and then perhaps the work- 
 house — or worse, even — suicide. I thought of that picture in 
 Frith's ' Road to Ruin ' — the wretched husband alone in a garret, 
 preparing to shoot himself. Gerard, I thought of you ruined and 
 penniless like that man, contemplating suicide." 
 
 Gerard smiled curiously, remembering how only a few days ago 
 he had contemplated, and even resolved, upon that last act in the 
 tragedy of failm-e. 
 
 Edith Champion had risen in her agitation, and was moving rest- 
 lessly about the room. She turned suddenly in her pacing to and 
 fro, and came towards Gerard, who had taken up his hat and stick 
 preparatory to departure. 
 
 " Tell me once more that you do not mean to marry — ^yet awhile," 
 she said, with feverish intensity. 
 
 " Believe me, there is nothing further from my thoughts." 
 
 " And j'ou are not weary of me ? I am still as much to you as I 
 was years ago when we were engaged ? " 
 
 " You are and have been all the world to me since first we met," 
 be answered tenderlv.
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 75 
 
 " Then you can promise me something, Gerard. If that is true — 
 if I am indeed your only love — it cannot hurt you to promise," she 
 faltered, drawing nearer to him, laying a tremulous hand upon his 
 shoulder, and looking at him with teaiful eyes. 
 
 " To promise what, dearest ? " 
 
 " That you will not marry any one else — that you will wait till — 
 till I am free. Oh, Gerard, don't think me cruel because I count 
 upon that which must be. I mean to do my duty to my husband ; 
 I mean to be a better wife to him than I have ever been ; less 
 selBsh, less given over to worldly pleasures, luxury, and show — 
 more thoughtful of him and his comfort. But the end must come 
 before very long. The doctors told me to be prepared. It may 
 come soon and suddenly — it must come before I am two years 
 older. 1 shall not be an old woman even then, Gerard," she said, 
 smiling through her tears, knowing herself hLs junior by a year or 
 so, " and I hope I shall not be an ugly woman. Will you promise 
 to wait ? " 
 
 " WilHngly, Edith, were the years ten instead of two." 
 
 " Will you promise ? " 
 
 "Yes, I promise." 
 
 "It is an oath," she said, " Say that you will be true to me by 
 all you hold most sacred in this world and the next, as you are a 
 man of honour." 
 
 "As I am a man of honour, I will marry you, and none other. 
 Will that satisfy you ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes ! " she cried hysterically ; " I am content. Nothing 
 else would have given me peace. I have been tormenting myself 
 ever since I heard of your fortune. I hated the poor old man whose 
 gratitude enriched you. But now I can be at rest ; I can trust 
 implicitly in your honour. I can trust you now, Gerard, and I can 
 do my duty to my husband, undisturbed by cares and anxieties 
 about the future. We shall not meet so often as we have done 
 perhaps. I shall go less into society ; my life will be less frivolous, 
 but you will still be Vami de la maison, won't you ? I shall see 
 you oftener than any one else ? " 
 
 " You shall see me as often as you and Mr. Champion choose to 
 invite me. But tell me more about him. Is it the heart that is 
 wrong ? " 
 
 " Oh, it is a complication — weak heart, over-worked brain, gouty 
 tendency, and other complications. You know how strong he looks, 
 what a solid block of a man. Well, he is like a citadel that baa
 
 76 Gerard ; or, 
 
 been long undermined, which may fall at any time, perhaps without 
 warning, or may crumble slowly, inch by inch. The doctors told 
 me much that I could not understand, but the main fact is only too 
 clear. He is doomed." 
 
 " Does he know? Have they told him ? " 
 
 "Not half what they told me. He is not to be alarmed. Most 
 of the evil has arisen from over-work — the strain and fever of the 
 race for wealth — and while he has been wasting his life in the effort 
 to make money, I have been spending it, oh, how recklessly ! I am 
 full of remorse when I think that I have been spending, not money, 
 but my husband's life." 
 
 " My dear Edith, it is his metier, his one amusement and desire 
 to make money, and as for your extravagance, it has been 
 after his own heart. A less costly wife would not have suited 
 him." 
 
 "Yes, that is quite true. He has always encouraged me to 
 spend money. But it is sad, all the same. He did not know 
 that money meant his heart's blood. It has been going drop by 
 drop." 
 
 " We spend our lives as we live them, Edith," Gerard answered 
 gloomily. "All strong passion means so much loss. We cannot 
 live intensely and yet live long. You know Balzac's story, ' La 
 Peau de Chagi-in.' " 
 
 " Yes, yes ; a tembly sad story." 
 
 " Only an allegory, Edith. We are all living as Raphael de 
 Valentine lived, although we have no talisman to mark the waste of 
 our years. Good-bye. You wiU come and help me to choose my 
 house, in a few days, will you not? " 
 
 " Yes, in a few days. When I have recovered from the shock of 
 this morning." 
 
 He went out into the broad bright sunshine, agitated, but by no 
 means unhappy. 
 
 It was a relief to see the end of that dubious and not altogether 
 delightful road along which he had been travelling, that primrose 
 path of dalliance which had seemed to lead no whither. 
 
 He had pledged himself for life, as surely as if he had vowed the 
 marriage vow before the altar, or allowed himself to be booked and 
 docketted in a registrar's oflice. For a man of honour there could 
 be no retreat from such a vow. Nothing but shame or dc-ath could 
 cancel the promise he had given. But he had no regret for having 
 BO promised. He had no foreshadowing of future evil. He had
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, jj 
 
 only confirmed iy a vow the bondage into which he had entered 
 years ago, when all life lay new and untried before him. This 
 woman was still to him the dearest of all women, and he was willing 
 to be bound to her. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A SHADOW ACROSS THE PATH. 
 
 The house-agents had been more truthful than their kind are wont 
 to be, and the house which Mr. Hillersdon had been invited to 
 inspect more nearly reahsed thek description than houses generally 
 do. Of course it was not aU that he wanted ; but it possessed 
 capabilities ; and it stood in grounds which are becoming daily 
 more difficult to find on the south side of Hyde Park. It was an 
 old house, and somewhat dismal of aspect, the garden being shut in 
 bv hio-h walls, and overshadowed by timber ; but Gerard was pleased 
 with that air of seclusion which would have repelled many people, 
 and he saw ample scope for improvement in both house and grounds. 
 He closed with the owner of the lease on the following day ; and he 
 had Roger Larose at work upon plan and specification without an 
 hour's delay. The house belonged to the period when all fa5ades 
 of important houses were Italian, and Gerard insisted upon the 
 Italian idea being strictly earned out in the improved front and 
 added wings. 
 
 '' Let there be no mixture of styles," he said, " that is anathema 
 maranatha in my mind. Above all, be neither Flemish nor 
 Jacobean — the school has been overdone. Let your portico bo 
 li^ht and graceful, yet severe ; and give me a spacious loggia upon 
 the first floor, between your new wings, which will consist each of 
 a sinf^le room — billiard-room on one side and music-room on the 
 
 other. 
 
 The delighted Larose assured his client that the Italian school 
 was his passion, and that he, too, was weary of the oriels and bay.-^, 
 the tun-ets and angles, cupolas and quaintness of the flamboyant 
 Flemish, miscalled Queen Anne. He took his designs to Mr
 
 yS Gerard ; or, 
 
 Hillersdon within twenty-four hours after their inspection of the 
 premises, and the new front and wings looked charming upon paper. 
 There was no question of competition, which would involve delay. 
 Gerard begged that the designs might be given to the best builder 
 in Loudon, and earned out with the utmost rapidity compatible with 
 good work. 
 
 " I must have everything finished before November," be said. 
 
 Roger Larose urged that it was hardly possible that two large 
 rooms, and a new fagade, with portico, loggia, and classic pediment, 
 to say nothing of various minor improvements, could be completed 
 in so short a time. 
 
 " Nothing is impossible to a man of energy, with ample funds at 
 his disposal," answered Gerard. " If your plans cannot be carried 
 out in four months, my dear Larose, they are useless, and I will 
 occupy the house as it now stands." 
 
 The commission was too good to be lost, and Larose promised to 
 achieve the impossible. 
 
 " I don't believe such a thing was ever done before, except for 
 Aladdin," he said. 
 
 " Consider me Aladdin, if you like ; but do what I want." 
 
 The garden was Gerard's own peculiar care. The landscape 
 gardener whom he called in wanted to cut down at least half the 
 trees — limes and chestnuts of more than a century's growth — upon 
 the pretence that they darkened the house, and that a smooth lawn 
 and geometrical flower beds were to be preferred to spreading 
 branches under which no turf could live. Gerard would not sacrifice 
 a tree. 
 
 " You will lay down fresh turf early in April every year," he 
 Baid, " and with care we must make it last till the end of July." 
 
 The nurseryman booked the order, and felt that this was a 
 customer who deserved his best consideration. 
 
 " And you will supply me with palms and orange trees, standard 
 rhododendrons, and other ornamental plants every season. It will 
 be your business to see that they do well while the season lasts." 
 
 " Exactly, sir, I perfectly understand your views. The lawn is 
 considerably contracted by that beit of timber, but we can make a 
 fine show of oranges in tubs, standard rhododendrons, and hardy 
 palms in the portico and on the lawn, and you will retain your 
 lime grove, which is, no doubt, an enjoyable feature of the grounds, 
 a remarkable feature in grounds so near London." 
 
 For the furni^^hiI)g of liis house IMr. Hillersdon consulted the man
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 79 
 
 who had dictated her taste to Mrs. Champion. The source of a 
 lady's taste and knowledge becomes forgotten after a year or two, 
 and she takes credit to herself for having evolved her surroundings 
 for her inner consciousness. But on being asked about her views 
 as to furniture, Mrs. Champion suggested the employment of Mr. 
 Callander, a gentleman who made it his business to create homes of 
 taste for those who could aSord to carry out his ideal. 
 
 " One has ideas of one's own, of course," said Edith Champion. 
 " I was full of original ideas for my drawing-rooms and morning- 
 room, but I found it very difficult to get them carried out. Trades- 
 people are so stupid. Mr. Callander helped me immensely with 
 drawings and suggestions. In your case I should certainly go to 
 him." 
 
 Gerard took her advice, and went to !Mr. Callander, of v'hora 
 Larose declared that he was the only man in London who had any 
 taste in fm'niture. 
 
 To this gentleman the millionaire explained his desires very 
 briefly. 
 
 " My house is to be severely Italian," he said, " and I want you 
 to furnish it as if it were a villa between Florence and Fiesole, and 
 as if I were Leonardo di Medici." 
 
 " And is expense to be no more considered than if you were one 
 of the Medici?" 
 
 " You can spend as much as you like, but you must not mako 
 any display of wealth. I have come unexpectedly into a fortune, 
 and I don't want people to point to me as a nouveau riche." 
 
 " Your house shall be furnished with a subdued splendour which 
 shall make people think that your surroundings have descended to 
 you from a Florentine ancestor. There shall be nothing to suggest 
 newness, or the display of unaccustomed wealth." 
 
 " You are evidently an artist, ]\Ir. Callander. Try to realise the 
 artistic ideal in aU its purity. But remember, if you please, there 
 are two rooms on the i^first floor, to the left of the staircase, which 
 I mean to furnish myself, and for which you need not provide 
 anything." 
 
 It was now the third week in July, and London was beginning to 
 put on its deserted aspect. Three weeks ago it had been a work of 
 dilEculty to cross from one side of Bond Street to the other ; but 
 now crossing the most fashionable thoroughfares was as easy and 
 leisurely a matter as a stroll in daisied meads. Everybody was
 
 8o Gerard ; or, 
 
 leaving town or talking of leaving, and dinners and balls "svere 
 becoming a memory of the past, except Bucb small dinners as 
 may be given to the chosen few during a period of transition. 
 Goodwood was over, and after Goodwood the tocsin of retreat is 
 sounded. 
 
 Gerard dined in a party of four in Hertford Street. Mrs. Gresham 
 had returned for a final glimpse of London, after a fortnight's severe 
 duties in her husband's parish. He was Vicar of a curious old 
 settlement in Suffolk, a httle town which had been a seaport, but 
 from which the sea had long since retired, perhaps disgusted with 
 the dulness of the place. 
 
 She was delighted to see Mr. Hillersdon again, and he could 
 but note the increased fervour of her manner since his improved 
 fortunes. 
 
 " I hope you have forgiven me for my premature application 
 about the chancel," she said, plumping herself down upon the 
 causeuse where he had seated himself after talking for a few minutes 
 with his host. " It was dreadfully premature, I know ; but if you 
 could see our dear, quaint, old church, with its long narrow nave 
 and lofty roof, I'm sure you would be interested. Do you know 
 anything about church architecture in Suffolk ? " 
 
 " I blush to say it is one of the numerous branches of my 
 education which have been neglected." 
 
 " What a pity ! Our East Anglian churches are so truly interest- 
 ing. Perhaps you will come down and see us at Sandvholme some 
 day?" 
 
 " Is Sandvholme Mr. Gresham's parish ? " 
 
 " Yes ; we have the dearest old Vicarage, with only one objection 
 — there are a good many earwigs in summer. But then our earwigs 
 arc more than counterbalanced by our roses. We are on a clay 
 soil, don't you know? I do hope you will come some Saturday and 
 spend Sunday with us. You would like Alec's sermon, I know; 
 and for a little Suffolk town our choir is not so very bad. I give 
 up two evenings a week to practice with them. You will think 
 about it, now, Mr. Hillersdon, won't you ? " 
 
 " Yes, certainly I wiU think about it," answered Gerard, meaning 
 never to do more. 
 
 He had not been very attentive to the lady's discourse, for his 
 thoughts had been engrossed by Mr. Champion, who was standing 
 on the hearthrug, with his back to an arrangement of orchids which 
 filled the fireplace, and which for a man of chilly temperament
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 8i 
 
 poorly replaced the cheery fire. He was indeed what his wife had 
 called him — a sohd block of a man, short, sturdy, with massive 
 shoulders and broad chest, large head and bull-neck, sandy-haired, 
 thick-featured, with the indications of vulgar h'neage in every detail. 
 A man who had made his own career, evidently, and who had 
 sacrificed length of years in the endeavour to push his way ahead 
 of his fellow-men ; a resolute, self-sufficient, self-contained man, 
 proud of his success, confident of his own merits, not easily jealous, 
 but, it might be, a terrible man if betrayed ; — not a man to shut his 
 ej-es to a wife's treachery, once suspected. 
 
 Of ill-health the tokens were of the slightest. A hvid tinge under 
 the eyes and about the coarsely moulded mouth, a flaccidity of the 
 muscles of the face, and a dulness in the tarnished eyeballs, were 
 all the marks of that slow and subtle change which had been creep- 
 ing over the doomed victim during the last few years, unnoted by 
 himself or those about him. 
 
 At dinner the talk was chiefly of the approaching departure. Mr. 
 and Mrs. Champion were going to Mont Oriol. 
 
 "You'll look us up there, I suppose, Hillersdon," said Champion; 
 "my wife could hardly get on without you; you arc almost as 
 necessary to her as her dachshunds." 
 
 "Yes, I dare say I shall find my way to Mont Oriol. I am by 
 nature ii-resolute. You and Mrs. Champion have often saved me 
 the trouble of deciding on holiday haunts." 
 
 '' And now that you are rich I suppose you will be idler than 
 ever," suggested Champion. 
 
 '' Upon my word, no. My case seemed too hopeless for improve- 
 ment while I was poor, and the stern necessity to earn monev 
 benumbed any small capacity I may have had for writing a readable 
 story." 
 
 "You wrote one that delighted everybody," interposed Mrs. 
 Gresham, who but dimly remembered the subject of his book, and 
 was hardly sure of the title. 
 
 '• But now that I need no longer write for bread my fancy may 
 have a new birth. At any rate, it need not dance in fetters." 
 
 Mr. Champion went ofl' to his whist club after dinner. He played 
 whist at the same club every evening during the London season, 
 unless peremptorily called upon to accompany his wife to some 
 festive gathering. He was a very silent man, and had never been 
 fond of society, though he liked to liave a line house and a liand- 
 Bome wife, and to give dinners which very respectable, and evea 
 
 a
 
 82 Gerard ; or, 
 
 smart people, considered it a privilege to eat. His greatest 
 pleasure was found in the city, liis chief relaxation at the whist 
 table. 
 
 "Don't be late, James," his wife said to him kindly, as he 
 muttered something about stepping round to the club. " Your 
 doctor makes such a strong point of your getting a long night's 
 rest." 
 
 " If my doctor could give me the capacity to sleep, I should set a 
 higher value on his advice," said Champion, " but you need not be 
 afraid, I shall be home at eleven." 
 
 AVlren Mr. Champion was gone Mrs. Gresham was sent to the 
 piano in the inner drawing-room, and Edith and Gerard were 
 practically tete-a-tete. Cousin Eosa was very fond of music, and 
 still fonder of her own playing. 
 
 She at once attacked Mendelssohn's Capriccio, while the other 
 two drew nearer to the verandah, and the perfume of the flowers, 
 and the cool, starlit street, and began to talk. 
 
 " I have been thinking a great deal about you lately," said Edith, 
 and there was the sound of anxiety in her voice. 
 
 " It is very good of you to keep me in your thoughts." 
 
 " Good of me ! I cannot help mj^self. If I did not care for you 
 more than I care for any one else in the world, the strangeness of 
 our position would make me think about you. I have been full of 
 such curious thoughts : but perhaps that is only because I have 
 been reading ' La Peau do Chagrin ' again, after having almost 
 forgotten the story. It is a horrid story." 
 
 " No, no, Edith, a magnificent story, full of the profoundest 
 philosophy." 
 
 '• No, it is only full of gloom. Why is that young man to die, 
 simply because he has inherited a fortune ? The story is dreadful, 
 like a haunting, horrible dream. I can see that unhappy young 
 man — so gifted, so handsome — sitting face to face with that hideous 
 talisman, Avhich diminishes with his every wish, and marks how his 
 young life is wasting away. I liave not been able to get the story 
 out of my mind." 
 
 " You are too impressionable, my dear Edith ; but I ovm the 
 story has a gloomy fascination which makes it difficult to forget. 
 It was the book which established Honord de Balzac's fame, and it 
 seems to me that the hero is only a highly coloured image of the 
 author, who wasted life and genius as feverishly as Raphael de 
 Valentin —living witli the same eager intensity, working witli the
 
 The World, the Flesh, aitd the Devil. 83 
 
 same fervid concentration, and dying in the zenith of his power, 
 though by no means in the bloom of his youth." 
 
 " Was not Alfred de Musset of the same type ? " 
 
 " Undoubtedly. The type was common to the epoch. Byron set 
 the example, and it was the fashion for men of genius to court un- 
 timely death. Musset, the gi-eatest poet France has ever had, son 
 of the morning, elegant, aristocratic, born to love and to be loved, 
 after a youth of surpassing brilliance, wasted the ripest years of man- 
 hood in the wine shops of the Quartier Latin, and was forgotten like 
 a light blow^n out, long before the end of his life. Our geniuses of 
 to-day know better how to husband their resources. They are as 
 careful of their brain-power as an elderly spinster of her Sunday 
 gown." 
 
 " How much better for them and for posterity," said Mrs. Champion. 
 " Please go on, Eosa," as Mrs. Gresham made a show of rising from 
 the piano. " Grieg is always delightful." 
 
 " So he is ; but I have been playing Rubinstein," replied Rosa, 
 severely. 
 
 "Then do play that sweet prelude of Chopin's in A flat major." 
 
 " Why, I played it ten minutes ago," answered the lady at the 
 piano. 
 
 " How sweet of you ! You know how I worship Chopin," answered 
 Edith, unabashed, and immediately went on talking. 
 
 " I dare say it is onljr the effect of that horrible story," she said, 
 '* but I have been feeling absurdly morbid of late, and I can't help 
 tormenting myself about your health." 
 
 "A most futile torment, since I am perfectly well," Gerald 
 answered irritably. 
 
 " No doubt, no doubt ; but my husband seemed perfectly well 
 last year, and yet there was all manner of organic mischief. I know 
 you are not strong, and since you came into your fortune you have 
 been looking dreadfully ill." 
 
 " So my mother told me. Gold has evidently a bad effect upon 
 the complexion, and yet the seventeenth century physicians con- 
 sidered it a fine tonic, boiled in broth." 
 
 " I want you to do me a favour, Gerard." 
 
 " Command my devotion in all things, great and small." 
 
 " Oh, it is not a great thing. You will come to Mont Oriol, of 
 course ? " 
 
 " Yes. If that is all you were going to ask- " 
 
 " It is something more than that. Before vou leave London I
 
 84 Gerard ; or, 
 
 want you to consult the cleverest physician you can find. The man 
 who knows most about brain, and heart, and lungs." 
 
 "A wide field for scientific exploration. I suppose you really 
 mean the man who has contrived to make himself the fashion — the 
 man to whom it is the right thing to go." 
 
 " No, no. I am not the slave of fashion. Go to some one who 
 wUl understand you — who will he able to advise you how to enjoy 
 your hfe, without wasting it as Balzac and Musset did." 
 
 "Have no fear. I am no Balzac or Musset. I have no Byronic 
 tire consuming me ; and be assured I mean to husband my life — for 
 the sake of the years to come — which should be very happy." 
 
 He took up the hand lying loose in her lap, the beautiful, carefully 
 cherished hand which the winds of heaven never visited too roughly, 
 and bent down to kiss it, just as the Moonlight Sonata came to a 
 close. 
 
 '• Oh, do go on, Rosa. Some more Mendelssohn, please." 
 
 With perhaps the faintest touch of maUce Mrs. Gresham attacked 
 the Wedding March, with a crash that made the lamp glasses 
 shiver. 
 
 " Do you know of any clever physician ? " asked Edith. 
 
 " I have never needed a physician since I was eleven years old, 
 and the only famous doctor I know is the man who saved my life 
 then, Doctor South, the children's doctor. I have half a mind to go 
 to him." 
 
 " A child's doctor ! " said Edith, shrugging her shoulders. 
 
 " Children have hearts, and brains, and lungs, I dare say Dr. 
 South knows something about those organs, even in adults." 
 
 "You win go to him to-morrow morning, then — and if he is not 
 satisfied he will advise another opinion. I should have preferred the 
 new German doctor, whom everybody is consulting, and who does 
 such wonders with hypnotism — Dr. Geistrauber. They say he is a 
 most wonderful man." 
 
 "'They' are an authority not always to be relied upon. I 
 would rather go to Dr. South, who saved my life when I was in 
 knickerbockers." 
 
 " Were you so very ill then ? " asked Mrs. Champion, tenderly 
 interested even in a crisis of seventeen years ago. 
 
 '' Yes ; I believe I was as bad as a little lad can be, and yet live. 
 When I try to remember my illness it seems only a troubled dream, 
 through which Dr. South's kindly face looms large and distinct. 
 My complaint was inflammation of the lungs, a malady which Dr.
 
 The World, ihc Flesh, and the Devil. 85 
 
 South said most children take rather kindly ; but in my case there 
 were comphcations. I was like Mrs. Gummidge, and the disease 
 was worse for me than for other children. I was as near death's door 
 as any one can go without crossing the threshold ; and my people 
 believe to this day that but for Dr. South I should have entered at 
 that fatal door. It was a pull for a man of my father's means to 
 bring down the famous children's doctor, but the dear old dad never 
 regretted the heavy fee ; and here I am to tell the story, of which I 
 knew very little at the time, for I was off my head all through the 
 worst of my illness, and I believe there was one stage of delirium 
 during which I associated Dr. South's fine grey head — prematurely 
 grey — with a great white elephant of Siam of which I had been 
 reading in ' Peter Parley's Annual.' " 
 
 "Poor dear little fellow!" sighed Edith Champion, with retro- 
 spective affection. 
 
 " How sweet of you to pity me ! I find myself pitying my own 
 small image in that dim and troubled time, as if it were anybody's 
 child. The complications were dreadful — pleurisy, pneumonia; I 
 believe the local doctor found a new name for my complaint nearly 
 every day, till Dr. South gave his decisive verdict, and then pulled 
 me through by his heroic treatment. Yes, I will go to him to-moiTOw; 
 not because I want medical advice, but because I should like to see 
 my old friend again." 
 
 " Go to him ; pray go to him," urged Edith, " and tell him every- 
 thing about yourself." 
 
 " My dear Edith, I have no medical confession to make. I am 
 not ill." 
 
 Mrs. Gresham had played herself out, for the time being, and came 
 into the front drawing-room as the footman appeared with tea d la 
 Fran^aise — tea that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care, tired Nature's 
 nurse, for Duchesses as well as for washerwomen. 
 
 The talk became general, or became, rather, a lively monologue 
 on the part of Rosa Gresham, who loved her OAvn inteipretation of 
 Chopin or Cliarvenka, but loved the sound of her own voice better 
 than any music that ever was composed. 
 
 Mr. Champion reappeared a few minutes after eleven, looking tired 
 and white after an hour and a half at the whist club, and Hillersdon 
 went out as his host came in — went out, but not home. lie walked 
 eastward, and looked in at two late clubs, chiefly impelled by his 
 desire to meet Justin Jermyn, but there was no sign of the Fate- 
 reader either at the Petunia or the Small-Hours, and no one whom
 
 86 Gerard ; or, 
 
 Hillersdon questioned about him had seen him since Lady Fridoline'a 
 party. 
 
 " He has gone to some Bad in Bohemia," said Larose ; " a Bad 
 with a crackjaw name. I beheve he invents a name and a Bad every 
 •summer, and then goes quietly and hves up the country between 
 Broadstairs and Birchington, and basks all day upon some solitary 
 stretch of sand, or on the edge of some lonely cliff, where the North 
 Sea breezes blow above the rippling ripeness of the wheat ; and lies 
 in the sunshine, and plans fresh impostures for the winter season. 
 No one will see him or hear of him any more till November, and 
 then he will come back and tell us what a marvellous place 
 Kumpelstiltzkinbad is for shattered nerves ; and he will describe the 
 scenerj'^, and the hotel, and the hot springs, and the people — ay, 
 almost as picturesquely as I could myself," concluded Larose, with 
 his low, unctuous chuckle, which was quite different from Jermyn's 
 elfin laughter, and as characteristic of the man himself. 
 
 Hillersdon stayed late at the Small Hours, and drank just a little 
 more dry champagne than his mother or Mrs. Champion would have 
 approved, women having narrow notions about the men they love, 
 notions which seem hardly ever to pass the restrictions of the 
 nursery. He did not drink because he Hked the wine, nor even for 
 joviality's sake ; but from a desire to get away from himself and from 
 a sense of irritation which had been caused by ]\Irs. Champion's 
 suggestions of ill-health. 
 
 " I shall be hypnotised into an invalid if people persist in telling 
 me I am ill," he said to himself, dweUing needlessly iipon Edith 
 Champion's anxieties. 
 
 The market carts were lumbering into Covent Garden when he 
 went home, and as the natural result of a late night and an unusual 
 amount of champagne, he slept ill and woke with a headache. He 
 breakfasted upon a devilled biscuit and a cup of green tea, and was 
 in Harley Street before eleven o'clock. 
 
 Having made no appointment, Mr. Hillersdon had to undergo the 
 purgatory of the waiting-room, where an anxious and somewhat 
 dowdy mother was trying to beguile the impatience of a rickety son 
 with picture books, and, in her gentle solicitude, offering a curious 
 contrast to a much smarter mother, whose thoughts seemed to be 
 rather with an absent dressmaker than with her sickly, overgrown 
 girl, to whom she spoke occasionally in accents of reproof, or in 
 lachrymose complaint at having to wait so long for Dr. South, while 
 Madame Viola was no doubt waiting for her — " and when I do get
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, ^"j 
 
 to Bruton Street very likely she won't see me," lamented the lady, 
 in an undertone. " It's all your fault, Clara, for catching cold. You 
 are so idiotic about yourself. I dare say you will be ordered off to 
 some expensive place in Switzerland, Doctors have no considera- 
 tion for one." 
 
 The girl's only reply to this maternal wailing was a little hacking 
 cough, which recurred as often as a comma. Her wan face and 
 rather shabby frock contrasted with the mother's artistic bloom and 
 perfect tailor gown. Hillersdon felt a sense of relief when the man 
 in black looked in at the door, and summoned mother and daughter 
 with a mysterious nod, which seemed pregnant with mournful augury, 
 although it meant nothing but " your turn." 
 
 The anxious lady impressed him so much more pleasantly that, 
 as time hung heavy, he made friends with the boy, helped to enter- 
 tain him by presenting the illustrations of a zoological book in a 
 new light for the next quarter of an hour ; and then the rickety boy 
 and his mother were summoned, and more patients came in, and 
 Hillersdon tried to lose his consciousness of the passing moments 
 in the pages of a stale Saturday Revieiv, — moments too distinctly 
 measured by the ticking of a very fine Sherraton clock, which stood 
 sentinel in a niche by the sideboard. 
 
 The man in black came for him at last, as it were the fatal ferry- 
 man ready for a new passenger, and he was ushered into the 
 presence of Dr. South, whom he found in a spacious room at the 
 back of the house, lighted by a large wmdow, which commanded a 
 metropohtan garden, shut in by ivy-covered walls. 
 
 The grey hair and genial smile brought back a vision of a little 
 bed near a sunny window, and summer breezes blowing over a head 
 that seemed to scorch the pillow where it lay. 
 
 He recalled the childish illness and the Devonian Eectory to Dr. 
 South, who remembered his journey by the night mail, and his 
 arrival at daybreak in the stillness of a summer Sabbath morning — 
 no labourer going out to the fields, only the song of the lark higli 
 up in the infinite blue above the ripening wheat. Dr. South had 
 not forgotten that long summer day, in which, like many another 
 medical Alcides, he had fought with death, wrestled with and thrown 
 the grisly shade, and had gone back to his hospital and his London 
 patients, leaving hope and comfort behind him. 
 
 " I know I was very much interested in the case," he said. 
 "Your mother was such a sweet woman. She has been spared to 
 you, I hope."
 
 88 Gerard ; or, 
 
 " Yes, thank God, she is in excellent health — a young woman still 
 in mind and habits." 
 
 And then he told Dr. South how, being just a little uneasy about 
 his own constitution — though with no consciousness of any evil — 
 he had come to be overhauled by the physician whose skDl he 
 knew by experience. 
 
 " Please consider me a little lad again," he said lightly, " and 
 knock my chest about as you did when I was lying in a troubled 
 dream, making nonsense-pictures of all my surroundings." 
 
 " We shall not find much amiss, I hope," replied the doctor, with 
 his kindly smile. "Take off your coat and waistcoat, if you 
 please." 
 
 The auscultation was careful and prolonged. There was none of 
 that pleasantly perfunctory air with which the physician dismisses 
 a good case. Dr. South seemed bent upon exploring every square 
 inch of that well set-up frame, from shoulders to waist, with bent 
 head and stethoscope at his ears. He concluded his examination 
 with a faint sigh, which might mean only fatigue. 
 
 "Do you find anything amiss?" asked the patient, rather 
 anxiously. 
 
 " I cannot detect absolute organic mischief, but tliere is a certain . 
 amount of w^eakness in both heart and lungs. You have had some 
 painful shock very lately, have you not ? Your nerves have been 
 greatly shaken." 
 
 " I have had a gi-eat surprise, but it was pleasant rather than 
 
 painful." 
 
 " I rejoice to hear it, but the fact that a pleasant surprise should 
 have so unhinged you is in itself a warning." 
 
 "How so?" 
 
 " It denotes liighly strung nerves and a certain want of stamina. 
 To be frank with you, Mr. Hillersdon, yours is not what we call a 
 good life ; but many men of your constitution live to old age. It 
 is a question of husbanding your resources. With care, and a 
 studious avoidance of all excesses, moral or physical, you may live 
 
 long." 
 
 Gerard thought of the 'peau decliarjrin. A studious avoidance 
 of excess — in other words, a constant watch upon that red line upon 
 the sheet of white paper which showed the shrinking of the talis- 
 man. Little by little, with every hour of agitated existence, with 
 every passionate hoart-tlirol), and every eager wish, the sum total 
 of his davs would dwindle.
 
 The World, the Flesh, mid the Devil. S9 
 
 " I have just come into a large fortune, and am only beginning 
 to live," he said fretfully. " It is hard to be told at this juncture 
 that I have not a good life." 
 
 " I cannot prophesy smooth things, Mr. Hillersdou. You come 
 to me for the truth ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes, I know ; and I am gi-ateful to you for your candour ; 
 but still it is hard lines, you must allow." 
 
 " It would be harder if you were a struggling professional man, 
 and saw your career blighted at the outset. I am very glad to hear 
 of your good fortime. With the resources and expedients of modem 
 science — which are all at the command of wealth — you ought to 
 live to be eighty." 
 
 "Yes, but at the price of an unemotional hfe. I am to vegetate, 
 not to live ! " 
 
 He slipped the neatly papered guineas into the doctor's hand, 
 and then turning on the threshold he asked nervously — 
 
 " Do you forbid me to marry, lest I should become the father of 
 a consumptive progeny? " 
 
 " By no means. I find no organic mischief, as I told you. I 
 would strongly advise you to marrj-. In a happy domestic life you 
 would find the best possible environment for a man of your some- 
 what fragile physique and highly nervous temperament." 
 
 " Thanks ; that is encouraging, at any rate. Good day." 
 
 After leaving the doctor Hillersdon strolled across Portland Place 
 and into the Portland Road, where he made an exploration of the 
 second-hand furniture shops, in search of certain objects which were 
 to assist in realising his idea as to those two rooms in his Italian 
 villa which he had taken upon himself to furnish. 
 
 An hour's peregrination from shop to shop resulted only in the 
 purchase of one piece of furniture — a black oak cabinet, ostensibly 
 of tlie sixteenth century, possibly a clever piece of patchwork put 
 together last year. It satisfied Gerard Hillersdon because it 
 closely resembled another black oak cabinet which he had seen 
 lately. 
 
 He had taken it into his head to reproduce for his own private 
 den those two rooms in which he had sat at supper with Justin 
 Jerniyn, and where he had seen the vision of Hester Davenport ; 
 rooms which perhaps had no tangible existence, dream-rooms, the 
 shadow-pictures of a hypnotic trance. It pleased him to think that 
 he could reproduce in sohd oak and brass, in old Venetian glass 
 and quaint Dutch pottery, the scene which might have I'Cen
 
 90 Gerard ; or, 
 
 made up of shadows, since his failure to discover the house or 
 the locality of the house where he had supped -with Jermyn 
 had given a tinge of unreality to all his memories of that eventful 
 night. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 "l BUILT MY SOUL A LORDLY PLEASURE-HOUSE." 
 
 FoK those who were not bound by their doctors to some constrain- 
 ing regimen of bathing and self-denial, life at Mont Oriol was one 
 perpetual holiday. Such visitors as Edith Champion lived only to 
 amuse themselves — to drive to distant ruins — ride in the early 
 morning when the sun-baked grass was cooled with dew, play cards 
 or billiards, and dance in the evening. For Mr. Champion Mont 
 Oriol meant daily baths, a severe regimen as to meat and drink, 
 and a strict avoidance of all business transactions, such transactions 
 being the very delight of his life, the salt which gave hfe its savour, 
 and without which the man felt himself already dead. 
 
 "There are men who are dead from the waist doAvnwards," he 
 said one day, " and who have to be dragged about in bath chairs, 
 or lifted in and out of a carriage. I don't pity them, as long as 
 they are allowed to write their owm business letters. I am dead 
 from the waist upwards." 
 
 He had his secretary with him at Mont Oriol, and in spite of all 
 prohibitions, that falcon eye of his was never off the changes of the 
 money market. He had telegrams from the Stock Exchange daily, 
 in his own particular cypher, which was at once secret and eco- 
 nomical. There were days when tens of thousands trembled in the 
 balance, while he sat taking his sun-bath on the terrace in front of 
 the hotel, and when the going down of the sun interested him only 
 because it was to bring him tidings of loss or gain. 
 
 "Would you like a set of opals, Edith? " he asked one day at 
 afternoon tea, crumpling up the little bit of blue paper which had 
 just been brought to him. " I have made some money by a rise in 
 Patagonian Street Kailways."
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 91 
 
 " A thousand thanks, but you forget the opals you gave me two 
 years ago. I don't think you could improve upon those." 
 
 "Yes, I had forgotten them. They belonged to a Eussian 
 Princess. I got them for about half their value. Then I suppose 
 there is nothing I can give you ? " he asked, with a faint sigh, as if 
 her indifference had suggested the impotence of riches. 
 
 "You are too good. I think not. I have everything in the 
 world I care for." 
 
 Mr. Champion and his wife had the handsomest suite of rooms 
 in the hotel, and Gerard had taken the next best. Between them 
 they absorbed an entire floor in one wing of the great white barrack. 
 They were thus in a manner secluded from the vulgar herd, and 
 Gerard seemed as if staying on a visit with the Champions, since 
 he was invited to use their salon as freely as his own, while he 
 dined with them five days out of seven. He had his own servants 
 with him, valet and groom, and he began to think that he too 
 wanted a secretary, if it were only to write every day to architect 
 or builder, urging them to expedite their work. He was eager to 
 be installed in his own house— eager to accumulate pictures and 
 statuary, curios, books, plate— to taste the feverish rapture of 
 spending his money. K, as Dr. South had hinted, his life was 
 likely to be shorter than the average life, there was all the more 
 reason why he should spend his money freely, why he should crowd 
 into a few years aU the enjoyment that wealth can buy. Yet even 
 here there was peril. He had been warned agamst all fierce 
 emotions. To prolong that feeble life of his he must five tem- 
 perately, and never pass the limits of tranquil domestic hfe. 
 
 It seemed to him that with this view he could hardly have done 
 better for himself than in that compact which he had made with 
 Edith Champion. In his relations with her there was no fiery 
 agitation, no passionate impatience. He loved her, and had loved 
 her long — perhaps a little more passionately when his love was a 
 new thing, but not, he assured himself, more devotedly than he 
 loved her now. He was secure of her love, secure also of her 
 virtue, for had she not known how to maintain her self-respect 
 during this long apprenticeship to platonic affection? Their Hvcs 
 would glide smoothly on, tiU James Champion, cared for and kindly 
 treated to the last hour of his existence, should drop gently into the 
 grave, decently mourned for such space of time and in such manner 
 as the world exacts of well-bred widows. And then Edith and he 
 would be married, and would assume that commanding position in
 
 92 Geraj'd ; or, 
 
 London and continental society whicii only a husband and wife 
 whose views and culture exactl}' harmonise can ever attain. The 
 prospect was in every way agreeable, and he could look forward 
 to it without any quickened throbbing of his tired heart. Dr. South 
 had called it a tired heart — a heart with which there was nothing 
 organicallj'' wrong, only the languor left by the strain of over- work. 
 He could sit in the hotel garden taking his sun-bath, and placidly 
 admiring the perfection of Edith's profile, shadowed by the broad- 
 leaved Leghorn hat, or the delicate arch of her instep in the 
 high-heeled Parisian shoe, so eminently adapted for sitting 
 still. 
 
 And thus the days went by at Mont Oriol, and nothing broke the 
 monotony of luxurious idleness — a life such as Guinevere and her 
 knights and ladies may have led at Camelot, when things were 
 beginning to go rather badly at the Court of King Arthur, a life of 
 sensuous pleasures and dormant intellectuality — a life in which 
 people talked about books, but rarely read, affected a profound 
 interest in advanced philanthropy, yet would have hardly risen 
 from an easy-chair to save a fellow-man from ruin, a life in which 
 heart and brain were only half awake, while the desire of the eye 
 and the delight of the ear were paramount. 
 
 Pleasant as this holiday time was, Gerard rejoiced when it came 
 to an end and he was free to return to London and look after his 
 architect and builder. October was half gone when he arrived in 
 his old shabby quarters near the church, at which his new valet — 
 vice Dodd, superannuated — looked with contempt. The builders 
 were hard at work in the house near the Park — Stamford House 
 it had been called, but it was to be known henceforward by tlie 
 name of its new owner. The builders were working by night as 
 well as by day, by the aid of the electric light which was already 
 installed. Gerard went to sec them at work on the night after his 
 return, and to his fancy there seemed something demoniac in the 
 vision of these men swarming up and down ladders and balancing 
 themselves upon narrow cornices in the cold clear light, and amidst 
 the noise of many hammers. 
 
 They were a little behind with their work, the clerk of the works 
 admitted, but there liad been a difficulty in getting good men, and 
 he was determined only to have first-rate workmen upon a job of 
 such importance. 
 
 " Depend upon it, you'll be satisfied with the result, sir," he said. 
 " The alteration of the fa^'ade has been a very difficult job, I can
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 93 
 
 assure you. It isn't like beginning fair, you see. We have liaci to 
 adapt the loggia to the existing front, and to avoid all appearance 
 of patchwork. You'll be pleased when it's done." 
 
 " Perhaps I shall, if I live long enougji to see it," answered 
 Gerard, fretfully. " But judging by the present aspect of the house, 
 I may be in my grave before it is finished." 
 
 ''Oh, indeed, sir, we are more forward than you may think. 
 The interior decorations are going on simultaneously. Things -Rnll 
 come together in a day. The architect is thoroughly satisfied with 
 the way the work is being done." 
 
 "No doubt; but the architect is not waiting to occupy the house, 
 as I am." 
 
 He stayed there for nearly two hours betwixt midnight and 
 morning, going about with the clerk of the works amidst all the 
 litter and confusion of painters and cai-penters, glaziers and plumbers, 
 a veritable pandemonium, in which fiends were passing to and fro 
 with cauldrons of boiling lead, and pots of acrid-smelling paint, a 
 scene of discordant noises, shriU whistling from divers whistlers, 
 sounds of plane and hammer, chisel and augur. It was out of this 
 chaos his ideal mansion was to come, fresh as the world when the 
 Creator saw that it was well. 
 
 He went there again next day with Mrs. Champion and her niece. 
 She had 'at least a dozen nieces, and took up one or another as 
 capriciously as she chose her gloves. Roger Larose and the 
 fm-niture-man were there to meet them, and they all went over the 
 house by daylight, peering into every comer, and discussing every 
 detail, the mantelpieces, the stoves, the windows and window-seats, 
 moulding, panelling, painting, carving, glass stained, and glass 
 Venetian, Bohemian, Belgian. 
 
 Aunt and niece were both agreed that house and decorations 
 would be quite too lovely. They did not attempt any more 
 technical opinion. The niece. Miss Flora Bellinger, went about 
 with her petticoats held up and her shoulders and elbows contracted, 
 murmuring, " Lovely, lovely," to everything, even the sink in tlie 
 housemaid's pantry, and in deadly fear of wet paint. 
 One suggestion Mrs. Champion ventured to make : 
 "Be sure you have plenty of corners," she said to Mr. Larose; 
 " quaint, odd angles, don't you know — pretty little nooks that can 
 be made Moorish, or Japanese, or Dutch, or Old English, just as 
 one's fivncy maj' suggest." 
 
 "My dear lady, you see the rooms," replied the architect gravely,
 
 94 Gerard ; or, 
 
 '■'and you see the angles. I cannot alter the shape of rooms that 
 are practically finished." 
 
 " That's a pity. I thought you could have throvm in comers. 
 The rooms are utterly lovely — ^but there are no cosy nooks." 
 
 '• I see, Mrs. Champion, that you hanker after a Flemish style, 
 which has now become the property of the restaurants. Were you 
 ever in the Ricardi Palace at Florence ? " 
 
 "Yes, IknowitwelL" 
 
 " I don't think you saw any quaint nooks or odd angles there, 
 althousrh vou mav find as many as vou like in Earl's Court." 
 
 " Yes, I suppose they are getting common," sighed Mrs. Champion; 
 " everything becomes common — everything pretty and fantastical, 
 at least." 
 
 After that searching inspection, which involved certain small 
 emendations and final decisions, Gerard Hillersdon told himself that 
 he would look no more upon his house until it was finished, except 
 those two rooms which he was to famish after his own devices. It 
 would worry liim too much to go there day after day only to see 
 how slowly the British workman can work. Mrs. Champion and 
 her husband were to spend November and December at Brighton, 
 po Gerard went down to the Rectory, where mother and sister were 
 fuU of delight when he told them that he had come to stay for at 
 least a month. 
 
 He found his fandly rejoicing over the good fortune of Mr. 
 Cumberland, who had been promoted from a rural curacy to a 
 London hving. The stipend was modest, but the parish was 
 extensive, and included one of the poorest distincts in the great 
 city — a labyrinth of narrow streets and alleys lying between the 
 churches of St. Anne and St. Giles. It was in just such a parish as 
 this that John Cumberland desired .to laboiu-. He was at heart a 
 Socialist. He believed in the stringent rights of the poor and the 
 responsibilities of the rich, and saw in the increasing luxury and 
 costliness which marked the existence of the upper classes the sign 
 of a degenerate people and a profligate age. In his new parish of 
 St. Lawrence, Wardour Street, there were all those elements of life 
 which most deeply interested him. It was a parish of mixed classes 
 and divers nationalities, the chosen haunt of tlie impecunious exile, 
 the Nihilist and the Fenian, the Carbonaro and the Karl Marxian, 
 It was a parish peopled by the inteUigent British workman, the 
 self-educated and self-sufficient mechanic. Great blocks of build- 
 ings, erected at difi'erent periods, and showing difierent stages of
 
 The Wo7'ld, the Flesh, and the Devil. 95 
 
 architectural and sanitary improvement, cast their mighty shadows 
 over the lower level of slates and tiles that roofed the courts and 
 alleys of the past. These huge edifices were model lodging-houses, 
 more or less admirable in their arrangements, and at their worst a 
 considerable advance upon the hovels that surrounded them. 
 
 Here, too, in the parish of St. Lawrence the Martyr, was the 
 well-known club for women who earned their bread by the sweat 
 of their brow — needlewomen of all kinds, factory girls of divers 
 industries, from jam and pickle making in Soho to filling cartridges 
 in the Gray's Inn Road — a club which was the centre of civilisation, 
 improvement, and all refining influences, for hundreds of hard- 
 working girls and women, and which had flourished exceedingly 
 under the fostering care of Lady Jane Blenheim, a woman who 
 devoted her hfe to good works. John Cumberland was delighted 
 at the prospect of having Lady Jane for his counsellor and ally ; 
 nor was he in any way disheartened by the knowledge that he and 
 his young wife were to begin their wedded life in a district whicli 
 smart people would call "impossible." The Vicarage of St. 
 Lawrence was a substantially built early Georgian house, in Greek 
 Street, a street which was occupied by the very cream of modish 
 society in the days of Chesterfield and Bolingbroke, but which is 
 now chiefly distinguished by French laundries and restaurants, 
 Italian grocery, and foreign conspirators of various tj^es and 
 nationalities. 
 
 The living was worth something under five hundred a year, but 
 the Kector of Helmsleigh knew by experience how much of a 
 clergyman's income has to be sacrificed to the claims of his parish, 
 and how little may be left for his own maintenance. He had, 
 therefore, questioned the wisdom of allowing his daughter to marry 
 a man whose only independent means consisted of a legacy of 
 railwaj"" shares from a spinster aunt, which shares produced about 
 a hundred and twenty pounds a year. He was also averse from 
 the idea of Lilian's Imes being set in the smoky atmosphere of 
 Soho. 
 
 " Let Jack Cumberland dree his tveird under the shadow of Cross 
 and Blackwell, and take his fill of work in a poor parish for the 
 next two or three years," said the Hector, with his genial aii-, 
 cheerily disposing of other people's lives. " By that time he will 
 have made himself a reputation as a powerful preacher, and some- 
 thing better will turn up — a fat living in a nice part of the country, 
 where my pet can have her garden and glebe meadows."
 
 96 Gerard ; or, 
 
 " Indeed, father, I don't want a garden, and a sleepy, idle life, 
 such as — as the very best people are content to lead in the country," 
 answered Lilian, eagerly. " I would nauch rather work hard with 
 Jack in a poor parish like St. Lawrence." 
 
 " Ah, that is the way with young people," sighed the Rector, 
 Avhose favourite maxim for the last twenty years had been that 
 of Parson Dale, Quieta tion movere, "they are always wanting to 
 go out and fight dragons. If they are not rampant for pleasure, 
 tennis, dances, hunting, why then they are rampant for work. 
 The gii'ls want to be hospital nurses, the boys want to be East End 
 curates, or to go to Africa, or, at the first whisper of some purposeless, 
 unnecessary war, they rush ofi" to enlist. Young people have no 
 idea how good it is to take Hfe quietly, and make the most of one's 
 allotted span." 
 
 The young people in this instance were so resolute, and their 
 elders so yielding, that it was finally agreed that Lilian and Jack 
 should be married a year after he had read himself in at the church 
 of St. Lawrence. A year would give him time to settle do'wn in 
 his parish, to put a good many crooked things straight, and get 
 into a groove in which his life and Lilian's might move quietly along, 
 without over much worry or emotion. He would have time to 
 furnish those gloomy old panelled rooms which to Lilian's eyes 
 Avere beautiful, fraught with delightful memories of patch and 
 powder, lovely ladies in rustling brocade sacques, daintily emerging 
 from their sedan chairs to trip lightly up the stone steps, while 
 their running footmen quenched their torches under the iron 
 extinguishers. The panelled walls, the iron extinguishers were 
 left, but who now has a running footman ? Duchess Georgina 
 had six, six splendid over-fed creatures in plush and bullion, silk 
 stockinged, powdered, beautiful, six to run in the mud beside her 
 chair, and hover about her and protect her when she alighted. 
 Lilian was charmed at the thought of the old-fashioned Loudon 
 house, and the rapture of picking up quaint old cabinets and 
 secretaires, and tables with claw and ball feet, to furnish withal. 
 She was in no wise depressed by the notion of a year's engagement. 
 This time of courtship was such a happy time — a season of 
 tenderest chivalry, and pretty trivial gifts, and small innocent 
 pleasures which needed much planning beforehand, season of letters 
 peipetual and unending, letters about nothing, yet so delightful to 
 the recipient, letters Avritten at midniglit, letters pencilled hastily 
 in the early morning — nay, one letter written in the vestry, which
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 97 
 
 eeemed a kind of sacrilege, but was not less esteemed on that 
 account, 
 
 " There are hours in which you are my religion, and I almost 
 forget that I have any other," said Jack, when his sweetheart 
 reproached him for that vestry letter. 
 
 Mr. Cumberland was still doing duty as curate at Helmsleigh 
 when Gerard came on the scene. He was to assume his new duties 
 shortly after Christmas. 
 
 " Then Lilian can come and keep house for me," said Gerard, 
 "and then she will be able to see her lover every day, and I can 
 help in the furnishing." 
 
 " Oh, please don't," cried his sister. " You would spoU all our 
 fun. You have too much monej'. You would just say to an 
 upholsterer, ' fui'nish,' and he would come with his men and take 
 possession of — our house," with a shy smile, and a blushing glance 
 at her lover, " and everything would be done splendidly, expensively, 
 and as the upholsterer hked, not as we Hke. No, dear Gerard, 
 we are goiug to pick up our furniture bit by bit, and it is to be 
 all as old as that wicked old George who shut up his poor wife in 
 the Castle at Alden. We have begun already. We bought a walnut- 
 wood bureau with brass bandies, in Exeter, the other day — so old — 
 oh, so old — and all genuine." 
 
 "Except the handles," said Cumberland, laughing ; " I shouldn't 
 like to answer for the handles. They look very Hke having been 
 put on last week." 
 
 "They have been newly lacquered, sir. You are di-eadfully 
 ignorant. The dear old drawers and pigeon holes and secret 
 recesses smell of old papers — lost wills — marriage certificates upon 
 which gi-eat fortunes depend — love letters — sermons preached a 
 hundred and fifty years ago. That bureau is a romance in 
 walnut-wood, and if you could see the dirty old shop in which 
 
 we found it " 
 
 "I am answered," said Gerard; "the wealth of the Indies 
 cannot give you half the pleasure you will find in bargain-hunting 
 in dirty shops. Perhaps when you have found that most of your 
 treasures are spurious, and that you could have got better and 
 truer antiques for less money at a West End upholsterer's, your 
 bargain hunting will lose some of its zest. I bide my time." 
 
 It amused him a little, and interested him deeply to see how 
 small a significance his wealth had in the eyes of his sister, as 
 compared with her lover and her own outlook of genteel poverty 
 
 H
 
 98 Gerard ; or, 
 
 in a crowded Loudon parish. For this girl, deep in love witli an 
 enthusiast) and sharing his enthusiasm, wealth had no fascination. 
 
 "You are too good," she told her brother, when they two were 
 alone, and he pressed her to accept a handsome dowry, "but I 
 shouldn't care to have money settled upon me, for fear Jack 
 should feel humiliated. He cannot afford to settle anything; and I 
 shouldn't hke the settlement to be onesided." 
 
 " But, my dear girl, that is all nonsense." 
 
 " Perhaps it is, only please let me have my own way. We are 
 sure to want your help by-and-by, to buUd schools, or to improve 
 the church, perhaps. There is sure to be some pressing want in 
 the parish, and then we will appeal to you. And in the meantime, 
 as we are to live among poor people, it is good for us to be poor. 
 "We shall be able to sympathise with them, and understand them 
 all the better." 
 
 Gerard argued no longer, but he meant that his sister should 
 be dowered by him, all the same. She should not be poor, while 
 he was inordinately rich. The settlement would have to be made. 
 In the meantime he was glad that the marriage was delayed a 
 year, so that he might have this bright young creature for hia 
 companion in the new home whose splendour he thought of some- 
 times with a thrill of apprehension. Would he not feel lonely 
 in that large house until he could bring a wife home, and all hia 
 wife's feminine surroundings of cousins and bosom friends, with 
 their flutter, and fuss, and life, and movement? A house occupied 
 only by men has always a gloomy atmosphere. There lacks the 
 colour and frou-frou of women's brighter raiment. 
 
 He pleaded with his mother that she should spare Lilian to him, 
 until she should be claimed by a husband, and the mother, who 
 dearly loved this wayward son — her poet as she had called him 
 in the fond exaggeration of maternal love, intoxicated by his 
 juvenile success in Hterature — could refuse him nothing. She 
 would have to part with her only daughter in a little time. That 
 was inevitable. The light-hearted daughter of the house, she 
 ^Yhose heaviest task hitherto had been the making of a new frock 
 for a smart-garden-party, she whose only sorrows had been the 
 sorrows of others, w-as now to go out into tlie thick of the fight, 
 aiid bear her o\vn burdens as wife and mother, and carry on her 
 shoulders and in her heart the care of a man's life, his mistakes 
 and disappointments, his failures and difTiculties, all his frailties 
 and feebleness, physical and mental. These were to be her burden,
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 99 
 
 and these she must carry patiently to the end, or else go out into 
 the dismal company of faithless, dishonoured wives. The Kector 
 of Helmsleigh had been a good husband, as husbands go, yet 
 his wife looked at her fair young daughter, sitting at the piano 
 under the soft lamp-hght, accompanying her lover's song, very 
 much as Abraham may have looked at Isaac on the eve of the 
 intended sacrifice. 
 
 " It mil not be a parting for you and Lihan," pursued Gerard, 
 intent upon his purpose, "for I shall expect you to spend all the 
 best part of the year at Hillersdon House. TVe "will do the London 
 season together. TVe ■wUl drink the cup of pleasure to the dregs." 
 
 " My dearest boy, what do I know of the season ? I should be 
 out of my element among the people you call smart. When 
 Barbara Vere rattled on about her great parties, and her lords 
 and ladies, I felt as if she was talking an unknown language. I 
 can get on very well with our county people here — we are county 
 ourselves, you know — but I dare say I should hardly feel comfortable 
 with them if I met them in London, in all their London finery." 
 
 " DcEir mother, you underrate the adaptability of your plastic 
 sex. I can conceive my father feeling bored by town gaieties, and 
 pining for his poultry-yard, his county papers, and his infallible 
 barometer. He has got into the rustic groove, and might sufler 
 by transplantation — but you would enjoy the quick, eager existence, 
 and intellectual friction." 
 
 '•I certainly should delight in meeting intellectual people — ■ 
 Tennyson, Browning, Tyndall, and Owen for instance," said Mrs. 
 HUlersdon, as if a httle group of that kind were to be met at every 
 evening party in the season. 
 
 " And the music and the pictures," suggested Gerard. 
 " Tes, indeed, there is so much to see and to hear in London. 
 T\'hen we have gone up to Limmer's for a fortnight the time has been 
 aU. too short. A Greenwich dinner, which I shall always consider a 
 sad waste of time and money, an afternoon at Piichmond, perhaps a 
 day at Ascot, and luncheon parties in London with too hospitable 
 friends. The fortnight goes by in a rush, and one seems to have 
 seen nothing." 
 
 " It shall be otherwise when you are with me, mother. "We wiU 
 go about in a leisurely way, and see everything. I know my httle 
 London, all that she is and all that she is not, and I wiU teach you 
 how to get the best she can give you. I wonder what you will think 
 of my house."
 
 100 Gerard; or, 
 
 " I am sure it will be perfect. You have sucli good taste." 
 " Fond flatterer. I have nothing but money, which can buy the 
 educated taste of other people." 
 
 * • * « * 
 
 Gerard spent Chi-istmas at the Rectory, partly because his mother 
 was especially anxious that he should be with her at that season of 
 family gatherings, and partly because his latest letters from builder, 
 architect, and furnitm'e man promised the completion of the house 
 on the last day of the year. There had been a good deal of pre- 
 varication in former letters, and there had been various excuses for 
 delay — excuses chiefly of a cUmatic nature, the elements seeming 
 to have conspired against the completion of that particular house. 
 Frost may have told Fog that the house belonged to a new 
 man, and that the new man ought to wait. Could he not be 
 content with the dog-kennel in which he had hved hitherto, 
 forsooth ? 
 
 But Roger's last letter was specific. The builder pledged himself 
 that his men should clear out of the house on the morning of the 
 31st. Decorators, carpet-layers, needlewomen should vanish from 
 the scene, silently as goblins at cockcrow, and on New Year's Evo 
 men and women, builders' minions and upholsterers' minions, were 
 to feast together on a grand supper at the " Bell and Horns," in the 
 Brompton Road. 
 
 Edith Champion had undertaken what she called the mounting of 
 the establishment. She had secured an all-accomplished hoiise- 
 keeper, and a clever man cook, who did not accept the situation 
 until assured of three imderlings in the kitchen, a private sitting- 
 room, and the use of a brougham for his marketing. She had 
 chosen butlers and footmen, and had devised a hvery for the latter 
 — darkest green, with black velvet collar and facings, black velvet 
 small clothes, and black silk stockings. " It is a sombre Hvery," 
 she wrote; "but the powder relieves it, and I think you will like 
 the effect. Your men will wear silk stockings always, that is a 
 point, and I have told your housekeeper to be very particular about 
 their shoe-bucldes. Their shoes will be made in Bond Street, and 
 will cost thirty shOlings a pair. Forgive me for troubling you witii 
 these details ; but with your wealth your only chance of distinction 
 is by nicety in minor points. Your house wiU be simply perfect. 
 I went through the reception-rooms yesterday. The ceilings are 
 painted in the style of the Ricardi Palace — a banquet in Olympus. 
 Cobalt predominates in the drapery of the goddessess, who, although
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. lor 
 
 Rubensesque, are quite unobjectionable. The eflect is brilliant, and 
 harmonises admirably with the subdued amber and russet of the 
 brocade hangings and chair covers. I long for you to see your 
 liouse now all is coming together. I engaged your ^lajor Domo 
 yesterday — a chance such as rarely falls in the way of a nouvemi, 
 riche. He was fifteen years with Lord Hamperdonne, to whom he 
 was guide, philosopher, and friend, rather than servant. It was he 
 who rescued Hamperdonne from that odious engagement witli 
 Dolores Drumio, the Spanish dancer. He has a genius for organ- 
 ising every kind of entertainment ; and if he and your chef can onl v 
 work harmoniously your establishment will go on velvet. You will 
 see that I am not engaging many servants. Parton will be house 
 steward, gi'oom of the chambers, and butler, with an xmder-butler 
 and two footmen, a lad for cellar work, and a house messenger, so 
 that your stablemen may never be called away from their work. 
 For a bachelor, I think this personnel, with half a dozen women, 
 quite sufiBcient. Anytliing further would mean display, rather than 
 usefulness, and I'm sure you don't desire that." 
 
 " How wise she is ! " thought Gerard, as he read this letter for the 
 second time. "How deUghtful to have to deal with an accom- 
 plished woman of the world instead of a sentimental girl ; and what 
 a wife she wiU make for a man in my position, by-and-by, when 
 poor Champion's time has come ! Beautiful, well-born, and full of 
 tact and social knowledge. Could any man desire a more delightful 
 companion? " Of her husband, Mrs. Champion wrote in a melan- 
 choly strain. Mont Oriol had done him very httle good. He had 
 allowed his work and his worries to follow him to the valleys of 
 Auvergne. He had not taken that absolute rest which the doctors 
 had so strenuously urged, and he was considerably worse than ho 
 had been in the summer. The speciahst who had seen him then 
 now talked of " Stock Exchange spine," which Edith feared was some 
 kind of mental ailment. Her husband was depressed and restless, 
 and there was an idea of sending him to St. Leonards till the end of 
 the winter with a trained attendant, as well as his valet. 
 
 " If he goes, I shall go with him," Mrs. Champion concluded, with 
 the air of a Koman wife. " I must not allow pleasure or inclination 
 to interfere with my duty to him. I should have infinitely preferred 
 any part of the Riviera — even Mentone — to St. Leonards, which I 
 detest ; but it will be some advantage to be near you, as I dare say 
 you will be too much taken up with your new house to go to tlie 
 South this year. By the way, have you any idea of the other
 
 I02 Gerard ; or, 
 
 House ? A seat in Parliament would give you kudos, and our party 
 wants all the strength it can get." 
 
 '■^ Fas si hefe," thought Gerard, "I am not going to waste any 
 portion of my scanty h'fe in an Ul-ventilated, malodorous, over- 
 crowded bear-garden ! " 
 
 He was to go to London on New Year's Day, his sister accom- 
 panying him, delighted at the idea of the journey, and all the more 
 dehghted since John Cumberland had made it convenient to travel 
 on the same day, and by the same train. He preached his farewell 
 sermon on St. Stephen's Day, and drew tears from many of his 
 hearers by the pathos of his farewell. His congregation knew that 
 the pathos was real, and that he had reaUy loved them, and worked 
 for them as only love can work. Gerard had been glad to spend 
 Christmas at home, for his mother's sake ; but despite his affection 
 for both parents, and his tender regard for the associations of child- 
 hood and early youth, the small domestic pleasures and twaddling 
 recurrences to past years, the fuss about the home-grown turkey and 
 the home-cured ham — ham cut from a pig of which the Rector 
 talked as of a departed friend — the church decorations, the parochial 
 festivities, the mothers' meetings, coal and blanket distributions, 
 and exhibition of Christmas cards, bored him excessively. In the 
 country life goes round like a wheel, and nothing but death or 
 calamity can change the circle of infinitesimal events. In London 
 there is always something new to be done or to be heard of — new 
 fashions, new scandals, the unexpected in some form or other. 
 
 Gerard was consumed by the feverish impatience of the " child 
 who has new robes and may not wear them." That last week at 
 the Rectory seemed illimitable. He wanted to be on the strong tide 
 of life — to feel the swift river carrying him along — and here he 
 seemed to be sitting on a vast stretch of level sand, from which ho 
 but faintly saw the distant flood. Yet this was precisely the kind 
 of existence he had been advised to lead — a life of placid monotony, 
 passionless, uneventful. 
 
 On his last night at the Rectory, and in one of his last talks with 
 his mother, she asked him in a casual way if he had seen or heard 
 anything more of Hester Davenport. 
 
 "No; I have not ti'ied to find her. The attempt seemed too hope- 
 less ; and after all, the face I saw was more a dream than a reahty ; 
 yet I know it was Miss Davenport's face." 
 
 " I don't understand, Gerard " 
 
 " No, dearest," interrupted her son. " I must say to you as
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 103 
 
 Hamlet said to his fellow- student, ' There are more things in heaven 
 and ea th than ' you — or I — can quite account for. You must come 
 to London, mother. London is full of revelations for any one who 
 has been buried ahve for half a lifetime in a rustic Eectory. You 
 will hear of new sciences, new religions. You wiU find Buddha 
 placed shoulder to shoulder with Christ. You will find people 
 discrediting the four evangehsts and pinning their faith upon 
 'materializations.' You will find the cultured classes despising 
 Dickens and making hght of Thackeray, in favour of the last smart 
 young man who has written a smart story of three or four pages in 
 a smart magazine. The old order is always changing. London is 
 for ever new, for ever young. You will feel twenty years younger 
 there than you do here." 
 
 "Younger under a smoky sky, Gerard! Younger in a place 
 where one must put on one's gloves before one can venture to pick 
 a rose ! Yoimger among crowds of rushing people and over- worked 
 cab-horses, and sickly town babies, whose poor httle faces make one 
 miserable ! I shall be glad to be with you, dear ; but I love this 
 sleepy old Rectory better than the finest house in Park Lane or 
 Grosvenor Square." 
 
 Gerard did not try to combat these benighted notions. His own 
 face was set Londonwards early next morning, and he and Lilian 
 were installed in the new house before afternoon tea. They had 
 explored every room, and were ready to receive Mr. Cumberland 
 and !Mrs. Champion at eight o'clock to a friendly Xew Year dinner 
 — a snug ■parti carre at a round table in the breakfast-room, one 
 side of which was all window, opemng into a winter-garden, where 
 a fountain played in a low marble basin, encircled with camellias 
 and palms. 
 
 The shaded lamps gave a soft and tempered light. The colour- 
 ing in this room was subdued and cool, pale bluish green for the 
 most part, the walls the colour of a hedge-sparrow's Q^g, reheved 
 by the warm sepia and Indian red of a few choice etchings. These, 
 with a wonderful arrangement of peacock's feathers and celadon 
 Sevres vases over the chimney-piece, were the only ornaments. 
 
 " No quaint comers or ingle-nook, nothing Moorish or Japanese 
 in all the house ; no copper or brass, or any one of the things I 
 delight in," sighed ^Irs. Champion. " Mr. Larose has been horridly 
 tyrannical. Yet I must confess he has succeeded. Your house is 
 a creation." 
 
 The service was perfection, every servant eager to please the new
 
 104 Gerard ; or, 
 
 master, and the dinner was worthy of a company of gourmets, 
 rather than of these four, who cared very little what they ate, and 
 who were, some of them, too much absorbed in their own thoughts 
 and feelings to know what they were eating. An oyster souffik. 
 which would have evoked praises from Lucullus or Lord Alvanley, 
 went round without comment or commendation. But if Mr. 
 Hillersdon's friends did not talk about the dinner there was plenty 
 of talk about other things. Edith Champion was full of offers to 
 take LDian to her particular friends and her favourite tradespeople, 
 during the few days she had left before going to St. Leonards with 
 her invalid husband. 
 
 " I want you to go to Madame St. Evi-emonde for your gowns," 
 said Mrs. Champion. " She is the only woman in London who 
 knows where a waist ought to begin and end — excuse my talking 
 chiffons, Mr. Cumberland, we ought to keep that kind of thing for 
 after dinner — but it is such a treat for a battered woman of the 
 world like me to have a neophyte to mstruct. I should like to take 
 you to my shoemaker, too, for he is rather a difficult person to deal 
 with ; and if he don't take to you he won't even try to fit your 
 
 foot." 
 
 " If that is the way of London shoemakers I should buy my boots 
 ready-made at the Stores," said Cumberland, grimly. 
 
 " Are there ready-made shoes ? " Mrs. Champion asked inno- 
 cently. " How terrible ! I know some people buy gloves in shops 
 ready-made; but ready-made shoes must be too dreadful. They 
 can't fit anybody." 
 
 " Their particular merit is that they fit everybody," said Cumber- 
 land. " It is only a question of size." 
 
 " Oh, if people don't care about shape or style, or whether they 
 have an instep or not, I suppose a ready-made boot or shoe would 
 do " said Mrs. Champion, taking a philosophical tone. " They 
 would keep out the wet. Only if one is to take a proper pride in 
 one's clothes one must have them from the best makers. I could 
 be content to go through life in a tweed gown ; but it must be made 
 by Redfern or Felix." 
 
 " I'm afraid your dressmaker would be a great deal too smart and 
 too expensive for me, Mrs. Champion," Lilian answered quietly. 
 
 " Too smart, too expensive — for Mr. Hillersdon's sister ! Why, 
 yon will be expected to dress as well as the Princess of Wales. 
 Your toilette will be under the fierce light that beats upon a 
 millionaire. You will have to dress up to this house."
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 105 
 
 " I should be sorry to dress in a way that would be unsuited to a 
 country clergyman's daughter." 
 
 " Or to a London clergyman's promised wife," said John Cumber- 
 land, stealing a tender look at the fair young face from under his 
 strongly-marked brows. Those brief looks meant a world of love 
 to Lilian. 
 
 "Let her dress as plainly or as smartly as she pleases, Mrs. 
 Champion," said Gerard, gaily ; " but if Madame St. Evremonde is 
 the best dressmaker in London to Madame St. Evremonde she must 
 go. While you are in this house, Lilian, you must look your 
 prettiest for my sake ; but when you migrate to Greek Street you 
 may wear a Quakeress's poke bonnet, or a Sister of Charity's 
 hood." 
 
 " Greek Street," exclaimed Mrs. Champion, in her most childish 
 manner. " Where is Greek Street ? " 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 "still one must lead some life beyond." 
 
 The dull beguming of the year, before the opening of Parliament 
 and the gi'adual awakening of London, passed like a dream. The 
 delight of installation in the home that he had created for himself, 
 and the novel sensation of squandering money were enough to keep 
 Gerard Hillersdon occupied and happy ; while Lilian was divided 
 between two absorbing duties. On the one side she had her brother, 
 whom she dearly loved, and aU the pomps and vanities of this 
 wicked world ; and on the other side she had her future husband, 
 now fully established as Vicar of St. Lawrence's, and wanting her 
 counsel and co-operation in every imdertaking. " I want the parish 
 to be as much your parish as mine, Lilian," he said. " I want your 
 mind and your hand to be in all things, great and small." 
 
 So on one day Lilian was trudging up and down some of the 
 dirtiest alleys in West Central London, deliberating and advising as 
 to a Night Refuge for women and children, and on the next she was
 
 io6 Gerard ; or, 
 
 ■with her brother at Christie's, giving her opinion about a Reynolds 
 or a Eaffaelle. 
 
 Gerard was profuse in his offers of money, would, indeed, from 
 his own purse have supplied all the needs of St. Lawrence's ; but 
 Jack Cumberland exercised a restraining influence, and would only 
 accept moderate benefactions — a hundred pounds for the new 
 Refuge, a hundred for the Working Man's Institute, and fifty each 
 for the Magdalen Rescue Society and Dispensary, two hundi-ed for 
 the schools ; five hundred pounds in all. 
 
 " It seems absurd that you should want money for anything while 
 I have ever so much more than I want," remonstrated Gerard, 
 toying with his open cheque-book. 
 
 "You shall do something more for us a year or two hence, when 
 you have familiarised yourself with your fortune, and have acquired 
 a sense of proportion," said Cumberland, smiling at his eagerness. 
 " At present you are hke a child with a new box of toys, who 
 thinks that he can distribute them among his playfellows and yet 
 have the boxful for himself. When you better know what money 
 means you shall be our benefactor on a larger scale — always 
 supposing you are stiU in the humour. In the meantime 
 that five hundred pounds is a prodigious God-send, and will 
 help us along capitally. I never hoped for such an excellent 
 start." 
 
 " I beUeve the fellow wants to keep his parish poor," Gerard said 
 afterwards, in a confidential talk with his sister. 
 
 " He doesn't want to sponge upon your fortune, Gerard, and he is 
 afraid of pauperising his people by doing too much." 
 
 "Pauperising? Ah, that's always the cry nowadays; but it 
 would take as long a head as Henry Brougham's to find out where 
 help ends and pauperisation begins. If the State were to feed the 
 Board School children, yea, even with one substantial meal per 
 diem, we are told that we should be teaching the parents to look to 
 State aid, and to squander their wages on drink. I dare say it 
 might work that way in a good many cases ; but if, on the other 
 hand, we could succeed in rearing a healthy race the craving for 
 drink might be lessened in the next generation." 
 
 Hillersdon House was a success. Society flocked to the millionaire 
 as flies go to the honey-pot. The Northern farmer's advice to his 
 son is one of the chief points in social ethics. We all like to go 
 where money is. There is a fascination in wealth and the luxury it
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 107 
 
 can buy that only a Socrates can resist, and even Socrates went to 
 rich men's houses, and smartened his rough attire for the feast. 
 Society, which had always approved of Gerard Hillersdon, was on 
 tiptoe to know what he would do with his money; that portion 
 which envied him his wealth opining that he would run through this 
 vast fortune in a year or two, while everybody had his own theory 
 as to how he ought to spend it. 
 
 As a social adviser there could be no one better than Roger 
 Larose, architect, poet, painter, and man of fashion ; a man who 
 seemed to have founded his style and manners upon the long- 
 forgotten bucks of those golden days before the Eegency, when 
 George, Prince of Wales, was young. 
 
 " I call Roger Larose the Sleeping Beauty," said Reuben Gambler, 
 "for he looks as if he had fallen asleep in some comer of the Cocoa 
 Tree Club, at the close of the eighteenth century, in a bag-wig, a 
 puce coat, and a frilled shirt, and as if he had never become 
 reconciled to modern costume." 
 
 Larose was an amiable enthusiast, full of pleasant whimsicalities, 
 and Gerard, who was naturally indolent, allowed him full scope as 
 a counsellor. 
 
 " You must give parties," said Larose ; " it is useless having a fine 
 house if you bury yourself alive in it ! You had better have bui]t 
 yourself a mausoleum — not half a bad idea, by-the-by. If any dear 
 old gentleman ever leaves me a few millions, I will build myself a 
 pyramid, like Cheops, and live in it till I am ready for the embalmers 
 — a pyramid in which I will receive only a few chosen friends — a 
 pyramid in which I will give choice little dinners to those chosen 
 ones. Yes, my dear Gerard, you must give parties— breakfasts, 
 luncheons, dinners, musical evenings. It is written in the stars that 
 you are to provide a good many of the amusements of this ensuing 
 season. I hope you like the notion of being a social centre, Miss 
 Hillersdon ? " said Roger, turning to Lilian, with an insinuating 
 smile. Not a handsome man, by any means, this Larose, but with 
 a delicate pallor, attenuated features, and a languid smile which 
 women pronounced sympathetic. 
 
 "It is rather alarming, but I want Gerard to be happy and 
 amused," Lilian replied brightly ; " and Mr. Cumberland will help 
 us to receive people. He was immensely popular m Devonshire." 
 
 " My dear young lady, Devonshire isn't London— but, of course, 
 Mr. Cumberland is channing, and I hear people are going to St. 
 Lawrence's to hear his sermons,"
 
 io8 Gerard ; or, 
 
 "People!" exclaimed Lilian; "why, the church is crammed 
 every Sunday at all the services." 
 
 " Ah ; but 1 mean people — people like Lord "Wordsworth, and 
 Mr. Lemaitre, the actor; people hke Lady Hyacinth Pulteney — 
 people who criticise and talk. If that goes on, Mr. Cumberland 
 -will be an acquisition at your parties. But, my dear Gerard," pur- 
 sued Eoger, solemnly, " the great point is food. People will go to 
 you to be fed. Feed them. You will have a luxury of flowers, of 
 course; Mrs. Smith — the Mrs. Smith — will decorate your rooms 
 and dinner-table. People expect the lust of the eye to be gratified ; 
 but that is, after all, a minor point. Your iced asparagus, ortolans, 
 quails, plovers' eggs — those are the essentials." 
 
 " And, as a reward for my hospitahty, my house will be called 
 the Restaurant Hillersdon, or Cafd Gerard. People will eat, drink, 
 and be merry — all at my expense." 
 
 " No, my dear fellow. You will not be laughed at. You have 
 not made your money out of Paissian hides or American manures. 
 You do not come to us with inadequate aspu-ates, fresh from the 
 Australian backwoods. You are not laboriously conning the alphabet 
 of civilised life. You are one of us. You have graduated in all our 
 follies and vices. You are an adept in all our conventionalities — 
 our mispronunciations, affectations, and jargon of all kinds. You 
 Avill do. You are not a new man. You are only that nice boy, 
 Gerard Hillersdon, plus two millions." 
 
 Hillersdon, perhaps, hardly needed this assurance. He might 
 affect the misanthrope, and preach as bitterly as Tiraon in his cave. 
 He loved his fellow-men just well enough to enjoy bringing them 
 about him, and to feel that splendour would be a poor thing if there 
 were nobody to admire it. Again, the science of entertaining was 
 in itself full of interest. Every man who has mixed ever so little 
 in society believes that he can give a dinner — assort his guests and 
 revise a menu — ^better than any one else. Hillersdon was not 
 without that delusion, and society fostered it by praise and appre- 
 ciation. His luncheons, which were more frequent at Hillersdon 
 House than any other form of entertainment, were voted perfect — 
 perfect as to the choice of guests, the harmonious blending of divers 
 opinions, professions, crazes — perfect as to all material elements — 
 the meniL never too elaborate or too long — the choicest luxuries 
 given with an air of simplicity which disguised their costliness. 
 The popiilarity of liis luncheons encouraged Mr. Hillersdon to revive 
 a somewhat exploded form of hospitality. He began a series of
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 109 
 
 Sunday breakfasts, to which only those were bidden whose wider 
 and less orthodox views made the morning service of the Anglican 
 Church a purely optional matter — to go or not to go, as the trained 
 choir or the sensational preacher might invite ; — unholy breakfasts, 
 at which the literary agnostic or the disciple of the latest fad aired 
 his or her opinions; breakfasts, the very thought of which made 
 Lihan shudder, as she passed the breakfast-room door on her way 
 to the victoria, which was to carry her to that little heaven below, 
 where Jack Cumberland's choir of working-men, trained by himself, 
 were to sing, and where Jack was to preach one of his heart-stirring 
 sermons. She heard the voices and laughter of her brother's 
 friends as she passed the breakfast-room door, and her heart sank 
 within her at the thought of what small significance Sunday now 
 had in the life of that brother. She loved him, and she began 
 to fear that he had cast in his lot among the unbelievers, among 
 men who ridicule the idea of a Personal God, who can discover 
 nowhere in this universe the necessity for any higher form of being 
 than their own, who think that through illimitable cycles creation 
 has been climbing upwards to its ultimate outcome, Man, who has 
 made gods, and shaU unmake them. 
 
 "Gerard, dear, is Sunday after Sunday to go by without your 
 going to chmch ? " Lihan asked, one sunny April morning, when 
 she found her brother smoking a cigarette in the winter-garden, and 
 looking idly at the Marechal Niel roses, while the servants in the 
 adjoining room were puttmg their finishing touches to a breakfast- 
 table laid for eight. 
 
 " My darling, I shouldn't be any the better for church, or the 
 cimrch any the better for me. I am a little out of harmony witli 
 the Christian idea, just now. Either I have outgrown it, or I am 
 passing through a phase of doubt ; but if you really want me to 
 sacrifice to the respectabilities I will go to St. Lawi'ence with you 
 next Sunday. One of Jack's rousing sermons will do me good. 
 They are capital tonics for a relaxed brain ! " 
 
 " Years ago you used to go to church every Sunday, and some- 
 times twice on a Simday." 
 
 '' Years ago I was very yoimg, Lihan. I went to church for 
 various reasons — first, to please my mother ; and next, because the 
 Rector would have made unpleasant remarks at luncheon if he had 
 missed me from the family pew; next again, because I liked the 
 sleepy old church and the sleepy service, and the famihar faces, and 
 my father's short sensible sermon ; and last of all, because I had not
 
 no Gerard; or, 
 
 begun to think of how much or how little faith in spiritual things 
 there was in me." 
 
 " And all that the cleverest people in London can teach you is 
 not to beHeve," said Lilian, sadly. 
 
 " My dear girl, the clever people have very Httle to do with my 
 disbelief. The change is in myself. It came about as spontaneously 
 and mysteriously as cotton bUght on an apple-tree. One day you 
 see the tree flourishing, the leaves clean and fuU of sap ; and the 
 nest day they are all curled up and withered, as if a fire had passed 
 over them, and the incipient fruit is eaten of worms." 5 
 
 " The carriage is at the door, ma'am," announced one of those 
 perfectly matched footmen whom Mrs. Champion had selected, 
 magnificent, impassible beings, who looked and moved and spoke as 
 if they had been cradled amidst patrician surroundings. ! 
 
 Lilian drove away in the simshine, heavy at heart for the brother 
 she loved. She saw him wath the illimitable power of wealth, sur- 
 rounded by all the snares and temptations of a world in which whim 
 and pleasure are the only laws that govern mankind. She saw him 
 cut adrift from the anchor in which she believed, sailing away from 
 the safe harbour of the Christian faith, to the bleak and barren sea 
 of scornful and sullen materiahsm; a gloomy agnosticism which 
 looks with contempt upon every spiritual iustiact, and laughs at 
 every Heavenward aspiration as the delusion of children and fools, i 
 
 While Lihan drove along Piccadilly, to the sound of various 
 church bells, and past a population setting churchward, Mr. Hil- 
 lersdon's Sunday visitors were slowly dropping in to the eleven 
 o'clock breakfast — a meal which had but one di-awback, according 
 to PiOger Larose. It made luncheon an impossibility. 
 
 One of the guests of the day, Mr. Reuben Gambler, was a youthful 
 novelist, who had made all vice his province, and whose delight was 
 to shock the susceptibilities of the circulating hbrary. His books 
 were naturally popular, and as in the case of a nervous rider with a 
 restive horse, people were impressed more by the idea of what ho 
 might do than of what he had actually done. He was hvely and 
 eccentric, and a favourite with Hillersdon and his circle. 
 
 " I've brought a particular friend of mine, who tells me he knows 
 you well enough to come without an invitation," said Gambler, 
 entering the winter-garden unannounced, from the adjoining draw- 
 ing-room into which lie had been duly ushered. A low unctuous 
 laugh soundecJfrom the other side of the half-raised portiere as he 
 spoke, a laugh which Gerard instantly recognised.^
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 1 1 1 
 
 " Your friend is Mr. JermjTi," he said quickly. 
 
 " Yes — how did you guess ? " 
 
 " 1 heard him laugh ; there is nobody else on earth who laughs 
 like that." 
 
 " But you think there is some one down there who does," said 
 Gambier, pointing significantly to the gi'Oimd. " A strange laugh, 
 ain't it ? but very cheery — sounds as if mankind were a stupendous 
 joke, and as if Jermyn were in the secret of all the springs that 
 work this little world, and knew when it was going to burst up. I 
 believe he knows more about it all than Sir William Thomson, or 
 any of those scientific swells who tell us what the sun is made of, 
 and how long they can warrant the earth to last." 
 
 Jermyn's head appeared under the old brocade curtain — a curtain 
 made from the vestments of Italian priests, the rich spoil of a 
 mediaeval sacristy — a curious face seen against the background of 
 purple and gold, clear cut, brilliant in colouring, high narrow brow 
 recedmg curiously, sharp nose, Hght grey eyes, and smiUng mouth, 
 displaying regular white teeth. 
 
 He paused for a moment or two, wjth the curtain in his hand, 
 looking out of the purple and gold, then with a little gush of 
 laughter came across the marble floor and shook hands with his 
 host. 
 
 " Surprised to see me, ain't you, Hillersdon ? " 
 
 "No; I have only been sui-prised not to see j'ou. And now 
 answer me a question. Where the devil are those rooms of yom's 
 in which you gave me supper on the night after Lady Fridoline's 
 party?" 
 
 " What ! Have you been hunting me up there ? " 
 
 "Hunting! Yes, it was a decided case of hunting. I don't 
 think the shrewdest detective in London could find those rooms of 
 yours." 
 
 "I dare say not, unless he knew where to look for them. I 
 never tell anybody my address, but I sometimes take a friend home 
 to supper — a man who is too fiill of himself and his own afifairs to 
 observe the way by which he goes." 
 
 Another visitor came into the winter-garden, and then Hillersdon 
 went into the next room to receive the rest of the party, which was 
 Boon complete. 
 
 The ninth guest proved a success. Most people were interested 
 in the Fate-reader, although most people pretended to make very 
 light of his art. That searching gaze of his, looking into a man's
 
 112 Gerard ; or, 
 
 soul tlarougli his face, had an uncanny influence that fascinated as 
 much as it repelled. He had made such strange hits by those fate- 
 reading prophecies of his, and foretold changes and events in the 
 lives of men, of which those men had themselves no foreshadowing. 
 What was this power which enabled him thus to prognosticate? 
 He called it insight ; but the word, though both vague and com- 
 prehensive, was not sufficient to explain a gift hitherto the peculiar 
 property of the necromancer and the charlatan — never before exer- 
 cised airily and gratuitously, by a man who was received in society. 
 Whatever Mr. Jermyn's means might be, whether large or small, 
 he had never been known to make money by the exercise of his 
 occult power. 
 
 He was leaving with the rest of HUlersdon's friends before one 
 o'clock, when his host detained him. 
 
 " I want to have a quiet talk with you," said Gerard ; " we have 
 not met since my altered fortunes." 
 
 " True," answered Jermyn, hghtly, " but I prophesied the turn 
 in your luck, did I not, old fellow? " 
 
 "You hinted at possibilities— you set me on the track of an old 
 memory — that scene in the railway station at Nice." 
 
 " Lucky dog. Half the young men in London are green with 
 envy when they talk about you. An instant's peril — and a lifetime 
 of boundless wealth." 
 
 " There is no such thing as boundless wealth except in America," 
 said Gerard. " It is a phrase to be used only about a man who 
 owns a silver mine. My income is fixed, and " 
 
 "Limited," cried Jermyn, interrupting; "a decidedly hmited 
 income. Is it eighty or ninety thousand a year, or does it run to 
 a hundred? I believe were I in your shoes I should be thinking 
 about economising. I should have a holy horror of the workhouse. 
 One loses all sense of proportion under the weight of two millions." 
 
 "There is a good deal of spending in it, certainly, if a man 
 knows how to spend judiciously. Do you like my house ? " 
 
 "I consider it perfect. You have had the discretion not to 
 follow the prevailing fashion. That is your strong point. You 
 have not gone too far, either, in expense or splendoui-. You have 
 put on the brake at the right moment." 
 
 " Come and see my den," said Gerard. 
 
 He led the way to the upper floor, opened a door at the back 
 of the house, and ushered Jermyn into a room with folding doors, 
 opening into a second room. The two rooms exactly reproduced
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 1 1 3 
 
 those Inn chambers where he had seen the vision of Hester 
 Davenport. Colour, form, material — all had been carefully copied, 
 Gerard's memory of that night and its surroundings being more 
 vivid than any other memory of his past life. There were the 
 same curtains of sombre velvet, darkest gi-een in the hghts, and 
 black in the shadows, the same Oriental carpet, of rich, but 
 chastened, hues, the same, or almost the same, Italian pictures— 
 a Judas by Titian— a wood-nymph by Guido, the same dehcatcly- 
 carved Chippendale secretaire and blackwood cabinet, the same 
 touches of colour amidst the gloom. 
 
 " My very rooms ! by all that's wonderful ! " cried Jermyn. 
 " What a close ob&*3rver of still life you must be ! You have got 
 everything — except me." 
 
 "The black marble bust? Yes, that is wanting; but I mean to 
 have that before I have done." 
 
 "Well, ray dear Hillersdon, imitation is the sincerest flattery, 
 and I feel intensely flattered." 
 
 " A whim — a fancj'' that pleased me for a moment — that is all 
 it means. Those after-midnight hours in your chambers marked 
 the turning-point in my life. I had made up my mind to shoot 
 myself that very night. The pistol was ready loaded in my pistol- 
 case. I had thought it all out, and had made up my mind. God 
 knows how you guessed my secret so readily." 
 
 " My dear fellow, your mind was steeped in suicide. There was 
 no secret in the matter — to an observer with the slightest claim to 
 insight. I saw despair, defiance, recklessness, and the gloom which 
 means only one thing — self-destruction." 
 
 " And while I was at the opera, listening to the doom of Don 
 Juan, the everlasting type of spendthrift and profligate — while I 
 was sitting in your chambers, the lawj'er's letter was lying on my 
 table within a few feet of the pistol-case — the letter tliat lieralded 
 the announcement of millions. That night was like a bad dream— 
 and it was not until many days afterwards that I was able to shake 
 off that dream-feeling, and realise my good luck." 
 
 " Good luck, with a vengeance," laughed Jermyn. "You have 
 been lucky in more ways than one — lucky in love as well as in 
 gold; lucky in the fast coming release of the woman you love." 
 
 '"I don't quite follow you," Gerard said coldly, resenting this 
 allusion, even from a man who professed to know everybody's 
 business. 
 
 '•Don't pretend to be angry with mc for touching upon an open 
 
 I
 
 1 1 4 Gerard ; or, 
 
 secret. Everybody knows of your devotion to one bright particular 
 star; and everybody "will be inclined to congratulate you when 
 the worthy stockbroker gets his order of release. Life can be of 
 very little value to him, poor fellow. I saw him dragged about in 
 a bath-chair on the parade at St. Leonards a month ago, a dismal 
 ^v^eck, and now I am told he is in retreat at Finchley — the begin- 
 ning of the end." 
 
 Gerard smoked his cigarette in silence. The conversation was 
 evidently displeasing to him. 
 
 The beginning of the end ? Yes, it might be that the end was 
 near ; and if it were so, what better could he desire than to many 
 the woman he had so ardently desired to many just four years ago ; 
 the capable, accomplished woman whom all the town admired, and 
 who was rich enough to be in no wise influenced by his wealth. 
 She was not less beautiful than she had been in her girlhood — more 
 beautiful, rather, with a beauty which was only now ripening to its 
 perfect development — a ruddier gold upon her hair, a finer curve 
 of cheek and throat. People were never tired of telling him that 
 Mrs. Champion was the handsomest woman in London. 
 
 "I want to ask you another question," Gerard began, when he 
 had smoked out the cigarette. " Was I utterly mad that night in 
 your rooms, or did I see a vision of a girl at a sewing-machine ? " 
 
 "You were not mad by any means. Your conversation was 
 both rational and logical. It is quite possible that you saw a 
 
 vision." 
 
 " Produced by some trickery of yours, no doubt. How was it 
 done?" 
 
 " If I were master of any of the black arts, do you think I would 
 tell you the secrets of my trade ? What if I willed that you should 
 recall the loveliest face you had ever seen ? Would that account 
 for the phenomenon, do you think ? " 
 
 " I don't know ; the face was certainly one I had seen before ; 
 but I was quite unable to identify it without assistance, therefore 
 one would suppose it had faded out of my mind, and could hardly 
 be willed into vivid actuaUty by you." 
 
 " You make no allowance for the submerged identity — that inner 
 ego beneath the outer husk of existence — that hidden nature which 
 keeps its fancies and thoughts locked in darkness, perhaps for years, 
 to start into light at a touch of a kindred spirit — that mysterious 
 being dormant in us from the dawn of manhood, which only awakens 
 at the call of love, and which is at the root of that other mystery we
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, i r 5 
 
 call love at first sight — love, passionate, all-absorbing, strong aa 
 death, bom in an hour." 
 
 "If not an Adam at his birth he is no love at all," quoted 
 Gerard. 
 
 And then he remembered how in the beaten track of life his love 
 of Edith Champion had grown up ; how he had met her at dinners, 
 and tennis-parties, and cricket matches, and afternoon teas, and had 
 danced with her three nights a week, and heard her praised by men 
 and women ; until gradually, out of these commonplace elements he 
 had come to think her the first necessity of his existence, and to 
 follow her, and devote himself to her. No, there had been nothing 
 romantic there — no mysterious flame, wrapping him round in an 
 instant, sudden, invincible. He loved as men and women love in 
 what is called good society — reasonably, with a love that does not 
 burst bonds, or even violate conventionalities. 
 
 He thought a good deal about Edith Champion during that April 
 afternoon, long after Jermyn had left him, and when he was saunter- 
 ing and dreaming alone in his little grove of lime and chestnut, 
 v;here the purple leaf buds and newly opening leaves were faintly 
 fanned by a soft west wind, and where, above the interwoven 
 branches, the sky showed deeply blue — one of those peerless spring 
 afternoons which bring with them, in their own fresh youthfulness, 
 a sense of reviving youth in the frame and mind of man — factitious, 
 but delightful while it lasts. 
 
 He thought of the woman to whom he had bound himself, and 
 for the first time since he had given her his solemn promise of 
 fidelity he felt the shadow of doubt creeping across that sunlit path 
 which an indulgent Fate, granting him all things to be desired of 
 man, had marked out for him. He told himself that he was one 
 of the spoilt children of Fortune ; and he hated himself because, 
 like the spoilt child of nursery story-books, he was inclined to 
 quarrel with his toys. 
 
 He had been living amongst men whose master is the spirit that 
 always denies. He had steeped himself in that pessimism of small 
 minds which pervades societj', and which is the chosen gospel of 
 the men who profess to be in advance of their fellow-men. A dull, 
 dead hopelessness came down upon him, Uke a dark cloud, in the 
 midst of this palace of art which he had built for his soul, and the 
 palace seemed no better than a prison-house. 
 
 He and ^Irs. Champion had met less frequently dm-ing the last 
 month, for Edith, who was warm-hearted and kindly natured, despite
 
 ii6 Gerard ; or, 
 
 her essentially modern estimate of life, had deemed it her duty to 
 withdraw in some measure from society, now that her husband was 
 the inmate of a private lunatic asylum. She drove to Finchley three 
 times a week, and spent an hour or two with the invalid, sometimes 
 driving with him in the doctor's capacious landau, while her own 
 horses rested, sometimes walking beside his wheel-chair in the garden, 
 and listening patiently while he rambled confusedly through the 
 Stock Exchange Hst, from Berthas and Buenos Ayres First Prefer- 
 ence to Electric Lighting Companies and Papafuego Loans ; the 
 shattered mind retracing trodden paths, and finding pleasure in 
 familiar sounds, though memory was almost a blank. Mr. Champion 
 was placable, satisfied with his surroundings, and expressed no 
 impatience of restraint, nor desire to be taken back to his own 
 house. Indeed, it seemed to his wife that he had forgotten every 
 detail of his past existence, except the shibboleth of the Money 
 Market. 
 
 In this dismal state it would have been less than charity to 
 pray for the prolongation of his life. Edith did all in her power, 
 by frequent supervision and by unde^iating interest, to secure the 
 patient's well-being. He had his old and trusted servant -nith him, 
 as a check upon the service of the doctor's attendants. A wife who 
 had loved him passionately could have done no more than Editli 
 was doing. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 " EARTH BEIKG SO GOOD, WOULD HEAVEN SEEM BEST ? " 
 
 Perhaps in every life there is one perfect interlude — one long sweet 
 interval set somewhere in the midst of the cares and tribulations 
 of commonplace existence, a period in which trouble and sorrow 
 are unknown, and all the colours of earth and sky are deepened 
 into supernatural beauty. The period of a young girl's engagement 
 to the man of her choice — if she be only single-minded and free 
 from jealoiis fears — is one of these halcyon days — a time of peace 
 and happiness, the winds and waves of trouble all lying at rest, while 
 the sea-birds, joy and hope, are hatching.
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 1 1 7 
 
 Lilian HLllersdon was steeped in the sunlight and the music of 
 that enchanting time. The man to whom she had plighted her life 
 seemed to realise her highest ideal of manly excellence. He satisfied 
 eveiy need of her nature. 
 
 She was deeply religious, and she found in her futm'e husband a 
 faith that could apprehend and discuss every theory and doubt of 
 the age, and yet stand sti'ong as a tower. She was tender-hearted, 
 benevolent, sympathetic, taking the suSerings of humanity as a 
 portion of her own life, an ever-present son'ow in the midst of her 
 own joy, and she found in John Cumberland a pity as tender as her 
 own, and a benevolence of a far wider grasp. She could look up 
 to bim with meek reverence, as the women of old looked up to 
 their mailed warriors, the men who went out to the unknown land 
 to fight for the sepulchre of their Lord. She could revere him, and 
 yet be utterly happy and light-hearted in his companionship, for 
 his religion was, like Kingsley's, the gospel of cheerfulness, and 
 his most ardent desire was to get the greatest sum of happiness out 
 of this world for himself and others. 
 
 The one shadow on her life was the fact that her brother had 
 wantonly shut himself outside that fold where she would have 
 gathered him, with all the precious things of her life ; but when 
 she told Jack Cumberland her fears and regrets, he smiled them 
 away, and comforted her with his broad view of a young man'.s 
 foolishness. 
 
 " He is only going through that phase of unbehef which most 
 men have to sufl:er at some period of their Hves," he said. " He 
 will not be prayed or preached into happier ideas. The best thing 
 you and I can do is to leave him alone with his opinions till he finds 
 out how barren and joyless this world is while it means the whole, 
 and how much more comprehensible when we accept it for what it 
 is — a single round upon the ladder of everlasting life. In the mean- 
 time, if we can interest him in philanthropic schemes, and the making 
 of Christian England, we shall do a good deal." 
 
 " He has promised to make the round of our parish with mother 
 next week," said Lilian. 
 
 Mrs. Hillersdon's much-talked-ot visit to her son's house had 
 been deferred from one cause and another imtil April was nearly 
 over ; but when that pleasant month was at its best she appeared 
 upon the scene, fresh and smiling as one of the glebe meadows on a 
 sunny morning, and escorted by the Eector, who was to spend only 
 three days in town, before returning westward to visit old friends,
 
 ii8 Gerard; or, 
 
 and to preach charity sermons at Stroud and at Bath on his way 
 home. 
 
 The mother was full of admiration of her son's surroundings, and 
 of the pretty rooms allotted to Lilian, in whose future home she was 
 even more keenly interested. While the Rector was in London, 
 the time was devoted to picture-galleries, concerts, the Park, and 
 society, with the exception of a somewhat hurried survey of Mr. 
 Cumberland's church, vicarage, and schools ; but when Mr. Hillers- 
 don had departed upon his round of visits, Lilian took complete 
 possession of her mother, and most of their time was spent in the 
 neighbourhood of Soho, both mother and daughter preferring the 
 simple luncheon provided by Jack Cumberland's plain cook and 
 middle-aged house-maid, in the sober oak-panelled dining-room in 
 Greek Street, to the elaborate inventions of tlie chef at Hillersdon 
 House. The mother was never tired of inspecting her daughter's 
 future home, or of discussing that important question of household 
 linen, with all its scope for variety of material and fine sewing. 
 Most delightful was it also to join Lihan and her lover in their 
 rambles after furniture, books, and curios, wherewith to make the 
 new home more and more homelike — the long drives to queer old 
 brokers' shops to examine some gem of the Chippendale or Sheraton 
 period, entangled in a dusty labyrinth of rubbish. It was curious 
 how to these two women there was more real raptm-e in a couple 
 of shield-backed chairs of the wheat-ear pattern, unearthed at a 
 remote broker's, than in all the chastened splendour and carefully 
 thought out luxury of Hillersdon House ; indeed, there was to Mrs. 
 Hillersdon's simple mind — chastened by long years of tranquil 
 inactivity, sobered by the sorrows of a country parish — some latent 
 feeling of distrust which saddened her in the midst of her son's 
 brilliant surroundings. The change in his fortunes was too sudden 
 and too intense. Unconsciously she echoed the foreboding of Solon 
 when Croesus exhibited his magnificence before the calm gaze of 
 wisdom. She looked at her son, radiant, animated, leading the 
 conversation at a table where all the guests were men of mark, and 
 all the women beauties or wits, and the flush upon his cheek seemed 
 the hectic of disease, the light in his eye too restless for health. 
 She questioned him with keenest anxiety after one of these brilliant 
 dinners. 
 
 " Are you not doing too much, Gerard ? " she asked tenderly, 
 "burning the candle of life at both ends? " 
 
 " My dear mother, candles were made to burn. If one must be
 
 D 
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 119 
 
 either a flame or a lump of tallow I would rather be the flame — 
 though, no doubt, the unlighted tallow would last a gi-eat deal 
 longer. I dare say we seem to be taking life prestissimo after your 
 gentle andante movement in Devonshire. But a man who has no 
 financial cares can stand a little racketing. I used to take a great 
 deal more out of myself in the days when the thought of my tailor's 
 bill, or the image of my landlord's sullen face scowling at me from 
 the half-open door of his back parlour, would come between me and 
 the roses and raptures of a Belgravian ball-room." 
 
 " But you have financial cares of another kind, Gerard," answered 
 his mother, in her grave, sweet voice. " You have the disposal of 
 a great fortune — talents for which you must account by-and-by." 
 
 " At least, admit that I have not buried them in a napkin — unless 
 it is a dinner napkin," laughed Gerard. "What did you think of 
 that chaufroid of quails? commonplace, I fear; everybody gives 
 quails at this season ; the London memi becomes as monotonous as 
 that of the Israelites in the wilderness ; but the lobster souffle was 
 iced to perfection." 
 
 "Well, I won't try to talk seriously to you to-m'ght; you will 
 only laugh at my old-fashioned ideas. I was brought up to think 
 of riches as something held in trust for one's feUow-creatures." 
 
 " You were brought up by the ideal squire and squiress. Yes, I 
 remember my grandfather, who spent every sixpence he could spare 
 from the mere bread and cheese of this life, upon buUding cottages 
 for his farm labourers and improving the di'ainage of old-fashioned 
 homesteads, and who was considered a tyrannical landlord by way 
 of recompense — and my grandmother, who tramped up and down 
 muddy lanes, and penetrated foul-smelling cabins, and dressed sore 
 legs, and read to the sick aud the blind, and was generally spoken 
 of as an ofBcious, domineering person. Is that the kind of life you 
 want me to lead, mother? " 
 
 " No, dear ; that was charity upon a small scale, and under 
 difficulties. Y'^ou can do some great work." 
 
 " Only show me what there is for me to do, mother, and I will 
 do it. There is Jack Cumberland yonder, who knows that my 
 surplus income is at his service, but who is too proud to be helped, 
 except iu the most insignificant way. Shall I build him a church, 
 or shall I endow an almshouse vast enough to hold all the elderly 
 paupers in his parish? I am ready to give anything or to do any- 
 thing. If I had any treasure specially dear to my heart, I would 
 surrender it, as Folycrates threw his ring into the sea."
 
 I20 Gerard; or, 
 
 " All, dearest, I know your heart is in the right place," said the 
 mother, drawing nearer to the low chair in which her son was 
 reclining, his head lying back upon the amber cushions, his cheek 
 pale with the exhaustion of an animated evening, " but I am grieved 
 to think that in a life which might be so happy — and so useful — 
 there is one sad want." 
 
 "What is that, mother?" 
 
 " The want of religious convictions. Your sister tells me that 
 you never go to church now, that Christ is no longer your master 
 and your guide, but that you and your friends talk of our blessed 
 Lord as a village philosopher in advance of his age, who uncon- 
 sciously reproduced the aspirations of Plato and the morals of 
 Buddha. You used to be such a firm believer, Gerard, in the days 
 when you came home from Marlborough, so fresh, and frank, and 
 joyous, and when you and I used to have long Sunday talks together 
 in the woods between luncheon and evening service." 
 
 " Ah, mother, those were the days when life was a picture and 
 not a problem ; the days before 1 began to think. I dare say I 
 shall be just as good a believer again by-and-by, when I am old 
 enough to leave off thinking." 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 "for such TmXGS MUST BEGIN SOME DAT." 
 
 Mr. Cumbeul.vnd's most energetic coadjutor in the improvement 
 of his new parish was Lady Jane Blenheim, who had worked in 
 that parisli for many years, and who was the head and front of 
 a club and home for working- women, that stood almost within tlie 
 shadow of the old church of St. Lawrence. Lady Jane had seen 
 vicars and curates come and go. She liad seen good and foithful 
 shepherds; she had seen those who scarce knew how to hold a 
 sheep-hook ; and she was quick to recognise the right stamp of man 
 in the new incumbent. She entered heartily into all his projected 
 improvements, and gave the hand of friendsliip to his intended 
 wife; while the Vicar on his side ardently espoused all the
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 121 
 
 cnlliusiasms of the lady, and lent his musical gifts to those social 
 evenings at the club which it was Lady Jane's delight to inaugurate 
 and superintend. To have as head of the parish a man with a 
 strong brain and a fine baritone voice, supported by an extensive 
 repertoire from both oratorio and opera, was more than she had ever 
 hoped, and she gave the new Vicar her friendship and her counsel 
 in unstinted measure. She was a familiar visitor in the dreariest 
 ground-floor dens, and in the most miserable garrets %vithin the 
 district, and she could tell him a great deal about his neediest 
 parishioners, who, although they frequently shifted from one 
 wretched lodging to another, did not often wander far afield, indeed 
 for the most part revolved within a narrow circle, keeping the old 
 burial-ground of St. Lawrence as their centre, and the church tower 
 as their landmark, a landmark which sometimes served to guide the 
 feet of the Saturday night reveller, too far gone in Hquor to read the 
 names of the streets, or recognise minor indications. 
 
 To please his sister and her betrothed, Gerard interested himself 
 in Lady Jane's club, and excused himself from an engagement at 
 one of the most distinguished houses in London, where hospitaUty 
 was a fine art, and where Cabinet Ministers were as common as 
 strawberries in July, in order to eat boiled salmon and roast lamb 
 in Jack Cumberland's dining-room, where Lady Jane and his sister 
 made up the party of four. His mother had gone back to Devon- 
 shire, satiated with the sights of London, and loaded with gifts from 
 her millionaire son, costly trifles and new inventions for the comfort 
 or decoration of drawing-room and morning-room, as yet unknown 
 and undreamed of by the shopkeepers of Exeter. 
 
 He was not sorry to give up a ducal dinner-party, albeit his card 
 of invitation bristled with Royalties. He had been tolerabl}'' familiar 
 with all that London can offer in the way of pleasure and dissipation 
 before he came into his fortime. He stood now upon a higher grade 
 of the steps that approach tlie throne, but the palace was the saniu 
 palace, the lights, music, flowers, lovely women were the same thac 
 he had looked upon for half a dozen seasons, when he was a nobody. 
 He would have liked to have had a new world — to have had a gate 
 open for him into a land where all things were new. If he had 
 been able to walk more than half a dozen miles without feeling 
 tired, he would have started for Central Africa. He had serious 
 thoughts of Japan, Ceylon, or even Burmah — but while an inner 
 self yearned for untrodden lands, the commonplace, work-a-day self 
 clung to ^layfair and its civilisation — to the great city in which for
 
 122 Germ'd ; or, 
 
 the man with any pretension to be "smart" there is only one 
 hatter, one boot-maker, tailor, carriage-builder, one kind of letter- 
 paper, one club, and one perfume possible ; for be it observed that 
 although the really smart man may be a member of twenty clubs, 
 there is only one that he considers worthy of him — that one from 
 which the black ball has excluded the majority of his particular 
 friends. 
 
 This little dinner in Soho, served by the neat parlour-maid, in 
 the sombre oak-panelled parlour, this talk with Lady Jane of the 
 ways and works of girls who made jam, and girls who made tailors' 
 trimmings, was almost as good as a glimpse of a new country. All 
 things here were new to the man who, since he left the University, 
 had Uved only amongst people who either were or pretended to be 
 of the mode, modish. 
 
 The stories he heard to-night of sin and sorrow, good and bad, 
 brutal crime, heroic effort, tender self-sacrifice, in a world given 
 over to abject poverty, with all the lights and shadows of these 
 lowly lives, touched and interested him more than he could have 
 supposed possible. His heart and his fancy had not been brought 
 BO near the lives of the masses since he read, with choking throat 
 and tear-dimmed eyes, Zola's story of the lower deeps in that 
 brilliant Paris of which he, Gerard Hillersdon, knew only the out- 
 ward glitter and garish colouring. Behind the boulevards and the 
 cafds, the theatres and the music halls, there is always this other 
 world where everybody whose eyes open on the light of God's day 
 is foredoomed a " lifer," sentenced to hard labour, and with but 
 faintest hope of a ticket-of-leave after years of patient work. To 
 Gerard, conscious of wealth in superabundance, these stories of 
 sordid miseries, agonies which a five-pound note might cure, or 
 fatal diseases, incurable for ever, which a Httle ease and a httle 
 comfort might have averted, seemed doubly dreadful — dreadful as 
 a reproach to every rich man in the city of London. And j^et to 
 try and alter these things, he told himself, would be like trying to 
 turn the tide of the St. Lawrence, above the falls of Niagara. Were 
 he to cast all his fortune into this great gulf of poverty, there would 
 be one millionaire the less, and for the masses an almost impercep- 
 tible gain. But he resolved, sitting in this sombre parlour, with the 
 simset of a fine May evening glowing on the polished oak panels, as 
 on deep water — he resolved that these stories of hard hves should 
 not have been told him in vain — that he would do some great thing, 
 when once he could decide upon the thing that was most needed —
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 123 
 
 to lessen the measure of perpetual want. Whether lodging-house 
 or hospital, club or refuge, reformatory or orphanage, something 
 would he create ; something which would soothe his own conscience 
 and satisfy his mother's piety. 
 
 The dinner was all over before eight o'clock, and the little party 
 left the Vicarage on foot to go to a hall in the neighbourhood which 
 had been lent for a meeting of the choirs formed by the various 
 women's clubs in London. The concert and competition had begun 
 when the Vicar's party entered the lighted hall, and the building 
 was crowded in every part; but seats had been kept for Mr. 
 Cumberland and his friends in a central position in front of the 
 platform. 
 
 The choirs were ranged in a semicircle, hke the spectators in a 
 Greek theatre. There were eight choirs, numbering in all some- 
 thing over two hundred girls, and each choir wore a sash of a 
 particular colour from shoulder to waist. These bright scarves 
 across the sombre dresses, all following the same line, gave an 
 appearance of uniformity to the whole costume. The eye hardly 
 noted the dingy browns, or rusty blacks, the well-worn olives, or 
 neutral greys of cheap, hard-wearing gowns. The bright faces, the 
 neatly dressed hair— with its varied colouring, from raven black, 
 thi'ough all the shades of brown and ruddy gold, to palest flaxen — 
 the blue, and yellow, and green, and rose, and violet sashes filled 
 the hall with life and colour. 
 
 Seen thus in a mass of smiling humanity the clubs of London 
 seemed to have sent out a bevy of beauties. The general effect 
 was excellent ; and when all the voices burst forth in a great gush 
 of melody, as the united choirs attacked Mendelssohn's " Greeting," 
 Gerard felt the sudden thrill of sjonpathy which brings unbidden 
 tears to the eyes. 
 
 After that burst of harmony, in which all the choirs sang 
 together, there came other part-songs by separate choirs. One of 
 these by the members of a club at Chelsea, which called itself some- 
 what ambitiously the St. Cecilia, struck Gerard as a marked advance 
 upon the others. They sang Schubert's " Wanderer," arranged as 
 a part-song, with English words, and among the many voices there 
 were tones of purest quality which went to Gerard HiUersdon's 
 heart, and moved him more than the new tenors and much heralded 
 sopranos from Italy, America, and Australia had been able to do of 
 late. Lideed, there had been nights at the opera when he, who 
 was passionately fond of music, had begun to fancy that he had left
 
 124 Germ'd ; or, 
 
 ofif caring for it; that one may get beyond music as one gets beyond 
 so many other pleasures; that even to that pure and perfect 
 enjoyment there may come a season of satiety. 
 
 To-night those famiHar notes thrilled him; those fresh young 
 voices pealing out over the crowded hall awakened in him a rapture 
 of humanity, a longing to be one with this world of humble toilers, 
 this world of struggles and of cares, in which the pleasures were so 
 simple and so few. This was a gala night, no doubt, for all these 
 girls. To stand on yonder platform, to wear those bright-coloured 
 sashes, and mingle their voices in tuneful harmonies, meant a festival. 
 He thought of the girls he met in society, the girls steeped to the 
 lips in worldliness and social intrigue ; girls who calculated the cost 
 of every entertainment, appraised its value, social and financial ; 
 sneered if the floral decorations at a ball were sparely done ; sneered 
 even more contemptuously when Transatlantic or newly-made wealth 
 obtruded itself upon the eye in a too lavish magnificence ; girls who 
 were gourmets upon leaving the nursery, and who passed at once 
 from the schoolroom bread and butter to a nice discrimination iu 
 quails, ortolans, and perigord pie ; girls who went gaily flirting and 
 dancing through the flowery groves of a London June, all freshness 
 and infantine candour imder the tempered incandescent lamps, yet 
 havinff one eye always steadily directed to the main chance of an 
 eligible husband and a handsome establishment. 
 
 ^Yhile he idly philosophised, gazing somewhat dreamily at the 
 wall of faces, rising in a semicircle in front of him, till the topmost 
 rank seemed to touch the roof of the hall, his eye suddenly fastened 
 upon one face in the middle distance, a delicate and pensive face, 
 far paler than the majority of those faces, though pallor is the pre- 
 dominant note in the complexions of London work girls. That one 
 face having once been perceived by him, shone out from the mass 
 of faces, separate and distinct, and held his gaze. It was the face 
 that had haunted his mind since that strange night in Justin Jermj-n's 
 chambers, the face of the girl at the sewing-machine. Line for line 
 it was the face he had seen in a vision, distinct in its identity as the 
 living face he was looking at to-night. 
 
 When the singing ceased he questioned Lady Jane, who sat nest 
 
 him'. 
 
 " There is a girl in the Chelsea choir, a very lovely girl, but witli 
 a look of care in her face," he said. " Do you know who she is ? " 
 
 " I tlnnk I know whom you mean. Can you point her out to 
 me?"
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 1 2 5 
 
 He counted the rows and the heads, and indicated the exact 
 position of the girl whose face attracted him. 
 
 " Do tell me what you know about her," he said earnestly. 
 
 " Very httle. She is not in my parish or in my club. I beheve 
 she is a good girl. She lives with her father " 
 
 " Who was once a gentleman and a scholar, but who is now 
 nothing but a drunkard," interrupted Gerard. 
 
 " You know her, then ? " exclaimed Lady Jane. 
 
 " Is that her history ? " 
 
 " I fear it is. She came once to a social evening at our club, and 
 I talked to her, but she was very reticent, and it is from other girls 
 1 have heard the little I know of her story. The father was in the 
 Church, but disgraced himself by intemperate habits. The girl who 
 told me this heard it from him, not from his daughter. Hester is a 
 brave, good girl, and bears the burden of her father's past foUies, 
 and works very hard to maintain him in comfort. She is a very 
 clever hand at braiding upon cloth. You may have noticed the 
 braided gowns and jackets that have been worn of late years. 
 Hester Dale does that kind of work for the fashionable tailors." 
 
 " Is it hand work or done bv the sewinir-machine ? " 
 
 " The greater part is machine work. Hester is very expert — a 
 really exquisite worker by hand or machine — but it is a hard life at 
 best. I wish we could do more to brighten it for her. We could 
 give her many little treats, and pleasant excursions in the country, 
 if she could only forget that she is a gentleman's daughter, and mix 
 with omr gii-ls upon an equal footing. She would find a good deal 
 of natural refinement among them, common as their surroundings 
 are. But she does not care to join in anything but the singing 
 classes. Music is her only pleasure." 
 
 " Is not London a place of terrible temptations for so lovely a girl, 
 under such adverse circumstances ? " asked Gerard, in the pause that 
 followed the next part-song, by an East End choir. 
 
 " Oh, Hester is not that kind of girl," answered Lady Jane, 
 quickly ; " she is too pure-minded to be approached by any evil 
 influences." 
 
 Another choir burst into Mendelssohnic melody, " The Maybells 
 and the Flowers," a choral song that sounded gay and fresh as May 
 itself — and Gerard was again constrained to sUence, but he never 
 took his eyes from the pure oval of that pale, pensive face, with its 
 lovely violet eyes, full of a dreamy sweetness, gentle, trustful, inno- 
 cent as the eyes of a child. Verily, this was a loveliness exempt
 
 126 Gerard; or, 
 
 from the snares aud lures that lie in wait for vulgar beautj'. A girl 
 with such a face as that would not be easily tempted. 
 
 His mind went back to those two occasions upon which he had 
 met Hester Davenport. He remembered that autumn afternoon at 
 the Eectory, when he went into the drawing-room to bid Lihan good- 
 bye, and found a strange young lady sitting with her — a young lady 
 in a plain alpaca gown and a neat straw hat, and with the loveliest 
 face he had seen for many a long day. He remembered the few 
 words interchanged with the curate's daughter — the commonplace 
 inquiries as to how she hked Hanover, and Hanover's waj-s and 
 manners, and whether she had studied music or painting — and then 
 a hm-ried adieu, as he ran ofif to the station. He remembered that 
 other meeting by the sea, and a somewhat longer conversation — a 
 little talk about her favourite walks, and her favourite books. He 
 recalled the sweet face in its youthful fi-eshness — fair as the face of 
 the holy bride in Raffaelle's " Spozalizio " — and then he thought of 
 the girls he had known in the smart world, girls who had made 
 magnificent marriages on the strength of a beauty less exquisite — 
 who were now queens of society, treading lightly upon pathways 
 strewn with the roses of hfe — worshipped, feted, royal in their 
 supremacy. 
 
 And it was just the starting point, the entourage that made all 
 the diflference. This girl might sit at her sewing-machine till her 
 loveHness faded to the pale shadow of the beauty that has been. 
 
 He hardly heard the rest of the concert, though the voices were 
 sufficiently loud. He was in a troubled dream of a life, which, after 
 all, concerned him very httlc. What was Hecuba to liim, or he to 
 Hecuba? Yet, in his eagerness to find out more about Hester 
 Davenport he bade Lady Jane a hurried good night, and put his 
 sister into her carriage to be driven home alone. 
 
 " I am going for a stroll in the moonlight," he said. " Don't sit 
 up for me. I may go to my club for half an hour afterwards." 
 
 It was early yet, not quite ten o'clock, and the young May moon 
 was shining over the chimneys of Soho, a tempting night for a walk, 
 and Gerard was given to nocturnal perambulations, so Lilian hardly 
 wondered at being sent home alone. 
 
 He watched the brougham till it disappeared round a comer, and 
 then watched the doors of the hall till the audience had all passed 
 out, and had melted away into the infinite space of London ; and 
 then he watched the girls who composed the different choirs as they 
 departed, mostly in talkative clusters, full of gaiety after the even-
 
 The Woidd, the Flesh, and the Devil. 1 2 7 
 
 ing's amusement. Among so manj' girls, all dressed in much the 
 same fashion, it was not an easy task to single out one — but his eye 
 was keen to distinguish that one girl for whom he waited, as she 
 crossed the street, separating herself from the herd, and walking 
 rapidly westward, he following. She walked with the resolute pace 
 of a woman accustomed to thread her way through the streets of a 
 great city, uncaring for the faces that passed her by, unconscious of 
 observers, intent on her own business, self-contained and self-reUant. 
 Gerard Hillersdon followed on the opposite side of the way, waiting 
 for some quieter spot in which he might address her. They walked 
 in this fashion as far as St. James's Park, and there, under the 
 shelter of spring foliage, beneath Carlton Hoiise Terrace, he over- 
 took and accosted her. 
 
 " Good evening, Miss Davenport. I hope you have not forgotten 
 me — Gerard Hillersdon, son of the Rector of Helmsleigh ? " 
 
 He stood bareheaded in the faint evening light — half dusk, half 
 moonhght — holding out his hand to her ; but she did not take the 
 extended hand, and she was evidently anxious to pass on without 
 any conversation with him. 
 
 "No, I have not forgotten — but I am hurrying home to my father. 
 Good night, Mr. Hillersdon." 
 
 He would not let her go. 
 
 " Spare me a few minutes — only a few minutes," he pleaded. 
 " I won't delay your return. Let me walk by your side. My 
 sister, your old friend Lihan, is living in London with me. She 
 would like to call upon you if you will let her." 
 
 " She was always kind — but it is impossible. My father and I 
 have done with the world in which your sister lives. We are Kving 
 verj' humbly, but not unhappily — at least, I have only one anxiety, 
 and that would be worse if we were Hving in a palace." 
 
 " Do you think my sister would value or love you less because 
 you are working to mamtain your father? Oh, Miss Davenport, 
 you cannot think so meanly of an old friend 1 " 
 
 " No, no ; I am sure she would be as kind as ever — but I would 
 rather not see her. It would recall past miseries. I have tried to 
 blot out all memory of my past Jife — to exist only in the present, 
 I get on very well " — with a sad little smile — " while I can do that. 
 Please don't make it more difficult for me. Good night." 
 
 She stopped, and this time it was she who held out her hand in 
 fi-iendiy farewell. 
 
 He took the poor little hand, so small, so delicately fashioned, in
 
 128 Gerard; or, 
 
 its shabby cotton glove — a grey cotton glove that had been washed 
 and neatly darned. Ho took her hand, and held it gently, but with 
 no intention of accepting his dismissal. 
 
 "Let me walk home with you," he said. "I have so much to 
 say to you." 
 
 " I would rather not. I am used to being alone." 
 
 "A part of the way — at least, just a little way. I want to tell 
 you of all the changes that have happened since you left 
 Helmsleigh." 
 
 " They cannot concern me. I tell you again I have done with 
 all that life. I have no interest in it." 
 
 " Not even in my sistei-'s fate ? She was your friend." 
 
 " She was, and a very dear friend, but all that is past and gone. 
 I want to know nothing about her, except that she is well and 
 happy." 
 
 " She is both — happier than when you knew her. She is in that 
 exalted condition of happiness which seems common to girls who are 
 engaged to be married — cm-ious when one considers their oppor- 
 tunities of appraising the joys of domestic life in the persons of their 
 fathers and mothers." 
 
 " She is engaged? " mused Hester, forgetful at once of her resolve 
 not to be interested, and all a woman in her quick sympathies. " Is 
 her fiance any one I knew at Helmsleigh? " 
 
 " No ; he did not come to Helmsleigh until after you left. Ho 
 succeeded your father as curate ; but he is now in London. He is 
 the Vicar of St. Lawrence's. You may have seen him at Lady 
 Jane's club." 
 
 " No ; I very seldom go to the club. I give most of my leisure 
 to my father." 
 
 " Mr. Davenport is pretty well, I hope ? " inquired Gerard, hardly 
 knowing how to avoid giving her pain in any allusion to her father. 
 
 " Yes, thank you. He has tolerable health ; only — there is no 
 use in hiding it from you — there is always the old trouble to fear. 
 It does not come often, but it is a constant fear." 
 
 " He is not cured ? He still gives way to the old temptation ? " 
 
 "Sometimes. He is very good. He struggles against that 
 dreadful inclination ; but there are times when it is stronger than 
 himself. He fought a hard battle with himself when we were in 
 Australia — tried to gain his self-respect and the respect of his fellow- 
 men, lie succeeded in getting profitable employment as a clerk. 
 We were doing quite well ; but the evil hour came. He was
 
 The World, ike Flesh, and the Devil. 129 
 
 tempted by foolish friendly people, who laughed at my anxieties 
 about him — and — the end was madness. He was dismissed from 
 the office where he was a gentleman and a person of importance, 
 with a good salary, and he was glad to di'op into a lower form of 
 emplojTuent ; and he sank and sank to almost the lowest in the 
 city of Melbourne. His friends ceased to care for him. They 
 called him irreti-ievable. So then I took the care of his life upon 
 ray own shoulders. I was able to earn a httle money by giving 
 lessons in a depot for sewing-machines, where I learnt a good many 
 improvements in machine-work — improvements that are not yet 
 common in England — and I saved just enough to pay our passage 
 home — a steerage passage. I brought him home, a sad wreck, 
 hopeless, broken in body and mind, and we found lodgings in 
 Chelsea — very cheap and very humble, but clean and wholesome. 
 A distant relation of my father's pays the rent. "We have lived 
 there ever since. I thought at first that I should be able to find 
 pupils for the pianoforte or singing, and that my German education 
 would help me in that way ; but I found very soon how hopeless 
 that is, especially when one is hving in a poor neighbourhood and 
 wearing a threadbare gown. And then I was lucky enough to dis- 
 cover a mantle-maker in Knightsbridge who wanted what is called 
 a braiding hand, and as my knowledge of the latest sewing-machine 
 enabled me to do this kmd of work better than most girls, I soon 
 got regular employment, and I have been able to make my hving 
 ever since." 
 
 "A poor living and a hard life, I fear," said Gerard. 
 
 " Oh, we have enough. We are just comfortable, father and I ; 
 and he is so fond of me and so good to me that I ought to bo 
 thankful and happy." 
 
 " And have you no recreation, no variety in your existence ? Is 
 it all hard work ? " 
 
 " I have the choir practice. That makes a little change now and 
 then, only I don't like to leave my father too often." 
 
 "Does he do nothing? " 
 
 " He reads the papers at the free library, and in fine weather he 
 does a little gardenmg." 
 
 " But he does nothing to help you — he earns nothing ? " 
 
 " No, he is past all that. If he could earn money evil would 
 come of it. As it is his pockets are always empty, poor dear, and 
 he cannot pay for the dreadful stufi" that would madden his brain. 
 Brandy and chloral cost money, luckily for him and for me." 
 
 E
 
 130 Gej^ard ; or, 
 
 " Will you let Lilian help you ? " asked Gerard. " "We are rich 
 now, ridiculously rich. We hold our wealth in trust for all who 
 need it. Let my sister do something to make your life lighter. 
 She shall put a sum of money into the Knightsbridge Bank to your 
 credit, open an account for you, and you can draw the money as 
 you want it. She shall do that to-morrow. Consider the thing 
 done." 
 
 " Do not dream of it, Mr. Hillersdon," she answered indignantly. 
 "I would never touch a sixpence of any such money. Do you 
 suppose I would take alms from you or any one else while I am 
 young and strong, and am able to get regular work ? I wonder you 
 can think so poorly of me." 
 
 " I wonder you can be so cruel as to refuse my friendship — for 
 in refusing my help you deny me the privilege of a friend. It is 
 mere stubbornness to reject a small share in Lilian's good fortune. 
 I tell you again we are absurdly rich." 
 
 " If you were twice as rich as the richest of the Rothschilds I 
 would not sacrifice my independence. If I were penniless and my 
 father ill the case might be different. I might ask your sister to 
 help me." 
 
 '• And must I do nothing to lighten your burden, to soften your 
 hardUfe?" 
 
 " It is not a hard life. It is the life of thousands of girls in this 
 great city — girls who are contented with their lot, and are bright 
 and happy. I am luckier than many of them, for my work is better 
 paid." 
 
 " But you were not bom to this lot! " 
 
 " Perhaps not ; but I hardly think that makes it any worse to 
 bear. I have hved the life long enough to be accustomed to it." 
 
 They were in Eaton Square by this time, the long and rather 
 dreary souare, with its tall, bam-hke church, which even Fashion 
 cannot make beautiful. \Vhen they were about half-way between 
 the church and the western end of the square Hester stopped 
 abruptly. 
 
 " I must beg you to come no further," she said, and there was 
 a resolute look in the pale proud face under the hght of the street 
 lamp that commanded obedience. 
 
 " Good night, then," he said moodily. " You will at least tell 
 me where you live ? " 
 
 '• Xo, there would be nothing gained. My father and I wish to 
 be forgotten."
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 131 
 
 She hurried away from him, and he stood there in moonlight 
 and gaslight, in the diill level square, thinking how strange 
 life is. 
 
 Should he follow her and find out where she lived ? No ; that 
 would be a base and vulgar act, and he might obtain her address 
 without that sacrifice of self-respect and risk of her contempt. He 
 could find out at the club, of whose choir she was a member. She 
 fancied herself safely hidden under her assumed name, no doubt; 
 but he had heard that alias from Lady Jane, and it would be easy 
 enough to discover the dwelling-place of Hester Dale. 
 
 He walked home melancholy, and yet elated. He was so glad 
 to have found her. It seemed as if a new life were beginning for 
 him that night. 
 
 He did not go to any of the haimts which invite the footsteps of 
 youth betwixt midnight and morning. Dancing tempted him not, 
 neither music nor cards. He was out of tune with all such common 
 amusements, and the commonplace emotions which they produce. 
 He felt as Endymion felt after the mystery of the cavern ; felt as 
 if in that walk in the dim evening shadows and in the bright moon- 
 light he had been in another world, and now was back in the old 
 world again, and foimd it passing dull. 
 
 AU was silent in his house when he went in, but through an open 
 window in the lofty hall a chilling wind crept in and stirred the 
 palm leaves, and awakened weird harmonies in an ^olian harp 
 that hung near the casement. His favourite reading-lamp was 
 burning on the table in his study, that room which owed its existence 
 to Justin Jermyn's taste rather than his own, and was yet in all 
 things as his own taste would have chosen. 
 
 The valet who was waiting up for him received his orders and 
 retired, and as his footsteps slowly died away in the corridor, Gerard 
 Hillersdon felt the oppression of an intolerable soKtude. 
 
 There were letters on a side table. Of all the numerous deliveries 
 in the district none ever failed to bring a heap of letters for the 
 millionaire — invitations, letters of introduction, begging letters, 
 circulars, prospectuses of every imaginable mode and manner of 
 scheme engendered in the wild dreams of the speculator. He only 
 glanced at these things, and then flung them into a basket which 
 his secretary cleared every morning. His secretary replied to the 
 invitations ; he had neatly engraved cards expressive of every phase 
 of circumstances — the pleasure in accepting — the honour of dining 
 — the regret in dechning — and all the rest. The chief thing which
 
 13- Gerard; or, 
 
 money had done for Gerard Hillersdon was to lessen the labour of 
 life — to shunt all his burdens upon other shoulders. 
 
 This is -what wealth can do. If it cannot always buy happiness, 
 it can generally buy ease. It seems a hard thing to the millionaire 
 that he must endure his own gout, and that he cannot hire some 
 one to get up early in the morning for him. 
 
 Among all the letters which had accumulated since six o'clock, 
 there was only one that interested him, a long letter from Edith 
 Champion, who had the feminine passion for wi-iting lengthily to 
 the man she loved, albeit of late he had rarely replied in any more 
 impassioned form than a telegram. 
 
 " It is so much nicer to talk," he told her when she reproached 
 him, " and there is nothing to prevent our meeting." 
 
 " But there is. There are whole days on which we don't meet — 
 my Finchley daj's." 
 
 " True. But then we are so fresh to each other the day after. 
 Why discount our emotions by Amting about them ? I love to get 
 your letters, all the same," he added kindly. " Your pen is so 
 eloquent." 
 
 " I can say more with my pen than I ever dare to say with my 
 lips," she answered. 
 
 Her letter to-night was gi-aver than usual. 
 
 " I have been at Finchley all day — such a trying day. I think 
 the end is coming — at least, the doctors have told me thej' do not 
 give him much longer. I cannot say I fear he is dying, since you 
 know that liis death will mean the beginning of a new existence for 
 me, with all the hope and gladness of my girlhood ; and yet my 
 mind is full of fear when I think of him and of you, and of what 
 my life has been for the last three j^ears. I do not think I have 
 failed in any duty to him. I know that I have never thwarted him, 
 that I have studied his wishes in the arrangement of our lives, have 
 never complained of the dull people he brought about me, or refused 
 to send a card to any of his city friends. If he had objected to 
 your visits I should have given up your acquaintance. I have never 
 disobeyed him. But he liked to %ee you in his house ; he never 
 felt the faintest pang of jealousy, though he must have known that 
 you were more to me than any common friend. I have done my 
 duty, Gerard ; and yet I feel myself disgraced somehow by those 
 three years of my mamed life. I was sold like a slave in the 
 market-place, and though such bargains are the fashion nowadays, 
 and everyl)ody approves of the market and the barter, yet a woman
 
 Th& World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 133 
 
 •u-ho has consented to be bought by the highest bidder cannot feel 
 very proud of herself in after hfe. It is nearly over, Gerard, and 
 by-and-by you must teach me to foi-get. You must give me back 
 my girlhood. You can, and you only. There is no one else who 
 can — no one — ^no one." 
 
 He sat brooding, with that letter open before him. Yes, he was 
 bound as fast as ever man was bound — bound by every obligation 
 that could constrain an honest man. Conscience, feeling, honour 
 alike constrained him. This was the woman to whom he gave his 
 heart four years ago, in the fresh morning of a yoimg man's life — 
 hi that one bright year of youth when all pleasures, hopes, and 
 fancies are new and vivid, and when the feet that tread this work- 
 aday earth move as lightly as if they wore Mercury's pinions. What 
 a happy year it had been ! What a bright, laughing love ! Though 
 he might look back now and sneer at his first love as commonplace 
 and conventional, he could but remember how sunny the world had 
 been, how Hght his heart, how keen his enjoyment of life in those 
 thoughtless days — before he had learnt to think ! Yes ; that had 
 been the charm of existence — he had lived in the present. He 
 must try to hve in the present now — to look neither backward nor 
 forward — to enjoy, as the butterflies enjoy — without memory, with- 
 out forecast. 
 
 He had not forgotten the opening chapter of the " Peau de 
 Chagrin " — the dismal centenarian in the bric-a-brac shop, the man 
 with a face hke a death's head, the dreary stoic who had existed for 
 a hundred years, and yet had never lived. He had the novel on 
 the table before him — an edition de luxe, richly illustrated, with 
 duphcate engravings on India paper. The story had a curious 
 fascination for him, and he coiild not rid himself of the idea that the 
 consumptive Valentin was his own prototype. In a curious, fanci- 
 ful indulgence of this grim notion, he had nailed a large sheet of 
 drawing-paper on the paneUed wall that faced his writing-table. He 
 had no enchanted skin to hang on the white paper, to indicate by 
 its gradual contraction the wasting of his own life — the hurrying 
 feet of Death ; but he had invented for himself a gauge of his 
 strength and nervine vitality. Upon the elephantine sheet he 
 had drawn with a bold and rapid pen the irregular outline of an 
 imagmary chagrin skin, and from time to time he had drawn other 
 hues within this outline, always following the original form. In 
 the steadiness and force of the hue his pen made he saw an indica- 
 tion of the steadiness of his nerves, the soundness of his physical
 
 134 Gerard; or, 
 
 health. Of the five lines upon the ■u-hite paper the innermost 
 showed weakest and most uncertain. There had been a gradual 
 deterioration from the fu-st h'ne to the fifth. 
 
 To-night, after a long interval of melancholy thought, he rose 
 suddenly, dipped a broad-nibbed pen into a capacious ink-pot, and 
 with slow, uncertain hand traced the sixth line — traced it with a 
 hand so tremulous that this last line differed more markedly from 
 the line immediately before it than that fifth line differed from the 
 first bold outline. Yet between the first and the fifth lines there had 
 been an interval of nearly six months, while between the fifth and 
 the sixth the interval was but three days. 
 
 The element of passion, with its fever of hope and expectancy, 
 had newly entered into his life. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 " OUT WENT in: heart's kew fire, ajsT> left it cold." 
 
 Gekakd HiLLERSDoy and Mrs. Champion met but rarely during the 
 month of May. Doomed men are apt to linger beyond the antici- 
 pations of their medical attendants, and the famous physician from 
 Cavendish Square continued his bi-weekly visits through all the 
 bright long sunny days which society's calendar has devoted to 
 the pursuit of pleasure — a chase from which Mrs. Champion's 
 handsome face and form were missing. Other figures there were as 
 perfect, other faces as famous for beauty ; and it was only once in a 
 way that one of the butterflies noted the absence of that Queen 
 butterfly ; it was only once in a way that friendship murmured -^nth 
 a sigh, " Poor Mrs. Champion, mewed up with an invahd husband 
 all through this lovely season ! " 
 
 Edith Champion gave the fading life her uttermost devotion. 
 She had a keen sense of honour, after all — this wife who had gone 
 on loving her first lover all through her married life. She had a 
 more sensitive conscience than her world would have readily believed. 
 She wanted to do her duty to the dying husband, so that she might 
 surrender herself heart and mind to a new life of gladness when he 
 should be at peace, and yet feel no sting of remorse, and yet have 
 no dark memory to fling its shadow across her sunlight.
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 135 
 
 With this laudable desire, she spent the gi-eater part of her life at 
 Finchley, where she had taken a villa near the doctor's house, so as 
 to be within call by day or night. She withdrew herself from aU 
 friends and acquaintances except Gerard Hillersdon, and even him 
 she saw only two or three times a week, driving into London and 
 taking tea in the cool Hertford Street drawing-room, with her nerves 
 always strained by the dread of some urgent telegram that should 
 call her back to her duties. 
 
 " The end may come at any moment," she said. " It would be 
 dreadful if I were absent at the last." 
 
 " Do you think it would really matter — to him? " asked Gerard. 
 
 " I think it would. He rarely addresses me by name, but I think 
 he always knows me. He will take things fi"om my hand — food or 
 medicine — which he will not take from his nurses. They tell me he 
 is much more restless when I am not there. I can do very little 
 for him ; but if 1 can make him just a shade easier and calmer by 
 Bitting at his bedside it is my duty to be there. I feel that it is 
 wrong even to be away for a couple of hours this afternoon — but if 
 I did not leave him and that dreary house once in a way 1 think my 
 brain would go as his has gone." 
 
 " Is the house so very dreadful ? " 
 
 " Dreadful, no. It is a charming house, nicely furnished, the very 
 pink of neatness, in the midst of a delightful old garden. It is what 
 one knows about it — the troubled minds that have worn themselves 
 out in those prim, orderly rooms, the sleepless eyes that have stared 
 at those bright, pretty wall-papers, the wild delusions, the attempted 
 suicides, the hngering deaths ! When I think of all those things, 
 the silence of the house seems intolerable, the ticking of the clock a 
 slow torture. But you will teach me to forget all this misery by-and- 
 by, Gerard? You will teach me to forget, won't you ? " 
 
 That was the only allusion she had ever made of late to the near 
 future. It was forgetfulness she yearned for, as the chief boon the 
 future could bestow. 
 
 " You caimot think how long this summer has seemed to me," 
 she said. " I hope I am not impatient, that I would not hasten the 
 end by a single day — but the days and the hours are terribly long." 
 An hour was the utmost respite that Mrs. Champion allowed 
 herself in that cool perfumed room, tete-d-tete with her first lover, 
 Burroimded with ail the old frivohties, the tea-table, set out with 
 tiny foie-gras sandwiches, and hot-house fruit, the automatic 
 Japanese fan, mounted on a bamboo stand, set in motion with the
 
 1^6 Gerard; or, 
 
 lightest touch, the new books and magazuaes scattered about, to be 
 carried off" in her victoria presently, for the solace of wakeful nights. 
 Only an hour of converse with the man she loved, broken into very 
 often by some officious caller, who saw her carriage at the door, and 
 insisted upon being let in. 
 
 It seemed to her now and then that Gerard was somewhat absent 
 and restrained during these interviews, but she attributed his languid 
 manner to the depressing nature of all she had to tell him. Her 
 own low spirits communicated themselves to him. 
 
 " We are so thoroughly in sympathy," she told herself. 
 
 He left her one afternoon late in Jmie, and instead of going into 
 the Park where the triple rank of carriages by the Achilles stafcie 
 oHered to the admiring lounger a bouquet of high-bred beauty, set 
 off by the latest triumphs of court dressmakers, he walked past the 
 Alexandra Hotel and dropped into Sloane Street, and thence to 
 Chelsea. His feet ha d taken him in that direction very often of late. 
 
 He had found no difficulty in discovering Hester's dwelling-place, 
 for on his way to the St. Cecilia Club he had stumbled against old 
 Davenport, bottle-nosed, shabby, but wearing clean linen, carefully 
 brushed clothes, and with a certain siu'vival of his old Oxford 
 manner. 
 
 Neither drunken habits nor dark vicissitudes had impaired the 
 old man's memory. He recognised Hillersdon at a glance, and 
 cordially returned his greeting. 
 
 " Wonderful changes have come about since we saw each other 
 in Devonshire, Mr. Hillersdon," he said. " I have gone very low 
 down the ladder of Fortune, and you have gone very high up. I 
 congratulate you upon your good luck — not undeserved, certainly 
 not. You acted like a hero, my dear young friend, and such an 
 act merited a handsome reward. I read the story in the news- 
 papers." 
 
 "A much exaggerated version of the truth, no doubt. I'll walk 
 your way, if you please, Mr. Davenport. I should hke to know 
 Iiow the world has used you." 
 
 " No better than it uses a homeless mongrel, sir ; but perhaps n() 
 worse than I deserved. You remember what Hamlet says : ' Use 
 every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping ? ' I 
 don't like to take you out of your way, Mr. Hillersdon." 
 
 " My way is no way. 1 was only strolling — with no settled 
 purpose." 
 
 They were on the Chelsta embankment, where Lhc old houses of
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 137 
 
 Cheyne Walk still recall the old-world restfulness of a day that is 
 dead, while the Suspension Bridge and Battersea Park tell of an 
 age that means change and progress. 
 . " you like old Chelsea and its associations," said Davenport. 
 
 "Very much. I remember the place when I was a boy, and I 
 recognise improvement everj'where ; but I gi-ieve over the lost 
 landmarks, Don Saltero, the old narrow Cheyne Walk, the sober 
 shabbiness " 
 
 " There are older things that I remember — in the days when my 
 people lived in Lowndes Square, and I used to come fresh from 
 Balliol to take my fill of pleasure in the London season. My father 
 was a prosperous Q.C., a man employed in all the great cases where 
 intellect and oratory were wanted. He was earning a fine income 
 —though not half as much as your famous silk -gowns earn nowadays 
 — and he spent as fast as he earned. He had a large family and 
 was very liberal to his children — and when he died, in the prime of 
 life, he left his widow and orphans the fag-end of a lease, a suite of 
 Louis Quatorze furniture, already out of fashion, a choice collection 
 of Wedgwood, and a few Prouts, Tophams, Hunts, and Duncans. 
 He had put away nothing out of the big fees that had been pouring 
 in for the last fifteen years of his life. He used to talk about 
 beginning to save nest year, but that next year never came. The 
 sale of the lease and furniture made a little fund for my mother and 
 three unmarried daughters. For me and my brothers the world 
 was our oyster — to be opened as best we might." 
 
 " You had scholarship to help you." 
 
 " Yes, Greek and Latm were my only stock in trade. A friend 
 of my father's gave me a small living within a couple of years of 
 my taking priest's orders, and on the strength of that I married, 
 and took private pupils. I lost my wife when Hetty was only 
 twelve years old, but things had begun to go wrong before then. 
 My second living was in a low district, village and vicarage on clay 
 soil, too many trees, and no drainage. The devil's tooth of neuralgia 
 fastened itself upon me, body and bones, and my life for somo 
 years was a perpetual fight with pain. Like Paul I fought with 
 beasts — invisible beasts — that gnawed into my soul. Here is my 
 poor httle domicile. I hardly knew we had walked so far.'' 
 
 He had taken his homeward way automatically, while Gerard 
 walked beside him, through shabby streets of those small serai- 
 detached houses which the builder has devised for needy gentility 
 and prosperous labour— here the healthy mechanic with five and
 
 138 Gerard ; or, 
 
 thirty shillings a week, corduroy trousers and shirt sleeves, there 
 the sickly clerk, with a weekly guinea and a threadbare alpaca coat. 
 Here shining windows and gaily filled flower-boxes, there dirt and 
 Blatternliness, broken bottles and weeds in the tiny forecourt, 
 misery and squalor in its most hideous aspect. Gerard had marked 
 the shabbiness of the neighbourhood, and he felt that somewhere 
 in the midst of this sordid labyrinth he should find his Ariadne, 
 though her hand would never have furnished him with the clue. 
 
 The house before which Mr. Davenport stopped was no better 
 than the other houses which they had passed, but the best had 
 been made of its shabbiness, the forecourt was full of stocks and 
 carnations, and a row of Mary lilies marked the boimdary rail which 
 divided this tiny enclosure from the adjacent patch. The window- 
 panes shone bright and clear, and the vrindow-box was a hanging 
 garden of ivy-leafed geranium, yeUow marguerites, and mignonette. 
 
 " What a pretty httle garden ! " exclaimed Gerard. 
 
 " Yes, there are a good many flowers for such a scrap of ground. 
 Hettie and I are very fond of our garden — we've a goodish bit of 
 ground at the back. It's about the only thing we can take any 
 pride in ■nnth such surroundings as ours." 
 
 And then, lingering at the gate, as Gerard lingered, the old man 
 asked — 
 
 " Will you come in and rest after your walk ? I can give you a 
 lemon squash." 
 
 " That's a tempting offer upon one of the hottest afternoons we 
 have had this year. Yes, I shall be pleased to sit down for half an 
 hour, if you are sure I shan't be in your way." 
 
 " I shall be very glad of your company. I get plenty of solitude 
 when Hettie is out on her long tramps to Knightsbridge. She 
 often passes the house in which her grandfather used to entertain 
 Bome of the best people in London — a work-girl, with a bimdle 
 under her arm. Hard lines, ain't it ? " 
 
 He opened the door and admitted his visitor into a passage four- 
 teen feet by two feet sis, out of which opened the front parlour and 
 general living room, a small room, with a little stunted cupboard on 
 each side of the fireplace. Gerard looked about him with greedy 
 eyes, noting every detail. 
 
 The furniture was of the commonest, a pembroke table, half a 
 dozen cane-seated chairs, a sofa such as can only be found in 
 lodging-house parlours ; but there were a few things which gave 
 individuality to the room, and in somewise redeemed its shabbiness.
 
 l^he World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 139 
 
 Fronting the window stood a capacious arm-chair, covered with 
 apple-blossom chintz ; the ugly sofa was draped with soft Japanese 
 muslin; a cheap paper screen of cool colouring broke the ugly 
 outline of the folding doors, and a few little bits of old china and a 
 row of books gave meaning to the wooden slabs at the top of the 
 dwarf cupboards. 
 
 There was a bowl of flowers on the table, vivid yellow corn- 
 cockles, which brightened the room like a patch of sunhght. 
 
 " Try that easy chair," said Davenport, " it's uncommonly com- 
 fortable." 
 
 " Thanks, no," seating himself near the window, " this will do 
 very nicely. That's your own particular chair, I know." 
 
 " You are right," sighed the old man, sinking into its cushioned 
 depths. " This chair was Hettie's present on my last Wrthday. It 
 was a shabby old chair when I first saw it at a broker's in the 
 King's Road — but I was caught by the comfortable shape — and I 
 told my poor girl I'd seen a second-hand chair that looked the 
 picture of comfort. She didn't seem to take much notice of what 
 I said, and the nest time I passed the dealer's yard — where the 
 chair used to stand in the open air amongst a lot of other things — it 
 was gone. I told Hettie it had disappeared. ' Sold, I suppose,' 
 said she, ' what a pity ! ' And nearly a year afterwards, on my 
 birthdaj', the chair was brought in, freshly covered, as you see it. 
 My poor girl had been paying for it by instalments, a shilling or 
 two at a time, ever since I mentioned it to her. How proud and 
 happy we both were that day, in spite of our poverty ! I remember 
 when I was at the University my brothers and sisters and 1 clubbed 
 together to buy a silver tea-kettle for my mother on her silver- 
 wedding day — and it only resulted in general mortification. She 
 was sorry we had spent our money — and she didn't like the shape 
 of the kettle. It was half covered with a long inscription, so we 
 couldn't change it, and I know two of my sisters were in tears 
 about it before the day was over. But I must make you that lemon 
 squash, l^unc est bibendum ! Perhaps though, you'd prefer a 
 John Collins? " — with a curiously interrogative look. " There isn't 
 any gin in the house, but I could send for a bottle." 
 
 "I much prefer the unsophisticated lemon; though I enxy a 
 city waiter the facility with which he made his name a part of 
 the convivial vocabulary. Falstaff could not have done more." 
 
 Mr. Davenport opened one of the dwarf cupboards, and produced 
 tumblers, lemons, and pounded sugar. Then he went out of the
 
 140 Gerard ; or, 
 
 room, and reappeared in a few minutes with a jug of frcsli water. 
 His narrow means did not permit the luxury of a s^-phon. He 
 concocted the two glasses of lemonade carefully and deliberately, 
 Gerard Hillersdon watching him all the time in a melancholy 
 reverie ; but the image that filled his mind was that of the absent 
 daughter, not the form of the father bodily present to his ej'e. 
 
 He was thinking of yonder easy-chair, paid for in sohtary shillings, 
 the narrow surplus left from the necessities of daily Hfe. He 
 thought of that refined and dehcate face, that fragile form, far too 
 finely made for life's common uses — thought of her daily deprivations, 
 her toilsome walks, her weary monotony of task -work. 
 
 Yes, there was the modern W'heel upon which feminine poverty 
 is racked — the sewing-machine. It stood in front of the window 
 by which he was sitting. She had covered it with a piece of art 
 muslin, giving an air of prettiness even to the instrument of her 
 toil. A pair of delf candlesticks stood on a little table near the 
 machine, with the candles burnt low in the sockets. She had been 
 working late last night, perhaps. It maddened him to think that 
 out of all his wealth he could do nothing to help her — she would 
 take nothing out of his superabundance. If he were to heed the 
 appeals of all the strangers who wrote to him — pouring out their 
 domestic secrets, their needs and troubles, in eight-page letters, he 
 might give away every penny of his income — but this one woman, 
 whom he yearned to help, would take nothing. This was Fate's 
 sharpest irony. Fidl of these thoughts, he sipped his lemonade 
 and discussed the poHtical situation with Mr. Davenport, whose 
 chief occupation was to read the papers at the Free Library, and 
 who was an ardent politician. Ho hngered in the hope of seeing 
 Hester before he left. 
 
 It was nearly four o'clock, and the June afternoon had a drowsy 
 warmth which was fast beguiling old Nicholas Davenport into 
 slumber. His words were coming very slowh^, and he gradually 
 sank^into a blissful silence, and was off upon that rapid dream- 
 journey which takes the sleeper into a new world in an instant- 
 plunges him into the midst of a draviatis personce that moment 
 invented whom he seems to have known all his life. 
 
 A bee was humming amongst the sweet-scented stocks, and a 
 town butterfly was fluttering about the mignonette. A hawker's 
 cry in the next street came with a musical sound, as if the hawker 
 had been some monotonous bird with a song of only three notes. 
 Still Gerard lingered, hoping that the old man would wake presently
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 141 
 
 and resume the conversation. He was in despair at the idea of 
 leaving without seeing Hester. 
 
 He wanted to see that delicately-modelled face — the face in the 
 Sposalizio — in the daylight. He wanted to be her friend, if she 
 would let him. T\Tiat harm could there be in such a friendship? 
 They were too completely severed by the iron wall of circumstances 
 ever to become lovers. But friends they might be — friends for 
 mutual help and comfort. He could share with her the good things 
 of this life. She could spiritualise his lower nature by the intiuence 
 of that child-hke purity which set her apart from the common world. 
 
 He heard a Hght footstep, and then the click of a latch. She was 
 at the gate, she was coming in, a slim and graceful figure in a light 
 cambric gown and a saUor hat, such a neat little white straw hat, 
 which cast pearly shadows on the exquisite cheek and chin, and 
 darkened the violet eyes. 
 
 She started and blushed crimson on seeing him, and darted a 
 despairingly reproachful look at her father, who had risen confusedlv 
 in the midst of a dream. Gerard, too, had risen as she entered, and 
 stood facing her. 
 
 " Don't be angry with your father or with me. Miss Davenport. 
 We happened to meet each other an hour ago on the Embankment, 
 and I walked home with him. And now that I am admitted to 
 your home you will let me bring my sister, I hope. She wUl be 
 glad to renew her old friendship with you. Do not hold her at 
 arm's length, even if you shut your door against me. You know 
 how sympathetic she is." 
 
 Hester did not answer him for a minute or so. She sank into a 
 chair, and took off the neat little hat, and passed her hand across 
 her brow, smoothing the soft pale brown hair which shadowed lier 
 forehead. She looked tired and harassed, almost too weary for 
 speech, and at last, when speech came, there was a languor in her 
 tone, an accent as of one who submits to fate. 
 
 •• Yes, I remember," she said, " your sister was always good and 
 sweet. She was very kind to me ; some of piy happiest hours were 
 spent with her. But that is all past and done with. It is hardly 
 kind of you to ask me to remember " 
 
 '•I don't want you to remember the old life. I only want yon to 
 open your heart to an old friend, who will help to make your present 
 life happier. Lilian may come, may she not ? I can see you 
 mean yes." 
 
 '• How can I say no, when you are so eager to do me a kind-
 
 142 Gera7'd ; or, 
 
 ness? " and then she glanced at the old man piteously. "If father 
 does not mind a face that wiU recall his residence at Helmsleigh, 
 and all he suSered there." 
 
 " No, no, Hettie, I don't mind. I have suffered too much, and in 
 too many places, since the Pain-devil stuck his claws into me. If 
 the people who blame me — who talk of me as a drunken old dotard 
 — could sufler an hour of the agony I have suffered off and on for 
 months at a stretch, they would be a little more charitable in their 
 judgments. I am not blaming your father, Mr. Hillersdon ; he was 
 very good to me. He bore with me as long as he could, till at last 
 I disgraced myself. It was a terrible scandal ; no man could bear 
 up against it. I felt after that night all was over." 
 
 " Don't, father, don't speak of it." 
 
 " I must, Hettie. I want to tell Mr. Hillersdon all that you have 
 been to me — what a heroine, what a martyr ! " 
 
 " Nonsense, father ! I have only done what other daughters are 
 doing all the world over. And, thank God, you are better now! 
 You have had very little of the old pain for the last two years. 
 You are sti'onger and better, living as you do now, than when — ■ 
 when you were less careful. Your neuralgia will never come back, 
 I hope." 
 
 " If Miss Hillersdon doesn't mind visiting us in this shabby 
 lodging, we shall be very pleased to see her," said Davenport, 
 brushing away a remorseful tear. " It cuts me to the heart that my 
 poor girl has not a friend in the world except that best of women, 
 Lady Jane Blenheim." 
 
 His request being granted, Gerard had no excuse for delajnng his 
 departure. He offered his hand to Hester as he said good-bye, and 
 when her slender fingers touched his own, his cheek and brow 
 flushed as if a wave of fire had passed over his face, and his eyes 
 grew dim ; only for a moment, but that fiery wave had never 
 clouded his vision at the touch of any other woman — not even Edith 
 Champion, to whom he had given the devotion of years. His heart 
 was beating violently as he walked along the shabby street, past 
 gardens that were full of summer flowers, and forecourts that were 
 no better than rubbish heaps, past squalid indigence and industrious 
 poverty. It was not till he pulled up under the shadow of the trees 
 in Cheyne Walk that the sense of a great joy or a great trouble 
 began to abate, and he was able to think calmly. 
 
 He seated himself on a bench near the river, and waited till his 
 pulses beat a more tranquil measure.
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 143 
 
 "I am a fool," hie muttered. "Why should her beauty agitate 
 me like this ? I have seen beautiful women before to-day — women 
 in the zenith of their charms, not pallid and worn hke this heroic 
 girl. The woman who is to be my wife is handsomer, and in a 
 grander style of beauty. And yet, because I must not care for this 
 one, every nerve is strained, every pulse is racing. I am a fool, and 
 the worst of fools, remembering what old Dr. South told me. Is 
 this sparing myself? is this husbanding my resources? To be so 
 moved by such a trivial cause — not to be able to admire a beautiful 
 face without being shaken as if by an earthquake." 
 
 He remembered the book upon his wTiting-table, the " Peau de 
 Chagrin," that story which had an irresistible fascination for him, 
 every page of which he had hung over many a night in his hours of 
 lonely thought. How vain had been Valentin's endeavour to lead 
 that passionless Hfe in which the oil in the lamp burns slowly ! But 
 he hoped to prove himself wiser than Balzac's ill-fated hero. He, 
 too, had planned an existence free from all strong emotions. In 
 his life of millionaire and man of fashion there were to be no 
 agitations. He looked forward to a future union with Edith as a 
 haven of rest. Married to a woman whom he had loved long 
 enough to take love for granted, a woman whose fideHty had been 
 tested by time, whose constancy he need never doubt, for him the 
 years would ghde onward with easy pace to sober middle life, and 
 even to the grey dignity of honoured age. But he, like Valentin, had 
 been warned against the drama and passion of life. He was to be, 
 not to act or to suffer. 
 
 And for a mere transient fancy, the charm of a pensive coun- 
 tenance, the romance of patient poverty, he had let his veins run 
 liquid fire, his heart beat furiously. He was ashamed of his own 
 inconsistency ; and presently, seeing a hansom sauntering along 
 Tiuder the trees with a horse that looked a good mover, he hailed 
 the man, and asked if his horse were fresh enough to drive as far 
 as Finchley. Naturally the reply was yes, and in the next minute 
 he was being can'ied swiftly through the summer dust with his face 
 to the north. 
 
 He had often meditated this drive to the northern suburb with 
 his own horses, and then it had seemed to him that to approach 
 the house in wliich Mr. Champion was lengthening out the lees of 
 life would be an error in taste, although he and the dying man had 
 been upon the friendliest terms ever since Edith's marriage. This 
 afternoon he felt a curious eagerness to be wth the woman to
 
 144 Gej'ard ; or, 
 
 wliom he had bound himself, a feverish anxiety which subjugated 
 all scruples. 
 
 He drove to the house Mrs. Champion had hired for herself — a 
 small villa, in a -well-kept garden. It was past eight when he rang 
 the bell, and the lawn and flower-beds were golden in the sunset. 
 He expected to find Edith Champion at dinner, and had made up 
 his mind to dine with her, tete-oAete perhaps, for the first time in 
 their Uves. 
 
 Dinner was out of the question, for the present, at any rate. One 
 of the match footmen, whose faces he knew in Hertford Street, 
 came strolling in a leisurely way across the lawn, pipe in mouth, to 
 answer the bell, suddenly pocketed his pipe and changed his 
 bearing'on recognising ]\Ir. Hillersdon, and informed him that Mrs. 
 Champion was at Kendal House, and that Mr. Champion was 
 very bad. 
 
 "Worse than usual, do you suppose? " asked Gerard. 
 
 "I'm afraid so, sir. Mrs. Champion came home at half-past 
 seven, but a messenger came for her while she was dressing for 
 dinner, and she just put on her cloak, and ran across the road without 
 even a hat. I'm afraid it's the bend." 
 
 " Which is Kendal House ? " 
 
 " I'll show you, sir." 
 
 The footman stalked out mto the road with that slow and solemn 
 stalk which is taught to footmen, and which is perhaps an element 
 in the trade-unionism of domestic service — a studied slowness of 
 movement in all things, lest perchance one footman should at any 
 time do the work of two. Mrs. Champion's footman was a person 
 of highest quality, and was even now oppressed with a sense of 
 resentment at having to perform his duties single-handed at Finchley, 
 while his comrade was leading a life of luxurious idleness in Hertford 
 Street. 
 
 He pointed out a carriage entrance in a wall a httle further up 
 the road, and on tJie opposite side of the way, and to this gate 
 Gerard hurried, and entered a highly respectable enclosure, a 
 circular lawn girt with gravel drive, shrubberies hiding the walls 
 and in front of hira a stately square stone house with classic portico, 
 and two wings, suggesting drawing-room and billiard-room. 
 
 The first glance at those numerous windows gave him a shock. 
 All the blinds were down. It was over, he thought. Edith 
 Champion was a widow. 
 
 Yes, it was over. The sober, elderly manservant who opened the
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 145 
 
 door informed him that Mr. Champion had breathed his last at five 
 minutes to eight. Mrs. Champion was just in time to be present at 
 his last moments. The end had been peaceful and painless. 
 
 Edith Champion came downstairs, accompanied by the doctor, 
 while the servant was talking, her eyes streaming. She saw Gerard, 
 and went across the hall to him. 
 
 " It is aU over," she said agitatedly. •' He knew me at the last 
 — knew me and spoke my name, just as I thought he would. 
 Thank God, I was there ; I was not too late for that last word. I 
 did not think I could feel it so much, after those long days and 
 weeks of anticipation." 
 
 *' Let me take you to your own house," Gerard said gently. 
 She was in a black lace dinner-dress, with a light summer cloak 
 flung loosely about her, her white throat rising out of the gauzy 
 blackness like a Parian pillar, her dark eyes drowned in tears, and 
 tears still wet on her pale cheeks. All that was tender and womanly 
 in her nature had been shaken by that final parting. If she had 
 sold herself to the rich man as slaves are sold in an Eastern market 
 he had been a most indulgent master, and her slaveiy had been of 
 the lightest. 
 
 The doctor attended her to the threshold, and she went out 
 leaning on Gerard's arm. Even in the midst of her natural resret 
 there was sweetness in the thought that henceforth she belonged 
 to him. It was his privilege and his duty to protect her, to think 
 for her in all things. 
 
 " You wll telegraph to my husband's solicitor," she said to the 
 doctor falteringly, as she dried her tears. " He wUl be the proper 
 person to arrange everything with you, I suppose. I shall not leave 
 
 the Laurels till after " 
 
 " I understand," interrupted the doctor, sa\-ing her the pain of 
 that final word. "AU shall be arranged without troubling you 
 more than is absolutely necessary." 
 
 " Good night," she said, ofiering her hand. " I shall not forget 
 how kind and thoughtful you always were. He could not have 
 been better cared for." 
 
 Gerard led her out of the formal enclosure where the conifers and 
 evergreens were darkening under the shadows of night. The gata 
 was open at the Laurels, and the stately footman was on the watch 
 for his mistress's return, his powdered head bared to the evening 
 breeze. Within there were lights and the brightness of flowers, 
 dinner ready to be served. 
 
 It
 
 146 Gerard; or, 
 
 " You will take something, I hope ? " said Gerard, when the 
 butler announced dinner. 
 
 They had gone into the drawing-room, and she was sitting with 
 her face hidden in her hands. 
 
 " No, no, I could not eat anything," and then to the butler, " Mr. 
 Hillersdon will dine. You can serve dinner for him, and tell George 
 to bring me some tea here." 
 
 " Then let me have a cup of tea with you," said Gerard. " I am 
 no more in the mood for dining than you are." 
 
 This gratified her, even in the midst of her sorrows. Women 
 have an exaggerated idea of the value which men set upon dinner, 
 and no sacrifice propitiates them more surely than the surrender of 
 that meal. 
 
 Edith Champion did not argue the point. She only gave a little 
 sigh, and dried her tears, and became more composed. 
 
 " I think I did my duty to him," she said presently. 
 
 " Most thoroughly. You made him happy, which is more than 
 many a wife can say about a husband she has adored," answered 
 Gerard. 
 
 The footman brought in the tea-table, and lighted the candles on 
 the mantelpiece and piano, and drew the curtains, with an air of 
 wishing to dispel any funereal gloom which the shadow of that dark 
 event at Kendal House had spread over the room. He and the 
 other servants had been talking about the funeral and their mourn- 
 ing already, speculating as to whether IMr. Champion had left 
 legacies to such of his servants as had been with him " say a year," 
 concluded George, footman, who had been in the service fourteen 
 months. 
 
 Mrs. Champion made a httle motion of her hand towards the tea- 
 pot, and George poured out the tea. She felt that the etiquette of 
 grief would not allow her to perform that accustomed oflice. She 
 sat still, and allowed herself to be waited upon, and sipped and 
 sighed, while Gerard also sipped in pensive silence. 
 
 He was thinking that this was the second time within a very few 
 hours that he was taking tea with Edith Champion, and yet what 
 a gap those few hours had cloven across his life. The woman he 
 had loved so long, and to whom he had irrevocably pledged himself, 
 was free from her bondage. There could be no longer doubt or 
 hesitancy in their relations. A certain interval must be conceded 
 to the prejudices of society; and then, at the end of that conven- 
 tional widowhood this woman, whom he had loved so long, would
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 147 
 
 lay aside her weeds, and put on her weddkig-go-wn, ready to stand 
 beside him at the altar. For months he had known that Mr. 
 Champion's end was imminent ; and yet to-night it seemed to him 
 as if he had never expected the man to die. 
 
 The silence was growing oppressive before either the lady or her 
 guest found speech. The footman had retired, leaving the tea-table 
 in front of his mistress, and they were alone again. 
 
 " You will not remain in this house after the funeral, of course," 
 said Gerard, having cast about for something to say. 
 
 " No, I shall leave England immediately. I have been thinking 
 of my plans while you and I have been sitting here. I hate myself 
 for my egotism ; but I could not go on thinking of — him. It would 
 do no good. I shall not easily forget him, poor fellow. His face 
 and his voice will be in my thoughts for a long time to come — but 
 I could not help thinking of myself too. It seems so strange to be 
 free — to be able to go just where I like — not to be obliged to follow 
 a routine. I shall go to Switzerland as soon as I can get ready. I 
 shall take Eosa Gresham with me. She is always enchanted to 
 tiurn her back upon that adorable parish of hers." 
 
 " But why should you go away ? " 
 
 " It will be best. If I were to stay in England you and I would 
 be meeting, and now — now that he is gone people would rake up 
 the past, and say ill-natured things about us. It will be far better 
 that we should see very Httle of each other till the year of my 
 widowhood is over. A long time, Gerard ; almost long enough for 
 you to forget me." 
 
 Her tone implied that such forgetfulness must needs be im- 
 possible. 
 
 " "What if I refuse to submit to such a separation, even to pro- 
 pitiate Mrs. Grundy ? We have treated that worthy personage in 
 a very off-hand manner hitherto. Why should we begin to care 
 about her ? " 
 
 "Because everything is different now he is gone. While my 
 husband approved of my life nobody could presume to take objection 
 to anything I might do ; but I stand alone now and must take care 
 of my good name — your future wife's good name, Gerard ! " 
 
 " How sweetly you put the question ! But, my dear Edith, must 
 we really be parted so long ? Ooiild people talk about us if you 
 and I were living in the same town, seeing each other every day ? " 
 
 " You don't know how ill-natured people can be. Indeed, 
 Gerard, it will be better for both our sakes."
 
 I4S Gerard; or^ 
 
 " Not for my sake," he said earnestly. 
 
 He had gone to Finchley that evening upon a sudden impulse, ad 
 if he had been flying from an unimagiued peril. He had felt, 
 vaguely, as if his first love were slipping away from him, as if 
 an effort were needed to strengthen the old bonds; and now the 
 woman who should have helped him to be true was about to for- 
 sake him — to sacrifice inclination and happiness to the babbling 
 crowd. 
 
 " What can it matter bow people talk of us ? " he cried im- 
 petuously. " We have to think of ourselves and our own happiness. 
 Eemeraber how short life is, and what need we have to husband 
 our brief span of years. Why waste a year, or half a year, upon 
 conventionalities ? Let me go with you wherever you go. Let ua 
 be married next week." 
 
 " No, no, no, Gerard. God knows, I love you, only too dearly ; 
 but I will not be guilty of deliberate disrespect to him who has gone. 
 He was always good to me — kind and indulgent to a fault. I 
 should have been a better wife, perhaps, if he had been a tyrant. 
 I will not insult him in his grave. A year hence ; a year from this 
 day I shall belong to you ! " 
 
 " And Mrs. Grundy will have no fault to find with you. ' Content 
 to dwell in decencies for ever,' " quoted Gerard, with a touch of 
 scorn. " Well, you must have your own way. I have pleaded, 
 and you have answered. Good night. I suppose I shall be allowed 
 to bid you good-bye at the railway station before you leave 
 England." 
 
 " Of course. Eosa shall write to j'ou about our plans directly 
 thev arc settled. You will be at the funeral, Gerard, will you 
 notV' 
 
 " Naturally. Once more good night." 
 
 They clasped hands, she tearful still, ready to break down again 
 at any moment ; and so he left her. 
 
 The hansom had waited for him, the horse's head in a nosebag, 
 the driver asleep on his perch. 
 
 " Only a year, and you are mine as I am yours," mused Gerard, 
 as lie was driven westward. " But a year sometimes makes a wide 
 gap in a life. V/hat Mail it do in mine ? "
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 149 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 " FOK SOME MUST STAisD, AND SOME MUST FAT J, OK FLEE." 
 
 Mr. Champion had been laid at rest ia a brand new vault at 
 Kensal Green for nearly a month, and his widow was at Interlacheu, 
 •with her cousin, maid, and courier, excursioning mildly among the 
 snow-peaks and glaciers, listening idly to Mrs. Gresham's interpre- 
 tation of Mendelssohn, Chopin, and all the new Sclavonic composers, 
 reading Shelley, Keats, and Swinburne, and abandoning herself to 
 a vague melancholy, which found reHef in the solitude of everlasting 
 hills, and the seclusion of private sitting-rooms at the hotel. From 
 Interlachen Gerard Hillersdon received his sweetheart's lengthy 
 and frequent letters, written in a fine, firm hand, on the smoothest 
 paper, with a delicate perfume of wood violets — letters descriptive 
 of every drive and every ramble among the hills, letters meditative 
 upon the poetry she had been reading, or the last German novel, with 
 its diffuse sentimentality and its domestic virtues — letters which 
 generally enclosed a little white woolly flower, plucked amidst per- 
 petual snows ; letters which did all that letters can do to bridge the 
 distance between lovers. Gerard repHed less lengthily, but with 
 unfailing tenderness, to all those letters of June and July. He 
 wrote from his heart, or he told himself that he was so writing. 
 He wrote with a large panel portrait of his sweetheart upon hia 
 desk, in front of him, a portrait which met his eyes whenever he 
 lifted them from his paper, a lifelike likeness of the beautiful face 
 and figure, gorgeous in Court gown and mantle, a tiara on the 
 imperial head, a riviere of diamonds upon the perfect neck ; a 
 costume whose splendour would have been enough for a princess of 
 the blood royal, yet which seemed only in harmony with Editli 
 Champion's beauty. 
 
 Sometimes between that face, with its grand lines, and classic 
 regularity, there would come the vision of another face, altogether 
 different, yet no less beautiful— the ethereal loveliness of the Ratfaelle 
 Madonna, the elongated oval cheek and chin and straight sharply- 
 chiselled nose, the exquisite refinement of the pensive lips and 
 delicate arch of the eyebrows over violet eyes, the pearly tints of a 
 complexion in which there was no brilliancy of colour, no peach 
 bloom, only a transparent fairness beneath which the veins about
 
 150 Gerar^d ; or, 
 
 the temples and around the eyes showed faintly azure — an oval 
 face framed in shadowy brown hair. With what a fatal persistence 
 this image haunted him ; and yet he had seen Hester Davenport 
 only once since that afternoon at Chelsea, when the old man 
 admitted him to the humble lodging-house parlour. Once only had 
 he returned there, and that was to escort his sister, who was delighted 
 to renew her acquaintance with the curate's beautiful daughter. 
 That had happened three weeks ago, and Lilian and Hester had 
 met several times since then — meetings of which Gerard had heard 
 every detail. 
 
 And now the London season was drawing to its close and Lilian 
 had to leave her brother's house in order to do her duty, as an only 
 daughter, and accompany her father and mother to Eoyat, where 
 the Rector was to take a course of waters, which was to secure him 
 an immunity from gout for the best part of a year, until the " cm"e " 
 season came round again and the London physicians had decided 
 where he was to go. It would be Lilian's last journey as a spinster 
 with her father and mother. She was to be married early in the 
 coming year, and to take upon herself husband and parish — that 
 parish of St. Lawrence the Martyr to which she had already attached 
 herself, and whose schools, almshouses, dispensary, night-refuge, 
 oi-phanage, and reading-room were as familiar to her as the morning- 
 room at Helmsleigh Rectory. 
 
 It was her last morning at Ilillersdon House, and she was 
 breakfasting tete-a-tete with her brother, a rare pleasure, as Gerard 
 had been very erratic of late, rarely returning home till the middle 
 of the night, and not often leaving his own rooms till the middle of 
 the day. He had been drinking deep of the cup of pleasure, as it is 
 offered to youth and wealth in the height of the London season ; but 
 pleasure in his case had not meant debauchery, and the only 
 vice to which late hours tempted him was an occasional hour's 
 worship of the mystic number nine, or a quiet evening at piquet 
 or poker. And in this drinking of the pleasure-chalice, he told 
 himself that he was in no wise unduly consuming the candle of 
 life, inasmuch as there was no pleasure which London could offer 
 him that could stir his pulses or kindle the flame of passion. His 
 heart beat no quicker when he held the bank at baccarat than 
 when he sat over a book alone in his den. Time had been when 
 an hour's play fired his blood, and set his temples throbbing; but 
 to the millionaire loss or gain mattered little. There was only the 
 pleasant exultation of success for its own sake, success which wag
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 151 
 
 no more delightful' than if he had made a good shot at bowls on. 
 a summer lawn. He argued, therefore, that he was living soberly 
 within himself, even when his nights were spent among the wildest 
 young men in London, the frequenters of the after-midnight clubs 
 and the late restaurants. 
 
 " How nice it is to have a quiet half-hour with you, Gerard ! " 
 Baid Lilian, as they began breakfast, he trifling with a devilled 
 sardine, she attacking bread and butter and strawberries, while 
 the chefs choicest breakfast dishes remained untouched under their 
 silver covers. 
 
 " Yes, dear, and how soon such quiet hours vdll be impossible. 
 I shall miss you dreadfully." 
 
 *' And yet, although we have lived under the same roof we have 
 Been very little of each other." 
 
 " True, but it has been so sweet to know you were here, that I 
 had always a sympathetic listener at hand." 
 
 Lilian answered with a sigh. 
 
 " You have given me no confidences, Gerard." 
 
 "Have I not? BeUeve me it has been from no lack of faith 
 in your honour and discretion. Perhaps it was because I liad 
 nothing to tell ! " 
 
 "Ah, Gerard, I know better than that. You have a secret — 
 a secret which concerns Mrs. Champion. I know she is something 
 more to you than a commonplace friend." 
 
 Gerard laughed to himself ever so softly at his sister's naivete. 
 " What, has your penetration made that discovery, my gentle 
 Lilian ? " he said. " Yes, Edith Champion and I are more than 
 common friends. We were plighted lovers once, dans le temps, 
 when we were both hopeful and penniless. Wisdom and experience 
 intervened. The young lady was induced to marry an elderly 
 money-bag, who treated her generously, and to whom her behaviour 
 was perfect. I changed from lover to friend, and that friendship 
 was never mterrupted, nor did it ever occasion the sHghtest 
 uneasiness to Mr. Champion." 
 
 "And now that Mrs. Champion is a widow, free to marry for 
 love " questioned Lihan, timidly. 
 
 " In all probability she will become my wife — when her mourning 
 is over. Shall you like her as a sister-in-law, LiUan ? " 
 
 " How can I do otherwise ? She has always been so kind to me." 
 
 " Ah, I remember. She took you to her dressmaker. I believe 
 that is the highest effort of a woman's friendship."
 
 152 Gerard ; or, 
 
 "How lightly y&u speak of her, Gerard, and how coldly — and yet 
 I am sure you care for her more than for any one else in the world." 
 
 " Naturally, and she deserves my affection, after having remained 
 constant to me through the interregnum of a loveless marriage." 
 
 " She is just the kind of woman you ought to marry. With her 
 beauty and good style she will help you to maintain your position, 
 and she will get rid of the friends whose influence I fear." 
 
 " Which of my friends, Lilian ? " 
 
 " All those who come to this house, except Jack. Perhaps you 
 will say Jack is no friend of yours, that you are not in touch with 
 him, as you call it." 
 
 " He is my friend all the same. Granted that we differ in ethics 
 and creed. I like him because he is sti-aight, and strong, and 
 true, and outspoken, and hearty — a man to whom I would turn 
 in doubt and difficulty, in sickness or despair — a good, brave, 
 honest man, Lihan, a man to whom I gladly give almost the 
 dearest thing I have on earth, my only sister." 
 
 Tears sprang to Lilian's eyes at this praise of her lover. She 
 could not answer in words for a few moments, but she stretched 
 out her hand to her brother, and they sat hand clasped in hand. 
 
 "How happy I am," she faltered at last, "to have won him, 
 and to have your love as weU." 
 
 " And now tell me why you dislike my fi-iends ? " 
 
 " Because they seem to me all false and hollow — full of flowery 
 words and shallow wit — arrogant, superficial, making light of all 
 good men's creeds, dismissing noble lives and noble thoughts 
 with a jest. Some of them are pleasant enough — Mr. Lurose, 
 for instance, with his elegant languor, and his rhapsodies about 
 art and architecture — Mr. Gambier, with his schemes for new 
 novels, which he has the impertinence to tell me will be unfit for 
 me to read." 
 
 " Poor Gambier ! that is his harmless vanity. His most ardent 
 detire is to be ranked with Zola and rejected by Mudie." 
 
 "There is one of your friends whose presence fills me with 
 horror, and yet he has more winning manners than any of them.'' 
 
 " Indeed 1 " 
 
 " The man who laughs at everything. Mr. Jerrajm." 
 
 " Jermyn the Fate-reader." 
 
 " He has never read my fate." 
 
 " No, he refused to make an attempt. ' There is a light iu your 
 sister's countenance that bafllos auguiy,' he told me. ' If I were
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, i 
 
 oo 
 
 to say anything about her it would be that she was created to 
 be happy — but in a nature of that kind one never knows what 
 happiness means. It might mean martj'rdom.' So you dishko 
 Justin Jermyn? " 
 
 "It is not so much dislike as fear that I feel when I think of 
 him . \\Tien lam in his society I can hardly help liking him. Ho 
 interests and amuses me in spite of myself. But it is his bad 
 influence upon you that I fear." 
 
 "My dear Lilian, that is all mere girl's talk. Bad influence, 
 bosh ! You don't suppose that my experience of hfe since I went 
 to the University has left my mind a blank sheet of paper, to be 
 written upon by the first comer. Jermyn is a new acquaintance, 
 not a friend, and his influence upon my Ufe is nil. He amuses 
 me — that is all — just as he amuses you, by his queer, gnomish 
 ways and impish tricks. And now, before you go, tell me about 
 Hester Davenport. You have been her friend for the last few 
 weeks, and have lightened her burdens. "What will she do when 
 you are gone ? " 
 
 " Oh, we shall write to each other. We are going to be friends 
 all our Uve«, and when I am settled at the Vicarage we shall see 
 each other often. She will come to St. Lawrence every Sunday 
 to hear Jack preach." 
 
 "That is something for her to look forward to, no doubt; but 
 in the meantime she is to go on with her drudgery, I suppose, 
 without even the comfort of occasional intercourse with a girl of 
 her own rank. Why could you not persuade her to accept an 
 income from me, which would be, at least, enough to provide fur 
 her and her father ? " 
 
 " I did not try very hard to overrule her decision, Gerard. In 
 my heart I could only agree with her that she could take no sucli 
 help from you, or from any one in your position. She could nut 
 Bacrifice her independence by allowing herself to be pensioned by a 
 stranger." 
 
 "I am not a stranger. I know her father's wretched story, and 
 he was my father's curate. That does not make me a stranger. 
 I don't think that either you or she can realise the position of 
 a man with more money than he knows how to spend, who must 
 inevitably squander a great deal of his wealth, waste thousands upon 
 futile aims. Why should not such a man sink a few thousands 
 to pronde permanently for the comfort of a girl whose story has 
 touched his heart? I would so settle the money that she would
 
 154 Gerard; 07% 
 
 receive the income from year to year, without ever being reminded 
 of its som-ce. There would be no humiliation, no sense of 
 obhgation ; the thing once done upon my part would be done for 
 ever. Why should it not be ? " 
 
 " Because she wiU not have it so. Call her proud, if you Uke — 
 I admire her for her pride. She is content with the life she leads. 
 She works hard, but she is her own mistress, and she is able to do 
 her work at home and to watch over the poor old father, who 
 would inevitably fall back into his dreadful ways if she were to 
 leave him too much alone, or if they were more prosperous and 
 he had the command of money. She has told me that their 
 poverty is his salvation." 
 
 " A sorry prospect for a beautiful young woman, who under 
 other circumstances might have society at her feet." 
 
 " She does not think of society, or consider herself a victim. 
 You have no idea how simple-minded she is. I doubt if she even 
 knows that she is lovely — 'Or, if she does, she makes very Hght 
 of her beauty. She told me that she had been poor all her life, 
 and that nobody had ever made much of her, except her father." 
 
 " And you were able to do very Uttle for her, it seems? " 
 
 " What you would think very little. I could not give her costly 
 presents ; her pride would have been up in arms at any attempt to 
 patronise her. I gave her books and flowers ; helped her to make 
 that poor little lodging-house sitting-room as pretty and homelike 
 as simple, inexpensive things could make it. We took some walks 
 together in Battersea Park, and one lovely morning she went 
 for a drive with me as far as Wimbledon, where we had a luncheon 
 of buns and fruit on the common, just hke two schoolgirls. She 
 was as gay and bright that morning as if she had not a care in 
 the world. I told her that she seemed happier than she had ever 
 been at Helmsleigh, and she said that in those days she was 
 oppressed by the knowledge of her father's sad failing, which we 
 did not know ; but now that we knew the worst, and that he 
 seemed really to have reformed, she was quite happy. Indeed she 
 has the bravest spirit I ever met with ! " 
 
 " Yes, she is full of courage ; but it is hard, very hard," said 
 Gerard, impatiently : and then he began to question Lilian about 
 her own ari'angements, and there was no further allusion to Hester 
 Davenport; but tliere was a sense of irritation in Gerard's mind 
 when he thouglit over his conversation with Lilian in the solitude 
 of his own dea.
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 155 
 
 " How feeble women are at the best ! " he said to himself, pacing 
 to and fro in feverish unrest. "What petty notions of help, 
 what microscopic consolations I A few books and flowers, a drive 
 or a walk, a Imich of buns upon Wimbledon Common ! Not one 
 effort to take her out of that slough of despond — not one attempt 
 to widen her horizon; a golden opportunity wasted, for LUian 
 might have succeeded where I must inevitably fail. If Lilian had 
 been firm and resolute, as woman to woman, she might have swept 
 away all "hesitations, all foolish pride. But, no ; she offers her 
 humble friend a few flowers and a book or two, and hugs herself 
 with the notion that this poor martyr is really happy — that the 
 sewing-machine and the shabby lodging are enough for her happi- 
 ness—enough for one who should be a queen among women. Why, 
 my housemaids are better off — better fed, better lodged, with more 
 leisure and more amusements. It is intolerable." 
 
 He had made up his mind that he would go no more to the little 
 street in Chelsea. He had gone in the first place as an intruder, 
 and had imposed himself upon the father's weakness, and traversed 
 the daughter's wish, so plainly expressed to him on their first 
 meeting. He hated himself for an act which he felt to be mean 
 and unworthy, and he determined that after his formal visit as his 
 sister's escort he would go there no more; yet two days after 
 Lilian's departure an irresistible desire impelled him to try to see 
 Hester again. He wanted to see if there were any justification for 
 Lilian's optimistic view of the case — whether there were indeed 
 peace and contentment in their humble home. 
 
 He went in the evening, at an hour when he knew Hester was 
 to be found at home. However frugally she and her father might 
 dine they always dined at seven, so that the old man should not 
 suffer that uncomfortable reversal of all old habits which is one of 
 the petty stings of poverty. The mutton chop or the little bit of 
 fish which constituted his evening meal made a dinner as easily 
 as it would have made a supper, and Hester took a pleasure in 
 seeing that it was served with perfect cleanliness and propriety, 
 a result only attained by some watchfulness over the landlady and 
 the small servant. The modest meal was despatched in less than 
 half-an-hour, and at half-past seven Hester and her father were 
 to be found enjoying their evening leisure — he with his pipe, she 
 with a book, which she sometimes read aloud. 
 
 So Gerard found them upon a delicious summer evening, which 
 made the conti'ast between Queen's Gate and the poorer district
 
 156 Gerard ; or, 
 
 westward of Chelsea seem all the more cruel. There all coolness 
 and space and beauty, tall white houses, classic porticos, balconies 
 brimming over with flowers, gaily-coloured blinds and picturesque 
 awnings, the wide expanse of park and gardens, the cool glinting 
 of water in the umbrageous distance; here long rows of shabby 
 houses, where every attempt at architectural ornament seemed 
 only to accentuate the prevailing squalor. And Hester Davenport 
 lived here, and was to go on living here, and he with all his wealth 
 could not buy her brighter surroundings. 
 
 He stopped at a bookseller's in the King's Koad and bought the 
 best copy of Shelley's poems which he could find, and at a florist's 
 on his way he bought a large bunch of Marechal Niel roses, and 
 with these gifts in his hand he appeared in the small parlour. 
 
 "As my sister is far away, I have ventured to come in her 
 stead," he said, after he had shaken hands with father and daughter. 
 " And you are more than welcome, Mr. Hillersdon," answered 
 the old man. " We shaU miss your sister sadh\ Her little visits 
 have cheered us more than anything has done since the beginning 
 of our troubles. I hardly know what we shall do without her." 
 
 " I am looking forward to next year, when Miss Hillersdon will 
 be Mrs. Cumberland," said Hester, softly, "and when I am to help 
 her with her parish work." 
 
 " Can you find time to help other people ; you who work so hard 
 already ? " 
 
 " Oh, I shall be able to spare an afternoon now and then, and 
 I shall be interested and taken out of myself by that kind of work. 
 What lovely roses I " she exclaimed, as he placed the bunch upon 
 the Httle table where her open book was lying. 
 
 " I am very glad you like them. You have other flowers, I see," 
 glancing at a cluster of white and red poppies in a brown vase, 
 "but I hope you will find room for these." 
 
 "Indeed, I will, and with delight. My poor poppies are put to 
 shame by so much beauty." 
 
 " And I have brought — my sister asked me to bring you Shelley," 
 he faltered, curiously embarrassed in the presence of this one 
 woman, and laying down the prettily bound volume with conscious 
 awkwardness. 
 
 "Did she really? " asked Hester, wonderlngly ; "I did not think 
 Shellev was one of her poots. Indeed, I remember her telling me 
 that the Kector had forbidden her to read anything of Shelley's 
 beyond a selection of short noems. I dare say she mentioned some
 
 The World, the Flesh, afid the Devil. 157 
 
 other poet, and your memory has been a little Tagiie. LiUan has 
 given me a library of her favourite poets and essajdsts." 
 
 She pointed to a row of volumes on one of the dwarf cupboards, 
 and Gerard went over to look at them. 
 
 Yes, there were the poets women love — Wordsworth, Hood, 
 Longfellow, Adelaide Proctor, Jean Ingelow, Elizabeth Barrett 
 Browning — the poets within whose pages there is security from 
 every evil image, from every rending of the curtain that shrouds 
 life's darkest pictures, poets whose key-note is purity. No Keats, 
 with his subtle sensuousness and heavy hot-house atmosphere. No 
 Shelley, with his gospel of revolt against law, human and divine ; 
 no Rossetti, no Swinburne ; not even Byron, whose muse, measured 
 by the wider scope of latter-day poets, might wear a pinafore and 
 feed upon the schoolgirl's bread and butter. The only giant among 
 them all was the Laureate, and he was handsomely represented in 
 a complete edition. 
 
 " I see you have no Shelley," said Gerard, " so my mistake was 
 fortunate." 
 '•But if Mr. Hillersdon would not let his daughter read 
 
 Shelley " began Hester. 
 
 " My worthy father belongs to a school that is almost obsolete— 
 the school which pretends to believe that the human mind is utterly 
 without individuality, or self-restraint, and that to read a lawless 
 book is the first stage in a lawless career. You have too much 
 mental power to be turned to the right or to the left by any poet, 
 be he never so great a genius. Not to have read Shelley is not to 
 have tasted some of the loftiest delights that poetry can give us. 
 I am opening a gate for you into an imtrodden paradise. I envy 
 you the rapture of reading Shelley for the first time in the full 
 vigour of your intellect." 
 
 " You are laughing at me when you talk of the vigour of my 
 intellect," she said gaily. " And as for your Shelley, I know in 
 advance that I shall not like him as well as Tennyson." 
 
 " That depends upon the bent of your mind — whetlier jon are 
 more influenced bj' form or colour. Li Tennyson you have the 
 calm beauty and harmonious lines of a Greek temple ; in Shelley 
 the unreal splendour and gorgeous colouring of the new Jerusalem 
 as St. John pictured it in his ecstatic dreams." 
 
 They discussed Hester's poets freely, and went on to the novelists 
 and essayists with whom she was most familiar. Dickens and 
 Charles Lamb were first favourites, and for romance Bulwer.
 
 158 Gerard ; or^ 
 
 Thackeray's genius she acknowledged, but considered him at his 
 best disheartening. 
 
 " I think for people with whom life has gone badly Carlyle's is 
 the best philosophy," she said. 
 
 " But siu-ely Carlyle is even more disheartening than Thackeray," 
 objected Gerard. " His gospel is the gospel of dreariness." 
 
 " No, no, it is the gospel of work and noble effort. It teaches 
 contempt for petty things." 
 
 They talked for some time, Mr. Davenport joining in the con- 
 versation occasionally, but with a languid air, as of a man who 
 was only half alive ; and there was an undercurrent of complaining 
 in aU he said, which contrasted strongly with his daughter's cheer- 
 ful spirit. He spoke more than once of his wretched health ; his 
 neuralgic pains, which no medical man could understand or relieve. 
 
 Gerard stayed till past nine, would have lingered even later if 
 Hester had not told him that she and her father were in the habit 
 of walking for an hour in the coolness of the late evening. On this 
 hint he took up his hat and accompanied father and daughter as 
 far as Cheyne Walk, where he left them to walk up and down in 
 the summer starlight, very lonely in the great busy city, as it 
 seemed to him when he bade them a reluctant good night. 
 
 " How lovely she is, but how cold ! " he thought, as he walked 
 homeward. " She is more like a picture than a living, suffering 
 woman. The old man's reformation sits mieasily upon him. Poor 
 wretch, I believe he is longing for an outbreak — would sell half his 
 miserable remnant of life for a short spell of self-indulgence." 
 
 Gerard pondered much upon Davenport's so-called reformation, 
 in the sincerity of which he had scanty faith. 
 
 It was only because he was penniless that he was sober — the 
 longing for alcohol was perhaps as strong as it had ever been. K 
 any stroke of luck were to fill his pockets he would break out again 
 as badly as of old. It was on this account, doubtless, that his 
 daughter was content to live upon a pittance. Poverty meant the 
 absence of temptation. 
 
 After this Gerard Hillersdon spent many an evening hour in the 
 Davenport menage. He supplied Hester with books and choicest 
 flowers, he took newspapers and hot-house grapes to the old man, 
 who ate the grapes with a greedy relish, as if he caught faint 
 flavours of the vintages of Bordeaux and Burgundy in that English 
 fruit. His visits and his gifts grew to be accepted as a matter of 
 course. Books were Hester's one pleasure, and she often sat reading
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 159 
 
 late into the night, although she was generally at her serving-machine 
 before eight o'clock in the morning. She was not one of those 
 people who require seven or eight hours' sleep. Her rest and 
 recreation were in those midnight hours when her father was sleep- 
 ing, and she was alone with her books, sitting in a low wicker chair 
 bought for a few shillings fi-om an itinerant basket-maker, in the 
 light of the paraffin reading lamp, which her own skilful hands 
 prepared every morning. 
 
 Gerard wondered at her placid acceptance of this life of toil and 
 monotony. Again and again as he walked slowly up and down 
 the shadowy promenade by the river he had sought by insidious 
 questionings to discover the lurking spirit of revolt against that 
 Fate which had doomed her to life-long deprivations. No word 
 of complaint was ever spoken by those beautiful lips, pale in the 
 moonlight. The London season had passed her by, with all its 
 pleasures, its smart raiment, and bustle of coaching meets and 
 throng of carriages and riders in that meeting of the ways by 
 Albert Gate whither her footsteps had so often taken her. She 
 had seen women, infinitely inferior to herself in aU womanly graces, 
 set off and glorified by all the arts of costume and enamel, dyed 
 hair and painted eyebrows, into a semblance of beauty, and queenin<T 
 it upon the strength of factitious charms : and yet no sense of this 
 world's injustice had embittered her gentle spirit. Patience was 
 the key-note of her character. If every now and then upon her 
 lonely walks a man stopped as if spell-bound at a vision of unex- 
 pected beauty, or even turned to follow her, she thought only of 
 his unmannerliness, not of her own attractions; and evil as are the 
 ways of men few ever ventured to follow or to address her, for the 
 earnest face, and the resolute walk, told all but the incorrigible snob 
 that she was a woman to be respected. No, she had never rebelled 
 against Fate. All that she asked from life was the power to main- 
 tain her father in comfort, and to prevent his return to those de^rad- 
 ing habits which had made the misery of her girlhood. 
 
 August was half over. West End London was a desert, and still 
 Gerard hngered, Gerard the double millionau-e, whom all the loveliest 
 spots upon this earth invited to take his pleasure at this holiday 
 season. His friends had bored him insufferably with their questions 
 and suggestions before they set out upon theu- o-mi summer pilgrim- 
 ages. Those mysterious diseases of which one only hears at the 
 end of the season had driven their victims in various directions, 
 eympatlietically crowding to the same springs, and sunning them-
 
 i6o Gerard; or, 
 
 selves in the same gardens. The army of martyrs to eczema and gout 
 ■were boring themselves insufferably in Auvergne — the rheumatics 
 •were in Germany — the weak chests and shattered nerves were 
 playing tennis at Maloja or St. Moritz — the shooting men were in 
 Scotland, the fishermen were in Norway — the idlers, who want 
 only to wear fine clothes, do a little baccarat, and dabble in summer 
 wavelets, were at Trouville, Etretat, Param^, Dinard, or Dieppe. 
 For any man deliberately to stay in London after the twelfth, was 
 an act so perverse and monstrous that he must needs find some 
 excuse for it in his own mind. Gerard's excuse was that he was 
 not a sportsman, had shot all the grouse he ever wanted to shoot, 
 that he had seen all of the Continent that he cared to see, and that 
 he felt himself hardly strong enough for travelling. The quiet of 
 his own house, uninvaded by visitors, pleased him better than the 
 finest hotel in Europe, the marble staircases and flower gardens of 
 the Grand Bretagne at BeUaggio, or the feverish va-et-vient of the 
 comfortable Scbweitzerhof at Lucerne. He wanted rest, and he 
 got it in his own rooms, where his every caprice and idiosyncrasy 
 found its expression in his surroundings. 
 
 Why should he leave London ? He had invitations enough to 
 liave made a small octavo volume, if he had cared to bind and 
 pei-petuate that evidence of the worship which Society offers to 
 Mammon, invitations worded in every form and phrase that can 
 tempt man's vanity or minister to his self-esteem. Invitations to 
 castles in Scotland, to moated granges in War^vickshire, to manor 
 houses and shooting-boxes in Yorkshire — to the wolds and moora 
 of the north, to Dartmoor and Exmoor, to Connemara and Kerry, 
 to cverj' point of the compass in the British Isles, and even to 
 chateaux in France, and hunting-lodges in Servia, Bohemia, 
 Hungarj', and heaven knows where. And every one of these 
 invitations, many of them backed with playful allusions to daughters 
 who for this or the other of his various accomplishments— tennis, 
 chess, music, sketching — were especially eager for his society, 
 every one of these invitations he knew was addressed not to him- 
 self but to his millions. This adulation filled him with unspeakable 
 scorn ; nor if the invitations had been prompted by the most 
 genuine friendliness would he have accepted one of them. Why 
 Bhould he fall in with other people's habits, or share m pleasures 
 not originated by himself, he who could live his own hfe — carry his 
 own retinue with him wherever he cared to go — charter the finest 
 yacht that had ever been launched — hire the most luxurious of shoot-
 
 The World, the Flesh, ajid the Devil. i6i 
 
 ing-boses, castles, or chateaux — and take existence at his own 
 measure, knowing no ruler but the caprice of the hour ? 
 
 His answer to all these hospitable offers was a polite refusal.' 
 His health was too precarious to permit his enjoyment of visits 
 which would otherwise be most agreeable. These refusals were 
 ^^Titten by his secretary and elicited much comment upon the 
 insolence of the newly rich, and from the masculine recipients 
 various unfriendly allusions to beggars on horseback. 
 
 Thus August drew towards a sultry close and the newspapers, 
 no longer absorbed by Parliamentary reports, dressed themselves in 
 the feathers of the screech owl and devoted a daOy column to 
 cholera, while the livelier and more discursive papers took up some 
 topic of the hour, social or domestic, and opened their pages to a 
 procession of letters upon the thrilling question of what we shall do 
 with our empty sardine tins, or is the stage a safe profession for 
 clergymen's daughters, or how to enjoy three weeks' hoHday for a 
 five-pound note. If Gerard Hillersdou had no longing for change 
 from arid and overbaked streets he was perhaps the only person 
 in town whose thoughts did not turn with fond longing towards 
 shadowy vales and running streams, towards mountain or sea. 
 Even Hester's resigned temper was stirred by this natural longing. 
 " How lovely it must be up the river in this weather ! " she said one 
 evening when Gerard was stroJling by her side under the trees of 
 Cheyne Walk. Her father was with them. In all Gerard's visits 
 he had never found her alone — not once had they two talked 
 together without a listener, not once had their eyes met without 
 the witness of other eyes. A passionate longing sometimes seized 
 him as they paced soberly up and down in the summer moonlight, 
 a longing to be alone with her, to hold her hands, to look into her 
 eyes, and search the secrets of her heart with ruthless questioning 
 — but never yet had that desire been gratified. Once on a sudden 
 impulse he called at the Chelsea lodging-house in the afternoon, 
 knowing that her father often spent an hour or two before dinner at 
 the Free Library, but the landlady who opened the door told him 
 that Miss Davenport was at her work, and must on no account be 
 disturbed. 
 
 " You can at least tell her that I am here, and would be glad to 
 see her, if only for a few minutes," said Gerard, and as he had given 
 the woman more than one handsome douceur, she went into the 
 parlour and gave his message. 
 
 She returned almost immediately to say that Miss Davenport was
 
 162 Gerard ; or, 
 
 engaged upon work tliat had to be finished that afternoon, and she 
 could not leave her sewing-machine. 
 
 The click, click of the hated wheel was audible while the woman 
 delivered her message, and Gerard left the threshold, angry with 
 Fate and life — angry even with the girl who had denied herself to 
 him. 
 
 " It is pride, obstinacy, heartlessness," he told himself, iu his 
 disappointment. " She knows that I adore her — that I can make 
 her Ufe one summer hoUday ; that I hold the master-key to all the 
 world contains of beauty or of pleasure ; and yet she goes on grind- 
 ing that odious wheel. She would rather be the drudge of a German 
 taUor than the ruler of my Hfe." 
 
 It was while he was in this embittered state of mind that he 
 found himself face to face with Justin Jermyn, only a few paces 
 from Mr. Davenport's door. 
 
 " I thought you were in the Hartz Mountains," he said, annoyed 
 at the encounter. 
 
 " I have been there — have tramped with my knapsack on my 
 back, hke a student from Heidelberg or Gottingen, have drunk the 
 cup of pleasure at roadside inns, dozed through a long summer day 
 on the Brocken, and dreamt of Mephisto and the witches. But one 
 day a fancy seized me to come back to London and hunt you up. 
 I heard from Roger Larose that you had turned hermit, and were 
 Uving secluded in the house he buOt for you — and I, who am some- 
 thing of the hermit myself, felt drawn to you by sympathy. Was 
 that Gretchen's wheel I heard just now, as I passed the house where 
 you were calling? " 
 
 " I have no idea what you may have heard ; but I should hke to 
 know what brings you to this particular neighbourhood." 
 
 "Curiosity, and a fast hansom. I saw you driving this way as I 
 stood waiting to cross the road at Albert Gate, with the intention 
 of calling upon you. Useless to go to your house when you were 
 driving away from it, so I hailed a hansom, and told the driver to 
 keep yours in view — and so the man drove me to the corner of this 
 street, where I alighted from my hansom just as you dismissed 
 yours. I passed the house yonder on the opposite side of the way 
 while you were talking to the landlady, who took her own time in 
 opening the door. You were too much absorbed to notice me as I 
 went by, and through the open window I saw a girl working at a 
 sewing-machine — a pale, proud face, which flushed crimson when 
 the woman announced your visit."
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 163 
 
 ''' And you expect me to endure the insolence of this espionage ? 
 "Whatever your gifts may be, ^Ir. Jermyn, whether you excel most 
 as prophet, necromancer, or private detective, I must beg you to 
 exercise your talents upon other subjects, and to give me a wide 
 berth." 
 
 Justin Jermyn responded to this reproof with a hearty langh.' 
 " Nonsense," he said, " you pretend to be angry, but you are not in 
 earnest. Nobody is ever angry with me. I am a privileged offender. 
 I am everybody's jester. Let me be your fool. Give me the privi- 
 leges that emperors of old gave to their jesters. You will find me 
 at worst a better companion than your own thoughts." 
 
 " They are gloomy enough at the present moment," said Gerard, 
 subjugated at once by that unknown influence which he had never 
 been strong enough to resist. ! 
 
 He knew not what the force was by which this young man 
 mastered him, but he knew that the mastery was complete. He 
 was Justin Jermyn's chose— to be bent this way or that. 
 
 " You are unhappy," cried Jermyn. " You, with the one lever 
 which can move the world under your hand. Absurd. If you have 
 wishes, realise them. If any man stands in the way of your desire, 
 buy him. All men are to be bought — that is an old axiom of Prime 
 Ministers — from Wolsey to Walpole — and almost all women. You 
 are a fool to waste yourself upon unfulfilled desires, which mean 
 fever and unrest. You have the peau de chagrin — the talisman of 
 power — in your banking account." 
 
 " Yes, the peau de chagrin — we may take it as an allegorical figure 
 to represent the power of money in an age of advanced ci-\nli3ation 
 — but while I possess the power I have to remember the penalty. 
 "With every passionate desire fulfilled the talisman shrinks, and the 
 possessor's life dwindles." 
 
 " No, my friend, it is our unfulfilled desires that shorten our lives 
 — our ambitions never reahsed — our hopeless loves. "With realisa- 
 tion comes satiety, and satiety means rest. The peril lies in the 
 aching hunger of the wish, not in its fruition."
 
 104 Gerard; of, 
 
 CHAPTER XV; 
 
 *' A MAX CAN HAVE BUT ONE LIFE AM) ONTE DEATH." 
 
 Of all the men he knew, Justin Jermyn was the last whom Gerard 
 would have deliberately chosen for a confidant and counsellor. He 
 had an innate dread of the man, thought him false, tricky, and un- 
 caimy, half a charlatan, and half a fiend ; and yet he was drawn 
 towards him by such an irresistible magnetism, and was at this time 
 BO sorely in need of some friendly ear into which his egotism could 
 pour its complainings, that, after trying to shake off Jermyn by 
 absolute incivility, he ended by walking as far as Barnes Common 
 with him, where they sat on a furzy hillock in the sweltering August 
 afternoon, and smoked and talked in a lazy, desultory fashion. 
 
 So far they talked only of people who were indifi'erent to both. 
 Jermyn had a scathing tongue about men and women — but, being a 
 man, was naturally most malignant in his estimate of the weaker sex. 
 
 " I believe the generality of men hate all women except the one 
 woman they adore," said Gerard, meditatively. " There is a natural 
 antagonism in the sexes, as between dog and cat. Turn a httle girl 
 loose into a playground of small boys, and if it were not for fear of 
 the schoolmaster, there would be no more of her after an hour's 
 play than of Jezebel when the dogs ate her. Every boy's hand 
 would be against her. They would begin by pulling her hair and 
 tripping her up, and then the natural savage in them would go on 
 to murder. Look at the way the Sepoys treated women in the 
 Indian Mutiny ! That devihsh cruelty was only the innate hatred 
 of the sex which asserted itself at the first opportunity. And your 
 talk about Mrs. Fontenelle and the pretty Miss Vincent is only the 
 civilised development of the same malignity." 
 
 " Perhaps," agreed Jermyn. " But for my own part I am rather 
 fond of women in the aggregate, as entomologists are fond of 
 butterflies. I like them as specimens. I Hke to pin them down 
 upon cork and study them, and make my guesses about their future, 
 by the light of their antecedents." 
 
 " And you do not beheve in the unassailable honour of good 
 women?" 
 
 " Not in honour for honour's sake. There are women who elect 
 to go through hfe with an unspotted reputation, for pride's eake,
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 165 
 
 just as an Indian fanatic will hold his arms above his head until they 
 Btiffen and wither, for the sake of being looked up to by his fellow- 
 men. But honour for honour's sake, honour in a hovel where there 
 is no one to praise — honour in the Court of a Louis the Great or a 
 Charles the Little — that kmd of honour, my dear Hillersdon, is beyond 
 my belief. Kemember I am of the world worldly. My intellect 
 and my opinions are perhaps the natural product of a society in its 
 decadence." 
 
 " And do you think that a good woman— a woman whose girl- 
 hood has been fed upon all pure and holy thoughts, whose chosen 
 type of her sex is the mother of Christ — do you think that such a 
 woman can survive the loss of reputation, and yet be happy? " 
 
 " Assuredly, if she obtain a fair equivalent — a devoted lover, or a 
 life of luxury, with a provision for her old age. The thorn among 
 the roses of vice is not the loss of honour, but the apprehension of 
 poverty. Anonyma, lolling on the silken cushions of her victoria, 
 shivers at the thought that all the luxuries which surround her may 
 be as short-lived as the flowers in the park borders, for a season, and 
 no more. BeUeve me, my dear Hillersdon, we waste our pity upon 
 these ladies when we picture them haunted by sad memories of an 
 innocent girlhood, of their parish church, the school-house where 
 they taught the village children on Sunday mornings, of broken- 
 hearted parents, or sorrowing sisters. Ways and means are what 
 these butterflies think about when their thoughts travel beyond the 
 enjoyment of the hoiu:. The clever ones contrive to save a compe- 
 tence, or to marry wealth. The stupid ones have their day, and 
 then drift to the gutter. But conscience — regrets — broken hearts ! 
 Dreams, my dear Hillersdon, only dreams." 
 
 A chance hansom took the two yoimg men back to town, and on 
 nearing Queen's Gate Gerard invited his companion to dine with 
 him. There was nothing new or striking in Justin Jermyn's dis- 
 course, but its cheap cynicism suited Gerard's humour. When a 
 man is set upon evil, nothing pleases him better than to be told that 
 evil is the staple of life — that the wickedness which tempts him is 
 common to himianity itself, and can not be wicked because it is 
 incidental to human nature. 
 
 They dined ttte-a-Ute in the winter-garden, where the warm air 
 rustled among the palm leaves, and the atmosphere was full of the 
 scent of roses, climbing roses, standards, dwarfs, which fiUed all the 
 available space, and made the conservatory a garden of roses. The 
 sliding windows in the lofty dome were opened, and showed a sky,
 
 1 66 Gerard ; or, 
 
 starlit, profound, and purple, as if this winter-garden near Knights- 
 bridge had been some palm grove in one of the South Sea isles. 
 The dinner was perfection, the wines the choicest products of 
 princely vineyards ; and Hillersdou's guest did ample justice to both 
 cuisine and cellar, while Hillersdon himself ate very httle, and 
 drank only soda-water. 
 
 " Fortune, which has favoured you so highly in some respects, 
 has not blest you with a fine appetite," said Jermyn, when he had 
 gone steadily through the menu, and had even insisted upon a second 
 supply of a certain chaud-froid of ortolans. 
 
 " There is such a baneful sameness in food and wines," answered 
 Gerard. " I believe my chef is an artist who deserves the eminence 
 he enjoyed with former masters — but his productions weary me. 
 Their variety is more in name than in substance. Yesterday quails, 
 to-day ortolans, to-morrow grouse. And if I live till next year the 
 quails and ortolans and grouse will come round again. The earliest 
 salmon will blush upon mj' table in January ; February will come 
 with her hands full of hot-house peaches and Algerian peas ; March 
 will offer me sour strawberries and immature lamb. The same — 
 the same over and over again. The duckling of May — the gi-een- 
 goose, the turkey-poult, the chicken-turbot. I know them all. 
 There is truer relish in a red herring which a working-man carries 
 home to eat with his tea than in all the resources of a French cook, 
 when once we have run through his gamut of delicacies. I remember 
 my first Greenwich dinner — rapture — the little room overlooking the 
 river, the open windows and evening sunlight, the whitebait, the 
 flounder-souch^, the sweetbreads, the iced moselle, food for the 
 Olympian gods ! But after many seasons of Greenwich dinners, 
 how weary and hackneyed is the feast I " 
 
 " You have possessed your millions little more than a year, and 
 already you have learnt how not to enjoy," said Jermyn. " I 
 must compliment you upon your progress." 
 
 " Ah, you forget, I knew all these things before I had my fortune 
 — knew them in the days when I was only an umbra, knew them 
 in otlier people's houses. Money can buy hardly anything for me 
 that has freshness or novelty, any more than it conid for Solomon, 
 and I have no Queen of Sheba to envy me my splendour until there 
 is no more spirit in her. Nobody envies a millionaire his wealth 
 nowadays. Millionaires are too common. They live in every street in 
 Mayfair. To be worth anybody's en^y a man shoidd have a billion." 
 
 " You be^n to find fault with the mediocrity of your fortune ? "
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 167 
 
 said Jermyn, with his pleasant laugh at human folly. " A little more 
 than a year ago you were going to destroy yom-self because you 
 were in pecuniary difficulties — harassed by tailors and bootmakers. 
 In another year you will be charging the same revolver to end an 
 existence that leaves you nothing to hve for, Solomon was not so 
 foolish. Indeed, I think that great king was simply the most 
 magnificent humbug that the history of the world otfere to the con- 
 templation of modern thinkers — a man who could philosophise so 
 exquisitely upon the vanity of human life, and yet drain the cup of 
 earthly pleasures — sensual, artistic, intellectual — to the very di-e^s ! 
 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher ; and, behold 1 the slave market 
 sends its choicest beauties to the king. Vanity of vanities, and 
 lo ! the ships come into port laden with apes and ivory, with T^Tean 
 purple and the gold of Ophu-, for the king ; and the buQding of the 
 mighty temple yonder on the holy hill aifords a perpetual interest 
 and an inexhaustible pla3i;hing for the man who calls the grass- 
 hopper a burden. I'll wager that in Jerasalem they called that 
 gorgeous temple Solomon's Folly, and laughed among themselves 
 as the great king's litter went up the hiU, with veiled beauty sitting 
 m the shadow of the purple curtains, and httle shppered feet just 
 peeping out among the embroidered cushions. Solomon in all his 
 glory 1 I th in k, Hillersdon, if I were as rich as you, the thing I 
 should feel most keenly would be that my money could not buy me 
 back one gleam of the glory of the past — not half an hour with the 
 guerilla leader David, among the wild hiUs, not one glimpse of 
 Jerusalem when Solomon was king, not a night ■with Dido, or a 
 dinner with Lucullus. We may imitate that gorgeous past, but we 
 can never recall it. Billions would not buy it back for us. All the 
 colour and glory of life has faded from an earth that is vulgarised 
 by cheap trippers. From Hounslow to the Holy Land one hears 
 the same harsh, common voices. German and Yankee accents 
 drown the soft Tuscan of the Florentine in the Via Tornabuoni 
 tramloads of Cockneys rush up and down the hills of Algeria, camel- 
 loads of vulgarity from London and New York pervade the desert 
 where Isaiah wandered alone beneath the stars. The hill where 
 the worshippers of Baal waited for a sign from their god, the Valley 
 of Jehoshaphat, are as banal as Shooter's Hill or the Vale of Health. 
 The spirit of romance has fled from our vulgarised planet, and not 
 a milliard of golden sovereigns could tempt her back for an hour ! " 
 ''I should be content to let the past go, if I could be happy in 
 the present. That is the difficulty."
 
 1 68 Gerard; or, 
 
 "Oh, I am always happy. I have fancies, but no passionate 
 longings. My only troubles are climatic. While I can follow the 
 bunshiae I am content." 
 
 "If you have finished your wine let us go to my den," said 
 Gerard, who had allowed his companion's rodomontade to pass by 
 him like the faint breath of evening wind among the palm leaves, 
 whUe his own thoughts travelled in a circle. " We can't talk freely 
 here. I feel as if there were listeners in the shadowy comera 
 behind those tree ferns." 
 
 "To your den with all my heart." 
 
 They went upstau's to the room where Gerard's talisman was 
 fixed against the wall, behind a Japanese curtaiu. He had not 
 lifted the curtain since the night when he fii'st met Hester Daven- 
 port, and when the tremulous line which his pen made upon the 
 paper showed him that a disturbing element had entered into hid 
 
 life. 
 
 To-night he flimg himself into his accustomed chair wearily, and 
 a heavy sigh escaped him, as he pushed aside the books upon the 
 table in front of him, and looked at the face of his betrothed in the 
 photograph. 
 
 Jermyn was walking round the room looking at everything with 
 an amused air. 
 
 " So Uke my old rooms," he said, " I feel quite sorry as I look at 
 the things. Mine are sold, dispersed, vanished into thin an-. I 
 gave up those old Inn chambers — too uncanny for a man of cheerful 
 temperament. I have a. pied a terre in Paris now." 
 
 " What part of Paris ? " 
 
 " Ah, I never tell my address. That is one of my idiosyncrasies. 
 But if ever I meet you on the boulevard after the theatres have 
 closed, I will take you to my den to supper, and wLU give you 
 Margot or Lafitte as good as the Madeira you liked that night in 
 the old Inn. By Jove, my image in black marble ! How did you 
 come by it?" 
 
 The image was a bust of Pan, and the features and expression of 
 the god were the features and expression of Justin Jermyn. AUow 
 for the phantasy of goat's ears, and the bust was as line a likeness 
 of the Fate-reader as portraiture could have achieved under the 
 happiest conditions. 
 
 "Who is the sculptor?" asked Jermyn, hovering over the bust 
 with childish pleasure. 
 
 " It is an antique from Sir Humphrey Squanderville's collectioq,
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 169 
 
 I found it at Christie's the other day, and I bought it as the best 
 substitute I could get for that black marble bust which I saw in 
 your rooms." 
 
 " You must be very fond of me, Hillersdon, to have set up my 
 image iu your sanctum." 
 
 " Fond of you ! Not in the least. I have a horror of you — but 
 I like your society, as a man likes opium. It has a foul taste, and 
 he knows it is bad for him ; yet he takes it — craves for it — must 
 have it. I could not rest tUl I had your hkeness ; and now that 
 grinning mouth of yours is always there to mock at my heartache, 
 my doubt, my despair. That broad smile of sensual enjoyment, 
 that raptm-e in mere animal life, serve me as a perpetual reminder 
 of what a poor creature I am from the pagan point of view — how 
 utterly unable to enjoy life from the Pantheist's standpoint, how 
 conscious of man's universal heritage — death." 
 
 " ' Death is here and death is there, 
 Death is busy everywhere,' " 
 
 quoted Jermyn. " Cheerful poet, Shelley ; an exquisite harper, but 
 a good deal of his harping was upon one string — death, dust, anni- 
 hilation. It would have been simply inconsistent if he had hved to 
 be as old as Wordsworth. But why should my image," posing 
 himself beside tlie bust, and laying his long white hand affection- 
 ately upon the sylvan god's crisp forelock, " remind you of dismal 
 things? My protot}^e and I have the spirit which makes for 
 cheerfulness? " 
 
 '■ Your very cheerfulness accentuates my gloom." 
 
 " Gloomy ! With youth and good looks, and ninety thousand a 
 year." 
 
 " More than enough for happiness, perhaps, if I had the freehold ; 
 but I am only a leaseholder, and I know not how short my lease 
 may be. I have pretty good reason to know that it is not a long 
 one. Yes, I know that, Justin Jermyn. I know that these things 
 belong to me as the dream-palace belongs to the dreamer who 
 fancies himself a king." 
 
 " Make the most of your opportunities while they last. To be 
 as rich as you are — and to be young — is to command the world. 
 There is not a flower in the garden of life that you cannot pluck." 
 
 " You are wrong. I am tied and hampered. I see before me 
 one — and only one — chance of supreme happiness, and yet I darq 
 not grasp it,"
 
 170 Gerard; or, 
 
 And then in a gush of confidence, in the passionate egotism that 
 must talk of self, he told this man whom he distrusted the inmost 
 secrets of his heart — told him how he had been moved by the sight 
 of Hester's face on the platform in the concert-hall, and how from 
 that night he had struggled in vain against the attraction which 
 di'ew him towards her. He told Jermyn everything — his intrusion 
 upon her life, albeit he knew her desire to avoid all friends of the 
 past — told of those quiet hours in the humble lodging, those unalarm- 
 ing gifts of flowers and books — told of those slow pacings by the 
 river, with the old father always at her side — pouring out his soul 
 to this man whom he doubted and feared as freely as a girl tells her 
 Btory of hopeless love to a trusted sister. 
 
 " We have never been alone together since that first night in 
 Eaton Square. I have never dared even to hold her hand in mine 
 with a lingering clasp, and yet when our hands touch there is a fire 
 that runs through my veins, till heart and brain are fused in that 
 passionate flame, and I can scarce shape the words that bid her 
 good-bye. Our talk has been only of commonest things. I have 
 never by look or word dared to express my love — and yet I think 
 she knows I love her. 1 think that when my heart leaps at the 
 Bound of her voice or the touch of her hand her heart is not cold. 
 I have seen her lips tremble in the faint evening light when we 
 have walked side by side under the trees. I have felt that there 
 was eloquence in her silence, in her faltering rephes. Yes, I know 
 Bhe loves me." 
 
 " What more do you want — knowing that ? Are you going to 
 leave her at her sewing-machine, when you can make her life one 
 blissful holiday?" 
 
 " She is not a woman to be had for the asking. Would you 
 advise me to fling every worldly consideration to the winds, and 
 marry her ? " 
 
 " You cannot marry everybody," replied Jermyn, with a practical 
 air, " and I take it you are irrevocably pledged to the lady yonder," 
 pointing to the gold and lapis lazuli frame — a gem of jeweller's work 
 — on the writing-table. 
 
 " Yes, I am pledged to her." 
 
 " In any case tlio world expects you to marry her — and it will go 
 rather hard with her — from a society point of view, if you don't. 
 But perhaps you care very little what the world says about Mrs. 
 Champion? " 
 
 " I care very much. I am bound to care for her reputation, and
 
 The Worlds the Flesh, and the Devil. 171 
 
 for her feelings. Till she, of her own free will, release me, I am 
 bound to her by every tie that can bind a man of honour." 
 
 " So ! " exclaimed Jermjm, " that means a good deal." 
 
 "It means not one syllable to Edith Champioa's discredit," 
 answered Hillersdon, hotly. " She was a faithful wife to her 
 husband, and I knew how to respect her position as his wife, 
 although I had been her adoring lover. During the three years of 
 her married life we were friends, and friends only. It may be that 
 we both counted on the days when she would be free, and when 
 the thread of the old story might be taken up again just where we 
 di'opped it." 
 
 " And now she is free, and you seem hardly to have taken up the 
 thread. " 
 
 " It is her fault," said Hillersdon, angrily. " She is beautiful, 
 generous, loves me with aD her heart ; but she is fettered by petty 
 laws which brave women laugh at. She ran away from me just 
 when my salvation lay in her society. I wanted to hold fast by my 
 first love. I wanted to live all my life in her company, to lure 
 back the loves and graces that had fluttered away, to forget that 
 there was another lovely or lovable woman upon this earth ; but 
 she told me that people woidd talk, and that it was better we 
 should see very little of each other until the period of conventional 
 grief was past, and I could decently make Champion's widow my 
 wife. So she is sketching snow-peaks at Jtlurren while " 
 
 " "While you are over head and ears in love with Hester Daven- 
 port." 
 
 " It is more than love ; it is possession. My world begins and 
 ends with her. I tried to run away, tried to start for Switzerland, 
 to follow my betrothed to her mountain retreat, in defiance of her 
 objection ; but it was a futile eifort. I was at the station ; my 
 servant and portmanteau were on the platform ; and at the last 
 moment my resolution failed. I could not place myself beyond the 
 possibility of seeing the face I worship, of hearing the voice that 
 thrills me." 
 
 " And you are content to go on seeing the lovely face and hearing 
 the thrilling voice in the presence of a third person ? Isn't that 
 rather like being in love with a ward in Chancery, aud courting her 
 in the presence of the family lawyer ? Why don't you get rid of 
 the old man ? " 
 
 " That's not as easy as you suppose. You saw me sent away 
 from Hester's door to-day. She will not receive me in her fathei-'s
 
 172 Gerard; or, 
 
 absence, and I am not such a cad as to force myself upon her 
 seclusion. I behaved badly enough in the first instance when I 
 acted in direct opposition to her wish." 
 
 " To her alleged wish. Do you think a woman is ever quite 
 candid in these cases, either to her lover or to herself? Look at 
 Goethe's Gretchen, for instance, somewhat snappish when Faust 
 addresses her in the street, but a few hours after, in the garden ! 
 What had become of the snappishness ? She is ocean deep in love, 
 ready to throw herself into the lover's arms. I can't conceive how 
 you can have gone on with this idle trifling, like an undergraduate 
 smitten by a boarding-school miss. You with your millions, your 
 short lease of life, your passionate desire to make the most of a few 
 golden years. Strange to what hopeless fatuity love can reduce its 
 victim ! Get rid of the old father, make a clean sweep of him, and 
 then at least the coast will be clear, and you need not confine your 
 love-making to half-an-hour's crawl upon the Embankment." 
 
 " How get rid of him ? There's the difiiculty. He has been 
 reformed by her care, and it is the business of her hfe to make 
 his declining years happy. Nothing would induce her to part with 
 him." 
 
 " Perhaps not ; but very little would induce him to part with her. 
 Do you suppose that he is not tired of his present life ? Do you 
 know w^hat reform means in the habitual drunkard? It means 
 deprivation that makes existence a Hving death. It means a per- 
 petual craving, a thirst as fierce as that which racks the parched 
 traveller in the African desert, the perishing sailor after a week 
 scorched upon a raft in mid-ocean : only it is the thirst for alcohol, 
 for fire instead of water. To his daughter this poor wretch may 
 pretend resignation, but you may be sure he is miserable, and will 
 resume his darhng vice at the first opportunil3\" 
 
 " And you would suggest that I should find the opportunity, that 
 I should fling him back into the Tophet from which his daughter 
 plucked him. No, Jermyn, I am not so vile as that." 
 
 " I suggest nothing. Only if you want to win the daughter you 
 must get the father out of the way ; unless, indeed, you prefer to 
 take the other line — throw over Mrs. Champion and make a formal 
 oSer for Miss Davenport's hand. No doubt the old man would be 
 very proud of you as a son-in-law, though you might have some 
 occasion to be ashamed of him as a fatlicr-in-law when the oppor- 
 tmiities of an establishment like this should lure him back to his old 
 habits."
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 173 
 
 " I have told you that I cannot break with Edith," 
 " And you will marry her next year, while you are still passionately 
 in love with another woman ? " 
 
 "I dare not think of next year. I may not live till next year. 
 I can think only of the present, and of the woman I love." 
 
 " You are wise. A year is a long time, measured by a passion 
 like yours. You have offered Davenport and his daughter an 
 income through your sister. You have acted with most admirable 
 delicacy, and yet your offers have been rejected. Have you ever 
 offered Davenport money, directly— with the golden sovereigns or 
 the crisp bank-notes in your hand? " 
 
 " Never. I would not degrade him by any such offer. And I 
 believe that he would reject any gift of that kind." 
 
 " A gift perhaps, but not a loan. A man of that kind will alway3 
 take your money if you humour his pride by pretending to lend it 
 to him. Or there are other ways. He is a good classic, you say, 
 or was so once. Let him write a book for you. A literary com- 
 mission would be an excuse for giving him ample means for enjoying 
 his evenings in his own way, and then your moonlit walks upon the 
 Embankment would have the charm which such walks have when 
 heart answers to heart." 
 
 " What a villain I should be if I were to take your advice and 
 tmdo the work to which that heroic girl has devoted herself for the 
 brightest years of her girlhood— those years which for the young 
 lady in society mean a triumphant progress of dances and tennis- 
 tournaments, and pretty frocks and adulation, a pathway of flowers. 
 She has given all the brightness of her youth to this one holy aim, 
 and you would have me undo her work." 
 
 " My dear fellow, the end is inevitable. I tell you that for the 
 habitual drunkard there is no such thing as reformation. There is 
 the semblance of it, while the sinner is cut off from the possibility of 
 sin ; but backsliding comes with opportunity, and the reaction is so 
 much the more violent because of that slow agony of deprivation 
 through which the sinner has been passing. I no more believe in 
 Mr. Davenport's reform than the Broad Church believes that Joshua 
 stopped the sun." 
 
 The conversation drifted into other channels. They discussed 
 that great problem of man's destiny which is always being argued 
 in some form or other. They asked each other that universal riddle 
 which is always being answered and is yet unanswerable. In this 
 line of argument Justin Jermyn showed an impish facility for shifting
 
 174 Gerard; or, 
 
 his ground ; and at the end of an hour's argnment Hillersdon hardly 
 knew whether he was foil of vague aspirations and vague behefs in 
 purer and better worlds beyond this insignificant planet, or whether 
 his creed was blank negation. 
 
 It was late when they parted, and after the man himself was gone 
 Gerard Hillersdon sat for a long time face to face with the marble 
 image, the sly smile, the curious sidelong glance of the long narrow 
 eyes seeming to carry on the argument, which the living lips had 
 dropped, to strange and wicked conclusions. 
 
 "Wealth without limit," mused Gerard, "and so little power to 
 enjoy — so brief a lease of life. Why, if I were sure of living to 
 eighty or ninety I should still think it hard that the end must come 
 — that it is inevitable— foreshadowed in the freshness of life's 
 morning; stealing nearer and nearer with the ripening noon; 
 hurrying with ever quickening pace in the twilight of life's evening, 
 when the last sun-rays gild an open grave. Oh, that inevitable end 
 — ^bane of every Hfe,but most hideous where wealth makes existence 
 a kind of royalty. I shudder when I read the wills of triple or 
 quadruple millionaires. The riches remain — a long array of figures, 
 astounding in their magnitude — and the man who owned all that 
 gold is lying in the dark, and knows the end of all things." 
 
 He went over to the wall against which he had affixed his 
 talisman, drew aside the curtain, and then stepped quickly back to 
 the table and dipped his pen in the ink. It was the same large 
 broad-nibbed pen with which he had drawn the last line upon the 
 night after his interview with Hester Davenport. He dashed his 
 pen upon the paper in a fury, and drew an inner line with one 
 hurried sweep of his wrist If determination could have assured 
 firmness that line would have been bold and strong as Giotto's 0; 
 but the tracing was even weaker than the last, and might have been 
 the effort of a sick man, so feebly did the line falter from point to 
 point." 
 
 "Dr. South and Justin Jermyn are right," thought Gerard. "It 
 is passionate feeling that saps the life of a man — most of all a 
 hopeless passion — most of all a struggle between honour and 
 incUnation. I will see South to-morrow, and if he tells me the 
 shadows are deepening upon the dial — if " 
 
 The sentence remained unfim'shed even in his own mind. He 
 spent a restless night, broken by brief slumbers and long dreams — 
 vivid dreams in which he was haunted by the image of Nicholas 
 Davenport, under every strange and degrading aspect. In one
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 175 
 
 dream he was in bis father's chnrch at evensong in the quiet 
 summer evening. He heard the organ and the voices of the vilhige 
 choir in the closing phrases of his mother's favourite hymn, " Abide 
 with me : " and amidst the hush that followed the Amen he saw 
 Nicholas Davenport lolling over the worn velvet cushions of the old- 
 -fashioned pulpit, gesticulating dumbly, mad with drink, but voiceless. 
 There was no sound in the church after that tender closing phrase 
 of the hymn. All that followed was silence ; but as he looked at 
 that degraded figure leaning out of the pulpit the church changed 
 to the pit of hell, and the village congregation became an assembly 
 of devils, and on the steps of Satan's throne stood a figure like 
 Goethe's Mephistopheles, and the face under the httle red cap with 
 the cock's feather was the face of Justin Jermyn. 
 
 There was nothing strange in the fact that he should so dream, 
 for he had long ago in his own mind likened the Fate-reader to 
 Goethe's fiend. 
 
 Gerard drove to Harley Street before ten o'clock next morning, 
 and was lucky in catching Dr. South, who was in London, en 
 passant, having finished his own cure at Homburg, and being on 
 the point of starting for a holiday at Braemar. 
 
 There were no patients in the waiting-room, as the doctor was 
 supposed to be out of town, and on sending in his card Gerard was 
 at once admitted to the consulting-room. 
 
 Dr. South looked up from his pile of newly-opened letters with a 
 pleasant smile. 
 
 " My little patient of the Devonshire Eectory," he said cheerily; 
 and then, ^\^th a keen look and a changed tone, he said, " But how 
 is this, Mr. Hillersdon, you are not looking so well as when you 
 were here last. I'm afraid you have been disregarding my advice I " 
 
 " Perhaps I have," Gerard answered gloomily. " You told me 
 that in order to spin out the thin thread of my life I must only 
 vegetate, I must teach myself to become a human jelly-fish, without 
 passions or emotions, thought or desire." 
 
 "I did not forbid pleasant emotions," said Dr. South; "I only 
 urged you to avoid those stormy passions which strain the cordage 
 of the human vessel, and sometimes wreck her." 
 
 " You urged that which is impossible. To Hve is to feel and to 
 suffer. I have not been able to obey you. I am passionately in 
 love with a woman whom I cannot marry." 
 
 " You mean that the lady is married already ? "
 
 1/6 Gerard; or, 
 
 " No ; but there are other reasons " 
 
 " If it is a question of social inequality, waive it, and man^y. 
 You cannot afford to be unhappy. The disappointment which 
 another man would get over in a year, might in your case have a 
 fatal effect. You are not of the temper which can live down 
 trouble." 
 
 " Tell me, frankly and ruthlessly, how long I have to live." 
 
 " Take off your coat and waistcoat," said the doctor quietly, and 
 then, as his patient obeyed, he said, " I should be an impudent 
 empiric if I pretended to measure the sands in the glass of life, but 
 I can, if you like, tell you if your chances now are any worse than 
 when you were with me last year. I remember your case perfectly, 
 and even what I said to j'ou at that time. I was especially 
 interested in you as one of my little patients who had faith enough 
 to come back to me in manhood. Now let me see," and the 
 thoughtful head was bent to listen to that terrible tell-tale machinery 
 we all carry about with us, ticking off the hours that remain to each 
 of us in this poor sum of life. The downward bent brow was unseen 
 by the patient, or he might have read his doom in the physician's 
 countenance. When Dr. South looked up his features wore only 
 the studied gravity of the professional aspect. 
 
 " Well," questioned Hillersdon, when the auscultation was finished, 
 •' am I much worse than when I was here last? " 
 
 " You are not any better." 
 
 " Speak out, for God's sake," cried Gerard, roughly, " I — I beg 
 your pardon, doctor, but I want the truth, the whole truth, and 
 nothing but the truth, no making the best of a bad case. What is 
 the outlook ? " 
 
 " Bad." 
 
 "Shall I Hve a year— two— three years? How much do you 
 give me?" 
 
 " With care— extreme care— you may live some years yet. Nay, 
 I do not say that you might not last ten years; but if you are 
 reckless the end may come quickly. Worry, agitation, fretting of 
 any kind may hasten your doom. I am sorry to be obliged to tell 
 you this." 
 
 "I thank you for having told me the truth. It settles one 
 question, at least. I shall try to be happy my own way." 
 
 " Marry the woman you love, even if she is a housemaid," said 
 the doctor, kindly, " and let her make your life happy in some quiet 
 retreat, far from the excitements and agitations of the world of
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 177 
 
 fashion or politics. You will go to the South, of course, before the 
 winter. I should recommend Sorrento or Corsica. Your wealth 
 will surround you with all the luxuries that make life easy wherever 
 a man has to live," 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 " HE IS THE VEKT SOUL OF BOUNTY." 
 
 Gerard Hillersdon left Harley Street almost persuaded to break 
 faith with the woman he had loved for more tlian three years, 
 and ot% himself to Ae woman he had loved less than three 
 months. But that one word "almost" lost the early Christian 
 Church a royal convert, and Gerard had not quite made up his 
 mind to marry Nicholas Davenport's daughter. 
 
 " So short a lease of life — and were I but happy with such a wife 
 as Hester I might prolong my span to the uttermost," he told him- 
 self, and then that advocate of evil which every worldly man has at 
 his elbow whispered, " Why marry her, when your wealth would 
 enable you to make so liberal a settlement that she need never feel 
 the disadvantage of a false position ? Win her for your mistress, 
 cherish and hide her from the eye of the world. To marry her 
 would be to bring a drunken madman into the foreground of your 
 life — to cut off every chance of distinction in the few years that may 
 be left to you. A man in your position can be true to Esther with- 
 out renouncing Vashti. And your Vashti has been loyal and con- 
 stant. It would be the act of a villain to break faith with her." 
 
 As if to accentuate that eval counsel ho found a letter from Vashti 
 waiting for him on his study table — a letter upon which Vashti's 
 image was smilmg, beautiful in court plumes and diamonds. There 
 was nothing new in her letter, but it stabbed him where he was 
 weakest, and tlie writer dwelt fondly upon her trust in him, and 
 upon that happy future which they were to lead together. 
 
 He dawdled away the summer noontide in his garden, smoking, 
 and dreaming, and he drove to Rosamond Road, Chelsea, at the 
 hour when he knew he was likely to find Nicholas Davenport alone. 
 His horses and stablemen had been idle of late, as he always em-
 
 1/8 Gerard ; or, 
 
 ployed a hansom when he went to Chelsea — and the inquiry, 
 " would the horses be wanted any more to-day ? " was generally 
 answered in the negative. 
 
 He found the old man dozing in his arm-chair, with the 
 Standard lying across his knees. He looked pale and worn, the 
 mere wreck of a man, his sOvery hair falling in loose wisps over 
 the high, narrow forehead. There were fresh flowers in the room, 
 and all was exquisitely neat, from the books upon the dwarf cup- 
 board to the muslin cover of the sewing-machine. Gerard seldom 
 entered that room without being reminded of Faust's emotion in 
 Gretchen's modest chamber — where, in the gentle maiden's absence, 
 he felt her spirit hovering near him, her pure and innocent mind 
 expressed in the purity and neatness of her surroundings. 
 
 He had time to glance round him, and to recall that scene— Ein 
 kleines, reinliches Zimmer — before Nicholas Davenport started up 
 out of his light slumber, and shook hands with him. 
 
 " This is uncommonly kind of you," said the old man. " These 
 Bummer afternoons are infernally long when Hester is out of the way. 
 And the papers are as dull as ditchwater — politicians on the stump 
 all over the countiy — one Parliamentary machine thrashing his 
 bundle of political corn at Leeds on Tuesday, and another machine 
 thrashing the very same bundle of facts and fallacies, and prophecies 
 that never come true, at Halifax I And so the ball rolls on." 
 
 "I dare say if we had lived at Athens we should have found 
 politics just as gi-eat a bore, and orators no less windy," answered 
 Gerard, lightly. " But you are not looking well, Mr. Davenport." 
 
 "I am feeling a little low to-day — the weather, perhaps," and 
 here the old man sighed, and began to fold up his newspaper with 
 the tremulous movement of hands that had never recovered the 
 firmness or repose lost under the influence of alcohol. " To be 
 candid with you, my dear Hillersdon, 1 am suffering from a pro- 
 found misapprehension in one of the best of creatines. My daughter 
 is an angel. Her devotion to me " — here the ready tears stole 
 down his withered cheeks — *' is beyond all praise ; but she is a 
 woman, and a young woman, and she doesn't understand my con- 
 Btitution, or the circumstances of my life. She has taken up tem- 
 perance as a craze, and she thinks she is doing me a kindness by 
 depriving me of every form of stimulant. She hugs herself with the 
 idea that she has saved me from destruction, and she cannot see 
 that she is reducing me to a state of weakness, mental and physical, 
 which must result in imbecility or death.' '
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, 179 
 
 He was so earnest, he looked bo reduced and wretched a being 
 that Gerard was inclined to believe him, and to doubt whether 
 Hester's system might not be a mistake. 
 
 " It is hard for you, I dare say, to make so complete a change in 
 your habits," he said doubtfully. 
 
 " Her mistake is in insisting upon total abstinence. I have not 
 forgotten tlie past, Mr. Hillersdon. I have not forgotten the degra- 
 dation and disgrace which I have brought upon myself in your 
 father's church ; but that unhappy exhibition was the outcome of 
 long months of agony. I had been racked by neuralgia, and the 
 only alleviation of my pain was the use of chloral or brandy. I have 
 been free from neuralgic pain of late. My poor Hester is very 
 careful of my diet, and takes the utmost care of my health after her 
 own lights ; but she cannot see how weak and depressed I am. She 
 cannot understand the mental misery which a glass of sound port, 
 twice a day, might cure." 
 
 " Surely Miss Davenport would not object to your taking a glass 
 of port after your luncheon and your dinner? " 
 
 " You don't know her, my dear friend," said Davenport, shaking 
 his head. " Women are always in extremes. She would begin to 
 cry if she saw me with a glass of wine in my hand, would go on her 
 knees to ask me not to drink it. She has taken it into her head 
 that the least indulgence in that line would bring about a return to 
 habits of intemperance, which I can assure you were never a part of 
 my nature." 
 
 " I must talk to Miss Davenport, and induce her to let me send 
 you a few dozen of fine old port, Cockburn's '57, for instance." 
 
 The old man's eyes gleamed as he heard the offer. 
 
 " You may talk to her," he said, " but she won't give way. She 
 has made up her mind that my salvation depends upon living in 
 her way. It is a hard thing for a man of my age to depend 
 for subsistence upon a daughter's manual labour, to see a lovely 
 girl wearing out her life at vulgar drudgery, and never to have 
 sixpence in my pocket — hardly the means of buying a newspaper. 
 She doles out her pence, poor child, as if they were sovereigns. 
 "Women have such narrow notions about money." 
 
 There was a silence of some minutes, during which Davenport 
 nearly fell asleep again, and then Gerard said quietly — 
 
 " Why should yon depend upon your daughter, even for pocket- 
 money ? Why not do something for yourself? " 
 
 " What can I do ? I have tried to get copying work, but I could
 
 I So Gerard; or, 
 
 not -write a clerk's hand. My penmanship was too weak and 
 illegible to be worth even the starvation wages paid for that kind of 
 work." 
 
 " I was not thinking of so poor an occupation. Have you tried 
 your hand at literature ? " 
 
 " I have, in more than one line, though I had no vocation, and 
 wrote slowly and laboriously. The articles I sent to the magazines 
 all came back, ' Declined with thanks.' My daughter was the poorer 
 by so many quires of Bath post and so many postage stamps." 
 
 " You tried a wrong line, I dare say. Beginners in literature 
 generally do. You are a good classic, I know." 
 
 "I was once, but the man who took his degree at Oxford thirty 
 years ago is dead and gone." 
 
 " Men don't forget Homer or Virgil when they have once loved 
 them with the scholar's fervour." 
 
 " Forget, no. One does not forget old friends. Quote me any 
 line firom Horace or Virgil — the most obscure — and I will give you 
 the context. Those two poets are interwoven with the fabric of my 
 brain. I used also to be considered a pretty good critic upon the 
 Greek Dramatists. I once got half way through a translation of 
 (Edipus, which some of my contemporaries were flattering enough 
 to persuade me to finish. I laid the manuscript aside when I began 
 parish work, and Heaven knows what became of it." 
 
 "The world has grown too frivolous to care for translations of 
 Sophocles," rephed Gerard, " but I beheve there is room for a new 
 Horace — that is to say a new version of some of the lighter satires — a 
 version which should be for the present epoch what Pope's was for 
 the time of Queen Anne ; and I feel that it is in me to attempt the 
 thing if I had the aid of a competent scholar — Hke yourself." 
 
 The old man's face lighted up with feverish eagerness. 
 
 " Surely your own Latin " he began tremulously. 
 
 " Has grown sadly rusty. I want a new version of my favourite 
 satires — a verbatim translation, reproducing the exact text in clear, 
 nervous English, and upon that 1 could work, giving the old lines a 
 modem turn, modulating the antique satire into a modern kev. 
 Will you collaborate with me, Mr. Davenport? Will you under 
 take the scholarly portion of the work ? " 
 
 " It is a task which will delight me. The very idea gives me new 
 life. Which of the satires shall we start with? " 
 
 " Shall we say the ninth in the first book ? It gives such a fine 
 opportunity for the castigation of the modern bore."
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, i S i 
 
 " Capital. I am proud to think that with so many translations 
 ready to your hand you should prefer a new one by me." 
 
 " I want to avoid all published versions," answered Gerard, 
 plausibly ; as he opened a note-case. 
 
 The old man watched him with greedy eyes, and the weak lips 
 quivered faintly. Did that note-case mean payment in advance ? 
 
 The question was promptly answered. Gerard took out a couple 
 of folded notes, and handed them to his future collaborator. 
 
 " You must allow me to give you two hundred pounds on account," 
 he said. "You will then at least have the feeling that your 
 scholarship is worth something, and that you are not wholly 
 dependent on your daughter's labour." 
 
 The old man fairly broke down, and burst into tears. 
 " My dear young friend, your delicacy of feeling, your generosity 
 overcome me," he faltered, clutching the notes with shaking fingers, 
 " but I cannot — I cannot take this money." His hold of the notes 
 tightened involuntarily as he spoke, in abject fear lest he should 
 have to give them back. " I suspect your proposed translation is 
 only a generous fiction — devised to spare me the sense of humiliation 
 in acceptmg this munificent honorarium. I own to you that the 
 work you propose would be full of interest for me. I perceive the 
 opportunities of those satires — treated as freely as Pope treated 
 them — the allusions, political, social, literary— and to a writer of 
 your power — who have made your mark in the very morning of life 
 by a work of real genius — the task would be easy." 
 
 " You will help me, then ? " said Gerard, his hollow cheek flushing 
 with a hectic glow. 
 
 ■' With all my heart, and to the utmost of my power," answered 
 Davenport, slipping the notes into his waistcoat-pocket as if by an 
 automatic movement. " Without conceit I think I may venture to 
 say that for the mere verbal work you could employ no better 
 hack." 
 
 " I am sure of that, and for much more than merely verbal work. 
 And now, good day to you, Mr. Davenport. It is about your 
 daughter's time for coming home, and she won't care to find a visitor 
 here when she comes in tired after her walk." 
 
 *' Yes, she will be here directly," answered the old man, starting 
 as with some sudden apprehension, " and on second thoughts I 
 would rather you did not tell her anything about our plans until they 
 are carried out. TMien your book is published she will be proud, 
 very proud, to know that her old father has helped in so distinguished
 
 l82 Gerard; or, 
 
 a work ; but in the meantime if you changed your mind, and the 
 book were never finished, she would be disappointed ; and then, on 
 the other hand, I should not like her to know that I had so much 
 money in my possession." 
 
 All this was faltered nervously, in broken sentences, while Mr. 
 Davenport followed his patron to the door, and showed him out, 
 eagerly facilitating his departure. 
 
 Gerard had dismissed his cab on arriving, and he walked slowly 
 away towards the river, carefuUy avoiding that road by which 
 Hester was likely to return. He was pale to the lips, and he felt 
 like a murderer. 
 
 CHAPTER XVn. 
 
 "so, QUIET AS DESPAIE, I TUICS'ED FKOM HIM." 
 
 Gerard called in Rosamond Road on the following evening at the 
 hour when he had been accustomed to find Mr. Davenport reposing 
 after his comfortable little dinner, and his daughter reading to him. 
 To-night the open window showed him Hester sitting alone in a 
 despondent attitude, with an unread book on the table before her. 
 
 She came to the door in answer to his knock. 
 
 " My father is out," she said. " He did not come home to dinner. 
 He went out early in the afternoon while I was away, and he left a 
 little note for me, saying that he had to go into London to meet an 
 old friend. He did not teD me the friend's name, and it seems so 
 strange, for we have no friends left. We have drifted away from 
 all old ties." 
 
 " Jilay I come in and talk with you ? " Gerard asked. " I am so 
 Borry you should have any cause for uneasiness." 
 
 " Perhaps I am foolish to be uneasy, but you know — you know 
 why. I was just going for a little walk. It is so sultry indoors, 
 and we may meet him." She took her hat from a peg in the passage, 
 and put it on. " We are not very particular about gloves in this 
 neighbourhood," she said. 
 
 He perfectly understood that she would not receive him in her 
 father's absence, that even in her fallen estate, a work-girl among 
 other work-girls, she clung to the conventionalities of her originaJ
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 183 
 
 sphere, and that it would not be easy for him to break through 
 them. 
 
 They walked to the end of Rosamond Road almost in silence, 
 but on the Embankment, with the dark swift river flowing past 
 them, and the summer stars above, she began to tell him her 
 trouble. 
 
 *' You know how happy I have been," she said, " in a life which 
 many girls of my age would think miserable and degraded." 
 
 "Miserable, yes; degraded, no. The most feather-headed girl 
 in England, if she knew your Ufe, would consider you a heroine." 
 
 " Oh, please don't make so much out of so little. I have done no 
 more than hundreds of girls would do for a dear old father. I was 
 BO proud and happy to think that I had saved him — that he was 
 cured of that fatal vice — and now, now I am full of fear that since 
 yesterday, somehow or other, he has obtained the means of falling 
 back into the old habit — the habit that wrecked him." 
 
 " What makes you fear this ? " 
 
 " He insisted upon going out last night after dinner. He waa 
 going to the Free Library to look at the August magazines. I 
 offered to go there with him. We used to read there of an evening 
 in the winter, but since the warm weather began we have not done 
 so. I reminded him how hot the reading-room would be with the 
 gas, but he was unusually eager to go, and I could not hinder him. 
 The worst sign of all was that he did not like my going with him, 
 and when we had been sitting there for half-an-hour he seemed 
 anxious to get rid of me, and reminded me of some work which he 
 knew I had to finish before this morning. But for that work I 
 should have stayed with him till he came home ; but I could not 
 disappoint my employer, so I left my father sitting engrossed in 
 ' Blackwood,' and I hoped all would be well. He promised me to 
 come straight home when the library closed, and he came home 
 about the time I expected him, but one look m his face, one sentence 
 from his lips told me that by some means or other he had been able 
 to get the poison which destroys him." 
 
 " Are you not exaggerating the evil in your own imagination ? " 
 asked Gerard, soothingly. " After all, do you think that a few 
 glasses too much once in a way can do your father any harm ? He 
 has seemed to me below par of late. He really may suffer from 
 this enforced abstinence." 
 
 " Suffer I Ah, you do not know, you do not know I I may 
 eeem hard with him, perhaps, but I would give my life to keep him
 
 io4 Gera7'd ; or, 
 
 from that old hon'or — that madness of the past, which degraded a 
 frentleman and a scholar to the level of the lowest drunkard in London. 
 There is no difference — the drink madness makes them all alike. 
 And now that some one has given him money all my care is useless. 
 I cannot think who can have done it. I don't know of any so-called 
 friend to whom he could apply." 
 
 " His letter tells you of an old friend " 
 
 " Yes ! It may be some one who has returned from abroad — 
 Eome friend of years ago who knows nothing of his unhappy story, 
 and cannot guess the harm that money may do." 
 
 "Pray do not be too anxious," said Gerard, taking her hand and 
 lifting it to his lips. 
 
 She snatched the small cold hand away from him indignantly. 
 
 " Pray don't," she said. " Is this a time for idle gallantry, and to 
 me of all people — to me who have to deal only with the hard 
 things of this Ufe ? " 
 
 "No, Hester, but it is a time for love — devoted love — to speak. 
 You know that I love you." 
 
 He took the poor little gloveless hand again and held it fast, and 
 kissed the work-worn fingers again and again. 
 
 " You know that I love you, fondly, dearly, with aU my soul. 
 Hester, only yesterday my doctor told me that I have not many 
 years to spend upon this planet — perhaps not many months. He 
 told me to be happy if I could — happy with the woman I love, for 
 my day of happiness must be brief even at the best. It is but a 
 poor remnant of life that I offer, Hester, but it means all myself-^ 
 mind and heart and hope and dreams are all centred and bound up 
 in you. Since I have known you — since that first night under the 
 stars when you were so hard and cold, when you would have nothing 
 to say to me — since that night I have loved only vou, lived only for 
 you." 
 
 She had heard him in despite of herself, her free will straggling 
 against her love, like a bird caught in a net. Yes, she loved him. 
 Her desolate heart had gone to him as gladly, blindly, eagerly aa 
 his heart had gone to her. There had been no more hesitation, no 
 more doubt than in Margaret in the garden, when in a sweet 
 piraplicity that scarce knew fear of shame, she gave her young heart 
 to her unknown lover. Hester's lore was just as pure, and fond, and 
 unselfish ; but she had more knowledge of danger than Goethe's 
 guileless maiden. She knew that peril lay in Gerard Hillersdon's 
 love — generous, reverential even, as it might seem. It was only a
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 185 
 
 year ago that she had sat, late into the night, reading Clarissa 
 Harlowe, and she knew how tender, how delicate, how deeply 
 respectful a lover might seem and yet harbour the basest designs 
 against a woman's honour. 
 
 "You have no right to talk to me like this," she said indignantly. 
 " You take advantage of my loneHness and my misery. Do you 
 think I can forget the distance your fortune has set between us ? I 
 know that you are bound to another woman — that you will marry a 
 woman who can do you honour before the world. I know that 
 in England wealth counts almost as high as rank, and that a 
 marriage between a millionaire and a work-girl is out of the 
 question." 
 
 " A lady is always a lady, Hester. Do you think your womanly 
 dignity is lowered in my esteem because you have toiled to support 
 your father — do you think there is any man in England who would 
 not admire you for that self-sacrifice ? Yes, it is true that I am 
 bound in honour to another woman — to a woman whom I loved 
 four years ago, and whom I thought this world's one woman — but 
 from that first night when I followed you across the Park — when 
 you sent me away from you so cruelly, the old love was dead. It 
 died in an hour, and no effort of mine would conjure the passion 
 back to life. I knew then how poor a thing that first love was — a 
 young man's fancy for a beautiful face. My love for you is different. 
 I should love you as dearly if that sweet face of yours was faded 
 and distorted — if those sweet eyes were blind and dim. I should 
 love you as the clerk loved the leper — with a passion that no outward 
 circumstance could change." 
 
 They were walking slowly under the trees — in the warm dark- 
 ness of a breathless August night. He had his arm round her, and 
 though her face was turned from him she did not repulse him. 
 She let his arm clasp her, and draw her nearer and nearer, till it 
 seemed as they moved slowly under the wavering branches as if 
 they were one already. Other obligations, the opinion of the world, 
 the past, the future, what could these matter to two beings whose 
 hearts beat throb for throb, in the sweet madness of newly-spoken 
 love ? 
 
 " Dearest, say you love me. I know it, I know it — only let me 
 hear, let me hear it from those h'ps. Hester, you love me, you 
 love me." 
 
 Her face was turned to him now — pale in that faint light of 
 distant stars, dark violet eyes still darker in the shadow of ni^rt.
 
 1 86 Gerard: or, 
 
 Their lips met, and between his passionate kisses he heard the faint 
 whisper, " Yes, I love you — love you better than my life — but it 
 cannot be." 
 
 " What cannot be — not love's sweet union — all our life, my poor 
 brief life, spent together in one unbroken dream, like this, like thia, 
 and this " 
 
 She wrenched herself out of his arms. 
 
 " You know that it cannot be — you know that you cannot marry 
 me — that it is cruel to try to cheat me — with sweet words that 
 mean nothing. No man ever kissed me before — except my father. 
 You have made me hate myself. Let me go — let me never hear 
 your voice again." 
 
 " Hester, is there no other way ? Do you want the marriage law 
 to bind us? Won't you trust in me — won't you believe in me — aa 
 other women have trusted their lovers, all the world over ? " 
 
 " Don't," she cried passionately, " why could you not leave those 
 words unspoken ? Why must you fill my cup of shame ? I knew 
 those hateful words would come if ever I let you tell me of your 
 love, and I have tried to hinder your telling me. Yes, I knew what 
 your love was worth. You will keep your promise to the great 
 lady — your sister told me about her — and you would let me lose 
 my soul for your love. You have been trying to win my heart — so 
 that I should have no power to resist you — but I am not so weak 
 and helpless a creature as you think. Oh, God, look down upon 
 my loneliness — motherless, fatherless, friendless — take pity upon 
 me because I am so lonely. I have none but Thee." 
 
 She stood with clasped hands, looking skyward in the moonlight ; 
 sublime in her simple faith, even to the unbeliever. 
 
 " Hester, do you think that God cares about marriage lines ? He 
 has made His creatures to love as we love. Our love cannot be 
 unholy in His sight — any more than the un wedded love of Adam 
 and Eve in the Garden." 
 
 " He never made us for dishonour," she answered firmly. " Good 
 night, Mr. Hillerisdon — good night and good-bye." 
 
 She turned and walked quickly, with steady steps, towards 
 Rosamond Road. A minute ago he had held her clasped close in 
 his enfolding arms, had felt the tumult of her heart mixing with the 
 tumult of his own — had counted her all his own, pledged to him 
 for ever by those passionate kisses, those tears which mingled with 
 his tears, tears of joy and triumph, the hysterical fervour of exultant 
 love. And now bhe called him " Mr. Hilleradon," and tuined her
 
 The Woi4d, the Flesh, and the Devil. 187 
 
 back upoD him as coolly as upon any importunate adventurer — 
 invincible m her purity, although she loved him. 
 
 Angry, despairing, his thoughts took a sudden turn — worthy of 
 Lovelace. He told himself that he would diplomatise — rtculer 
 pour mieux saiiter. 
 
 " Let me walk with you to your door at least," he said, " if it is 
 to be good-bye." 
 
 She made no answer, and he walked by her side, watching her 
 profile in the dim light. She had wiped away her tears, her hot 
 blushes had faded to marble pallor, her hps were firmly set, as if 
 the face were verily marble, delicately chiselled by some old-world 
 sculptor. 
 
 " Hester, you are very cruel to me." 
 
 " It is you who are cruel. Most of all when you tried to trade 
 upon my weakness, to frighten me by saying you have not long to 
 live. That was the cruellest of all." 
 
 " But it is tnie, Hester — as true as that you and I are walking 
 here side by side. When I first came into my fortune, knowing 
 myself far from strong, I went to a dear old doctor who saved my 
 life from a sharp attack of lung disease when I was a little boy. I 
 saw him more than a year ago, and he was not particularly hopeful 
 about me even then. He warned me that I must live carefully, that 
 all strong emotions would tend to shorten my days. I saw him 
 again yesterday, for I was bent on knowing the worst. He was all 
 kindness and all tinith. He told me that I had changed for the 
 worse within the year that was gone, and that only by extreme 
 carefubess could I prolong my life for a few years. And then he 
 bade me go and be happy, as if that were such an easy thing to do." 
 
 " It must be easy for you to be happy. You have all the world 
 to choose from," she said falteringly. 
 
 " A futile privilege if there is only one thing in the world that I 
 want. Deny me that and you reduce me to misery." 
 
 " Did your doctor really say that you have but a few years to 
 live ? " she asked, and he knew by her voice that she was crying, 
 though her face was averted. "Don't try to make me unhappy. 
 I'm sure it is not tnie that he said so. Doctors don't say such things." 
 
 " Sometimes, Hester. Even a physician will tell the truth when 
 he is hard pressed. My doctor spoke very plainly. It is only in 
 a life of calm — which means a life of happiness — that I can hope 
 to prolong my existence a few years — just the years that are best 
 and brightest, when love lights them. If I am worried and un-
 
 iS8 Gerard ; or, 
 
 happy my life will be a question of months instead of years. But 
 if you do not care for me that makes no difference to you." 
 
 " You know that I care for you. Should I be speaking to you 
 now — anxious about your health — after what you have said to me, 
 if I did not care for you ? If love were not stronger than pride, I 
 Bhould never have spoken to you again. But I am speaking to you 
 to-night for the last time. Our friendship is at an end for ever." 
 
 " Our friendship never began, Hester. From the first I had but 
 one feeling about you, and that was passionate love, which takes 
 no heed of difficulties, does not forecast the future. I was wrong, 
 perhaps, hampered as I am, to pursue you ; but I followed where 
 my heart led ; I could not count the cost for you or for me. You 
 are right — you are wise. We must part. Good night, dear love, 
 and good-bye." 
 
 His tone was firm and deliberate. She believed him — believed 
 that he was convinced, and that trial and temptation were over. 
 She turned to him with a choking sob, put her hand in his, and 
 whispered good-bye. Those two hands clasped each other pas- 
 sionately, but with briefest pressure. She hurried from him to the 
 little iron gate, let herself in at the unguarded door — what need of 
 locks and bolts when there was so little to tempt the thief? — and 
 vanished from his sight. 
 
 He went back to the river side, and sat there for an hour or more 
 watching the tide flow by, and thinldng, thinking, thinking of the 
 woman he loved and the brief span he had for love or for life. 
 
 " And she can believe that I renounce her — knowing that she 
 loves me — having held her in my arms and felt her sweet lips 
 trembling against my own in love's first kiss. How simple women 
 are ! " 
 
 It was eleven o'clock before he remembered that he had asked 
 Jermyn to sup with him at midnight. He walked home, for his 
 heated brain and throbbing pulses needed active movement. He 
 walked faster than he had walked three or four years ago, when he 
 was a strong man. He thought of many things upon his way 
 through streets that were still full of traffic and busy life, and once 
 or twice as he caught the expression of a passing face he saw a 
 kind of wondering horror in strange eyes that looked at him. 
 
 " I must be looking miserably ill to-night," he thought, after one 
 of those casual glances. " Perhaps I am even worse than Dr. South 
 Beemed to think me. He questioned me about my family history, 
 and I rather shirked the suliject — paltered with the tmth — told him
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 189 
 
 my father and mother are aUve and well. But the history is bad 
 all the same. Bad, decidedly bad. Two lovely young sisters of 
 my mother faded off this earth before they saw a twentieth birthday, 
 and an micle I can just remember died at three and thirty. My 
 family history won't justify a hopeful view of a bad case." 
 
 He supped with Jermyn, and sat late into the night, and drank 
 deeper than his wont, and he told Jermyn the story of his love. Of 
 his free will he would not have chosen Justin Jermyn for a con- 
 fidant, and yet he poured out all his hopes and dreams, the whole 
 history of his passion in all its weakness and all its strength to this 
 man whose mocking cynicism continually revolted him. Yet it 
 may be that the cynic's companionship was the only society he 
 could have endured at this stormy period. The voice of conscience 
 must be stifled somehow ; and how could it be so easily drowned 
 as by this spirit of evil which denied the existence of good, which 
 laughed at the idea of virtue and honour in man or woman ? 
 
 '■'■ If the first man who put a fence round a bit of land and called 
 it his was an enemy to his feUow-men," said Justin Jermyn, " what 
 of the first man who set up a narrow standard of conduct, a hard 
 and fast rule of morality, and said by this standard and by this line 
 and rule of mine shall men act and live for evermore, whether they 
 be happy or miserable? Along this stony road, hedged in with 
 scruples and prejudices, shall men tramp painfully to their dull and 
 dreary end ; yes, even while, in the fair open country on either side 
 those thorny fences, joy and love and gladness beckon to gardens 
 of roses and valleys fairer than Eden. Why torment yourself 
 because you have given a fooUsh old man the means of indulging 
 freely in his favourite vice — an innocent vice, since it hurts none but 
 himself — whereby you have perhaps provided for him the happiest 
 days of his life ? " 
 
 " I have given him the means of breaking his daughter's heart," 
 said Gerard, remorsefully. 
 
 " Skittles I No woman's heart was ever yet broken by a drunken 
 father. It needs a nearer and dearer love than the filial to break 
 hearts. All that Hester Davenport wants in this life is to be happy 
 with the man she loves. The drunken father might prove a 
 stupendous difficulty if you wanted to parade your divinity through 
 the electric glare of the great world as Mrs. Gerard Hillersdon — 
 but if you want her for your goddess, your Egeria, hidden from the 
 glare and the din, the existence of her father, drunk or sober, is of 
 httle moment."
 
 igo Gerard ; or^ 
 
 CHAPTER XVm. 
 
 "lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe op teaks." 
 
 Gerakd let three whole days go by without making any attempt 
 to see Hester. Lovelace himself could hardly have been more 
 diplomatic. He was completely miserable in the interval, counted 
 the hours, and wondered perpetually whether the woman he loved 
 was hungering for his presence as he hungered for hers. He spent 
 the greater part of the time with Jermyn ; driving to Richmond one 
 day to dine at the Star and Garter and sit late into the night, 
 watching the mists rising in the valley, and the stars shining on 
 the river; driving to Maidenhead on another day and loitering 
 long upon the shadowy river, and sitting in a riverside garden 
 smoking and talking half through the sultry summer night; and 
 in this long tete-a-tete he sounded the uttermost depths of Justin 
 Jermjm's godlessness and cheerful egotism. 
 
 "The one thing that I am certain of in this Rhadamanthine 
 universe," said this philosophical worldling, " is that I, Justin 
 Jermyn, exist; and this being my one certainty, I hold that my 
 one duty — the duty I owe to myself — is to be happy, and to make 
 the best of the brief span which I am to enjoy on this earth. 
 Reason tells me that to be happy and to live long I must abjure 
 passion — reason tells me that serenity of mind means health and 
 prolonged life ; and to this end I have learnt to treat life lightly, 
 as a farce rather than a tragedy, and to give my affection neither 
 to man nor woman — to be slave neither of friendship nor of love. 
 A selfish philosophy, I grant you ; but self is my only certainty." 
 
 " An admirable philosophy, if it were as easy to practise as to 
 preach. And have you never loved ? " 
 
 "Never, in the fashion that you call love. I have never been 
 unhappy for a woman's sake." 
 
 "And the domestic affections — father, mother, family?" 
 
 "I never knew them. I was flung as a waif upon the world, 
 reared upon charity, the architect of my own forttine — such as it 
 is. I am like Hester Summerson in ' Bleak House.' My mother 
 was my disgrace, and I was hers. I am at least so far a follower 
 of St. Paul, that I owe no man anything. I sink the second part 
 of the precept."
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 191 
 
 Gerard meditated upon Jermyn's character as he drove home, 
 towards daybreak, the man himself slumbering by his side. It was 
 perhaps only natural that a man cut off from all family ties, cheated 
 of mother's love and father's friendship, a stranger to every bond 
 of blood relationship, should have grown up to manhood heartless 
 and passionless, should have trained himself to the settled calm of 
 a philosophical egotism, attaining in the morning of life that im- 
 mimity from all the pains and penalties of the affections which the 
 average egotist only achieves in old age. 
 
 Gerard looked at the sleeper wonderingly, almost with envy. 
 The fair pale face was unmarked by a line that told of anxious 
 thought or deep feeling. The sleeper's lips were parted in a faint 
 smile, as if even in sleeping he felt the sensuous pleasure of life 
 on a fair summer morning — the perfume of flowers from a hundred 
 gardens, the soft breath of the wind creeping up from the west, 
 warm with the glow of last night's sunset. The joy of Uving! 
 Yes, this man who loved no one enjoyed life in all its fulness ; and 
 he, Gerard, with two millions to spend, and, it might be, less than 
 two years to spend them in, was miserable — miserable because of 
 the cowardly incertitude which made him unable to take the 
 straight and honourable road to happiness while the sinuous and 
 evil way lay open to him. 
 
 He went to Chelsea at dusk on the third evening after Hester's 
 tearful farewell. She came quickly to the door in answer to his 
 knock, and he was startled at the change which three days had made 
 in her. The first words she spoke told him that it was not love of 
 him which had so altered her, but poignant anxiety about her father. 
 
 "He has never been home since that night," she said. "I have 
 been in search of him at every place that I cotild think of aa 
 possible for him to have gone to, but I can hear nothing of him 
 since Tuesday night — the night you were here. He was at the 
 Swan Tavern that night, sitting in the coffee-room drinking brandy 
 and water till the house closed. He was talking a good deal, 
 and he was very excited in his manner when he left, but the 
 people would not tell me if he had drunk much. They pretended 
 not to know how much brandy had been served to him. I have 
 been to the police office, and the river has been dragged along by 
 the Embankment, where he and I used always to walk. They were 
 very good to me at the police station, and they have promised to do 
 all they can to find him, Hving or dead. But, oh " — Auth a bm-st of
 
 192 Gerard ; or, 
 
 uncontrollable weeping — " I fear they will never find him alive. 
 He could have had only a little money, and he must have spent it 
 all on brandy, and then when he was mad with drink — ah, you 
 don't know how drink maddens him — he may have walked into the 
 river, or thrown himself in, miserable and despairing. He was at 
 the Swan at eleven o'clock, only a few minutes' walk from the 
 river, and I can find no one who saw him after that hour. I thmk 
 he must have meant to come home — I don't think he would wilfully 
 
 desert me — but some accident, some fit of madness " 
 
 She could not speak for sobbing. Gerard led her into the 
 parlour, where the old man's empty chair reminded him of that last 
 interview, and of the snare he had set for a weak sinner's feet. 
 Looked at in the hght of Hester's grief to-night, and the awful 
 possibilities she suggested, the thing which he had done seemed 
 little short of murder. 
 
 "I will go to Scotland Yard, Hester," he said, eager to comfort 
 her. " I will set the cleverest detectives in London at work, and 
 it shall go hard if they don't find your father. My dearest, don't 
 give way to these morbid imaginings. Be sure he is safe some- 
 where — only hiding because he feels he has disgraced himself in 
 your eyes. He has been afraid to come home, knowing how 
 grieved you would be at his backsliding. Be comforted, dear 
 love." His arms were round her, and he drew the pale pinched 
 face to his own, and again their lips met, but this time Hester's 
 kiss was the kiss of despair. She clung to her lover in her grief 
 and fear. She forgot the peril of such consolations. 
 
 What comfort could he give her about her father, except the 
 assurance that all that money could do to find him should be done, 
 and that once being found every possible means should be taken 
 to ensure his welfare in the future. He told her that there were 
 doctoi's who had made such cases their chief study, homes where 
 her father could be surrounded with every luxm-y, and yet secured 
 from the possibility of indulgence in his fatal vice. He showed her 
 how happy and free from care her future might be if she would 
 only trust her own fate and her father's to him. And then came 
 words of love, burning words that have, been spoken again and 
 again upon this earth with good or evil import — words that may be 
 true when the lips speak them, yet false within the year in which 
 they are spoken — words that promise an eternity of love, and may 
 be uttered in all good faith, and yet prove lighter than the thistle- 
 down wafted across summer pastures.
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 193 
 
 Three days ago she had been strong to resist the tempter, strong 
 in womanly pride and maiden modesty. To-night she was broken 
 down by grief, worn and fevered by sleepless nights, almost reck- 
 less in her aching misery. To-night she listened to those vows of 
 love. What had she on this earth but his love, if the father for 
 whom she had toiled was indeed lying at the bottom of the river, 
 her purpose in life gone for ever? Who could be more lonely and 
 friendless than she was to-night? 
 
 So she Hstened to his pleading, heard him whUe he urged her to 
 consider how poor a thing that legal tie was which he entreated 
 her to forego ; how often, how lightly cancelled by the disgraceful 
 revelations of the divorce court. 
 
 " Time was when marriage meant till death," he said, " but that 
 is an exploded fashion. Marriage nowadays means the convenience 
 of a settlement which will enable a man either to found a family or 
 to cheat his creditors. Marriage means till husband and wife are 
 tired of each other, and till the lady has grown callous enough to 
 face the divorce court." 
 
 And then he reminded her how the most romantic passions, the 
 loves that have become history are not those alliances upon which 
 parish priest and family lawyer have smiled. He reminded her of 
 Abelard and Heloise, of Henri's passion for Gabrielle, and Nelson'g 
 deathless love for Emma Hamilton. He urged that society itself 
 had pardoned these fair offenders, for love's sweet sake. 
 
 Her intellect was too clear to be deceived by such shallow 
 reasoning. 
 
 On the very brink of the abyss she recoiled. Loving him with 
 all her heart, knowing that life without him meant a colomiess and 
 hopeless existence — a hand-to-hand struggle with adversity, know- 
 ing by too bitter experience that to be well born and poor means 
 lifelong humiliation, she yet had the strength to resist his pleading. 
 
 " Your wife or nothing," she said. " I never meant to hear your 
 voice again after that night. I prayed to God that we might never 
 meet again. And now for my father's sake I humiliate myself so 
 far as to ask your help. If you will bring him back to me I will thank 
 and bless you — and will try to forget your degrading propositions." 
 
 " Degrading, Hester I " he cried reproachfully, trying to take her 
 hand again, the hand that had lain softly in his a few moments ago. 
 
 " Yes, degrading ! What could you say to any wretched lost 
 woman in London worse than you have said to me ? You talk to 
 me of love— and you offer me shame for my portion." 
 

 
 194 Gerard ; or, 
 
 " Hester, that is a woman's narrow way of looking at life. As if 
 the priest and the ring made all the difference." 
 
 " If you cared for me you would make me your wife." 
 
 " I am not free to marry, Hester. I am bound by a tie which I 
 cannot break yet awhile. The tie may be loosened in years to 
 come, and then you shall be my wife. So soon as I am free we 
 will have the priest and the ring, the whole ecclesiastical formula — 
 although that formula will not make me one whit more your slave 
 than I am this night." 
 
 " I don't want a slave," she said resolutely. " I want a husband 
 whom I can love and honour. And now I am going back to the 
 police station to ask if there is any news." 
 
 "Let me go with you." 
 
 " I had rather you went to Scotland Yard, as you promised." 
 
 " I will go to Scotland Yard. I will do anything to prove my 
 love and loyalty." 
 
 " Loyalty ! Oh, Mr. Hillersdon, do not play with words. I am 
 an ignorant, inexperienced girl, but I know what truth and loyalty 
 mean — and that you have violated both to me." 
 
 They left the house together, in opposite directions. Gerard 
 walked towards Oakley Street, hailed the first cab he met, which 
 took him to Scotland Yard, where he saw the officials, and gave a 
 careful description of the missing Nicholas Davenport, age, personal 
 characteristics, manners, and habits. When asked if the missing 
 man had any money about him at the time of his disappearance, he 
 professed ignorance, but added that it was possible that he had 
 money. It was late in the evening when he left Scotland Yard, 
 and he went into the Park, and roamed about for some time in a 
 purposeless manner, his brain fevered, his nerves horribly shaken. 
 This hon'or of Nicholas Davenport's fate absorbed his naind at one 
 moment, and in the next he was thinking of Hester and his rejected 
 love, troubled, irresolute, full of pity for the woman he loved, full 
 of tenderest compassion for scruples which seemed to him futile 
 and foolish in the world as he knew it, where iUicit liaisons were 
 open secrets, and where no man or woman refused praise and 
 honoiu- to sin in high places. He pitied the simplicity which clung 
 to virtue for its own sake, a strange spectacle in that great guilty city, 
 a penniless girl sacrificing love and gladness for the sake of honour. 
 
 He went from the Park to the SmaU Hours, a club where he 
 knew he was likely to find Jermyn, who rarely went to bed before 
 the summer dav.n. "It is bad enough to be obliged to go to bed
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 195 
 
 by candle-light from October to March," said Jermyn, who declared 
 that any man who took more than three or four hours' sleep in the 
 twenty-four shamefully wasted his existence. 
 
 " We are men, not dormice," he said, "and we are sent into thia 
 world to live — not to sleep." 
 
 Gerard found Jermyn the ruhng spirit of a choice little supper- 
 party, where the manners of the ladies — although they were not 
 strictly "in society," and would not have been received at the 
 Heptachord, or at the Sensorium — were irreproachable, so irre- 
 proachable, indeed, that the party would have been dull but for 
 Justin Jermyn. His ringing laugh and easy vivacity raised the 
 spirits of his convives, and made the champagne more exhilarating 
 than the champagne of these latter days is wont to be. 
 
 " A capital wine, ain't it ? " he asked gaily. " It's a new brand, 
 ' Fin de Siecle,' the only wine I care for." 
 
 Gerard drank deep of the new wine, would have drunk it had it 
 been vitriol, in the hope of drowning Nicholas Davenport's ghost ; 
 and when the httle banquet was over, and youth and folly were 
 waltzing to the strains of Strauss in an adjoining room, he linked 
 his arm through Jermyn's and led him out of the club, and into the 
 BtOlness of St. James's Park. 
 
 Here he told his mentor all that had happened, denounced him- 
 self as a traitor, and perhaps a murderer. " It was your scheme," 
 he said; "you suggested the snare, and you have made me the 
 wretch I am." 
 
 Jermyn's frank laughter had a sound of mockery as he greeted 
 this accusation. 
 
 " That is always the way," he said, " a man asks for advice, and 
 turns upon his counsellor. You wanted to get that officious old 
 father out of the way. I suggested a manner of doing ^it. And 
 now you call me Mephisto and yourself murderer." 
 
 And then with airiest banter he laughed away Gerard's lingering 
 scruples, scoffed at man's honour and at woman's virtue, and 
 Gerard, who had long ago abandoned all old creeds for a dreary 
 agnosticism, heard and assented to that mocking sermon, whose 
 text was self, and whose argument was self-indulgence. 
 
 " I shudder when I think of the myriads of fanatics who have 
 sacrificed happiness here for the sake of an imaginary paradise — 
 wretches who have starved body and soul upon earth to feast and 
 rejoice in the New Jerusalem," said Jermyn, finally, as they parted 
 at Buckingham Gate in the faint flush of dawn.
 
 196 Gerard ; or, 
 
 Less than half an hour afterwards Gerard was in the Rosamond 
 Eoad, and at the httle iron gate that opened into the scrap of 
 garden, where a cluster of sunflowers rose superior to the dust, pale 
 in the steel-blue light of dawn. 
 
 The lamp was stUl burning in the parlour, and he saw Hester's 
 shadow upon the bhnd. She was sitting with her elbows on the 
 table, her face buiied in her hands, and he knew that she must be 
 weeping or praying. She had let her lamp burn on, imconscious of 
 the growing daylight. The window was open at the top, but the 
 lower half was shut. He tapped on the pane, and the shadow of a 
 woman's form rose up suddenlj', and broadened over the blind. 
 
 " Hester, Hester," he caUed. He raised the sash, as she drew 
 up the blind, and they stood face to face, both pale, breathless, and 
 agitated. 
 
 " You have heard of him, you have seen him," she cried excitedly. 
 " Is it good news ? " 
 
 " Yes, Hester, yes," he answered, and sprang into the room. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 ALL ALONG THE KIVEE. 
 
 Between Reading and Oxford there is a riverside village, of which 
 the fashionable world 'has yet taken scant notice. It lies beyond 
 the scene of the great river carnivals, and the houseboat is even yet 
 a strange apparition beside those willowy shores. Thei'e is an old 
 church with its square tower and picturesque graveyard placed at a 
 bend of the river, where the stream broadens into a shallow bay. 
 The church ; a straggling row of old-world cottages, with over- 
 hanging thatch and low cob walls, half hidden under roses, honey- 
 suckle, and Virginia creeper, cottages whose gardens are gorgeous 
 with the vivid colouring of old-fashioned flowers ; a general shop, 
 which is also the post-office ; and a rustic butcher's, with verandah 
 and garden, constitute the village. The Rectory nestles close beside 
 the church, and the Rectory garden brims over into the churchyard, 
 long trails of banksia roses straggling across the low stone wall 
 which divides the garden of the living from the garden of the dead. 
 The churchyard is one of the prettiest in England, for the old Rector
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 197 
 
 has cared for it and loved it during his five and thirty years' incum- 
 bency, and nowhere are the roses lovelier or the veronicas finer 
 than in that quiet resting-place by the river. 
 
 The land round about belongs to a man of old family, who is rich 
 enough to keep liis estate unspoiled by the speculating builder, and 
 who would as soon think of cutting off his right hand as of cutting 
 up the meadows he scampered over on his sheltie, sixty years ago, 
 into eligible buOding plots, or of breaking through the tangled 
 hedges of hawthorn and honej'suckle to make new roads for the 
 erection of semi-detached villas. In a word Lowcombe is still the 
 country pure and simple, undefiled by the subm-ban early English 
 or the shoddy Queen Anne schools of architecture. 
 
 On the brink of the Thames, and about twenty minutes' walk 
 from Lowcombe Church, there is an old-fashioned cottage, humble 
 as to size and elevation, but set in so exquisite a garden that the 
 owner of a palace might envy its possessor a retreat so fair in its 
 rustic seclusion. 
 
 Here, while the second crop of roses were in their fullest beauty, 
 a young couple whose antecedents and belongings were unknown to 
 the inhabitants of Lowcombe set up their modest menage of a man 
 and two maids, a gardener, a dinghy, and a skiff. 
 
 The village folks troubled themselves very little about these 
 young people, who paid then- bills weekly ; but the few gentihties 
 in the parish of Lowcombe were much exercised in mind about a 
 couple who brought no letters of introduction, and who might, or 
 might not, be an acquisition to the neighbourhood. The fact that 
 Mr. Hanley was alleged to have bought the house he hved in and 
 forty acres of meadow land attached thereto, gave him a certain 
 Btatus in the parish, and made the question as to whether Mr. and 
 Mrs. Hanley should or should not be called upon a far more serious 
 problem than it would have been in the case of an annual tenant, 
 or even a leaseholder. 
 
 "Nobody seems to have heard of these Hanleys," said Miss 
 Malcolm, a Scottish spinster, who prided herself upon race and 
 respectability, to !Mrs. Donovan, an Irish widow, who was swollen 
 with the importance that goes with income rather than with blue 
 blood. " If the man was of good family surely some of us must 
 have heard of him before now. Lady Isabel, who goes about 
 immensely in the London season, thinks it very curious that she 
 ehould never have met this Mr. Hanley in society." 
 
 '* Old Banks was asking an extortionate price for the Eosary and
 
 198 Gerard ; or, 
 
 the laud about it," said Mrs. Donovan, '•' so the 'man must have 
 money." 
 
 " Made in trade, I dare say," speculated Ikliss Malcolm, whereat 
 the widow, whose husband had made his fortune as a manufacturer 
 and exporter of Irish brogues, reddened angrily. It was painful to 
 remember in the aristocratic dolcefar niente of her declining years 
 that the name of Donovan was stamped upon millions of boots in 
 the old world and the new, and that the famous name was stUl 
 being stamped by the present proprietor. 
 
 Finally, after a good deal of argument, it was decided at a tea- 
 party which included the elite of the parish, with the exception of 
 the Eector, that until ^Ir. Muschatt, of Muschatt's Court, had called 
 upon the new people at the Rosary no one else should call. What- 
 ever was good in the eyes of Muschatt, whose pedigree could be 
 traced without a break from the reign of Edward the Confessor, 
 must be good for the rest of the parish. 
 
 And while the village Agora debated their social fate, what 
 of this yovmg couple ? Were they languishing for the coming of 
 afternoon caUers, pining for the sight of strange faces and unfamiliar 
 names upon a cluster of visiting cards? Were they nervously 
 awaiting the village verdict as to whether they were or were not to 
 be visited ? Not they ! Perhaps they hardly knew that there was 
 any world outside that garden by the river, and that undulating 
 Btretch of pasture where the fine old timber gave to meadow land 
 almost the dignity of a park. Here they could wander for hours 
 meeting no one, hearing no voices but their own, isolated by the 
 intensity of an aflFection that took no heed of yesterday or to-morrow. 
 
 " I never knew what happiness meant till I loved you, Hester," 
 Baid the young man whom Lowcombe talked of as " This Mr. 
 Hanley." 
 
 " And I am happy because you are happy," Hester answered 
 Boftly. " And you will not talk any more about having only a year 
 or two to live, will you, Gerard ? That was aU nonsense — only said 
 to frighten me — wasn't it ? " 
 
 He could not tell her that it was sober, serious truth, and that he 
 had in no wise darkened the doctor's dark verdict Those imploring 
 eyes urged him to utter words of hope and comfort. 
 
 " I believe doctors are often mistaken in a case, because they 
 underrate the influence of the mind upon the body," he said. " I 
 was BO miserable when I went to Dr. South that I can hardly 
 wonder he thought me marked for death."
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 199 
 
 " And you are happy, now, Gerard — really, really happy ; not 
 for a day only ? " she asked pleadmgly. 
 
 "Not for a day, but for ever, so long as I have you, sweet 
 wife." 
 
 He called her by that sacred name often in their talk, not being 
 sensitive enough to divine that at every repetition of the name to 
 which she had no right, her heart thrilled with a strange sudden 
 pain. She troubled him with no lamentings over the sacrifice he 
 had exacted from her. She had never reproached him with the 
 treachery that had made her his. Generous, devoted, and self-for- 
 getful, she gave him her heart as she would have given him her life, 
 and her tears and her remorse were scrupulously hidden from him. 
 To make him happy was now the sole desire and purpose of her 
 life. Of her father's fate she was still uncertain, but she was not 
 without hope that he hved. A detective had traced a man, whose 
 description taUied with that of Nicholas Davenport, to Liverpool, 
 where he had embarked on a steamer bound for Melbomne within 
 two days of Davenport's disappearance from Chelsea. The passage 
 had been taken in the name of Danvers, and the passenger had 
 described himself as a clergyman of the Church of England. Hester 
 was the more inclined to believe that the man so described might 
 be her father as he had often talked of going back to Austi-alia and 
 trying his luck again in that wider world. It was not because he 
 had failed once that he must needs fail agam, he had told her. 
 
 " But how could he have got the money for his passage ? " asked 
 Hester. " He had exhausted all his old friends. It seems impos- 
 sible that he could have had money enough to pay for the voyage 
 to Melbourne." 
 
 And then on his knees at her feet in the silence of the night, 
 with tears and kisses and protestations of remorse, Gerard HiUersdon 
 confessed his sin. 
 
 '* It was base beyond all common baseness," he said. " You can 
 never think worse of me for that act than I think of myself. But 
 your father stood between us. I would have committed murder to 
 win you ! " 
 
 "It might have been murder," she said dejectedly. 
 " I have told you my crime, and you hate me for it. I was a 
 fool to tell you." 
 
 " Hate you ! No, Gerard, no ; I can never hate you. I should 
 go on loving you if you were the greatest sinner upon this earth. 
 Do you think I should be here if I could help loving you? "
 
 2CO Gerard; or, 
 
 His head sank forward upon her knees, and he sobbed out his 
 passion of remorse and self-abasement, and received absolution. 
 He tried to persuade her that all would be well, that her father's 
 health might be benefited by a long sea voyage, and that he might 
 not fall back into the old evil ways. He might not ! That was 
 the utmost that could be said ; a faint hope at best. Yet this faint 
 hope comforted her ; and in that summer dream of happiness, in 
 the long days on the river, the long tete-a-tete with a companion 
 •who was never weary of pouring out his thoughts, his feelings, 
 his unbeliefs to that never-wearying listener, all sense of trouble 
 vanished out of her mind. She only knew that she was beloved, 
 and that to be thus beloved was to be happy. Her bm-den of tears 
 would have to be borne, perhaps, some day far away in the dim 
 future, when he should weary of her and she should see his love 
 waning. There must be a penalty for such a sin as hers ; but the 
 time of penance was still afar off, and she might die before the fatal 
 hour of disillusion. She thrust aside all thought of dark d/ivs to 
 come, and devoted herself to the duty of the present — the duty of 
 making her lover happy. All his sins against her were forgiven ; 
 and she was his without one thought of self. 
 
 They had begun their new life almost as casually as the babes in 
 the wood, and after wandering about for a few days in the lovely 
 Thames Valley, stopping at quiet out-of-the-way villages, they had 
 come to Lowcorabe, the least sophisticated of all the spots they 
 had seen. Here they found the Rosary, a thatched cottage set in 
 a delicious garden, with lawn and shrubberies sloping to the river. 
 Successive tenants had added to the original building, and there 
 were two or three fairly good rooms under the steep gabled roof 
 one a drawing-room open to the rafters, and with three windows 
 opening into a thatched verandah. The Rosary had long been for 
 Bale, not because people had not admired it, but because the owner 
 an Oxford tradesman, had asked an extravagant price for his 
 property. 
 
 Gerard gave him his price without question, having seen that 
 Hester was enamoured of the riverside garden, and in three daya 
 the cottage was furnished, paint cleaned, walls repapered, and 
 everything swept and garnished, and Hester installed as mistress 
 of the house, with a man and two maids, engaged at Reading. 
 
 The furniture was of the simplest, such furniture as a young 
 clergyman might have chosen for his first vicarage. Hester had 
 entreated that there might be nothing costly in her surroundings,
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 201 
 
 no splendour or luxury wWdi slioiild remind lier of her lover's 
 wealth, 
 
 " I want to forget that you are a rich man," she said. " If you 
 made the house splendid I should feel as if you had bought me." 
 
 Seeing her painfully earnest upon this point, Gerard obeyed her 
 to the letter. Except for the elegance of art muslins and Indian 
 draperies, and for the profusion of choice flowers in rooms and 
 landings and staircase, except for the valuable books scattered on 
 the tables and piled in the window-seats, the cottage might have 
 been the home of modest competence rather than of boundless 
 wealth. 
 
 Hester's touch lent an additional grace even to things that were 
 
 in themselves beautifiil. She had the home genius which is one of 
 
 the choicest of feminine gifts— the genius which pervades every 
 
 circiunstance of home life, from the adornment of a drawing-room 
 
 to the arrangement of a dinner-table. Before he had hved at 
 
 Lowcombe for a week Gerard had come to see Hester's touch 
 
 upon everything. He had never before seen flowers so boldly and 
 
 picturesquely grouped ; nor in all the country houses he had visited 
 
 and admired had he ever seen anything so pretty as the cottage 
 
 vestibule, the deep embrasure of the long latticed window filled 
 
 with roses, and in each angle of the room a tall glass vase of lilies 
 
 reaching up towards the low timbered ceiUng. No hand but 
 
 Hester's was allowed to touch the books which he had brought to 
 
 this retreat — a costly selection from his library at Hillersdon House. 
 
 He had seen to the packmg of the two large cases that conveyed 
 
 these books, and he had so arranged their conveyance that none of 
 
 his servants should know where they went after the railway van 
 
 had carried them away. No one was to know of this retreat by 
 
 the river — not even Justin Jermyn, his confidant and alter ego. He 
 
 wanted this new hfe of his — this union of two souls that were aa 
 
 Qne — to remain for ever a thing apart from his everyday existence ; 
 
 he wanted this home to be a secret haven, where he might creep to 
 
 die when his hour should come ; and it seemed to him that even 
 
 the inevitable end would lose its worst terrors here, in Hester's 
 
 arms, vfith her sweet voice to soothe the laborious passage to the 
 
 unknown land. 
 
 And if death would be less awful here than elsewhere, how 
 sweet was life in this rural hermitage ! How blissful the long 
 summer days upon the river, with this gentle, pensive girl, who 
 seemed so utterly in sympathy with him ; who, after one week of
 
 202 Gerard ; or, 
 
 union thought as he thought, believed as he believed; had sur- 
 rendered life, mind, heart, and being to the man she loved, merging 
 her intellectual identity into his, until nothing was left of the creed 
 learnt in childhood and faithfully followed through girlhood, except 
 a tender memory of something which had been dear and sacred, 
 and which for her had ceased to be. 
 
 For her Christ was no longer the Saviour and Redeemer she had 
 worshipped. He was only the "Man of Nazareth" — a beautiful 
 and admirable character, standing out from the tumultuous back- 
 ground of the world's history, radiant with the calm, clear light of 
 perfect goodness, the gifted originator of life's simplest and purest 
 ethics, a teacher whose wise counsels had been darkened and 
 warped by long centuries of superstition, and who was only now 
 emerging from the spectre-haunted midnight of ignorance into the 
 clear light of reason. 
 
 Gerard belonged to the school of sentimental agnostics. He was 
 willing to speak well of Christ and of His prophets, was full of 
 admiration for the grand personality of Elijah, and thought the 
 Book of Job the loftiest expression of human imaginings. He loved 
 to dwell upon the picturesque in the Bible, and Hester learnt from 
 his conversation how familiar an infidel may be with Holy Writ. 
 When she told him how great a consolation the Christian's un- 
 questioning belief had been to her in the darkest days of her 
 poverty, he smiled at her sweet simplicity, and said how he too had 
 been a beUever till he began to think. And so, with many tears, as 
 if she had been parting with some cherished human friend, she let 
 the Divine Image of the Man-God go, and accepted the idea of the 
 God-like Man, a being to be named in the same breath with 
 Socrates and Plato, with Shakespeare and Milton — only a httle 
 higher than the highest modem intellect. Only a week, and a 
 creed was destroyed, but in that week what a flood of talk about all 
 things in heaven and on earth, what theories, and dreams, and 
 philosophies sounded and explored ! To this woman, whom he 
 loved more fondly than he had ever dreamed of loving, Gerard gave 
 the intellectual experience of his manhood, from the hour he began 
 to ponder upon the problem of man's existence to his latest opinion 
 upon the last book he had read. Had she not loved him, her own 
 simple faith, the outcome of feeling unsustained by thought, might 
 have been strong enough to stand fast against his arguments ; but 
 love took the part of the assailant, and the result was a foregone 
 conclusion. Had he been a religious enthusiast, a fervid Papist,
 
 T^he World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 203 
 
 believing in saintly relics and miracle-working statues, she would 
 have believed as he taught her to believe. Her faith, fortified by 
 her love, would have removed mountains. With her, to love meant 
 total self-abnegation. Even the sharp stings of remorse were 
 deadened by the happiness of knowing that her lover was happy ; 
 and as she gradually grew to accept his idea of a imiverse governed 
 ' only by the laws of human reason, she came to think that whether 
 Church and State had assisted at her marriage was indeed, as 
 Gerard urged, of infinitesimal significance. And this intellectual 
 emancipation achieved, there remained but one cloud on her 
 horizon. Her only fear or anxiety was for her father's welfare — 
 and even of him she tried to think as little as possible, knowing that 
 she could do nothing for him except await the result of his mis- 
 conduct. She had given him all the fairest years of her girlhood, 
 and he had accepted her sacrifice, and at the first opportunity had 
 chosen his darling vice in preference to his daughter. She had a 
 new master now, a master at whose feet she laid all the treasures of 
 her life, for whom no sacrifice could ever be too much. 
 
 Time is measured by feeling. There are days in every life which 
 mean epochs. One eventful week may stand for more in the sura 
 of existence than half a dozen placid monotonous years. It seemed 
 to Hester, while September was yet young, that her union with 
 Gerard Hillersdon had lasted for half a lifetime. She could scarcely 
 think of herself except as his wife. All the past years seemed dark 
 and shadowy, like a dioramic picture that melts gradually into 
 something strange and new. The name of wife no longer wounded 
 her ear. The new philosophy taught her that she was no less a 
 wife because she had no legal claim to the title. The new philosophy 
 taught her that she had a right to do what she liked with her hfe, 
 so long as she did not wrong her neighbour. One clause in that 
 Church Catechism her childish lips had repeated so often, was 
 blotted out for ever. Duty to God was done with, since there was 
 no God. All moral obligations were comprised in duty to man — a 
 reasonable regard for the happiness of the largest number. 
 
 That renunciation of the creed of hope was not accomplished 
 without moments of mental agony, even in the midst of that dream 
 of love which filled the world with one adored presence. There 
 were moments when the young heart would have gone up to the 
 old Heaven in prayer — prayer for the endurance of this deep fehcity, 
 prayer for the creature she loved too well. But the new Heaven 
 was a blank — an infinite system of worlds and distances, measureless,
 
 204 Gei'ard ; or, 
 
 illimitable — but there was no one there — ^no one — no mind, no heart, 
 no love, no pity ; only systems and movement, perpetual movement, 
 •which included light, heat, evolution, everything — a mighty and 
 complex universe of which her lover and herself were but uncon- 
 sidered atoms, of whom no higher Existence had ever taken heed, 
 since they two, poor sport of Life and Time, were the crowning 
 glory of evolution. The progress of the species might achieve 
 something loftier in infinite ages to come ; but so far they two, 
 Gerard and herself, were the highest outcome of immeasurable ages. 
 For conduct, for happiness, for protection from the dangers that 
 surroimded them, they had to look to themselves and to none 
 other. 
 
 Had she been less absorbed by her affection for the creature 
 Hester would have more acutely suffered by this darkening over of 
 the world beyond, which had once been her consolation and her 
 hope ; but in Gerard's companionship there was no need of a better 
 world. 
 
 Those last weeks of summer were exceptionally beautiful. It 
 seemed as if summer were lingering in the land even when September 
 was drawing to its close. Trees and shrubberies, the flower-beda 
 that made great masses of vivid colour on the lawn — scarlet, orange, 
 golden yellow, deepest azure — were untouched by frost, unbeaten 
 by rain. The broad, old-fashioned border which gave an old-world 
 air to one end of the garden was glorious with taU gaudy flowers — 
 tritoma, Japanese anemones, cactus dahlias, late-blooming lilies, 
 and roses red and white. And beyond the garden and encircling 
 slirubhery, in the hedgerows and meadows, in the copses and on 
 the patches of hillocky common, heather, gorse, wild-flowers, there 
 was everj'where the same rich luxuriance, the wealth of colour and 
 perfume, that joyous exuberance of Nature which five or six weeks 
 of old-fashioned summer weather can fling over the face of an 
 English landscape. 
 
 It may be that this abundant beauty, this delicious interlude of 
 sunshine and blue sky helped Hester Davenport to forget the 
 shadows in her life — to forget all that was painful and dubious in 
 her position, and to exist only in the happiness of the present. 
 Morning after morning the same sunlit river rippled round the boat, 
 which seemed to dance and twinkle in the vivid light, as if it were 
 a living thing, longing to be free and afloat. Morning after morning 
 Gerard and Hester sculled their skiS along the windings of romantic 
 backwaters, halting under a roof of greenery to idle away the sultry
 
 The World, the Fleshy and the Devil. 205 
 
 hours in talk or reading. Under those slanting willows, whose 
 green tresses dipped and trailed in the bright blue water, they 
 would sit for a long summer day, Hester's dexterous fingers 
 employed upon some piece of artistic embroidery, while Gerard 
 read aloud to her. 
 
 In this way they went through aU the devious windings and 
 eloquent incomprehensibUities of the "Revolt of Islam" — ia this 
 way Hester heard for the first time of the "Ring and the Book" — 
 and wept and suflered with the gentle heroine, and thrilled and 
 trembled in those scenes of dramatic grandeur and fiery passion, 
 unsurpassed ia the hterature of power. A new world opened before 
 her as Gerard familiarised her with his favourite authors — the 
 lawlessness of Shelley, the rude vehemence of the Elizabethan 
 dramatists, the florid eloquence of Jeremy Taylor, the capricious 
 brilHancy of De Quincey, the subtle wit of Lawrence Sterne. These 
 and many other writers, long familiar to the man who had lived by 
 hterature, were all new to Hester. 
 
 " What an ignoramus I have been ! " she exclaimed ; " I thought 
 when I had read Shakespeare and MUton, and Byron and Tennyson 
 I knew all the best treasures of Enghsh hterature — but now the 
 treasures seem inexhaustible." 
 
 There were other literatures too to be tasted. They read 
 Eugenie Grandet together, and Hester wept over the heroine's 
 disappointed hfe. They read new books and old books, having 
 nothing to do in those six weeks of perpetual summer but read and 
 talk and ramble, and worship one another, each unto the other the 
 beginning and end of life. 
 
 " If it could last ! " thought Gerard ; but Hester, less experienced, 
 and, therefore, more confiding in Fate, dreamt that this Elysium 
 would last tiU the grim spectre, who tramples down all bhsses, 
 broke into their enchanted palace. 
 
 She watched his face with fondest anxiety, and it was her dehght 
 to mark how the dark lines and the pinched, wan look seemed to 
 be vanishing day by day. "Who knows whether it was really so, 
 or whether in the face she worshipped she saw only what she so 
 ardently longed to see, signs of improving health and youth renewed. 
 His eyes had a new brightness, she thought, and if he looked pale 
 in the dayhght, she had always a bright colour in the evening as 
 they sat side by side in the luminous chcle of the reading-lamp. 
 And again and again he assured her that happiness had given him 
 a new lease of life, that all the old aches and wearinesses had been
 
 2o6 Gerard; or, 
 
 subjugated, and that Dr. South would tell a very different story 
 next time he overhauled his patient. 
 
 " He told me to seek happiness, and I have sought and found it," 
 he said, kissing the slender hands that had toiled so patiently in the 
 past, and which now so often lay idly in his. 
 
 Gerard thought of the Chart of Life behind the cmiain at 
 HUlersdon House, and fancied that when he should again trace 
 a hne upon that mystical chart the outline would be bold and free, 
 the stroke of the pen broad and steady. 
 
 In those sis weeks of happiness he had severed himself almost 
 entirely from his past life, and from that wrestling, striving world 
 in which a bachelor imder thirty, with two millions of money, is an 
 important factor. The men of his set had left off wondering why 
 he started neither racing stud nor mammoth yacht, why neither the 
 blue ribbon of the turf nor the glories of the Royal Yacht Squadron 
 had any attraction for him. The mascuhne portion of society had 
 set him down finally as a poor creature, without manly aspirations 
 or English pluck — an aesthete, a dilettante, a man good for nothing 
 but to keep a free luncheon table, and to lose a hundred now and 
 again at ^cart^ or piquet. Women were far more indulgent. They 
 talked of Gerard Hillersdon as " quite too interesting — so delightfully 
 unlike any one else." 
 
 He had arranged that all his letters should be re-addressed to the 
 Post Office at Reading, and twice a week he despatched the indis- 
 pensable replies from Reading to the house-steward, to be posted in 
 London. Thus even his own servants knew of no nearer address 
 than Reading, which was seven miles from the Rosary. He answered 
 only such letters as absolutely required replies, and to these his 
 answers were brief and colourless. He had so concentrated all his 
 thoughts upon Hester, and the placid, sunlit life which they were 
 leading, that it was only by a painful effort he could bring his mind 
 to bear upon the commonplace of friendship or the dry-as-dust of 
 business. Certain letters there were which had to be written some- 
 how, the writing of which was absolute mental agony. These were 
 his weekly letters to the woman whom he was pledged to marry 
 when the year of her widowhood should have ended. And of that 
 year a quarter had already gone by — a quarter of a year which had 
 drifted him so far away from his old love that he looked back at 
 the dim past wonderingly, and asked himself, " Did I ever love 
 her? Was not the whole 'story a concession to society ethics, 
 which demand that every young man should have his goddess, cfe
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 207 
 
 '^r le monde, every married woman her youthful adorer, every 
 smart menage its open secret, not to know which is not to belong 
 to the smart world ? " 
 
 Once a week at least he must write to the absent lady ; for to 
 neglect her might result in a catastrophe. Her nature, he told him- 
 self, was of the catastrophic order, a woman most dangerous to 
 offend. He had never forgotten that moment in Hertford Street 
 when, at the thought of his inconstancy, she had risen up in her 
 fury, white to the Hps, save where the hectic of anger burned upon 
 her cheek in one red spot, like a flame. He might doubt — did 
 doubt — if he had ever loved her ; but he could not doubt that she 
 loved him, with that love of woman which is " a fearful and a lovely 
 thing." 
 
 No ; he must maintain the falsehood of his position till he could 
 find some way of issue from this net which he had made for himself 
 in the morning of life. Now, with love at its zenith, he could con- 
 ceive no phase of ch'cumstances that could make him false to Hester. 
 Her life must be intertwined with his to the end ; albeit he might 
 never parade his passion before the cold, cruel eyes of the world — 
 eyes that stare down the poetry of life, and if a man married Undine 
 would look at her with cold calculation through a tortoiseshell 
 merveilleuse, and ask, " What are her people ? " 
 
 Once a week the lying letter had to be written — lying, for he 
 dared not write too coldly lest the distant divinity should mark the 
 change of temperature and come flying homeward to find out the 
 reason for this falling-ofi". So he secluded himself in his study one 
 morning in every week, telling Hester that he had troublesome 
 business letters which must be answered, and he composed his 
 laborious epistle, spicing his forced tenderness with flippancy that 
 was meant for wit, elaborating society scandals from the faintest 
 hints in Truth or the World, rhapsodising on summer time and the 
 poets, and filling his tale of pages somehow. 
 
 His conscience smote him when Edith Champion praised these 
 artificial compositions, this Abelard done to order. Her perception 
 of epistolary style was not keen enough to detect the falsehood of 
 the writer. 
 
 " What lovely letters you have written me lately ! " she wrote, 
 "only too far apart. I never knew you write so eloquently, for you 
 must remember how you used to put me off with a couple of hurried 
 pages. I am touched to the heart at the thought that absence 
 seems only to bring us nearer together, more perfectly in sympathy
 
 2o8 Gerard ; or, 
 
 with each other. I spent half the night — indeed the mountains 
 were rosy in the sunlight when I closed my book — reading Shelley, 
 after your last letter, in which you told me how you had been read- 
 ing him lately. You are right. We are too apt to neglect him. 
 Browning is so absorbing with his analytical power — his gift of 
 turning men and women inside-out and dissecting every mental 
 phase — ^he so thoroughly suits the temper of the age we live in, 
 which seems to me an age of asking questions for which there are 
 no answers. Write oftener, dearest. Your delightful letters have 
 but one fault — there are too few of them." 
 
 " So much for the divining rod of a woman's intelligence," thought 
 Gerard, as he tore up the letter. 
 
 And then from the highly-cultivated lady, who was well abreast 
 of the stream of modern literature, and who was fuU of the current 
 ideas of the age, he turned to the fond girl whose delight was to 
 listen to the expression of his ideas, who accepted his gospel as if 
 there were no other teacher on this earth, as if all the wisdom of 
 Buddha, Confucius, and Socrates were concentrated in this young 
 journalist of nine-and-twenty. He turned to Hester, and found in 
 her companionship a sweet reposeful influence he had never felt in 
 the old days when aU his leisure hours were spent with Edith 
 Champion. 
 
 In one of Edith's later letters there was a remonstrance. 
 
 "You tell me nothing of yourself," she said. " Not even where 
 you are or what you are doing. Your paper and the Knightsbridge 
 post-mark indicate that you are at Hillersdon House, but what are 
 you doing there, and what can be keeping you in London when all 
 the civilised world is scattered over moor and mountain, or roving 
 on the sea ? I sometimes fear you are Ul — perhaps too iU to travel. 
 If I really thought that I should waive every other consideration and 
 go to London to be near you. And yet your delightful letters could 
 hardly be written by a sick man. There is no languor or depres- 
 sion in them. A whim, I suppose, this lingering in town when 
 everybody else has fled. You were always a creature of whims, 
 and now you have milUons you are naturally all the more whimsical. 
 Not to be like other people 1 was not that your ambition years ago 
 when wo used to discuss your career ? " 
 
 How could he read such letters as these without a pang of remorse ? 
 He suffered many such pangs as he read ; but in the next half-hour 
 he was floating idly with the current along the lovely river, and 
 Hester's pale young loveliness was opposite him, the sweet face
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 209 
 
 dimly seen in the deep shadow of a broad straw hat. Nothing that art 
 can lend to beauty was needed to accentuate that delicate harmony of 
 form and colouring. The simple cambric frock, the plain straw hat 
 became her better than court robes and plumes and jewels could have 
 done. She was just at the age when beauty needs the least adornment. 
 
 "I don't wonder that you refused to be tempted by all my oifers 
 of finery from man-mantua-makers," Gerard said to her one day. 
 " You are lovelier in your cotton gowns than the handsomest woman 
 in London in a hundred guinea confection by Eaudnitz or FeHx. 
 But some day when we are in Paris I shall insist on dressing you 
 up in their fine feathers, just to see how my gentle Hester will look 
 as the Queen of Sheba. A woman of fashion, drest in the latest 
 modish eccentricity, always recalls her Sheban majesty to my mind," 
 
 " Some day when we are in Paris ! " 
 
 He often spoke as if their lives were to be spent together, as if 
 wherever he went she would go with him. Sometimes in the midst 
 of her happiness Hester lost herself in a labpinth of mingled hope 
 and fear. He had told her of an insurmountable obstacle to their 
 legal union, and yet he spoke as if th&fe were to be no end to this 
 blessed life in which they lived only for each other. Ah, that was 
 the shadow on the dial, that was the one stupendous fear. To this 
 marriage of true minds, marriage unsanctified by church or law, 
 there would come the end — the falHng off of love, sudden or gradual ; 
 the bitter hopeless day on which she should awaken from her di'eam, 
 and pass out of Paradise into the bleak barren world. She tried to 
 Bteep heart and mind in tlie bliss of the present, to shut her eyes 
 against all possibilities of woe. Whatever the future might bring 
 it would be something to remember she had once been completely 
 happy. Even a single day of such perfect bliss would shme like a 
 star in the night of years to come. She would not spoil the ineffable 
 present by forebodings about the future. And thus it was that Gerard 
 Hillersdon had to listen to no repLnings, to kiss away no remorseful 
 tears. She who had given him her heart and life had given with all 
 a woman's self-forgetfuhiess. "XMiat matter how fate might use her 
 by-and-by ? The triumph of her life was iu her lover's happiness. 
 
 It would be difficult to imagine a life more secluded, more shut in 
 and isolated from the outer world, or a spot more remote from the 
 drawbacks of civilisation ; and yet this young couple, wandering in 
 the lanes and over the commons, or gliding along sunlit waters in 
 their picturesque skiS, with its striped red and white sail, and ita 
 gaily-coloured Oriental cushions, were the cynosure of several pairs 
 
 P
 
 210 Gerard; or, 
 
 of eyes, whicii took heed of the smallest details in their behaviour 
 or their surroundings, and the subject of several very active tongues, 
 a subject which gave new zest to many a five-o'clock tea within 
 driving distance of Lowcombe. 
 
 Placid and inoffensive as their lives were, the young people who 
 were known as Mr, and Mrs. Hanley had given umbrage to the whole 
 neighbourhood by various omissions and commissions within the six 
 weeks of their residence at the Rosary. 
 
 In the first place they had taken no trouble to conciliate the resi- 
 dents among whom they had descended suddenly, or, in the words 
 of the jovial and facetious curate of an adjoining parish, "as if they 
 had been dropped out of a balloon." They had brought no letters 
 of introduction. They had not explained themselves. They had 
 planted themselves in the very midst of a select and immaculate little 
 community without producing any evidence of their respectabihty. 
 
 " And yet no doubt they expect people to call upon them," said 
 Lady Isabel Glendower, the help-meet of an ancient Indian General 
 who went to garden-parties in a bath chair, and whose wife and 
 daughters had taken upon themselves a tone of authority in all 
 social matters, based upon the lady's rank as an earl's daughter. 
 "Mr. Muschatt actually was going to call. I met him last week 
 riding that wretched old cob towards the Rosary, and was just in 
 time to stop him. ' Surely you are not going to compromise us by 
 calling on these people,' I said, ' until we know more about them.'" 
 
 " The foolish old thing saw the young woman on the river the 
 other day, and was so taken by her pretty face that he wanted to 
 know more of her," said Clara Glendower, who was young and 
 skittish. " He raved to me about her transparent complexion and 
 simple cotton frock. Old men are so sUly." 
 
 " I think, Lady Isabel, the less we say about these young people, 
 the better," said Miss Malcolm, with awful significance. " They aro 
 evidently not the kind of persons you would like your daughters to 
 know. A young man, able to spend money as freely as this young 
 man does, cannot be without a circle of friends ; and yet I can 
 answer for it that not a creature except the tradesmen's youths has 
 been to the Rosary for the last six weeks." 
 
 " But if they are honeymooning they may wish to be alone," 
 suggested Cara. 
 
 " Honeymooning ! nonsense, child," retorted Lady Isabel, who 
 prided herself on being outspoken. " I dare say that young woman, 
 in spite of her simple cotton frock, has had as many honeymoons as 
 there are signs in the Zodiac. The most notorious women in London 
 are the women who wear cotton frocks and don't paint their faces."
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 2 1 1 
 
 " Mr, and Mrs. Hanley have been six weeks at Lowcombe, and 
 have never been to church. That stamps them," said Mrs. 
 Donovan, at whose luxurious tea-table the conversation took place. 
 
 The Rector heard the fag end of the debate. 
 
 "I must see if I can persuade them to come to church," he said, 
 in his mild, kindly voice. " It is rather too much of a jump at 
 conclusions to suppose that because they are not church-goers they 
 are disreputable. Half the young men of the present generation are 
 Agnostics and Darwinians, and a good many young women imitate 
 the young men's agnosticism just as eagerly as they imitate theu' 
 collars and ties. I am old enough to know that one must make 
 prodigious allowances for the erratic intellect of youth. Whether 
 Muschatt calls on the Hanleys or not, I shall call and find out what 
 manner of people they are. I am sorry I have put it off so long." 
 
 The Rector had a way of coming down with the heavy foot of 
 benevolence upon the serpent's head of village malignity, now and 
 again, on which account he was generally spoken of as an eccentric, 
 and a man who would have been better placed anywhere than in the 
 Church of England ; an elderly widower, hving with a soft-hearted 
 maiden sister, childless, irresponsible, altogether lax in his ideas of 
 morahty, a man who took pity upon fallen village girls, and gave 
 himself infinite trouble to save them from further evil, and to help 
 them to hve down their disgrace ; a man who had laboured valiantly 
 in the work of female emigration, and to whom almost every mail 
 from the new world brought ill-spelt letters of gratitude and loving 
 remembrance. Such a man the elite of Lowcombe considered should 
 have cast in his lot at the East End of London. In a small settlement 
 of eminently correct people he was out of place. He was too good 
 for the neighbourhood ; and the neighbourhood was too good for him. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 "some dim derision of mysterious laughter." 
 
 While Mr. Gilstone, the Rector of Lowcombe, whose worst vice was 
 procrastination, v/as meditating a ceremonious call upon his new 
 parishioners, accident anticipated his design, and brought him face to 
 face with the young woman whose morals and cotton frocks had met 
 with such drastic treatment at Mrs. Donovan's Thursday tea-drinking. 
 Sauntering in the Rectory garden on Saturday afternoon Mr. 
 Gilstone's keen glance was attracted by a figure seated near an 
 old, old tombstone in a comer of the churchyard where his garden 
 wall, in all its wealth of foliage, made an angle with the willowy
 
 212 Gerard; or, 
 
 bank of the river. The sunhght on the white camhiic frock gave 
 that seated form and bent brown head an air of something supernal, 
 as it were Dante's divine lady in the light of Paradise. The Rector 
 stepped upon a little knoll that was level with the top of the 
 wall in order to look down upon the lady sitting by the tomb. 
 
 Yes, it was Mrs. Hanley — that Mrs. Hanley of whose antecedents 
 and present way of hfe Lowcombe spoke shudderingly. He could 
 just distinguish the exquisite profile under the shady straw hat, he 
 could see the delicate ear, transparent in the sunlight, the perfect 
 curve of the throat rising from a loosely tied lace handkerchief, the 
 graceful lines of the slender girUsh figure in the plain white gown. 
 No art had been used to enhance that perfect beauty, and none wa3 
 needed. The purity of the white gown, the simplicity of the Tuscan 
 hat, were in harmony with that placid and ideal loveliness. 
 
 " Poor child, I hope with all my heart that all is well with her," mused 
 the Rector, as he stepped down from the gi'assy knoll, and strolled to 
 the gate opening into the churchyard, and then with quiet step made 
 his way to the tomb against which Hester was sitting, on a gi'assy 
 ridge, over which periwinkle and St. John's wort had been allowed 
 to run riot, half covering the crumbKng grey stones and clothing the 
 cumbrous early Georgian sepulchre with fresh young beauty. This 
 was a corner of God's Acre in which the Rector permitted a careless 
 profusion of foliage, a certain artistic neglect that was part of his plan. 
 
 The lady was reading, and on looking down at her book, Mr. 
 GUstone saw that she was reading Shelley's " Alastor." 
 
 She looked up at the sound of his footfall among the leaves, and 
 then calmly resumed her reading. He drew nearer, hat in had. 
 
 " Allow me to introduce myself to you, Mrs. Hanley," he said, in 
 his pleasant voice. " I have been meaning to call upon you and 
 Mr. Hanley for a long time, but indolence and procrastination are 
 the vices of old men. Seeing you just now from my garden I 
 thought I might snatch the opportunity of making friends with you 
 here on my own ground." 
 
 She had risen in confusion, blushmg violently, with a scalding 
 rush of crimson over brow and cheeks, and her heart beating with 
 almost suflbcating force. A criminal upon whose shoulder the law 
 bad just laid its iron hand could hardly have suffered more. In that 
 one moment Hester Davenport realised what it was to be a social 
 pariah. It was as if she had awakened suddenly from a dream of 
 bhss to find herself alone in the cold workaday world, face to face 
 with a judge who had power to denounce and punish. 
 
 " Pray, sit down," said the old man, " and let us have a little chat." 
 
 He seated himself on the low boundary wall—lowest just at thia
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 213 
 
 o 
 
 part of the churchyard, where the fairy epleen-worfc grew in every 
 chink of the crumbling stones. 
 
 " You have been my neighbours for some time," said the Eector, 
 " and yet I have seen so little of you. I am sorry you don't come 
 to my church — but perhaps you are people who object to our simple 
 village services, and you go further afield." 
 
 "We do not go to any church," Hester faltered. "It would be 
 only hypocrisy if we were to join in services which have very little 
 meaning for us. We honour and love the Gospel for all that is 
 true and beautiful in it, but we cannot beheve as you and your 
 congregation believe, and so it is better to stop away from church." 
 
 " You are very yoimg to have joined the great army of unbe- 
 lievers," said the Rector, with no change in the gentleness of his tone, 
 or the friendly light of his eyes. He had heard too many young 
 people prattle of their agnosticism to be particularly shocked or 
 startled at the words of unbelief from these girlish lips. " Were 
 you brought up m a household of infidels — were your early teachers 
 unbelievers ? " 
 
 " Oh no. I was once a Christian," she answered, with a stifled 
 sob. " I once believed without questioning — believed in the divinity 
 of Christ, believed that He could heal the sick and raise the dead, 
 believed that He was near me at all hours of my life, nearest when 
 I was in deepest sorrow." 
 
 " And when did you cease to believe in His presence — when did 
 you lose the assurance of a Saviour who could pity your sorrows and 
 understand your temptations ? " 
 
 "Doubt came gradually, with thought, and thinking over tha 
 thoughts of others far wiser than myself." 
 
 " Mr. Hanley, your husband, is an agnostic, I take it? " 
 
 The drooping head bent a little lower ; the hand on the open book 
 turned a leaf or two with a restless movement. 
 
 " He does not believe in miracles," she answered reluctantly. 
 
 " Nor in a life to come — nor in an Almighty God to whom wa 
 are all accountable for our actions. I know the creed of the youth- 
 ful Freethinker — universal liberty ; liberty to follow the bent of his 
 own desires and his own passions wherever they may lead him ; and 
 for the rest the Gospel of Humanity, which means tall talk about 
 the grandeur and wisdom of man in the abstract, combined with a 
 comfortable indifference to the wants and sorrows of man in tho 
 concrete, man at Bethnal Green or Haggerstone. Oh, I know what 
 young men are," exclaimed the Rector, with indignant scorn ; " how 
 shallow, how arrogant, how ready to absorb the floating opinions of 
 their day, and to take ready-made ideas for the results of original
 
 214 Gerard; or, 
 
 thought. Frankly, now, Mrs. Hanley, is it only since your marriage 
 that you have been an infidel? " 
 
 Hester faltered a reluctant " Yes." 
 
 And then, after a brief pause, she began to plead for the man she 
 idolised. 
 
 " Indeed, he is not shallow or ignorant," she said. " He has 
 thought long and deeply upon the religions of the world, has brooded 
 over those instincts which lead the hopes and desires of all of us to 
 a life beyond — an unseen universe. He is not a strong man — he 
 may never live to be old— indeed I sometimes fear he will not, and 
 we have both talked often and long about that other world which 
 Ave once believed in. We should be so much happier if we could 
 believe — if we could hope that when death parts us it will not be for 
 ever. But how can we hope for the impossible — how can we shut 
 our eyes to the revelations of science — the fixed, immutable laws 
 which hem us in on every side, and show us of what we are made 
 and what must be our end ? " 
 
 " Dust we are, and to dust we must return," said the Rector, 
 " but do you think there is nothing outside the dust — nothing that 
 will survive and ripen to more perfect hfe when this poor clay is 
 under the sod. Do you think that the innate belief of all human 
 kind carries no moral weight against the naiTow laws of existence 
 imder the conditions and restrictions in which we know it ; con- 
 ditions and restrictions which may be changed in a moment by the 
 fiat of Omnipotence, as the earth is changed by an earthquake or the 
 ocean by a storm ? Who, looking at the placid, smiling sea could 
 conceive the fury and the force of a tempest if he had never seen 
 one ? You would find it as difficult to believe in that level water 
 lifted mountains high, or in the racing surf, as to believe in the 
 6ur\nval of intellect and identity, the passage from a known life here 
 to an unkiioAvn life hereafter. The philosophers of these latter days 
 call the unknown the unknowable, or the unthinkable, and suppose 
 they have settled and made an end of everything which they cannot 
 understand. But I am not going to preach sermons out of church, 
 Mrs. Hanley. I am much more interested in you than in your 
 opinions. At your age opinions change, and change again— but the 
 personality remains pretty much the same. Even if you and your 
 husband ilon't come to church you are my parishioners, and I want 
 to know more of you. I hope you both like Lowcombe ? " 
 
 " Oh, it is far more than Uking. We both love the place." 
 
 " And you mean to live among us ? You will not grow tired 
 of the river, even when winter sheds a gentle greyness over all 
 that is now so brilliant? There are people who say they are
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 215 
 
 fond of the country — in summer. Take my -word for it, the souls 
 of those people are never far from Oxford Street. To love the 
 country one must know and admire every phase and every subtle 
 change of every season. Awakening from a long sleep one should 
 be able to say at the first glance across the woods and hUls — ' this 
 is mid-October or this is March.' One should know the season 
 almost to a week. You are not one of those who only care for a 
 midsummer landscape, I hope ? " 
 
 " No, indeed ! I love the country always — and I hate London." 
 
 The shudder with which the last words were spoken gavo 
 earnestness to the avowal. 
 
 " You have not been happy in London," said the Rector, his 
 quick ear catching a deeper meaning than the words expressed. 
 
 " I have been very unhappy there." 
 
 "And here you are quite happy. As a girl you had troubles; 
 yoiu" surroundings were not all you could wish ; but your wedded 
 life is perfectly happy, is it not ? " 
 
 " Utterly happy." 
 
 "Come to church, then, my dear Mrs. Hartley. Come and 
 kneel in our village church — the old, old church, where so many 
 have knelt, and given thanks in joy, and been comforted in affliction. 
 Come and give thanks to God for your happiness. It is not for 
 you, who scarcely know what mathematics mean, to , refuse to 
 beheve in a God because His existence cannot be mathematically 
 demonstrated. Your own heart must tell you that you have need 
 of God, that you have need of a conscience outside your own 
 conscience, a wisdom above your own wisdom. Come and kneel 
 among us, and give God thanks that your lines have been set in 
 pleasant places — and, since I am told you are rich, come and work 
 among our poor. It is good for the yoimg and prosperous to interest 
 themselves in the old and needy. If you go among our cottagers 
 at first as a duty, and perhaps thinking it an unpleasant duty, you 
 will soon come to love the work for its own sake. There is sweet- 
 ness in your face that teUs me your heart wiU open to the unhappy." 
 
 "I love visiting the poor," Hester answered, brightening a little 
 at this suggestion. "I have been poor, and know what poverty 
 means. I should like to go about among your cottagers — if — if my 
 husband" — she faltered at the word, in spite of all those broader 
 ideas which Gerard had taught her — " if my husband will let me." 
 
 " He could hardly refuse you the happiness of making others a 
 little happier — you who possess all the material elements of happiness 
 in superabundance. I feel assured Mr. Hanley will consent to your 
 devoting a few of your leisure hours to my cottagers. I will only
 
 2 1 6 Gerard ; or, 
 
 Bend you to wholesome cottages, and really deserving people. But, 
 as they are all good churchmen, I want you to come to church first. 
 They are sure to talk to you about the church services, and you will 
 be embarrassed, and they will be shocked if you have to say that 
 you never go to church. I can't tell you what that means to simple 
 people, for whom church is the ante-chamber of heaven. To them 
 it is anathema maranatha, the abomination of desolation." 
 
 " I cannot go to church," said Hester, with averted face. 
 
 "Not even to thank God for your happy life, for your marriage 
 with the man you love ? " 
 
 " No, no, no ! " 
 
 " Then my dear young lady, you lead me to think that this 
 eeemingly happy union is one for which you dare not thank God ; 
 or in plain speech that you are not Mr. Hanley's wife." 
 
 Her sobs were her only answer. All those grand theories of 
 universal liberty, of virtue that knew not law, wliich she had 
 taken to her heart of late, all she had learned at second-hand from 
 Gerard, and at fii'st-hand from Shelley, vanished out of her mind, 
 and she sat by the Eector's side crushed by the weight of her 
 sin, as deeply convinced of her own shame and worthlessness as 
 she who knelt amidst the accusing Pharisees and waited for the 
 punishment of the old law, unexpectant of the new law of pardon. 
 
 " I am sorry for you, my dear young lady, deeply and truly sorry. 
 You were not born for a life of degradation." 
 
 "There is no degradation," protested Hester, through her tears; 
 ** my love for him and his for me is too complete and true ever to 
 mean degradation. He has read much and thought much, and has 
 got beyond old codes and worn-out institutions. I am as much and 
 as truly his wife as if we had been married in your church yonder." 
 
 " But you are not his lawful wife, and other wives, down to the 
 humblest peasant woman in this village, will think badly of you, and 
 all Clu-istian women will think you a sinner — a sinner to be pitied 
 and loved perhaps, but a sinner all the same. Why should that be ? 
 There is no other tie, I hope ? Mr. Hanley is not a married man ? " 
 
 " Oh no, no ! " 
 
 " Thank God ! Then he must marry you. It will be my duty to 
 put the matter before him in the right light." 
 
 "Ob, pray do not interfere," exclaimed Hester. "He would 
 think I had come to you to complain — he would love me less, 
 perhaps — would think me designing, selfish, caring only for myself. 
 There is nothing in life I care for but his happiness, and he ia 
 perfectly happy now. He knows that I am devoted to him, that I 
 would trive my life for him "
 
 The Woi'ld, the Flesh, and the Devil. 2 1 7 
 
 " You have given your honour — that to such a vfoman as you is 
 eometunes more than Ufe." 
 
 " Honour or hfe, I could not count the cost of either for his sake." 
 
 " And he must be a villain if he can refuse to give you back to 
 the position from -which you have fallen — for his sake." 
 
 " It will come — it will come in time. I feel that he will do what 
 is right — in his own good time." 
 
 " You cannot afford to wait for that. You are far too good to 
 occupy your present position for another day or hour, unless your 
 betrayer will consent to make wrong right. Pray trust me, my dear 
 young lady. Though I am a rustic I have seen something of human 
 nature, and I will act with discretion. I will not be precipitate." 
 
 "I would much rather you did not interfere. You don't know 
 him. He is wayward and fanciful — you may turn him against 
 me — and we are so happy now — utterly happy — and it may be 
 only for a short time. He has been told that he may die young. 
 When he has gone all my life may be one long repentance — ono 
 long atonement for having made his last years happy.", 
 
 "My poor child, women have a natural bent for self-sacrifice, 
 which too often leads them into sin. Come, come, my dear, don't cry ; 
 and remember whatever may happen I mean to be your friend." 
 
 Hester sighed. The circle of perfect love — that narrow, 
 isolated spot in the universe m which she had been hving for the 
 last seven weeks was broken in upon suddenly from the outside 
 world, and everything in this golden dream of hers took new 
 lights and new colours when looked at by other eyes. In that 
 sweet solitude of two, they had been Hke Hero and Leander, like 
 Kosalind and Orlando, like any two creatures who exist only 
 for each other, and for whom all the rest of creation is no more 
 than a picturesque background to that dual hfe. Love in its first 
 brief intensity scarcely believes in that outer world. 
 
 "Yes, my dear, however this story of yours may end — and I 
 hope and believe it will not end badly — you may rely upon my 
 friendship," said the Rector, " and if you want a woman's help or 
 counsel my old maiden sister will not withhold it from you. 
 When the world was thirty years younger I had a yoimg wife 
 whom I adored, and who had something of your complexion 
 and contour, and a baby daughter. Before my little girl was threa 
 years old God took her ; and her mother, who had been in weak 
 health from the time of the child's birth, died within a year of our 
 loss. Those two angel faces have followed me down the vale 
 of years. I never see a child of my daughter's age without a 
 little thrill of tenderness or pity. I never see an interesting girl
 
 2i8 Gerard ; or, 
 
 of your age without thinking that my Httle girl might have grown 
 up Uke her. So you see, Mrs. Hanley, I have a reason for being 
 interested in you over and above my duty as a parish priest." 
 
 "You are all that is kind," faltered Hester, "and I wish I were 
 worthier " 
 
 "It is not you who are unworthy. No, I will say no more, lest 
 I should seem harsh to one you love. May I walk part of the way 
 home with you ? " 
 
 "I shall be very pleased to have your company, but I have a 
 boat close by." 
 
 " Then let me take you to your boat ? " 
 
 He went with her to a httle reedy inlet, where she had moored 
 her dinghy, and he stood on the bank and watched her as she 
 Bculled the light boat away towards the setting sun, with the easy 
 air of one used to the work. 
 
 " Poor child," sighed the Kector. " How strange that one is so apt 
 to feel more interested in a sinner than in a saint. It is the mystery of 
 human life that takes one's fancy, perhaps ; the sinner's appeal to pity^ 
 as against the saint's confidence in hor own holiness. I suppose that 
 is why Mary Magdalene is the most popular character in the Gospel." 
 
 Hester rowed slowly up the sunlit river, creeping close in 
 shore by the stunted willows which spread their low shadows across 
 the water. She crept into the shadow as the wounded deer creeps 
 away to die, stricken to the heart by her conversation with Mr. 
 Gilstone. It was the first time she had been brought face to face 
 with stern reality since she had allowed her lover to lead her by 
 the hand into the fool's paradise of unsanctioned love. He had 
 taught her to believe that the sanction meant very little, and that 
 the loyalty and unselfishness of a mutual attachment were an all- 
 sufficient proof of its purity; but these modern views of hia did 
 not stand by her for a quarter of an hour under the earnest inter- 
 rogation of a village parson. All her old-fashioned ideas, her 
 reverence for God's Word, her shrinking from man's disdain, rushed 
 back into her mind, and Philosophy and Free Thinking were 
 scattered to the winds. She stood confessed a woman dishonoured 
 by the sacrifice love had exacted from her. She looked back to 
 those quiet evenings by the river, when she and her father had 
 walked up and down in the starlight, with Gerard Hillersdon beside 
 them, sympathetic, respectful almost to reverence. Ah, what bliss 
 it had been to listen or to talk with him in that tranquil hour when the 
 burden of daily care had been laid down ! What unalloyed happiness, 
 without thought or fear of the future — without regi'ct for the past !
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 219 
 
 How altered now were her thoughts, when to look back upon the 
 past was horror, when to think of the future filled her whole being 
 with aching fear ! 
 
 This had been one of her rare days of eoHtude, and it was ending 
 badly. Gerard had left for London after their leisurely breakfast, 
 and was not to return tiU the eight-o'clock dinner. Business or 
 whim had urged him to spend a day in the metropolis — to lunch at 
 one of his clubs, and to hear the gossip of town and country from 
 men who were " passing through " — to breathe that more piquant 
 atmosphere of the world in which everybody knows everybody else's 
 latest secret. The freshness and the quiet of the country would be 
 all the more delicious, he told himself, after that brief plunge into 
 the dust and movement of the town. 
 
 Hester had not pouted or looked sorrowful at his departure, but 
 the day had been sorely long ; and now this chance meeting with the 
 Eector had filled her with sadness and apprehension — dread lest he 
 should break the spell that held their tranquil lives, by a vain inter- 
 position upon her behalf. And then came the agonising thought 
 that her lover, in spite of a devotion that seemed all-absorbing, did 
 not love her well enough to make her his wife. Sophistry might make 
 their union seem beautiful without the bond of marriage ; but still 
 that question remained unanswered — Why were they not married ? 
 
 At this quiet evening hour, perhaps one of the saddest in Hester's 
 life, there came suddenly upon her the sound of laughter — a man's 
 frank laughter, joyous as the song of birds, joyous almost to 
 ecstasy; and round the bend of the river a steam launch, gaily 
 decked with crimson draperies and Oriental cushions, came quickly 
 towards her, with the figures of its occupants defined against the 
 brightness of the western sky. Foremost of the group stood the 
 tall and Hssom form of a young man with yellowish auburn hair and 
 sharply cut features, and gi'ouped about him were women in light 
 summer gowns and airy hats, and other young men in white flannels. 
 A ripple of laughter and joyous voices went past her as they passed, 
 and then above it all rose that same mirthful laugh she had heard 
 before the boat came in sight. The laughter of the man with 
 auburn hair and pale, sharp-cut face was wafted up the river, in the 
 wake of the boat, on the soft evening air. That joyous group of 
 youthful strangers touched her with a keener sense of her own lone- 
 liness ; her father mysteriously vanished out of her life ; the friend- 
 ship of all old friends for ever forfeited by her conduct ; nothing and 
 no one left to her save the man for whom she had surrendered all. 
 If he should grow weary of her, if he should change, what had she 
 on earth ? Nothing ! Her glances turned involuntarily to one deep
 
 2 20 Gerard ; or, 
 
 shadowy pool she knew of under an inward curve of the bank. 
 Nothing but death ! And in the new dispensation of Darwin, 
 Spencer, and CUflFord, death by suicide was no more terrible than 
 death by inevitable decay. There was no afterwards. There was 
 no Great Father outside this httle world to whom the self-destroyer 
 had to render up his account. 
 
 At a quarter to eight came the glad sound of wheels — sound for 
 which Hester had been listening for the last half-hom", and two 
 minutes later Gerard was ia the lamp-lit hall, amidst the cool fresh- 
 ness of newly cut roses, and Hester was in his arms, faltering her 
 fond welcome between tears and laughter. 
 
 " Why, my darUng, you are almost hysterical. This won't do, 
 Hettie." 
 
 " The day has been so long. But you are home at last," she 
 sighed, drying her tears, the &st he had seen since one stormy 
 burst of weeping which he must needs remember all his life — the 
 passionate tears of a woman betrayed by the man she loved too well 
 to punish, even by her resentment. 
 
 " Home at last— home by the very train and at the very hour I 
 named — and uncommonly glad to be home, sweet wife ! " 
 
 How ghbly he pronounced the name — and yet, and yet, she 
 blushed at the sound, as she had not done since its novelty had 
 worn off, and she accepted the gospel of free thought. All that the 
 good old parson had said to her was in her mind that night, though 
 she smiled and brightened and grew happy in the companionsliip of 
 the man she adored. 
 
 He had come home laden with gifts for her — books, trinkets — not 
 valuable gems, since she steadfastly refused any such gifts — but the 
 light and airy inventions of modern art — new settings of moonstones 
 or starstones, fairy-hke silver hair-pins, ornaments that would be 
 worthless when their fashion was past, dainty toys and trifles to 
 scatter about the tables, eccentricities in silver and enamel, Dresden 
 china bonbon boxes, Japanese idols. 
 
 " Throw them into the river if you don't like them," he said, as 
 they sat at the cosy round table after dinner, with the lampliglit 
 shining upon the glittering toys which Gerard produced one after 
 another from a capacious leather bag, taking childlike pleasure in 
 Hester's wondering admiration. " I am growing richer and richer — 
 appallingly rich. My stocks and shares were chosen with such extra- 
 ordinary foresight by that marvellous old man with the umbrella 
 that the value of them has gone on increasing ever since he bought 
 them. My Piosarios, my South-'Westerns, my Waterworks, British
 
 The World, the Fleshy and the Devil. 221 
 
 and Foreign, my London Guarantee Shares — everytliiug I own has 
 an upward tendency. I cannot spend a quarter of my income, 
 xmless I do something ■uald and foolish. Think of something, 
 Hester ! Imagine some mad, delightful escapade which would cost 
 us twenty thousand pounds. We must launch out somehow ! " 
 
 " I can imagine nothing so wild or so foolish as my love for you," 
 said Hester, growing suddenly thoughtful, " for when you cease to 
 care for me I must die. There ^YiIl be nothing left." 
 
 " Cease to care for you ! While there is consciousness here " — 
 touching his forehead — " that will never be ! " 
 
 "And you really love me — with all your heart ? " 
 
 " With all my heart, and mind, and strength. There's the Church 
 Catechism for you. I am surprised I can remember so much of it." 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 "as GEXTLE AiTD A3 JOCUiTD AS A JEST." 
 
 Mr. Gilstoxe thought long and seriously of his interview with the 
 j'oung lady who was known to Lowcombe as Mrs. Hanley. In his 
 many years' widowhood, during which his maiden sister Tabitha 
 had cared for his creature comforts, kept his servants in order, 
 maintained a spotless propriety throughout his roomy old house, 
 and assisted him with counsel and manual labour in his cherished 
 garden and churchyard, her mind had become the other half of his 
 mind, and he had no secrets from her, not even the secrets of other 
 people ; so within a few hours of that conversation in God's Acre 
 Tabitha Gilstone knew as much about Mrs. Hanley as her brother 
 had been able to discover. 
 
 Tabitha was not surprised to hear that there was something 
 wrong. That had been decided by the consentient voices of Low- 
 combe some weeks ago. Tabitha sorrowed for this poor young 
 woman, as she always sorrowed for human error, with its inevitable 
 sequence of human suffering, most especially when the sinner was 
 young, and perhaps -uith just one extra touch of tenderness when 
 the sinner was fair. She was sorro^vful, but she was not surprised. 
 She was not one of those women who are quick to pronounce the 
 female sinner a calculating minx, and the male sinner an artless 
 victim. She felt very angry with the unknown owner of the Rosarj', 
 and denounced him in immeasured terms. " The scoundrel," she 
 cried, "not content with having brought disgrace upon a pretty, 
 refined young creature, he must needs try to pervert her mind. 
 First he makes her an outcast, and then he makes her an Atheist." 
 
 " Don't be too hard, Bertha," remonstrated the Rector. " I dare
 
 22 2 Gerard ; or, 
 
 say Mr. Hanley does not think he is doing any wrong in introducing 
 this poor girl to the new learning. He thinks that he is leading her 
 into the light of truth, not into the darkness of infidelity. You 
 don't know how arrogant the new school of agnosticism is, how 
 coniident in materialism as the royal road to the well-being of man- 
 kind. For us who believe the unbelievers can find nothing but con- 
 temptuous pity. I expect to find this young man a difficult subject. 
 He has been spoilt by too much wealth and a little learning." 
 
 "But you will do all you can, BasU," urged Miss Gilstone. 
 *' You will persuade him to behave honourably ; or if he is wicked 
 enough to refuse, I hope you will persuade that poor girl to leave him 
 at once and for ever. Let her come to us if she is friendless ; I will 
 find a home for her, either in this house or with some of my friends." 
 
 '' Ah, Tabitha, how many girls have we ever succeeded in turn- 
 ing from the way of evil while there were any flowers along the 
 path ? It is only when they come to the thorns and briers that they 
 can be persuaded to turn back. However, I mean to do my utter- 
 most in this case." 
 
 " And how much good you have done in such cases, Basil ; how 
 many happy wives and mothers on the other side of the world havo 
 to thank you that they are not outcasts in the streets of London ! " 
 
 The keen impression made by her conversation with the Rector 
 wore off as the dreamy days went by, and Hester once more was 
 happy, and unashamed of her happiness, like Eve in Eden. The 
 river was still at its loveliest, and Gerard and Hester spent the 
 greater part of their days in a punt moored in some romantic back- 
 water, or by some willowy eyot, he stretched in sybarite idleness 
 among silken cushions, she reading aloud to him. She had a beau- 
 tiful voice, and by long habit reading aloud had become very easy 
 to her. Together in this way they dipped into W. EL Clifford and 
 Herbert Spencer, Comte and Mill — he picking out chapters or 
 essays for her to road, she accepting meekly whatever he put before 
 her as the best. They read the poets also, in these golden after- 
 noons, when there was just enough of coolness to make' the west 
 wind crisp and pleasant, and no hint of a wind from the east. 
 
 One morning she happened to mention the launch and the fair- 
 haired, pale-faced young man whose joyous laughter had intensified 
 her sadness. 
 
 " I felt very despondent that afternoon," she said, " and his 
 laughter saddened me." 
 
 "Describe him to me again, Hester," said Gerard. "Stay." Ho 
 sketched a profile lightly on the fly-leaf of a book, and handed tho 
 book to her. " Was your laughing youth like that ? "
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 223 
 
 " Yes," she cried wonderingly, " that is the very face. You know 
 him, then ? " 
 
 " Yes, I know him." 
 
 He took a letter out of his pocket and re-read it frowningly, a letter 
 that had come to him with his last batch from the Post Office at Reading. 
 
 " "What has become of you ? Where are you hiding yourself? " 
 wrote Justin Jermyn. " Surely you are tired of your Garden of 
 Eden by this time. I heard of you in London the other day, so 
 you have not carried your bliss to some untrodden valley where the 
 novelty of your environment might prolong the freshness of your 
 feelings. I can fancy no impassioned love lasting more than six 
 weeks. The strain upon mind and imagination is too great. 
 
 "May not one see you? Is your happiness too sacred for the 
 vulgar eye of a friend ? I feel sure the dear young lady would like 
 me, however she may object to the ruck of your acquamtance— and 
 for the rest I am discretion itself— a very Hon's mouth for any secret 
 you may drop into me ; as deep, as silent as that deep water near 
 the Church of St. George the Greater, where the enemies of the 
 Venetian Repubhc sleep so soundly. Seriously, I am pining to see 
 you. Tell me when and where I am to go to you. Remember, 
 there is a mystic sympathy which links your life to mine. You 
 cannot escape me. Whether you will or no, in your joys and in 
 your son-ows, I shall be near you. — Yours for life, " J. J." 
 
 A hateful letter to Gerard in his present mood, rendered still mora 
 hateful by the idea that Justin Jermyn might be his near neio-hbour. 
 
 " Did you see the name of the launch ? " he asked. 
 
 " No ; I only noticed the young man's face, and that the giris 
 who were grouped about him were handsome and attractive. Is he 
 a man whom you disHke ? " 
 
 " Yes, when I am away from him. But when I am in his com- 
 pany he always contrives to amuse and interest me, so that, in spite 
 of myself, he seems my dearest friend." 
 
 " I understand," said Hester. " He is very clever— but not a good 
 man. And yet he had such a joyous laugh, and seemed so happy." 
 
 "My dearest, do you think only the good people are happy? 
 Some of the most joyous spirits in this world have gone along with 
 hearts utterly and innately bad." 
 
 They were taking tea on the lawn a day or two after this con- 
 versation, theu- nistic table and restful wicker chairs grouped under 
 a great weeping ash which had once been the chief feature of the 
 cottage garden, when a boat shot rapidly towards the rustic laudmg
 
 2 24 Gerard ; or, 
 
 stage, aud a lissom form appeared upon the steps, and came with 
 airy footsteps, mercurial, vivid as light, across the close-shorn turf. 
 
 "At last," cried Justin Jermyu. "I thought I could not be 
 mistaken." 
 
 "In whom, or in what?" asked Gerard, starting to his feet and 
 contemplating the uninvited guest with a most forbidding frown. 
 
 " In my old friend Mr. Hanley. I am staying with Matt Muller, 
 the landscape painter, on his house-boat hard by Wargrave ; and I 
 heard, casually, the description of a certain Mr. and Mrs. Hanley, 
 who are in some wise a mystery to the neighbourhood — the lady 
 exquisitely beautiful (with a bow and a smUe for Hester), the gentle- 
 man inordinately rich, young, idle — all that my dear friend Gerard 
 is, in short. So I made a shrewd guess as to Mr. Hanley's identity, 
 and — me void. Pray present me to Mrs. Hanley." 
 
 He stood before them smiling, self-assured, hght as Ariel himself, 
 clad from top to toe in white, and with glints of sunlight in his 
 blonde hair, and a deUcate transparency in his blonde complexion, 
 untouched by wind or weather. He looked as if nothing were 
 further from his thoughts than the suspicion that his company could 
 be in any wise distasteful. 
 
 Hester had risen in confusion, and stood leaning a httle against 
 one of the low branches of the ash, blushing painfuUy. This was 
 the fii'st visitor who had broken the spell of their sweet soHtude, 
 and, as in her meeting with the Eector, she felt again the sharp 
 bitter sense of being brought face to face with that outer world 
 which could but think ill of her. 
 
 " Mr. Jermyn — my wife," said Gerard, gravely, with emphasis 
 upon the word wife. 
 
 Justin Jermyn dropped into one of the low chairs, settled himself 
 in a nest of dainty Moorish cushions, and waited to be refreshed 
 with tea, which Hester prepared for him with hands which trembled 
 a little, despite her eftbrts at self-control. In her conversation with 
 the Eector the sense of the old man's fatherly pity had been more than 
 she could bear without tears. In the presence of Justin Jermyn that 
 which she felt was the sense of hidden mahgnity, the consciousness 
 of being despised and made light of by the man who fawned upon her. 
 
 She handed him his cup in silence, offered him the light dainties 
 from the prettily decked table with the air of performing a social 
 duty in which her inclination had no part, and when she had done 
 tliis she opened a big Florentine umbrella, and walked slowly away, 
 leaving the two men under the ash. 
 
 "How shy she is," said Jermyn, looking after her, "and how 
 lovely ! Even your rapturous tirades had hardly prepared me for 
 80 much beauty. Yes, it is the true Kaifaelle face — the transparent 
 purity of colouring — the delicate and harmonious featuits "
 
 The JVor/d, the Flesh, and the Devil. 225 
 
 " Why did you hunt me down here ? " demanded Gerard, rudely 
 breakmg in upon these encomiums. " Do you suppose that when 
 a man has made a paradise for himself — remote and secret — he 
 wants to be intruded upon by " 
 
 "The serpent," interrupted Jermyn. "Perhaps not. Yet the 
 eerpent always finds his way in through some gap in the hedge. 
 And after all there must be limits to the pleasures of a dual solitude. 
 Love may remain unchanged, but ideas become exhausted, and the 
 tete-a-tete begins to bore. If the serpent hadn't upset everything 
 at an early stage in their union, how heartily sick of Eden Adam 
 and Eve must have become by the time Cain and Abel were weaned. 
 Don't be angiy, Gerard. Granted that I am a pushing cad, and 
 that I go where I hke to go rather than where I am wanted. I 
 come to you with all the news of the town — of the world — fresh in 
 my mind, the scandals, and follies, and the social entanglements of 
 which your newspapers tell you nothing. You can surely put up 
 with me for an hour or so." 
 
 Gerard put up with him till midnight. He dined at the Rosary, 
 and the little dinner of three had a gaiety which the tete-a-tcte 
 dinners had somewhat lacked latel3\ Even Hester was amused by 
 a style of conversation that was new to her, and the unpleasant efiect 
 of ^Ir. JermjTi's personahty wore off, and was almost forgotten. He 
 evidently liked and admired Gerard, and that was much in his favour. 
 
 The moon was at the full, silvering wood and meadow, river and 
 eyot, as they bade the visitor good night, and stood and watched 
 him row down the stream towards Wargrave, a ghost-like figure in 
 his white raiment, under that cold white light. 
 
 " He amused you, Gerard," said Hester, as they walked slowly 
 back to the house. " I was glad to hear you laugh so merrily. We 
 have been too serious of late. Our books have saddened us." 
 
 " Yes, they all tell the same story; that nature is everything and 
 we are nothing. Jermyn is an amusing rascal, and as I told you 
 yesterday, I like him well enough when I am with him." 
 
 " You called me your wife when you introduced him to me,'' 
 murmured Hester, hiding her face upon his shoulder. " You will 
 never let him find out that I am — anything less than your wife — 
 will you, Gerard ? I feel as if that man's scorn would wither me." 
 
 " His scorn ! My dearest, he admires you beyond measure, and 
 do you think he is the kind of man to be influenced in his opinion 
 of any woman by a marriage certificate ? He knows that I adore 
 you. He shall never know anything else about us but that we are 
 devoted to each other. And if he is ever wanting in reverence for 
 you, in the smallest degree, he shall never enter our house again."
 
 ^26 Gerard ; or^ 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 "COMPAEE DEAD HAPriNESS WITH LrVXNG "WOE." 
 
 After that one evening's hospitable entertainment LIr. Jermyn 
 considered himself free of the Rosary. He dropped in at any hour 
 he liked, and always brought cheerfulness with him. He joined 
 Hester and Gerard in their long, lazy mornings in the punt, discussed 
 their books, old and new, seeming to know every book that had 
 ever made its mark in the world, and to remember, as few readers 
 remember. Gerard was certainly the gayer for his company, and 
 listened with interest to an account of the visitors on the Pegotty^ 
 where Matt Muller received a society that could only be described 
 as mixed. HappOy the Pegotty was berthed at a distance of ten 
 miles, and the painter's Bohemian guests rarely went over a mile 
 beyond her moorings. 
 
 All the dreamy seriousness that had tinctured Hester and Gerard's 
 long duologue evaporated in the presence of Justin Jerrayn, as the 
 mist wreaths melt from the riverside meadows under the broadening 
 sunshine. The greatest problems in life and time were touched as 
 lightly by Jermyn as the airiest nothings of tea-table gossip. It was 
 impossible to be earnest in the society of a man for whom existence 
 was a jest, and the Sybarite's luxury the supreme good below the stars. 
 
 " If I ever contemplate another world, it appears to me as a 
 planet in which there is perpetual summer ; a place where there are 
 no bad cooks, and where the fowls of the air have no legs," he said, 
 with his joyous laugh, when Hester pleaded for that last forlorn 
 hope of man's progressive existence, somewhere, somehow. 
 
 Mr. Gilstone called twice at the Rosary during these halcyon days at 
 the beginning of October, only to find that Mr. and Mrs. Hanley were 
 out on the river. Gerard tossed the Rector's cards aside with a con- 
 temptuous laugh on the second time of finding them on the hall 
 table. 
 
 " What pushing rascals these parsons are ! " he exclaimed. " This 
 fellow calls twice in ten days, instead of taking ofifence at my neglect. 
 Wants money out of me for his schools, or his coal-club, no doubt. 
 Well, the parson's life is not a happy life, as I know by home ex- 
 perience, and I'll reward his pertinacity with a comfortable cheque." 
 
 Hester turned red, and then pale, at the sight of the Rector's cards. 
 
 " He may not want money," she faltered. 
 
 " May not ! 'My dearest, he is a priest. The priest who doesn't 
 go for your purse is a black swan that I don't expect to find along 
 this river." 
 
 " He may wish to see you."
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 227 
 
 " Then his wish shall remain ungratified. I am not going to let 
 the world into our paradise by the thin end of the clerical wedge." 
 
 " You need not fear the world," Hester answered, with the first 
 touch of bitterness that Gerard had heard in any speech of hers. 
 " People know that there is something wi'ong in our lives. They 
 have all held themselves aloof." ! 
 
 " The voice is the voice of my poetic Hester, but the words aro 
 the words of the Philistine," said Gerard lightly, as he left her. 
 
 She stood looking at the Kector's cards, lying far apart whero 
 Gerard's careless hand had flung them. She felt that she had 
 offended the man whom she loved better than all the world besides. 
 Oh, fool, self-conscious fool, to care for what that shallow or self- 
 seeking world might think or say of her. Whatever she had 
 sacrificed of womanly pride and self-respect, was it not enough 
 reward to have made him happy — him for whom life was to be so 
 brief, who had need to crowd into a few summers the love and 
 gladness which for other men may be spread over the length of 
 prosaic years, making a little spot of colour and light here and there 
 on the duU grey woof of domestic monotony. 
 
 The Eector called a third time, and this time met the master of 
 the house at the hall door. 
 
 "Good morning, Mr. Gilstone. Pray step inside my den here,", 
 said Gerard, throwing aside his hat. " I am ashamed that you 
 should have troubled to pay me a third visit. I was on the point 
 of sending you a cheque." 
 
 " I have not asked you for any money, Mr. Hanley," answered 
 the Eector, gravely, seating himself in the proffered chair, and look- 
 ing round the room with the shrewd glance of eyes that have been 
 observing things for sixty-six years. 
 
 There was nothing in the cottage parlour, transformed into a 
 study, to indicate dissipated habits ; none of the slovenliness of the 
 Bohemian idler. Many books, flowers everywhere, and an all-per. 
 vading neatness distinguished the apartment. 
 
 " You have not asked me ? No, no," said Gerard, lightly, "but I 
 knowthat in an agricultural parish theremustbeagood deal of poverty, 
 and every well-to-do parishioner should pay his quota. Winter is 
 approaching, though we may be beguiled into forgetting all about him 
 in this delicious autumn. You are thinking of your coal and blanket 
 club, I dare say. Allow me to write you a cheque." He opened a 
 drawer, took out his cheque-book, and dipped his pen in the ink. 
 
 " No, Mr. Hanley," said the Rector, decisively ; " I cannot take 
 your money. I am here to talk to you of something much more 
 precious than money."
 
 ^28 Gerard ; or, 
 
 " Of my soul, perhaps ? " questioned Gerard, his countenance 
 hardening. "I may as well tell you at once, Mr. Gilstone, that I 
 am an unbeliever in the Christian revelation, and, indeed, in 
 transcendentalism of all kinds." 
 
 " You are a Darwinian, I conclude ? " 
 
 "No; I am nothing! I neither look before nor after. I want 
 to make the most of life in the present, while it is mine. God knows, 
 it is short enough for the longest Hved amongst us — and death comes 
 no easier to me, the unit, because I know the universe is working 
 steadily towards the same catastrophe." 
 
 "You dread death? " asked the Rector.' 
 
 " Who does not? Contemplate death in whatever form you will, 
 he is the same hideous spectre. Sudden destruction, slow decay — 
 who shall say which is the more terrible ? But come now, IVIr. Gil- 
 stone, you are not here to talk metaphysics. I say again, let me wiite 
 you a cheque for your schools, your cottage hospital, your somethmg." 
 
 " And I say again, Mr. Hanley, that I cannot take your money." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " I cannot take money for alms from a man who is Hving in sin." 
 
 "Oh, that's your drift, is it, sh-?" cried Gerard, sprmgiug to hia 
 feet. " You force yourself into my house in order to insult me ! " 
 
 " No, Mr. Hanley. I am here in the hope of helping you to 
 mend your life." 
 
 " What right have you to suppose that my life needs mending ? " 
 
 " Say that it is only the shrewdness of an old man who has hved 
 long enough to know something of human nature. Two young 
 people with ample means do not hve as you and Mrs. Hanley are 
 living without some reason for their isolation, and in your case I 
 take it the reason is that the lady is not your wedded wife. If that 
 is so, let me, while your relations are still unknown to the world at 
 large, marry you to this young lady, quietly, some morning, with no 
 witness but my sexton and my dear old maiden sister, both of whom 
 know how to keep a secret." 
 
 " My dear Mr. Gilstone, you are vastly obliging ; but I am really 
 a little amused at your naivete. Do you really forget — suppose I 
 am not legally married to the lady I call ray wife — that there are 
 plenty of registrars in England who would marry me to her as 
 quietly as you can, and make no favour of the business ? " 
 I " I do not ignore the existence of registrj^ offices where any groom 
 in the county may be married to his master's daughter at a day or 
 two's notice ; but I thuik Mrs. Hanley would prefer to stand by 
 your side at the altar, and to be married to you according to the 
 ordinances of the Church."
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 229 
 
 " I do not think Mrs. Hanley has any profound belief in those 
 ordinances. She is satisfied with the knowledge that she possesses 
 my whole heart, and that her love has made me happy." 
 
 " And you accept her too willing sacrifice of virtue and good 
 name, and reserve to yourself the privilege of deserting her when 
 you are weary of her." 
 
 " You have no right to talk to me in this strain." 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Hanley, I have a right — the right of an old man and 
 a parish priest, the right which comes from my deep pity for that 
 innocent-looking girl whom you have made your victim. I have 
 talked with her, and every word she uttered helped to assure me 
 that she was not created to be happy in a life of sin. She is not 
 the kind of Avoman to accept such a life readily — there must have 
 
 been more than common art in the seducer who betrayed her " 
 
 • " Hold your tongue, sir," cried Gerard passionately. " How dare 
 you pry into the lives of a man and woman whom you see united and 
 happy ; who ask nothing from you ; neither your friendship nor your 
 countenance ; nothing except to be let alone. My wife — the wife of 
 my heart and of my home — the wife I shall never forsake — is satisfied 
 with her position, and neither you nor any one else has the right to 
 interfere in her behalf. Your priesthood involves no privileges for 
 one to whom all creeds are ahke mischief-making and superstitious." 
 
 " I have been taught that the men who set aside old creeds have 
 adopted humanitarianism as their religion," said the Eector ; " but 
 there is not much humanity in your reckless sacrifice of this young 
 
 lady — who, I say again, was born for better things than to be- 
 
 anj'thing less honoured than your wife." 
 
 "You have talked with her?" said Gerard, suddenly; "when 
 and where ? " 
 
 " I found her in the churchyard one afternoon, and we had a 
 little quiet talk together." 
 
 " I understand ; just enough to make her unhappy and absurdly 
 sensitive upon a question which I thought she and I had settled for 
 ever," retorted Gerard angrily. " Did she ask you to call upon 
 me ? Are you her ambassador ? " 
 
 " No. She is only too unselfish. You do not look hke a 
 scoundrel, Mr. Hanley, and your conduct in this matter is a mystery 
 to me. You are rich, independent. Why should you refuse to 
 legalise a tie which you own has made you happy ? Is there any 
 impediment? Are you married already ? " 
 
 " I have no wife but Hester." 
 
 "But j'ou have some reason ? " 
 
 " Yes, T have ray reason — and as I do not believe in pr;psteraft
 
 230 Gerard ; or, 
 
 or in father-confessors you must pardon me, Mr. Gilstone, if I refuse 
 to explain that reason to you, a total stranger, whose sympathy, or 
 whose curiosity, I have not invited." 
 
 " Enough, Mr. Hanley. I am sorry for that ill-used young lady, 
 about whose conscience and whose social status you are equally 
 indifferent. If you should alter your determination and make up 
 your mind to act as a man of honour, you may command me in any 
 way or at any time ; but untU you do so I shall not again cross 
 your threshold. " 
 
 "So be it — but pray bear in mind, Eector, that you have crossed my 
 threshold unasked, and that you cannot expect me to be appalled at 
 your threaft of withholding an acquaintance which I never sought." 
 
 He rang for the servant, and himself accompanied the Rector to 
 the hall door, where they parted with ceremonious politeness. 
 
 He was angry with this stranger's intrusion upon his life, angry 
 with Hester for having betrayed their secret. She came in from 
 the garden directly after Mr. GUstone's departure, fluttered and pale, 
 having seen the Rector going out at the gate. 
 
 For the first time Gerard received her with a frowning brow, and 
 in gloomy silence. 
 
 " The Rector has been with you," she said timidly, seating herself 
 in her accustomed nook by the window, where she had her work- 
 basket and Uttle book-table. 
 
 Gerard was slow to answer. She had time to take her work out of 
 the basket, and to put in a few tremulous stitches before he spoke. 
 
 " Yes, the Rector has been here — an old acquaintance of yours, 
 it seems." 
 
 " Not very old, Gerard. I have only spoken to him once in my life." 
 
 " Only once ; and in that once you contrived to make him 
 acquainted with all your grievances." 
 
 " Gerard, how cruelly you speak ! I told him nothing — nothing. 
 Tie guessed that all was not well — that I was living a life which, in 
 Ills sight, is a life of sin. Oh, Gerard, don't be hard upon me. I 
 liave never worried you with my remorse for my own weakness, but 
 when that good old man talked to me so kindly, so gently- " 
 
 "You played the tearful Magdalen — allowed a bigoted old Pharisee 
 to humiliate you by his pitying patronage — sent him to me to urge me 
 to legalise our union — to legalise, forsooth ! As if law ever held love." 
 
 " I did not send him to you. I begged him not to interfere." 
 
 "You could at least have told me of your conversation with this 
 man, and so prepared me for being sermonised." 
 
 " I could not epeak of it, Gerard. There are things one cannQt 
 speak of."
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 231 
 
 She bent very low over her work to hide her tears, feeling in- 
 stinctively that tears would be hateful to him in his present humour. 
 In all the days they had spent together she had kept tears and 
 sadness to herself. For him she had been all sunshine. 
 
 He took two or three impatient turns in the small room, where 
 the cramped space only UTitated him. 
 
 " Hester, are you tired of me, and our life here ? " he asked, 
 stopping suddenly in front of the window by which she was seated. 
 
 "Tired! Gerard, you know my life begins and ends with you. 
 I have given up everything else — this world and the next. I have 
 nothing to care about, nothing to hope for but you." 
 
 " If I were free to marry you I should need no priestly bidding ; 
 but I am not free. I am bound hard and fast by an old tie, which 
 I cannot loosen, yet awhile at any rate. I may be able hereafter to 
 free myself — without dishonour : or I may never be free." 
 
 " Do not speak of it, Gerard. I have asked nothing of you. Mr. Gil- 
 stone believed that he had a duty to do. He has done it. That is all." 
 
 Her gentle patience touched him. He seated himself by her side, 
 took the work out of the unsteady hands which were only spoiling 
 it, and drew her to his heart. 
 
 " You are only too good to me, Hester," he said ; " let us be 
 happy, dearest, happy jn spite of the conventionalities, happy as 
 Shelley and his Mary were, in the beginning of their union, before 
 law had set its seal upon the bond of love. Some day Church and 
 State may seal our marriage — but it will make the bond no stronger." 
 
 He had not forgotten what the Rector had said of her. Yes, she was 
 of the stuff of which wives are made. She was not the kind of woman 
 to accept degradation easily. And then he told himself that there was 
 no degi'adation in their union, that he was a fool to consider the world's 
 opinion, or be influenced by the narrow views of a village parson. 
 
 After that day there was no word spoken by either Gerard or 
 Hester of the Rector's visit. He came no more to the Rosary, nor 
 did any one else in the parish call upon the new-comers. Perhaps 
 the involuntary look of distress in Mr. Gilstone's countenance, when 
 Mr. and Mrs. Hanley were again discussed at a village tea-drinking, 
 may have confirmed his parishioners in their suspicions of evil. The 
 old speculations were repeated, the old assertion was reiterated, to 
 the eft'ect that people who did not desire to be visited or to visit must 
 be innately bad, and the Rector held his peace. He started a new 
 subject, and even affected not to know that any one had been talking 
 about the Hanleys. He was sore at heart when he thought of that fan: 
 and lovable girl, before whom the future seemed bo dark an outlool?.
 
 232 Gerard ; or. 
 
 For Hester the world was not quite what it had been before her 
 conversation with the Rector. An unspeakable sadness stole over 
 her spirits when she remembered the bitter shame of that hour in 
 which she found herself face to face with an orthodox follower of 
 the Gospel, and saw her position as it looked in his eyes. A 
 gnawiag remorse had fastened upon her heart. She looked back 
 with sick regret to the days of poverty and hard labour, the long 
 walks through the arid streets, the long hours at her sewing-machine, 
 and all the little domestic cares that had been needed to eke out 
 scanty resources, and make her father's life comfortable. Gladly 
 would she have gone back to the drudgery could she have been as 
 Bhe was then — without fear or reproach. The plethora of wealth in 
 w^hich she Hved — the flowers, the frivohties, the wastefulness which 
 she had no power to control, shocked and pained her. She felt like 
 an Indian wife in some luxurious zenana, helpless, hopeless, irrespon- 
 sible. The fact that her future was amply pro%'ided for, a fact of which 
 Gerard had assured her in the most delicate manner, gave her no satis- 
 faction. She could not conceive the possibility of hfe whenhe was gone. 
 
 She bore her burden in silence. He for whom she had sacrificed 
 rehgion and good name never knew of those long watches of the 
 night in which her thoughts were full of sadness. He never saw her 
 tears or heard her complain of all that was painful in her position at 
 the Eosary. The October days drew in ; the harmony in red and 
 gold land russet, which had made autumnal woods lovelier than 
 summer foliage, gradually faded to the dull grey of winter. At 
 every breath of the wind the dead leaves came gently showering 
 do^Ti, with sound as faint as a snowfall, and all the upper branches 
 of beech and elm were bare, while here and there some sturdy oak 
 still spread boughs of red or gold against the iron sky. 
 
 The days were short, and often too cold for idle hours upon the 
 river. Scarcely had the wintry sun sloped toward the westward 
 curve of the reedy shore when the pale mist of night began to creep 
 over the meadows and along the river, untU it slowly rose and 
 wrapped house and garden m one dense cloud. Hester's tender 
 care guarded Gerard from those river fogs with strictest watchful- 
 ness, for had not he told her Dr. South's poor opinion of his lungs? 
 Thus the long evenings might have hung heavily upon them both 
 had they not both been students, for whom the longest life would 
 have been only too short for the unexplored, inexhaustible world of 
 books. To study tlie catalogues of booksellers, to read the advertise- 
 ments of new books in the Atlienoeum, and to order every book that 
 took his fancy made one unfailing source of amusement for Gerard 
 5[illersdonj and with these long, quiet evenings old ambitions revived.
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 233 
 
 He would write a novel — he would write that narrative poem which 
 had been simmering in his mind for years, that story in verse which 
 was to have all the depth of Browning and all the delicacy of 
 Tennyson, all the dash, wit, and chic of Owen Meredith, with all the 
 passion of Swinburne, a poem which, if it succeeded, should mark a 
 new era in poetry. 
 
 He loved to talk of his unreaHsed dreams, and Hester loved to 
 listen. Thus the wintry evenings were seldom too long, and Hester, 
 seeing him happy, felt that her sacrifice had not been in vam, and 
 told herself again and again that her own feelings were as nothing 
 when weighed against his content. 
 
 He went up to London one bright October day, and saw Dr. 
 South, who expressed himself altogether hopefullj'. 
 
 " You have been taking life easily," he said, " and the result is all 
 I could wish, more than I hoped. Your heart is better, your lungs 
 are stronger. We cannot give you a new heart, but we can make 
 the old one wear much longer than I thought possible the last 
 time I saw you. Frankly, you were in a very bad way just then." 
 
 Gerard heard this verdict with delight. So far from being tired 
 of this world he had a greed of life. He could comtemplate old age 
 with calmness. That season which to the mind of youth is ordinarily 
 a jest and yet a horror had for him no terrors. He could con- 
 template long years of luxurious repose, in that palace of art which 
 he had built for himself, and to which every year of declining life 
 should bring new treasures. He could think of himself seated among 
 his books, his statues, pictures, gems, curios ; white-haired, white- 
 bearded, wise with the hoarded wisdom of a long life ; a man to 
 whom young men should come as they went to Protagoras, to hear 
 golden words of philosophic counsel. Fate had given him the gold 
 which can buy such an old age as this. He thought of Samuel 
 Rogers, of Stirling Maxwell — of the few men who seem to have 
 drunk the wine of hfe to the lees, and yet to have found no bitter- 
 ness in the cup ; and he saw before him the possibility of a life as 
 perfect as theirs, could but hfe itself hold out. That was the one 
 all-absorbing desire — to keep the bond intact between consciousness 
 and this clay — without which he had been taught to beheve con- 
 sciousness must cease to be. 
 
 He went back to the Rosary after that interview with Dr. South 
 happier than he had been for some time. He felt his youth renewed, 
 the shadow of impending doom removed from hia path. He was 
 more than ever devoted to Hester. He told her the doctor's opinion, 
 and kissed away her tears of joy. 
 
 In Devonshire there had been some anxiety about him,. \\x. and
 
 234 Gerard ; or, 
 
 Mrs. Hillersdon had returned from a long stay at Royat and a 
 delightful tour in the south-west of France. They were now in- 
 Btalled at the Rectory, where Lilian was occupied with preparations 
 for her marriage. 
 
 " Mother is very disappointed to hear that you are not coming to 
 us before Cliristmas," wrote Lihan. " She wants to thank you for 
 all the pleasure your money has afforded her and father ; and to 
 tell you how easy and luxurious our travels were made by your 
 generous gift. For my part I have worlds to tell you, and I shall 
 be unhappy tiU we meet. We stayed three days in town, for father 
 to see his old friends at the clubs and to dine with some clerical 
 bigwigs, and for mother and me to do our shopping, which was 
 tremendous. We went on the very first momLng to Hillersdon 
 House, and it was a blow to find that you were not there or likeh' 
 to be there for an indefinite time. Your servants were rather 
 mysterious about you — servants love mystery, don't they ? Your 
 paragon housekeeper was at Brighton, your butler had gone for an 
 ahing in the Park. The footman did not know your address, but 
 told me in the most condescending way that our letters would be 
 forwarded to you ; so I Hve in the hope that you will receive this 
 letter somewhere, by land or sea, in a shooting-lodge in the Highlands, 
 or on a Norwegian lake. 
 
 " I am very unhappy about that poor girl in whose fate you were 
 as much — or almost as much — interested as I was. I mean Hester 
 Davenport. After having failed in finding you, I drove to Chelsea, 
 hoping to find Hester. I wanted to take her to lunch with mother 
 at the Alexandra, and then to a picture galleiy, just to make a 
 little break in her monotonous Hfe. But I found her rooms empty, 
 and her landlady was very doleful about her. She left one morning 
 in the middle of August ; paid what was owing, put together a few 
 things in a Gladstone bag, sent her landlady's little boy for a cab, 
 and drove off. Heaven knows where. Her father had disappeared 
 mysteriously a few days before, and the landlady thought this had 
 upset poor Hester. She was very much agitated when leaving, 
 quite unlike her usual self. She gave no address, but a fortnight 
 afterwards the landlady received a few lines from her, tcUing her to 
 send any letters that might be waiting for her, addressed to H., at 
 the Post Office, Reading. Two of Whiteley's men came about the 
 same time with an ordef from Hester, packed up all her books, her 
 father's clothes and belongings, in two deal cases, addressed them 
 to the South- Western Station, Reading, to be called for, and left 
 them ready for the railway people to take away. Nothing more 
 has been heard of Hester or her father at their old lodgings. The 
 
 I
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 235 
 
 landlady cried -when she talked of them, and she evidently thinks 
 there is something wrong. I have a good mind to write to Hester, 
 and address my letter to the Reading Post Office, and yet what can 
 I say to her ? It is all so mysterious ; first the old man's disappear- 
 ance, and then her sudden flight. It seemed like a flight, did it not? 
 
 "Jack was very glad to see us on our return. He has been 
 ■working hard all the summer, has had neither hoHday nor change 
 of air ; but now he is coming down to Helmsleigh for the harvest 
 festival, and we are all going to be very happy. "We want you to 
 complete our happiness." 
 
 Gerard destroyed this letter directly he had read it, knowing how 
 these words of his sister would have distressed Hester. She had 
 Bpoken of Lilian very rarely, and he had heard the deep regret in 
 her tone, the sorrow for the loss of a friendship that had been very 
 dear, the hopelessness of that friendship's renewal. Not for worl(i 
 would he have her reminded of the morning of her flight, with its 
 agony of conflicting emotions, shame, regret, fond self-sacrificing 
 love, courage to meet the worst that fate could bring, for his sake. 
 He could recall her face now in its rigid whiteness, as the cab drove 
 up to the station door where he stood ready to receive her. They 
 had parted only a few hours before in the rosy flush of morninc. 
 They were meeting now never to part again, Gerard told her, as 
 they sat side by side in the railway carriage, careless whither the 
 train took them on their first journey together. 
 
 Lilian's letter brought back the memory of that momino- to 
 Gerard, and with it a revival of his tenderest feelings. How gentle, 
 how utterly unselfish she had been in the despair which went with 
 her surrender ; how careful that he should not sufler from her 
 remorse ! He began to think seriously of trying to free himself 
 from his promise to Edith Champion — that promise made in her 
 husband's lifetime, and of which she had said, " Remember, it is an 
 oath." He began to think of confessing the new tie with which he 
 had bound himself, and appealing to Edith's generosity to release 
 him. He thought of this, but as it was a thing which could be done 
 at any time, he was in no hast« to do it. Should new obhgations 
 arise — should there be the promise of a child to be born to him — 
 well, in that case it might be his duty to release himself, at any cost, 
 from that older tie. 
 
 Justin Jermvn dropped in frequently during these shortening 
 autumnal days, always full of animal spirits, always with his budget 
 of Uttle social scandals, which set everybody m a ridiculous light, 
 and oflered food for laughter. What a preposterous world it seemed, 
 contemplated from his standpoipt and how could anybody be serious
 
 2 
 
 6 Gerard ; or. 
 
 about it, or care by what slow linking together of infinitesimals, by 
 what processes, molecular or nebular, this speck in the universe 
 had come to be the thing it is ? Hester hated his mocking talk, 
 but she was glad to see Gerard amused within the narrow hmits of 
 the Kosary. Had there been no such visitor as Jermyn, he might 
 have wanted to go to London oftener, perhaps. So in some wise 
 Ehe had reason to be gi-ateful to Jermyn. 
 
 Matt Muller, the landscape painter, to whom the Thames had 
 been a gold mine, was still hving on his house-boat, despite those 
 autumnal mists which were more conducive to art than to healtli. 
 He was buUduig himself a cottage and painting-room on the river 
 bank, and had the delightful duty of watching the bricklayers at 
 their work. Jermyn oscillated between London and Mr. Muller's 
 house-boat, and was always fresh and metropolitan, while the painter, 
 he protested, had lapsed into a bovine state of being, and thought 
 of nothing but the canvas on his easel and the cottage that waa 
 slowly rising out of a level stretch of meadow land. 
 
 Jermyn stayed later than usual one evening after dining at the 
 Rosary. The weather had been exceptionally fine during the last 
 few days. This was St. Luke's summer, as Hester said, with a 
 faint sigh, when she heard the church bells pealing along the river, 
 and remembered the date, the eighteenth of October, St. Luke's 
 Day — day which, in the years that were past, had seen her kneeling 
 in her place at church ; day which for her henceforth meant only 
 the uncertified anniversary of a problematical personage. 
 
 She had spent the morning on the river with Gerard, tempted by 
 the warmth of the sunshine which gilded meadow and islet. They 
 had stayed out till the edge of dusk, and, creeping slowly home iu 
 their punt, had found Jermyn pacing the lawn by the water, looking 
 out for their return. 
 
 "I have come to offer myself for dinner," he said, as he helped Hester 
 out'of the boat. " It is ages since I have bored you with my society — 
 a week at the very least — and I have brought you a budget of news, 
 Gerard; news not altogether fit for IMrs. Boffin," shaking his finger 
 at Hester, " so I must keep it for our half-hour in your cosy tabagie." 
 
 " Your half-hours in the smoking-room are very long," said Hester. 
 
 " Their length proves that I can interest Gerard. You ought to 
 be very grateful to me, Mrs Hanley. He would expire of ennui in 
 this dehcious retreat if I did not bring him a faithful report of all 
 the malicious things that are done and said in London." 
 
 " I have forgotten tlio meaning of the word ennui since I came to 
 tlje Kosary," said Gerard ; " so you may suppress all desire to patronise
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 237 
 
 Us upon that score. When the leaves are all off the trees and the 
 Thames begins to look dreary, we shall take wing for the Riviera." 
 
 "I -will meet you at Monte Carlo. I am more at home there than 
 anywhere," said Jermyn, gaily. 
 
 " I doubt if we shall go to Monte Carlo." 
 
 " Oh yes, you will. You won't go, perhaps — you'll gravitate there. 
 It has been called the loadstone rock, don't you know. It will draw 
 you, as that rock in the story drew the nails out of Siubad's vessel. 
 You will find yourself powerless against the fascination of one of the 
 loveliest spots upon this earth. I shall be just as sure of meeting 
 you there as Caesar's shade was of meeting Brutus at Philippi." 
 
 The dinner passed gaily. The lamplit table was brilliant with 
 the beauty of decay, decked with autumn leaves and berries of 
 various and harmonious colouring, which Hester had collected that 
 morning in a woodland walk, while the world was all fresh and 
 dewy. The evening was so mild that the two young men were 
 able to smoke their after-dinner cigars and enjoy then- after-dinner 
 talk pacing up and down the gravel path in front of the drawing- 
 room, while Hester sat in the lamplight by the hearth, where a 
 fire of pine logs gave a show of cheerfulness without too much heat. 
 She had her work and her books about her, and the girlish figure 
 in the white gown in the brighth'-furnished room made a graceful 
 picture of home-life altogether unlike that vision of Boheraianisra 
 and debauchery which the spinsters of Lowcombe imagined within 
 the walls of the Rosary. 
 
 " Does Mrs. Hanley go with yon to the South ? " inquired JermjTi, 
 after they had exhausted his stock of London gossip, and were 
 lapsing into thoughtfulness. 
 
 The night was even lovelier than the day had been ; the sky was 
 fuU of stars, and now towards ten o'clock, the late moon was rising 
 round and golden from behind a wooded hill on the opposite shore. 
 
 " Natiirlich. Did you suppose I should leave her behind ? " 
 
 "I only suppose there is an end to all things. You have had a 
 very long honejinoon." 
 
 " We are not tired of each other yet." 
 
 " No ? " interrogatively. " And poor Mrs. Champion, whom the 
 world declares you are to marry directly she is out of her weeds. 
 It will be rather rough upon her if you many any one else." 
 
 " That is a matter for the lady's consideration and mine — not for 
 yours." 
 
 " I apologise. After all the chief aim in this life is to be happy, 
 and so long as you are happy with the lady yonder — a most lovely 
 and amiable creature "
 
 ^3^ Gerard ; or, 
 
 " For God's sake hold your tongue I You mean kindly to 03 
 both, I dare say — but every word you say increases my irritation." 
 
 " My dear HHlersdon, how sensitive you are. Strange that a 
 position which seems to have secured your happiness should not 
 bear discussion — even with an intimate friend." 
 
 Gerard turned upon his heel, and went back to the house, Jermyn 
 following him, and the two young men spent the rest of the evening 
 in the drawing-room with Hester, where their talk was no longer of 
 living people, but of books and ideas, and of great minds that have 
 gone out into the Unknown. Hester was always carried away by 
 talk of this kind, carried away from remorseful brooding, from the 
 consciousness of an abiding sorrow. In that shadowy world of 
 speculative thought all painful feelings were merged m the one 
 great mystery, what we are and whither we are going; whether 
 that individual existence, so agonisingly distinct to-day, shall to- 
 morrow merge and melt into the infinitesimal life which builds the 
 coral reef and recomposes the earth we tread on. 
 
 Such conversations always left her in deepest melancholy. Yet 
 she took a morbid pleasure in them, as people do in books that 
 make them cry. 
 
 The wood fire and the lamplight had heated the low cottage 
 drawing-room over much before Justin Jermyn left, and when he 
 was gone Gerard opened the window, and let in the coal, soft air, 
 and the wide sweep of moonlit sky, above a ridge of firs which 
 bounded the landscape. The moon was high in the midmost heaven 
 by this time, riding triumphantly amidst that glorious company oi 
 stars which look like her satellites. Hester and Gerard stood at the 
 open window, contemplating the sky and river, glad to be alone, albeit 
 they had not wearied of Jermy.i, who had a knack of being interest- 
 ing upon any subject. They were both silent, both full of thought, 
 glad to rest after the animated discussion of the last two hours. 
 
 " Hark ! " said Gerard, suddenly. " Some one has opened the 
 garden gate. Jermyn is coming back. "What can he want ? " 
 
 Hester's ear was quicker than his. She heard a step upon tlio 
 travel, a feeble, dragging footstep, as of one who was weary unto death. 
 
 " It is not his step," she said. " It is some one who is old and 
 feeble." 
 
 As she spoke there came creeping out of the shadow of the 
 shrubbery, and round by the angle of the house, a figure that had 
 a spectral look in the moonlight which silvered the face and shone 
 white upon the travel-stained raiment. It was the figure of an old 
 man with ragged grey beard and taU, gaunt form. The bent 
 shoulders, the slow movements, indicated uttermost weariness.
 
 I 
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 239 
 
 The man came tottering towards the lamplit wmdow, leaning upon 
 his stick ; he came closer and closer, till he was face to face with 
 Hester, and then with a loud cry he lifted his stick and pointed at 
 her triumphantly. 
 
 "I knew it," he cried hysterically, "I knew it was you. I knew 
 I had found you — at last — found you in the midst of your infamy — 
 living in luxury while your old father has been starving. Yes, by 
 Heaven, within an ace of starvation — living in sin • " 
 
 "Father," cried Hester, piteously, stretching out her hands to 
 him, trying to put her arms about him, "father, you have no cause 
 to blame me. It was you who left me. I was giving you my life 
 — would have given it you tUl my last breath — but you left me — 
 left me without a word — alone and fatherless." 
 
 Sobs choked her. She could say no more. She could only shape 
 the words dumbly, whUe he thrust her from him with a savage gesture. 
 
 "Don't touch me," he cried, "I renounce you — I have done with 
 you " 
 
 And then from the father's lips came one of those foul words which 
 brand Uke red-hot iron. The daughter sank in an agony of shame 
 at his feet — not fainting, only too keenly conscious of her misery. 
 
 To be called that name — and in Gerard's hearing. What could her 
 life be ever more after this night but one everlasting sense of shame ? 
 
 Her hands were clasped over her face, as she half knelt, half 
 crouched, upon the ground. In those few moments there was time 
 for that one thought, " I am that thing which he has called me." 
 And then she heard Gerard's hoarse cry of rage, a blow, a groan, 
 and her father had fallen like a log on the gravel path beside her. 
 
 CHAPTER XXin. 
 
 "alas, why cam'st xhou htther?" 
 
 He was not dead. Hester, in the first few minutes of helpless 
 horror, thought that the blow which had felled her father to the 
 ground must needs be his death-blow; but it was not so. Her 
 trembling fingers loosened the wisp of rusty black which he woro 
 round his throat ; she felt the beating of his heart under the ragged 
 flannel shirt. She heard the stertorous breathing, which, however 
 dreadful, at least indicated life. 
 
 " Go for the doctor," she cried. " Oh, for God's sake, the doctor 
 — without the loss of a moment. You have not killed him." 
 
 " Elilled him ! no. I only ventured to silence his foul tongue — the 
 ungrateful old scoundrel. My blow was not murderous — but I meant 
 to silence him, and I have done it," said Gerard, with a scornful laugh.
 
 240 Gerard ; or, 
 
 It seemed such a wortbless life to him, these poor dregs of a 
 vrasted existence. Age, poverty, drunkenness, what had such a 
 man to hve for, or how should such a man value life ? — and yet 
 if one made an end of this wretched remnant of used up humanity 
 the act would be called murder, and one might be hanged for it. 
 
 "What should be done ? Send for a doctor ? Yes. It was past 
 one o'clock, and the nearest doctor was at Lowcombe, a mile off, 
 a medical practitioner whose function it was to see a scattered 
 population in and out of the world, a population dispersed at 
 inconvenient distances, approachable only by accommodation roads, 
 ■within a radius of six or seven miles. 
 
 "I'U go to the gardener's cottage and try to get a messenger," 
 eaid Gerard. '' Don't be frightened, Hester. Just keep quiet tiU 
 I come back." 
 
 He ran off towards the gardener's house, on the other side of the 
 road, adjoining a large kitchen garden where the said gardener de- 
 lighted in the cultivation of a vast stock of vegetables which nobody 
 consumed, and in the consumption of seeds which ought to have been 
 enough to sow vegetables over all the waste gi'ound in Berkshire. 
 
 He was gone, and Hester's fears grew more intense as she knelt 
 beside the motionless form, hstening to the labouring breath. Had 
 he fainted, or was it some kind of stroke which made him un- 
 conscious ? She went into the house for water to bathe his temples. 
 She tried to force a spoonful of brandy between the pallid lips, but 
 without success. She could only watch the face, which the moon- 
 light whitened, and note how it had aged and altered for the worse 
 since August. Those few months had done the work of years. 
 Every line had deepened, and there was something worse than age, 
 the pale, duU, soddened look of the habitual drunkard. 
 
 Gerard came back after a quarter of an hour that seemed an 
 age. 
 
 "Dowling has started," he said. "I waited till I had seen him 
 go. It's nearly an hour's walk there and back. Your folly in 
 setting your face against a stable has left us without a messenger 
 in a dilemma like this. Hasn't he got his senses back yet ? " 
 
 He stood looking down at the figure stretched at full length 
 across the pathway. The path in front of the verandah was 
 nan'ow, but by a happy chance Nicholas Davenport had fallen \di\\ 
 his head upon the edge of the la^vn, where the turf was thick and 
 Boft. Gerard looked down at him with but little compunction, a 
 Borry figure in mud-stained clothes, boots split and down at heel, 
 trousers torn at the knees and ragged at the edge. 
 
 " I wonder whether the Rector of Lowcombe would urge me to
 
 The World, (he Flesh, and the Devil. 241 
 
 make this man my father-iu-Iaw," thoiiglit Gerard; and then 
 moved by some better feeling he stooped down to lift the heavy 
 head from the gi'ound, and with Hester's help conveyed the vox- 
 conscious form into the drawing-room, and laid it on the sofa, 
 where Hester placed a do'^Ti pillow under the ragged gi-ey hair, 
 and spread a plush coverlet over the motionless Hmbs. 
 
 " Is there anything else that we can do ? " she asked piteously. 
 
 "I am afraid not. I am lamentabty ignorant of all medical 
 ti'eatment. If Lilian were here she would be ever so much more 
 use. I'm afraid it is some kind of fit." 
 
 "Do you think he is dying? " Hester asked, hon-or-stricken. 
 
 She was kneeling by the sofa, holding her father's hand, which 
 was cold and inert. 
 
 "I don't know. I know nothing, except that his fall just now 
 can hardly have killed him." 
 
 '' If it had you would have been his murderer," she said, horrified 
 at his callousness. 
 
 " Would you have preferred me to stand by and hear him insiilt 
 you — you who have been his devoted slave — who sacrificed all the 
 joys of girlhood to his necessities ? " 
 
 No, he had no compunction. This dotard had broken in upon 
 their lives, bringing horror and agitation into their peaceful home ; 
 this dotard to whom Hester owed nothing, who had been already 
 overpaid in filial duty. He had no compunction, he the young man 
 who had raised his hand against age and feebleness. He had no 
 more regi'et for this tiling that he had done than he might have felt 
 if he had kicked a strayed mongrel from his threshold. He was 
 angry with the hazard of life which had brought this most ineligible 
 visitor to his retreat, and had perhaps made a happy union with 
 Hester impossible henceforward. He knew her exaggerated ideas 
 of duty to this drunken log, knew her willingness to sacrifice herself. 
 How could he tell what line she would take ? 
 
 Legalise their union, forsooth ! Create a legal link between 
 himself and yonder carrion. Go through the rest of his hfe 
 ticketed with a disreputable father-in-law. He could not stay in 
 the room with that unconscious item of poor humanity. He went 
 out and paced the gi'avel walk from end to end, and back again, 
 and back again, Avith monotonous repetition, waiting for the coming 
 of the doctor, who did not come. The gardener came back in 
 something less tlian an hour, to say that the doctor had been sum- 
 moned to a distant farmhouse, where there was a baby expected, 
 and would doubtless remain there till the arrival of the baby. The 
 farmhouse was nearly five miles on the other side of Lowcombei 
 
 li
 
 2A2 Gerard ; or, 
 
 All that the doctor's wife could promise was that her husband should 
 go to the Rosary as soon as possible after his return home. 
 
 Thus, through the long October night there was nothing to be 
 done but to wait and watch in patience. The air grew chill as 
 morning approached, and Gerard came back to the drawing-room, 
 where Hester had kept up the fire, and where the lamp was still 
 burning. The old man's breathing was quieter, and he seemed 
 now to have sunk into a heavy sleep. 
 
 " He will do well enough," said Gerard, looking at the unlovely 
 sleeper. " There is a Providence that watches over drunkards." 
 
 " Gerard, Gerard, how cruel you are ! " 
 
 " Do you expect me to be kind ? I would have given thousands 
 to keep that man out of our life." 
 
 " You gave him the money that set him on the wrong path," 
 she said. 
 
 " I gave him money to get rid of him. I saw your life sacrificed 
 to an imaginary claim. I saw your youth fading — your beauty 
 with a blight upon it — the blight of poverty and care. He was the 
 only bar to our happiness, and I swept him out of my way. 
 We have been happy, Hester. For pity's sake don't tell me you 
 care more for that vpreck of humanity than you care for me ! " 
 
 " I care for him because he is my father, and has such sore need 
 of my love." 
 
 "Ah, that is the old stoiy. Well, you can go on caring for him 
 — vicariously. We will put him in a sanatorium where his declining 
 years will be made comfortable, and where he will be protected 
 from his pernicious propensities." 
 
 She took no notice of this speech. She was sitting, as she had 
 sat through the greater part of that night, holding her father's 
 hand, stooping now and then to moisten his forehead with a hand- 
 kerchief dipped in Eau-de-Cologne, listening to his breathing, 
 hoping for the daylight and the coming of the doctor. 
 
 Daylight came at last, chilly and misty, and soon after daylight 
 Mr. Mivor, the long-established and trusted family practitioner, was 
 ushered into the room by a sleepy housemaid, who had heard with 
 wonder that there was an invalid in the house — some one who had 
 arrived unexpectedly in the night, and for whom a bedroom was to 
 be aired and oiade ready. Hester had gone upstairs at daybreak to 
 call the servants, and had seen to the lighting of a fire in this 
 unused bedroom, a pleasant room enough, looking out over the 
 high road and kitchen garden to the park-like meadows beyond. 
 
 Mr. Mivor had heard various conversations about the young 
 couple at the Rosary, but as a discreet practitioner and a man of the
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 243 
 
 world had refrained from all expression of opinion. He was not 
 the less interested in this social mystery, and his curiosity was 
 considerably increased by what he saw this morning — those two 
 pale faces, the man's sullen and heavy, the woman's haggard with 
 anxiety, and between them this shabby, disreputable figure, this 
 sodden countenance, ia which the medical eye was quick to see the 
 indications of habitual intemperance. 
 
 " "^Tien did the seizure occur? " he asked, after he had made his 
 examination. 
 
 " Soon after one o'clock." 
 
 " Was he in good health up to that time ? " 
 
 " I don't know. He came into the house — an unexpected visitor 
 — and dropped down almost immediately. He has been unconscious 
 ever since," Gerard answered deliberately. 
 
 "And there was no exciting cause — no quaiTel, no shock of any 
 kind? " interrogated the doctor, with a sharp look at the speaker. 
 
 " It may have baen a shock to him to find us — in his state of 
 mind — which I take it was not of the clearest." 
 
 "You think he had been drinking? " 
 
 " I think it more than Ukely he had." 
 
 Mr. Mivor postponed all further questions. He took out a neat 
 little leather case, which he was in the habit of carrying with him 
 on his professional rounds, and from this closely packed repository 
 he selected a powder which he administered to the patient with his 
 own hands, gravely watchful of him all the time. The old man's 
 eyes opened for a moment or two, only to close again. 
 
 "You will want a trained nurse," he said presently, "if this 
 person is to remain in your house — and, indeed, it would not be safe 
 for him to be moved for some days." 
 
 " He will remain here, and I shall help to nurse him," said Hester, 
 who had resumed her seat by the sleeper's piUow. " He is rqy father." 
 
 " Your father ! I did not quite understand," said the doctor, not a 
 little surprised at this revelation, for he had noted the ragged flannel 
 shirt, the greasy coat-collar, and the general aspect of foulness and 
 decay which made the old man's presence in that room a cause of 
 wonder. 
 
 Her father ! This poor human wreck the father of the beautiful 
 Mrs. Hanley, about whom there had been so many speculations! 
 Were some of her malevolent detractors right after all, and did she 
 really come from the gutter ? 
 
 He looked at the old man's face more thoughtfully than before. 
 Bloated and disfigured as those features were by evil habits, they did 
 not show the coarse modelling which is supposed to go with low birth.
 
 244 Gerard : or. 
 
 The hand lying inert on the phish coverlet was slender and finely 
 formed — a hand that had never been hardened by the day-labourer's 
 Avork. The man might once have been a gentleman. The capacity 
 for intemperance is sometimes immeasurable even in gentle blood. 
 
 Mr. Mivor Avas not quite satisfied with the aspect of the case. 
 He did not imphcitly believe that story of the old man's entrance 
 upon the scene, and immediate seizure. The stroke was a paralytic 
 stroke, he had no doubt of that — but he suspected that there was 
 somethmg being kept from him, and he was all the more suspicious 
 after Mrs. Hanley's admission of her relationship to the patient. 
 His duty, however, lay clear before him. Whatever might have 
 happened in the small hours of the night that was gone — even if 
 there had been a quarrel between the old man and the young one, 
 and violence of some kind, as he suspected — the man was not dead. 
 His duty was to cure him, if he could, and his interest was to keep 
 his suspicions to himself. 
 
 " I'll telegraph to London for a hospital nurse, if you like," he said. 
 
 "Pray do," assented Gerard, ringing the bell. " I'll send oft" your 
 telegram as soon as it is written." 
 
 " And in the meantime," said the doctor, waiting his message at 
 a table where there were all the necessary materials ready to liis 
 hand, " I will help you to get the patient comfortably to bed." 
 
 "His room is quite ready," Hester said. "I can do anything for 
 him — I am used to waiting upon him." 
 
 " He has been ill before now, I suppose, then ? " 
 
 " Never so bad as this. I never saw him lose consciousness as 
 he did last night — after he fell." 
 
 Her faltering accents and the distress in her face assured Mr. 
 Mivor that his conjecture was well founded, but he pressed her with 
 no further questioning, and quietly, with the skill and gentleness of 
 the trained practitioner, he assisted the scared manservant to carry 
 tlie slumbering form to the room above, and assisted Hester in 
 removing the weather-stained outer garments, and settling the 
 patient comfortably in tlie bed that had been made ready. 
 
 The fire burned cheerily in the old-fashioned grate, the autumn 
 sun shone brightly outside. Tlie room witli its dainty French paper 
 and white furniture looked fresli and jture as if it had been prepared 
 lor a ])nde — and there on the bed lay the victim of his own vices — • 
 tliose negative sins of sloth and intemperance which are supposed 
 to injure only the sinner. 
 
 " My poor father has been wandering about the country till his 
 'clothes have got into this dreadful state," Hester said to the doctorj 
 apolojuetically, as she laid tlie wretcliod garments on a chair, "j
 
 The World, the Flesh, and tlic Devil 245 
 
 have a trunk full of his things in the house, ready for him when he 
 wants them. I suppose it is my duty to tell you that he has been 
 the victim of intemperate habits, induced in the first instance by 
 acute neuralgia. He is very much to be pitied, poor dear. You 
 won't tell any one, will you? " 
 
 " Tell any one ! My dear yOung lady, what do you think doctors 
 are made of? Family secrets are as sacred for us as they are for the 
 priesthood. It was very easy for me to guess that drmk — and only 
 drink — could have brought a gentleman to this sad pass. And now 
 I shall leave you to take care of him till the nurse arrives. I dare 
 say she Avill be here early in the afternoon. I'll look in before dark." 
 
 When he was gone Hester examined her father's pockets. In 
 the large outside pocket of the shooting-jacket there was a shattered 
 volume of Horace, containing the satires, the margins annotated in 
 Nicholas Davenport's small penmanship — penmanship which had 
 retained something of its original microscopic neatness, in spite of 
 shaken nerves and tremulous fingers. 
 
 In the breast-pocket of the same coat there were a good many 
 pages of manuscript, with many interlineations and blottings, mdica- 
 tive of strenuous labour. These were all of the same character, 
 metrical translations of some of the satires. These attempts indi- 
 cated extraordinary labour, the same passages being reproduced 
 over and over again — now in one metre, now in another — but no 
 section of the work was finished. There were all the marks of a 
 weakened will directing a once powerful intellect. 
 
 Hester gave these pages to Gerard presently when ho came in to 
 look at the patient. She gave them to him in silence, not even 
 looking at him, lest her face should express too intense a reproach. 
 These laboured translations proved how completely the scholar had 
 been duped by the man who had deliberately tempted him back 
 into the way of vice. 
 
 " Poor fellow ! Yes, he tried to earn my money. He had the 
 instinct of a gentleman. I was a scoundrel, and you do well to hate 
 or to despise me. I am worthy of nothing better." 
 
 " Hate you ! " she repeated, in a low, broken voice, "you know I can 
 never do that. You did not realise what you were doing, or you never 
 could have done such a cruel thing. You have ruined him, body and 
 soul ; but I am as much to blame as you. If I had been true to my- 
 self and to him, I might have found him and brought him back." 
 
 " Yes, if you had sacrificed youth, and love, and loveliness, and 
 all fair things in this brief life for that worn-out hulk. No, Hester, 
 I am not bnital, I am not heartless. I am sorry for him ; but he is 
 the victim of his own instincts, and if the opportunity had not come
 
 246 Gerard; or, ^ 
 
 from my liand it would have come from some other hand. I should 
 be much more sorry if you had gone on with that duU slavery which 
 cut you off from all the joys that youth has a right to claim from 
 life. I was mad when I saw your patient drudgery, your blank 
 pleasureless days. I would have done a worse thing than I did to 
 rescue you. And now — well — we must do the best we can for 
 him " — with a reluctant glance at the sleeper. " After all, he is 
 no worse off than many an elderly Crcesus struck down in the 
 midst of his possessions. To this comjjlexion we must all come 
 at last." 
 
 Hester answered nothing to his philosophical summing up of the 
 situation. She took her seat by the bedside, watchful, ready to 
 carry out the doctor's instructions, which were of the simplest. 
 There was hardly anything to be done. The old man might awaken 
 from that prolonged slumber in his right mind, or he might not. 
 She could but wait and watch. She had drawn down the blinds, 
 and sat in the subdued light — sat with folded hands, and lips which 
 moved in prayer to that Personal God of whose non-existence her 
 latest studies had assured her. In this hour of agony and self- 
 reproach her thoughts went back into the old paths ; and even in 
 the Great Perhaps there was some touch of comfort. Surely some- 
 where, she told herself, there must exist some Spirit of love and 
 pity, some Universal All-comprehending Mind greater than the 
 mind of man, to which sorrow could make its appeal — in which 
 despair could find a refuge. All the peoples of the earth have felt 
 the necessity for a God. Could this blind gi'oping after the Great 
 Spirit mean nothing, after all ? The words of her new teachers — 
 words of power from the pens of men who had thought long and 
 deeply, who had brought culture and pure science to bear upon the 
 problems of life and mind — came back to her in their inflexible 
 assuredness — the words of men who said there was no God, and 
 that the world was none the poorer for the loss of Him — the words 
 of men who said that this life could be full of grace and pleasantness 
 and hope and love, albeit there was no better life beyond, and our 
 beloved dead were verily and for ever dead. 
 
 And then words more familiar, words known long before, recurred 
 with a quieting power, like the sound of a melody learnt in child- 
 hood, and a gush of tears loosened the iron bands that held her 
 heart, and a ray of hope stole in upon the darkness of her thoughts. 
 "Come unto Me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will 
 give you rest."
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 247 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 "alas for me, then, my good DATS ARE DONE." 
 
 Lii'E went by with dull and measured pace after that night of terror. 
 Nicholas Davenport recovered consciousness upon awakening from 
 that prolonged slumber, which may have marked the exhaustion 
 following upon long wanderings from village to village, poor food, 
 and unrestful nights in miserable beds. Hester found a rough record 
 of his journejangs in his pockets, in the shape of crumpled tavern 
 bills — the earliest in date a weekly account from the landlord of a 
 little inn at Abingdon. This dated as far back as August, and it 
 was evident the old man had gone to Abingdon almost immediately 
 upon the receipt of Gerard's money, it might be with some dim idea 
 of being near Oxford and the Bodleian, or it might be from some 
 memories of joyous days spent along the river when he was an 
 undergraduate. There were several bills from the Abingdon Inn, 
 spreading over a period of six or seven weeks, and the bills marked a 
 downward progress in the drunkard's career, each successive account 
 showing a larger consumption of alcohol. The last account was not re- 
 ceipted, and it seemed but too likely that the old man had left in debt. 
 Later bills showed a journey down the river, by land or water. 
 The names of the towns or villages where he had stopped had a 
 rustic sound, the signs of the inns were quaint and old-fashioned. 
 The Ring of Bells. The Old House at Home. The First and Last. 
 But whatever the sign might be, Nicholas Davenport's bill showed 
 that his chief outlay had been for alcohol — brandy in the earlier 
 stages of the journey. Later, when his funds were dwindling, the 
 drink had been gin. The unhappy man had chosen the very worst 
 direction for his fated footsteps, for in those low-lying rural villages 
 by the river he must have found the atmosphere most calculated to 
 bring back those neuralgic agonies which had been first the cause, 
 and afterwards both cause and excuse, for his intemperance. His 
 daughter's care had kept the fiend at a distance, but he had gone in 
 the very way of his old enemy. The last in date of all the bills was 
 a scrawling memorandum from a wayside public-house in the next 
 village to Lowcombe, and hardly two miles from the Rosary. It 
 was doubtless from the fireside gossips of the tap-room that Nicholas 
 Davenport had heard that description of Mr. and Mrs. Hanley and 
 their manner of life which had led him to suspect their identity with 
 Gerard and Hester. And now he was stretched on a sick bed, 
 helpless, the power of movement lost to the long lank limbs : help- 
 less and almost imbecile. The mind was dim and blurred. Memory
 
 248 Gerard ; or, 
 
 was gone, save for rare and sudden flashes of recollection, which 
 had about them something strange and unearthly that thrilled his 
 daughter with awe. Some sudden allusion to the past, some sharp, 
 clear, scrap of speech startled and scared her as if the dead had 
 spoken. His imbecility seemed far less unnatural, less painful even, 
 than these transient revivifications of sense and memorj'. 
 
 The nursing sister, a quiet, orderly person between thhty and 
 forty, tall, broad-shouldered, vigorous, and with a hearty appetite 
 for her meals, relieved Hester's watches in the invalid's room ; and 
 after the first week a male attendant was engaged, who would be 
 able to assist in getting the patient out of doors, so soon as he should 
 be well enough to be moved into a Bath chair, and wheeled about the 
 gardens and lanes. Mr. Mivor explained to Hester that her father's 
 condition was not so much an illness as a state. He had little hope 
 in any marked recovery, physical or mental. Mr. Davenport's con- 
 stitution had been destroyed by intemperance, and the surprise, the 
 shock, whatever it was that brought about the seizure of the other 
 night, had onlj' precipitated a crisis that was, in a measure, inevitable. 
 
 Hester's colour came and went as she listened to his opinion. 
 She hfted her eyes to the doctor with an imploring look. 
 
 " Tell me the truth, Mr. Mivor, the whole truth. Do you really 
 think that what happened the other night has made hardly any 
 dift'ercnce to my father — that this sad state of things must have 
 come about, even if " 
 
 " Even if there had been no agitating cause — no fall. Yes, I do- 
 But the fall came before the stroke, I think, did it not ? " 
 
 " Yes, I am sorry to say ; " and then in trembling accents she went 
 on, " I am so anxious to know the truth, to know the worst even, 
 that I must tell you all. You have promised to keep our secrets ? " 
 
 " Yes, yes, be assured that you can trust me." 
 
 " I left my home to spend my life with Mr. Hanley — left without 
 my father's knowledge. He was away from our poor lodgings at 
 the time — and I thought that he had deserted mc, and I may have 
 cared less on that account, perhaps. But he had not meant to 
 abandon me, I am sure. He had gone away under a misapprehen- 
 sion, and after wandering about the country he found us here— and 
 he was not (juite himself, I think, for he spoke to me cruelly — with 
 words which no father " 
 
 She broke down, sobbing out the bitter memory of that night. 
 The worthy doctor soothed her with kindly sympathy. He had seen 
 much of those storms of care and woe, anger and strife, tliat rage in 
 the households whose outward seeming is peace and pleasantness, 
 and he had a tender lieart for the sorrows of his patients, especially
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 249 
 
 fur a young and beautiful woman who was expiating the sin of having 
 loved too well, and who was evidently not of the clay of whicli 
 sinners are made. 
 
 " Don't tell me any more," he said ; " there were high words— a 
 little bit of a scuffle perhaps, and your father fell. I thought as 
 much when I helped to undress him, I examined him carefully. 
 There were two or three incipient bruises — nothing more. Such a 
 fall would not have produced the seizure. That was the result of 
 gradual decay, the decay of an alcoholised brain. Your father has 
 been the chief sinner against himself." 
 
 There was infinite relief in this opinion so far as Gerard was con- 
 cerned, but it did not lessen the burden of her own remorseful 
 conscience. She blamed herself for this final ruin of the life she 
 had fought so hard to reclaim. 
 
 One duty, one atonement, only remained, she thought, and that 
 was to bear her burden, and to make this broken life as happy as 
 she could. Her father knew her, and took pleasure in her com- 
 panionship. That was much. He accepted his surroundings with- 
 out inquiry or astonishment, and enjoyed the luxuries that were 
 provided for him without asking whence they came. He saw Gerard 
 without agitation, occasionally recognising him and addressing him 
 by name, at other times greeting him with the distant poHteness due 
 to a stranger. And Gerard endured his presence in the house, at 
 first with a sublime patience, even going out of his way to pay the 
 feeble old man little attentions when he met him in the garden or 
 neighbouring lanes on sunny mornings, dragged along in his com- 
 fortable Bath chair, wrapped to the chin in fur, with Hester walking 
 at his side. While the scene of that awful night, the fears that had 
 haunted him in the slow hours of waiting for dawn and the doctor, 
 were still fresh in his memory, a touch of pity and remorse made 
 him patient of a presence which could not bring comfort or pleasant- 
 ness into his retreat ; but after a month of this endurance, the 
 incubus began to oppress and annoy him, even although Hester 
 took care that he should see as little as possible of that third inmate 
 of the house, and refrained from worrying him with any details of her 
 father's life, whether he were better or worse, cheerful or depressed. 
 The mere consciousness of the old man's existence became unbear- 
 able, and Gerard urged the need of placing him in a sanatorium, where, 
 as he argued, he would be better cared for than in any private home. 
 Hester was unhesitating in her refusal. 
 
 " He could not bo happier or better cared for than he is here," 
 she said, "and even if he were as well cared for, which I doubt, I 
 should not know it, and should be miserable about him."
 
 250 Gerard; or, 
 
 " That is rather a bad look-out for me. And how long is this 
 kind of thing to last ? " 
 
 " As long as he lives." 
 
 "And according to your friend, ]\Ir. Mivor, he may last for years 
 — a wreck, but a hving wreck — and in that case he wiU outlast me. 
 You cannot mean it, Hester. You can't mean to abandon me for 
 — this unlucky old man ? " 
 
 " Abandon you ! Gerard, how could you think it ? " 
 
 " But I must think it. Xo one can serve two masters. If you 
 insist upon staying here to nurse your father, you can't go to the 
 South with me, and what becomes of our winter in Italv ? " 
 
 " I have been thinking of that," she said, with a troubled look. 
 "But is it really necessary for you to go to the South? The 
 ■weather has been so mild." 
 
 " It generally is before Chiistmas. Winter doesn't begin to show 
 his teeth till January." 
 
 " And you have been so well." 
 
 "Xot well enough to face five months' cold weather, or to disobey 
 my doctor. He told me to winter in the South." 
 
 Hester sighed, and was silent for a few moments. Oh, that dream 
 of the lovely South, how sweet it had been, how fondly she had 
 dwelt upon Browning's Italian poems, upon all those word-pictures 
 of mountain and ohve wood, cypress and aloe ; the lull-side chapel, 
 the mule path, the straggUng town upon the mountain ridge, the 
 viae-shadowed herceau, the sapphire lake ! And she had to renoimce 
 this fair dream ; and, infinitely worse, she had to part from Gerard. 
 If he must go to the South, they must be parted. 
 
 " I would give up anything rather than leave my father," she said 
 quietly. " I think you must know how I have looked forward to seeing 
 that lovely South, the coimtries that seem a kind of dreamland when 
 one thinks of them in our prosaic world, and seeing them with you — 
 with you ! But if you must go, you must go alone. You will come 
 back to me, won't you, dear? The parting won't be for ever ? " 
 
 " I shall come back — yes, of course, if I Hve ; but it will be hideously 
 dreary for you here all the winter. Surely you could trust your father 
 to the nurse and his man. They are very kind to him, aren't they ? " 
 
 " Yes, they are kind, and I am here to see that they are kind. 
 How do I know what would happen if I were away ? He is very 
 trying sometimes. They might lose patience with him." 
 
 '• A sharp word would not hurt him once in a way. They would have 
 to be kind to him in the main. His existence means bread and cheese 
 for them, and it would be to their interest to make him comfortable." 
 
 " That would not absolve me from my duty, Gerard. Xo ; I must 
 stay with him till the end."
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 251 
 
 " Well, you must do as you please. If you find this place too 
 dismal or too damp you can take your invalid to Hastings or Tor- 
 quay. He could travel as far as that, I suppose ? " 
 
 " I don't think so. Mr. Mivor said that any fatigue or excite- 
 ment might be dangerous. He is to be kept as quiet as possible, 
 and this place suits him admirably." 
 
 " And he suits Mivor as a patient." 
 
 " That's a very unfair insinuation, Gerard. ]\Ir. Mivor might come to 
 see him every day, yet he only comes once in ten days. He told me the 
 other day that he would not come again unless he were sent for ; but 
 urged him to come occasionally just to see that no neglect was arising." 
 
 " I don't grudge Mivor his fees. I only lament the change that 
 has come into our life — the life we were to lead together ; " and then, 
 touched by the sadness in Hester's face, he went on, " After all, if 
 the winter were very mUd, I might rub on here, perhaps." 
 
 " No, no," she cried eagerly, " you must run no risk. Oh, Gerard, 
 surely you know how precious your life is to me — dearer than any 
 other life. You must know that it is duty that keeps me here — 
 that love would have me always by yom- side." 
 
 " I know that you have all the obstinate clinging to unthankful 
 duties which is a characteristic of your sex," he said ; " or perhaps 
 I ought to say a characteristic of good women. The bad ones 
 throw their caps over the mill, laugh duty to scom, and, I believe, 
 get the best out of Ufe. Theirs is the Esau's portion, the savoury 
 mess that they long for, the pleasure that comes at the nick of time. 
 After all, I think that is the best." 
 
 He was lying back in his low hergere beside the drawing-room 
 fire, his arms flung up above his head, his eyes gazing dreamily at 
 the flaming logs, in that brief half-hour when the cold, pale winter 
 day melts into darkness. He was very fond of Hester still, per- 
 fectly contented in her society ; but he had begun to think of other 
 things when he was with her, and he hated that presence of the old 
 man and his attendants upstairs. One of the rooms that Davenport 
 occupied was over the drawing-room, and Gerard could hear foot- 
 steps crossing the floor now and then, the male attendant's heavy 
 tread, the nursing sister's lighter footfall, and at seven o'clock every 
 evening the wheels of the invalid-chair drawn slowly across the 
 room. He knew the automatic routine of that sad life, the hour at 
 which the patient was dressed, his meals, his airing, the business of 
 getting him to bed, which happened before Hester and Gerard sat 
 down to dinner. He knew all these details, though Hester had 
 talked of the patient so Uttle — knew them by their monotonous 
 recurrence. He considered what he should do with himself in the
 
 252 Gerard; or, 
 
 ■winter, how make life most pleasant to himself now that the spell 
 which had bound him to the Eosary was broken ? He had been 
 warned against all excitement. The feverish life of the dissipated 
 idler was not for him. The utmost that he could allow himself in the 
 way of relaxation would be the societj' of clever people, and a little 
 quiet dinner-giving in his fine London house. He could oscUlate 
 between London and the Eosary, and Hester need feel no sense of 
 desertion. The -winter season had begim ; there would be plenty of 
 pleasant people in London. His sister was to be manned in the first 
 week of the new year, and he would have to be in Devonshire for 
 that occasion. His mother had written to him several times since 
 her retm-n from tlie Continent, urging him to go and see her, fuU of 
 vague imeasiness about the life he was leading. 
 
 " If Hester owes a duty to her fi^ther, I have my obligation to my 
 people," he said to himself, in that long reverie by the fireside. " I 
 have to consider the claims of those who have never brought disgrace 
 upon me as that old sot has done upon her." 
 
 "What are j'ou thinking of so earnestly, Gerard?" Hester asked 
 presently, watching his face in the fitful light. 
 
 " I am thinking of my mother." 
 
 The answer cliilled her. His mother ; yes, he, too, had those who 
 were near and dear to him — those in whose lives she had no part. 
 
 " Your mother. Ah. how kind she was to me, and what ages ago 
 that old life seems ! Shall I ever see her again, I wonder ? " she 
 speculated, with a sigh. 
 
 And then came the bitter thought : "What could his mother think 
 of her ? Disgraced, dishonoured, nameless ; an outcast in the sight 
 of such a woman as the Eector's wife. She did not reckon upon 
 a good woman's Christian charity. She thought of the Eector's 
 wife only as of one who had never been touched by sin, and who 
 could make no allowances. 
 
 "Your sister is to be married very soon, I suppose?" she said 
 interrogatively, after a long pause. 
 
 " In the first week of the year. I shall have to be at the wedding." 
 
 "Of course. My heart will go with you, and all my warmest wishes 
 for her happiness — even though she and I may never meet again." 
 
 " Don't harp upon that string, Hester. Let the future take care 
 of itself. You arc getting morbid in tliis odious house." 
 
 " Odious ! Oh, Gerard, wo have been so happy here ; I thought 
 you loved this house." 
 
 " So I did, while it was full of sunshine and flowers, and before 
 j'ou turned it into a hospital. Don't lot us quairel, Hester. I'm a 
 little hipped, and I shall be saying disagi'eeable things without mean-
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 253 
 
 ing them. You have reminded me of my sister's wedding, and that I 
 have not even thought of a wedding present. What shall I give her ? " 
 
 " Something very handsome, of course ; hut I know how chari- 
 table she is, and that she would rather have something for the poor 
 people in her new parish." 
 
 " She shall have anything she likes for her poor ; but she must 
 have something which she can look at by-and-by as her brother's 
 gift. Cheques are the most fashionable offerings from rich relatives, 
 so I shall give her a cheque ; but there must be something else — 
 a service of plate, I think, will be best. She and Cumberland 
 would never have the heart to buy silver for themselves. He would 
 say, ' It should be melted down and given to the poor ; ' but Lilian 
 will not have my gifts melted down. I will go up to town to- 
 mon'ow and choose the service — fine old Georgian plate such as will 
 not seem an anachronism in their old Georgian house. I know 
 even Cumberland has one small vanity. He wants everything in 
 his house to be of the same period as the building itself." 
 
 Gerard went to London on the following morning, and for the 
 first time since he had lived at the Kosary, told Hester not to expect 
 his return that evening. 
 
 " I may be in London for two or three days," he said. " I Jiave 
 a good deal to do there." 
 
 She made no murmm-. She saw him off at the gate with a smile, 
 standing waving her hand to him in the winter sunlight, aTid tlieii 
 she went slowly back to the house with an aching heart. 
 
 "'Alas for me, then, my good days are done!'" she sighed, 
 quoting her favourite Elaine. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 " now COULD IT EXD IN' ANY OTHER WAY ? " 
 
 The winter was mild, one of those moist and gentle seasons which 
 delight the heart of the sportsman, but which all the sanitarians and 
 ultra sensible people declare to be unhealthy, preaching their little 
 sermon about want of aeration, and so on. Gerard was not one of 
 these. He hated frost and snow, London snow most of all ; and 
 he was glad of a winter which did not oblige him to leave Hester 
 for any length of time. He did not want to spend all his days at 
 the Eosary. She had made that once delightful retreat in some- 
 wise a horror to him ; but he loved her still, and he shrank from 
 any act 'that might seem like desertion. When the year of Mrs. 
 Champion's widowhood was over he would have to face his difficulty, 
 and settle with himself and with his first and second love as to
 
 2 54 Gerard; or, 
 
 what his life was to be. By that time Nicholas Davenport might 
 be peacefully at rest, and the chief impediment to his marriage 
 with Hester removed. In the meantime Hester was to him in all 
 things as dear and as honoured as if she had been bound to him by 
 the strongest tie the law can forge — not a very strong tie, it must 
 be admitted, nowadays. He stayed in town for about ten days, 
 choosing his sister's wedding present, and seeing all the town had 
 to show him in the way of dramatic talent. He gave a couple of 
 his famous breakfasts diiring those ten days, and Hillersdon House 
 was put in working order, his staff of servants revised and corrected, 
 and every detail of Ms luxurious surroundings carefully supervised. 
 Valet and butler were told that their master would winter in 
 England, mostly in London. Valet and butler were fully aware 
 that their master had another establishment; but he had so far 
 been cleverer than the average master in keeping the secret of the 
 second home. No one knew where he went when he left Hillersdon 
 House. He who was so amply furnished with carriages always 
 went to the station in a hansom. 
 
 He spent Christmas at the Rosary, three days of quietness and 
 contentment, which were a relief after the breakfasts, the copious 
 talk, the picture galleries and theatres, the scandals, and perpetual 
 movement of London. He would have been quite happy but for 
 the uncomfortable consciousness of Nicholas Davenport's presence 
 in the room above — an existence which he could never contemplate 
 without vague pangs of remorse, lest this death in life were indeed his 
 work, lest it had been that blow of his which shattered the feeble intel- 
 lect. Hester told him what Mr. Mivor had said about the inevitable- 
 ness of the attack ; but this one opinion was not enough for comfort. 
 Another doctor and a better doctor might have told a different story. 
 
 Hester tried to be happy in those brief days of holiday ; but the 
 old unquestioning happiness, the joy that looked neither before nor 
 after, was gone. The perfect union was broken. The ring which 
 symbolises eternity was snapped into mere segments of life which she 
 must accept with thankfulness. It was much that her lover had not 
 deserted her. All the stories that she had ever read went to prove that 
 desertion was the inevitable end of forbidden bliss such as she had 
 tasted. He had shown her that he could live happily for more than a 
 week apart from her, but there was yet no hint of desertion ; and he had 
 done much in deferring his journey to Devonshire till after Christmas. 
 
 He left her on a mild and sunny morning, looking far better than 
 on his arrival at the cottage. Those few quiet days had rested him 
 after the high living and keen contest of malicious wit whicli consti- 
 tutcid London society, or that eection of it in which he moved.
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 255 
 
 Hester and he had walked in the wintry woods together, and 
 enjoj^ed the balmy air of pine thickets, and the soft carpet of fallen 
 leaves, with aU the winter charm of chastened colouring under grey 
 skies. He told her at parting that he had been very happy. 
 
 " If you could only have given me a little more of your time it 
 would have been better," he said. "You are so severe in your 
 recognition of a divided duty. Forgive me, love," he added hastily, 
 seeing her look of dish'ess. " You are all goodness, and I am a 
 wretch to murmur. I will ^vi-ite to you after the wedding." 
 
 " Oh, sooner than that, Gerard ; that would mean quite a week 
 to wait ! " 
 
 " Well, then, sooner. But you know what a bad correspondent 
 I am. I think volumes about her I love, but my lazy pen refuses 
 to write a single page." 
 
 He was gone, and she went back to the cottage, which had taken 
 a different look since the change in its master's habits. It no longer 
 looked Hke Gerard's home. It had the air of a house to which a 
 man comes occasionally, and where things hardly bear the stamp 
 of his individuality. The despatch-box was shut ; the writing-table 
 showed no litter of scattered papers. The books he read oftenest 
 — Swinbui'ne, Baudelaire, Richepin, Verlaine, Comte, Hartmann, 
 Darwin, Schopenhauer, were all in their places ; for these were 
 books which Hester loved not, and she had not disturbed them in his 
 absence. The rooms looked to her like the rooms in a widow's house. 
 There was the absence of litter which marks the absence of man. 
 
 She sat by the fire in the study for an hour or more while the 
 invalid was being dressed and got ready for his morning airing, sat 
 thinking of her own life and what she had made of it ; a melancholy 
 review, for her conversation with Mr. Gilstone had swept away all 
 sophistry as to her position. She no longer compared herself to 
 Shelley's Mary, no longer beheved in the rightfulness of her conduct. 
 She stood convicted in her own eyes as a woman who had sinned. 
 Whether the universe were or were not directed by a thinking mind, 
 she had lost her place among good women. She sat there alone at this 
 Christmas season, when other women were surrounded by friends, 
 and told herself that she had forfeited the right to womanly friendship. 
 
 She walked beside her father's chair in the lanes for an horn- 
 before the brief winter day began to fade, walked at his side, and 
 talked to him, and pointed out the features of interest in the land- 
 scape, the moving life of beast and bird, as she would have done for 
 a child. She Ustened to his feeble, disconnected talk. She made 
 him understand — as much as it was in his power to understand any- 
 thing — that he was cherished and cared for. 
 
 o
 
 256 Gerard ; or, 
 
 Tliey did not meet many people in the lanes, but those -whom 
 they met took a gi'eat deal more notice of the old man in the Bath 
 chair and the pensive face and gh'lish figure of his companion than 
 Hester supposed. Gentle and simple were interested — the simple 
 with an unalloyed friendliness towards helpless old age and filial 
 duty ; the gentle with a touch of pity for the old man, mixed \vith 
 conflicting opinions about his daughter. 
 
 The Curate in his soft felt hat, slouched over his brows as if he 
 had been a brigand, the Misses Glendower, bent on district visiting, 
 Mrs. Donovan driving her self-willed ponies, and crimson with the 
 effort of keeping them under control — -all these were keenly observant 
 uf Hester, and talked of her with a new zest at afternoon-tea. 
 
 Tliis ai^pearance of an invalid father, who, although physically 
 and mentally a wreck, looked liked a gentleman, was calculated to 
 modify the %-iUage ideal of Mrs. Hanley's position. That she 
 should have her father to live with her, clad in purple and fine 
 linen, sediilously waited upon, and enthroned in a Bath chair that 
 must have cost as much as the family landau which Lady Isabel 
 had just obtained from the Eepository in Baker Street, certainly 
 suppUed an element of respectability which the world of Lowcombe 
 had not looked for from Mrs. Hanley. After all, people are not kites, 
 and though they may tear and maul a reputation, they are not alto- 
 gether without tenderness for the sorrows of life. 
 
 " I must say that young woman's attention to her father is one of 
 the most touching things I have seen for a long time," said Mrs. 
 Donovan, " and if I could have stopped my ponies yesterday morn- 
 ing I really think I should have pulled up and introduced myself to 
 her. But there, you all know what my ponies are." 
 
 " Yes, j\Irs. Donovan, and we all know what your driving is," 
 answered Lady Isabel, who had been a famous whip in her youth, 
 and who, belonging to a house that had always been poor liked to 
 show her contempt for the newly rich. 
 
 " I really think some of us ought to call," pursued Mrs. Donovan, 
 ignoring the venomed shaft. " I hear that Mr. Hanley has been a 
 good deal away from home lately." 
 
 '•Has he? The begiiuiiiig of the end, I should think. Why 
 don't you call, Mrs. Donovan? You are broader-minded than 
 I am, and you have no daughters. It can't do you any harm to 
 take notice of Mrs. Hanley ; and as she doesn't know a soul iu the 
 place, she may be glad to make your acquaintance." 
 
 " I don't thinki she could do your daughters any harm, Lady 
 Isabel. She is so much younger than your girls ; and she looks 
 tUie picture of innocence*"
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 257 
 
 "Yes, and I have seen just such pictures in the Burlington 
 Arcade, when I have been to my glover's rather too late in the 
 afternoon," retorted Lady Isabel. " You can please yourself, Mrs. 
 Donovan ; but I never visit people whose antecedents I don't know. 
 The fact that this young person behaves nicely to her imbecile father 
 is no evidence of her respectabiHty. Young persons of that class have 
 their feeUngs as well as we have, and I dare say they are fonder of their 
 own people than we are, knowing themselves shut out of society." 
 
 After this Mrs. Donovan gave up all idea of patronising Mrs. 
 Hanley. However she might hug herself with the thought of her 
 investments and dividends, and the power which unlimited cash can 
 give, she knew that she was not strong enough to fly in the face of 
 Lowcombe society. It was for her to follow, and not to lead, if she 
 wanted to be admitted to that inner circle, where the society was not 
 suburban and rich, but county and arrogantly poor. These county 
 people boasted of their dearth in these latter days, as if it were a 
 distinction ; since poverty, for the most part, meant land, while 
 wealth not unfrequently meant trade. Mrs. Donovan wanted to 
 stand well with that choice circle which had its ramifications in the 
 Peerage, and talked of Dukes and Duchesses as if they were men 
 and women : so she did not call upon Mrs. Hanley ; and thus 
 Hester was spared that favour which would have been the last worst 
 drop in her cup of bitterness. 
 
 New Year's Eve is apt to be a saddening season, even in the 
 family circle, for however cheerily we may pretend to take it with 
 carpet dances and hand-shaking, or Pickwickian jovialities in the 
 way of innocent games and strong drinks, there lurks deep in every 
 heart the consciousness of another stage passed in the journev that 
 leads down hill to that inn we all wot of, where there is always 
 room for everybody : and deep in every heart there is the memory 
 of some one whom the year has taken away, and not all Time's 
 years can bring back. But what of New Year's Eve to the lonelv 
 girl who sat beside the fire through the long evening, surrounded with 
 the books she loved, but finding scanty solace even in their company ! 
 
 Such lonely evenbgs are by no means rare in the lives of wedded 
 wives, at those seasons when the indisputable rights of gim or rod 
 keep the sportsman far away from the home fireside, or when the 
 sacred demands of business constrain the mercantile man to over- 
 eat himself in a city hall : but Hester could not forget that she was 
 sitting alone to listen for the ringing of the midnight joy-bells, only 
 because she was an unwedded wife. Had the bond been sanctified 
 her natural place would have been with her husband at Helmsleigh 
 
 s
 
 258 Gerard ; or, 
 
 Rectory on this vigil, which was a memorable one for the Eector'a 
 household, since it was the eve of his only daughter's wedding. How 
 natural that she, Lilian's friend, should have been by Lilian's side to- 
 night ! How indispensable her presence had she been Lilian's sister- 
 in-law ! Tears sprang to her aching eyelids at the humiliating thought 
 that she could now be no more counted worthy to enter that home 
 where she had once been treated almost as a daughter of the house. 
 
 She remembered a New Year's Eve spent in that house, ever so 
 many years ago, as it seemed to-night, looking back from a life in 
 which all things were changed, across a dreary interval of misfortune 
 and poverty. She remembered how kind every one had been to 
 her, fulloftenderest compassion for her motherless youth, her burden 
 of household cares. How bright and happy the rambling old Eectory 
 had looked, all the sitting-rooms gaily lighted with a miscellaneous 
 collection of lamps and candles ; the old-fashioned Christmas decora- 
 tions of holly and evergreen in hall and dining-room ; the friendly 
 evening party, with a good deal of music and a little waltzing, 
 started in an impromptu fashion by the youthful master of the 
 neighbouring hounds ; the inevitable recitation from the curate ot 
 an adjoining parish — long, dismal, intended to make people's flesh 
 creep, but only making the aged yawn and the young laugh. She and 
 Lilian had sat together in a comer by the piano, struggling against 
 the tendency to girlish giggling, full of their own small jokes and depre- 
 ciation of the youth of the neighbourhood, both of them heart-whole 
 and happy — happy as children are, without thought of the mon'ow. 
 
 She had played, fresh from her German master's tuition, full of 
 the Leipsic school and its traditions, had played and had been 
 praised and made much of. Her plajang was a thing of the past 
 almost, for in the days of her poverty she had been without a piano, 
 and in her new hfe she had given up all her hours to being Gerard's 
 companion, and he, who cared httle for classical music, had given her 
 no encouragement to regain lost ground by severe practice. The 
 pretty little cottage-piano stood in its corner unopened, and now that it 
 might have been to her as a companion and friend, she feared to play 
 lest the sounds should disturb her father in his rooms on the upperfloor. 
 
 The night was clear and frosty, but not severely cold, and at mid- 
 night she wrapped a thick shawl about her and went out on the la\vn, 
 and walked slowly up and down by the starlit river, listening for 
 the bells of Lowcombe Church. They broke out upon the stillness 
 with a sudden burst of sound that thrUled her, like the spontaneous 
 cry of some Titanic soul rejoicing in some great, nameless good to 
 mankind. She could not divide herself from the gladness in that 
 burst of music, as the sounds came pealing along the water. The
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 259 
 
 starlight, the darkness of the opposite woods, the faint ripple of the 
 quiet river, the universal hush of calmest winter night through 
 which the joy-peal broke, were all too much for her sad, remorseful 
 heart. She felt that somewhere beyond this narrow scene of life 
 there must be a home and a refuge for lives such as hers, somewhere 
 a friendship and a pity gi-eater than human pity, which could under- 
 stand, and pardon, and shelter. If it were not so, the story that 
 church bells, and running rivers, and winds that blow over wood- 
 land and moimtain, and cathedral organs had been telling was a lying 
 message to mankind, civihsed and uncivihsed, in all the ages that 
 •were gone ; and that fond hope deep in the heart of man, barbarian 
 or civilised, bond or free, was the cruellest hallucination that was 
 ever engendered in that automatic instrument which we call mind. 
 
 She walked for nearly an hour in the wintry garden, and that 
 quiet commune with Nature, that unconscious absorption of the 
 beauty of the winter landscape gave her much more comfort than 
 she had been able to find in Tennyson or Browning, since even " In 
 Memoriam," which was to her as a second gospel, had failed to-night 
 to wean her from the thought of her own sorrows. 
 
 "I wonder if he has remembered me, once, just for one moment 
 in all this evening ? " she asked herself, as she rose from her knees. 
 
 Even when most shaken in her old faith by the new learning she 
 had never altogether lost the old habit of prayer. Her prayers 
 might be vague and indistinct, the outpouring of a sorrowful mind, 
 to what God she knew not, but for her prayer was a necessity of life. 
 
 She was sitting at her lonely breakfast next morning in Gerard's 
 study, when something happened which cheered her with the know- 
 ledge that she was not altogether forgotten. 
 
 There came the soimd of wheels on the crisp gravel drive, a loud 
 ring at the door, and then the country-bred parlour-maid bounced 
 into the room with an excited air, exclaiming, " If you please, 
 ma'am, here's a brougham ! " 
 
 " What do you mean, Pearson? It's the doctor, I suppose ! " 
 
 " No, no, ma'am. It's a new carriage, coachman, and all com- 
 plete — for you ! Here's a letter the coachman brought. I forgot 
 the salver, I was that taken aback ; " and the damsel handed a letter. 
 
 It was from Gerard. 
 
 "Dearest, — " Since you are to spend the winter in the country 
 you must have a carriage, so I send you a brougham by way of New 
 Year's gift. It has been built specially for country work, and will 
 be none the worse for much service in the nistic lanes you are so
 
 26o Gerard ; or, 
 
 fond of. The coachman has admirable testimonials from previous 
 employers, so you may trust him fully as head of your stable. I 
 have told him to engage a stable-help, and to put all things on a 
 proper footing. The horse was bought for me by a man who is a 
 far better judge of the species than I am. 
 
 " Be happy, my love, in the begmning of the year, and in many 
 a happy year to come. — Your ever faithful, G. H. 
 
 " P.S.— Just starting for Devonshire." 
 
 The letter made her almost happy, almost, but not quite, for kind 
 as his words were they gave her no assurance of his love ; they did 
 not tell her that his thoughts and his heart's desire would be with 
 her at the beginning of the year, the first year which had begun 
 since they two had loved each other. For him it was much less of 
 an epoch than it was for her, and he had easily reconciled himself 
 to the idea of their separation. 
 
 The gift vouched for his kindly thought of her, and was welcome 
 on that account, but she felt that any addition to her luxuries only 
 accentuated the dubiousness of her position. 
 
 She went out to look at the brougham, a delightful carriage, small, 
 neat, with dark, subdued colouring, and a perfection of comfort and 
 elegance which in no way appealed to the eye of the casual observer ; 
 such a brougham as a leading light of the House of Commons might 
 choose to convey him quickly and quietly to and from the scene of 
 his triumphs, every detail sober, simple, costly only because of its 
 perfection. The horse was a fine up-standing brown, a patrician 
 among horses, carrying his head as if he were proud of it, doing his 
 work as if hardly conscious of doing it, in the fulness of his power ; 
 an amiable horse, too, for he stooped his lordly head and gave his 
 velvet nose freely to the caressing touch of Hester's hand. 
 
 The coachman was middle-aged, and, to all appearance, the pink 
 of respectability. 
 
 " I have only driven from the station, ma'am," he said. " If 
 you'd like to drive this afternoon the horse won't hurt." 
 
 *' No, no. I'll let him rest to-day, if you please." 
 
 " Quite tlie lady," thought the coachman, as he drove round to 
 his unexplored stables, pleased with a mistress who showed no im- 
 patience to be sitting in her new carriage and running her new horse 
 off his legs; evidently a lady to whom a brougham was no novelty. 
 
 He had been pleased with his master, who had told him to order 
 whatever was required in the way of stable gear, and to engage a 
 helper, all in the easy way which marks a master who does not look 
 too closely into details.
 
 The Woi'ld, tlie Flesh, and the Devil. 261 
 
 Hester was comforted by this mark of Gerard's regard. For a 
 millionaire to give such gifts might have but Httle significance, yet 
 the gift implied thoughtfulness, and it made her happier to know 
 that he had thought of her. 
 
 She drove in her new carriage on the following day, drove to 
 Reading and made her httle purchases, all as modestly chosen as if 
 she had been the wife of a curate. Gerard had given her a pocket- 
 book stufied with bank-notes before he left for Devonshire, but no 
 plethora of money could induce her to extravagant expenditure. 
 Her winter gowns, made by a Reading taUor, were of a Quaker-Uke 
 plainness ; her dinner-gown of soft grey silk was the simplest thing 
 in home dinner-gowns. The long seal-skin coat which Gerard had 
 insisted upon ordering for her at the beginning of the winter was 
 the only expensive garment she possessed. Just at this season she 
 had to make purchases which were not for her own use, purchases 
 of finest lawn and softest cambric, and pattern garments of daintiest 
 form, which gave employment to her skilful fingers in the long 
 lonely evenings of that first week in the New Year. 
 
 Gerard wrote to her of his sister's wedding in briefest phrases. 
 Must he not also have remembered that had all been well she should 
 have had her place, and an honoured place, at that family gathermg, 
 and that there must be a sting in anything he might -nTite of the 
 ceremony and of his people ? 
 
 " They left for the Land's End, to spend a fortnight in a little inn 
 on the edge of the Atlantic — a cmious fancy for a winter honey- 
 moon. I wanted them to go to Naples and Sorrento — of course at 
 my expense — but John Cumberland would not hear of a journey 
 that would keep him away from his parish for more than a fortnight, 
 and my sister's mind is his mind, so they are clambering about upon 
 the rocks, watching the shags and the gulls, and listening to the 
 roaring of the breakers — utterly happy, I beheve, in each other's 
 society, as you and I have been beside the dripping fringes of the 
 willows. For my own part, I can hardly imagine a January honey- 
 moon. Love needs sunshine and long summer days." 
 
 That last sentence haunted Hester all through the evening, as 
 she bent over her work at her little table in the nook by the fire. 
 Was love ended with a single summer? Could she and Gerard 
 ever renew the happmess of last summer? Alas, no; for last 
 summer he could hardly bear to be absent from her for an hour ; 
 and of late he had shown her only too plainly that he could live 
 without her. It was only natural, perhaps. Who but a romantic 
 girl could ever think that any union love ever made could be one 
 long honeymoon ? There was no word of returning to the Rosary
 
 262 Gerard; or, 
 
 in Gerard's last letter. His mother insisted on his staying for another 
 week at the Rectory, and he had been unable to refuse her. He hoped 
 that Hester was taking long drives, getting herself plenty of new 
 books at Miss Langley's delightful library, and keeping in good health 
 and spirits. It is so easy for the absent to entertain these hopes. 
 
 Hester did not take many drives, though the roads were in 
 good condition, and the coachman came every morning for orders. 
 She preferred her quiet walks beside her father's Bath chair ; for 
 these at least left the satisfaction of duty done, and the brougham, 
 with all its elegant luxuriousness, only oppressed her with a keener 
 sense of her position. She felt ashamed of driving past the Low- 
 combe people in their shabbier carriages, felt almost as if she 
 could hear the hard things they said of her. 
 
 She thought often of kindly Mr. Gilstone and his vain endeavour 
 to set things right for her, and she longed for the sound of his 
 friendly voice in her solitude. But she had no hope that he would 
 ever enter the Rosaiy again. She would have gladly gone to his 
 church on the first Sunday of her solitude, had she been brave 
 enough to face the curious eyes of his congregation; but on the 
 second Sunday she felt so utterly desolate that her heart yearned 
 to the church as the one shelter outside her lonely home where 
 she could enter and feel herself unforbidden, so in the evening 
 she ordered her brougham and drove to Lowcombe, telling her 
 coachman to stop at the entrance to the viDage, and to wait for 
 her at the same spot when the service was over. She did not want 
 to make herself conspicuous at the lych gate by the flaming lamps 
 of her carriage, or the beauty of her horse. She hoped to creep 
 quietly to a seat in one of the aisles ; but it happened that the 
 pew opener was the son of the butcher who served the Eosary, and 
 was eager to pay all possible honour to a good customer. With 
 this mtent he conducted her to a seat near the pulpit, the seat of 
 the august Mr. Muschatt himself, a seat cushioned and foot-stooled 
 in purple cloth, where the local landowner sat like Dives, and was 
 reported never to drop more than sixpence into the bag, and only 
 to drop sixpence when he had failed in obtaining a threepenny 
 piece. Here, in the sight of the evening congregation, which in- 
 cluded most of the gentilities of Liwcombe, where the evening service 
 was popular, Hester sat in her sealskin coat and neat httle sealskin 
 toque and heard the evening lessons, and here she knelt with meekly 
 bent head and joined in the prayers which had once been inter- 
 woven with her daily life, but which now had a doubly impressive 
 sound after a silence of half a year ; while the old hymn tunes, and 
 most of all the words of that evening hymn she had loved so well —
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 263 
 
 "Abide with me, fast falls the eventide," moved her almost to tears. 
 Indeed, it was only the consciousness of the lamplight on her face, 
 and perhaps, too, the apprehension of fmtive glances from unkind 
 eyes, that nerved her to the eflfoit which restrained her tears. 
 
 The Rector's evening sermon was simple and practical, one of those 
 plain-speaking, homely addresses which he loved to give of an 
 evening — sermons in which he spoke to his flock as to a httle family 
 with whose needs and sorrows and failings he was familiar. 
 Hester met his glance more than once as she looked up at him, 
 and there were words, comforting words, in his sermon which she 
 fancied were meant especially for her, words to lighten the sinner's 
 despair and to promise the dawn of hope. 
 
 She went home happier for that village service, and having once 
 confronted the curious looks of the congi'egation she determined to 
 go to church regularly. The church was open to sinners as well as 
 saints, to Magdalen as well as to Martha and Mary, to the doubter 
 as well as to the believer ; and now that Gerard was no longer 
 by to assail the creed in which she had been reared, with all the 
 pessimist's latest arguments, her heart went back into the old paths, 
 and the Rock of Ages was once again a shelter and a support. 
 
 There was a daily service at Lowcombe, and to this service 
 Hester went every morning during Gerard's absence. It was the 
 one break in her life, an hoirr of quiet prayer and contemplation 
 which tranquillised her mind, and sustained her through the 
 monotonous duties of the day. 
 
 Gerard reappeared after more than a fortnight's absence. His 
 native air had not improved his health. He looked haggard and 
 weary, and owned that he had been bored in the famity circle. 
 
 " My father and mother are model people of their kind," he said, 
 " and everything in their house goes by clockwork ; but so does 
 life in a gaol, and I confess that I found the Rectory about as 
 lively as Portland. There was nothing to do, and nothing to think 
 about. If I had been a sportsman I should have been out with the 
 hounds. Rural life provides nothing for men who are not sportsmen. 
 Such malshapen beings are hardly believed in by the rural mind." 
 
 Hester saw with poignant grief that after a few days at the 
 Rosary Gerard was as bored as he had been in Devonshire. He 
 did not hint at this weariness, but the signs of ermui were too 
 obvious. He suggested inviting Justin Jermyn, but Hester had 
 grown keenly sensitive of late, and she was so evidently distressed at 
 the mention of Mr. Jermj-n, that Gerard did not press the question. 
 
 " I feel as if there is a covert sneer in almost every word Mr. 
 Jermyn speaks to me," she said.
 
 264 Gerard; or^ 
 
 " Indeed, my dear child, you wrong him. Jermyn is a laughing 
 philosopher, and holds all things lightly. I envy him that lightness 
 as the happiest gift Nature can bestow. For him, to exist means 
 to be amused. He lives only for the present hour, has a happy 
 knack of utihsing his friends, and does not know the meaning of 
 thought or sorrow." 
 
 Gerard went to London soon after this little discussion about 
 Jermyn, and was away till the end of the week, and from thence- 
 forward he appeared at the Rosary only for two or three days at 
 a time, coming at shorter or longer intervals, his periods of absence 
 lengthening as London began to fill. In Loudon Jermyn was 
 much with him, his umbra, his second self. Hester discovered 
 this fact from his conversation, in which Jermyn's name continually 
 recurred. He spoke of the man always with the same scornful 
 lightness, as of a man for whom he had no real afl'ection, but the 
 man's society had become a necessity to him. 
 
 "Does he hve upon me? " he said once, when Hester gently 
 suggested that Mr. Jermyn must be something of a sponge, " well, 
 yes, I suppose he does — upon me among other friends — upon me 
 perhaps more than any other friend. You remember how Lord 
 Bacon used to let servants and followers help themselves to his 
 money, while he sat at his desk and wrote, seemingly unobservant. 
 Bacon could not afford to do that kind of thmg — his income 
 wouldn't stand it — but Jermyn is my only follower, and I can 
 afford to let him profit by my existence. He does not sponge 
 or borrow my money. He only wins it. I am fond of piquet, and 
 when we are alone he and I play every night. He is by far the 
 better player, an exceptional player indeed, and I dare say his 
 winnings are good enough to keep him in pocket money — while I 
 hardly feel myself any poorer by what I lose. If you would spend 
 a little more, Hettie, I should be all the better satisfied." 
 
 "You are only too generous," she said, %\'ith a sigh. '"I have 
 everything in the world that I want — and I have been more ex- 
 travagant lately. Your bank notes seem to slip through my fingers." 
 
 " That is what they were meant for. I'll send you another 
 parcel from London to-morrow." 
 
 " No, no, please do not. I have plenty of money, nearly three hun- 
 dred pounds. But are you really going back to town to-morrow ? " 
 
 " Really, dear. It is a case of necessity. !My lungs won't stand 
 this river-side atmosphere. Why don't you think better of my 
 suggestion, Hester, and let me find another home for your father, 
 lie could be well provided for, and you would be free to travel 
 vdth me. Dr. South would think me mad if I were to spend
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 265 
 
 February and March in the valley of the Thames — and even you 
 would hardly wish me to run so gi'eat a risk." 
 
 " Even I. Oh, Gerard, as if your life were more precious to any 
 one in this world than it is to me." 
 
 " Prove your regard for me, then. Let me arrange at once about 
 your father — there are plenty of respectable households in which he 
 could be placed under medical care — and come to Italy with me." 
 
 " No," she sighed, "that is what I should love to do, but I have 
 made up my mind. "While my father lives I will do my best to 
 make his Hfe happy. It is the only atonement I can make " 
 
 Her tears finished the sentence. Gerard rose impatiently, and 
 began to walk about the room. 
 
 " You can hardly expect me to sacrifice my life to your exag- 
 gerated ideas of duty," he said. " The best part of the world is 
 untrodden ground for me, and I live in an age which has minimised 
 the fatigue and difficulty of travelling. A man may go round the 
 world now more easily than he went from London to Paris a hundred 
 years ago, and I have means to make the uttermost expenditure a 
 legitimate outlay. And you would have me wither under such a sky 
 as that " — he poiuted to the grey fog that veiled garden and river, 
 and blotted out the opposite shore — " and restrict my movements to 
 jogging backwards and forwards between London and this house." 
 
 "I would have you do nothing, Gerard, that you do not Hke, 
 nothing that can possibly injure your health. If it is best for you to 
 go to the South, go there without an hour's needless delay. I will try 
 to make the best of life while you are away, and you will come back 
 to me in the summer, won't you, Gerard, if you are not tired of me? " 
 
 " Tired of you. You know that I am not. Don't I entreat you 
 to go with me ? It is only your whims and exaggerated notions I 
 am tired of." 
 
 This conversation occurred in February, and it may be that the 
 dull, depressmg February weather, the river fog, the Scotch mist, 
 the sodden grass and dripping shrubs, and dark, leafless branches of 
 beech and elm, counted for something in Gerard's angry impatience. 
 He went back to London on the following day, and he talked of 
 starting for Italy, nay, indeed, made all his plans for departure, and 
 then at the last altered his mind and stayed in town. 
 
 He reappeared at the Rosary at the end of the week, and it was 
 a shock to him to find Nicholas Davenport installed by the drawing- 
 room fire. There had been a gradual improvement in his condition 
 since Christmas, and the doctor had suggested his being carried 
 downstairs in his invalid chair of an afternoon, thinking that the 
 change of surroundings might have a beneficial influence upon his
 
 266 Ge7^a7'd ; or, 
 
 mental state. His mind had certainly been brighter. He had 
 taken more heed of Hester's presence, and had talked to her 
 rationally, though without memory, frequently repeating the same 
 speeches, and asking the same questions over and over again. 
 
 His presence beside the hearth made the house odious to Gerard, 
 ■who saw in that bent and shrunken form the image of death. He 
 retreated at once to the study, where Hester found him standing 
 beside the fire in a gloomy reverie. 
 
 " I had no hope of your coming to-day," she said deprecatingly, 
 " or I would not have had my father brought down to the drawing- 
 room. I'm afraid it hurts you to see him there." 
 
 " It does, Hester. The very consciousness of his presence in the 
 house has always been a horror to me. Perhaps it is because my 
 own life hangs upon so thin a thread that I hate to see the image 
 of death — and that hving death of imbecility is death's worst form. 
 Sometimes I think I shall die that way myself." 
 
 She soothed him, and argued away his fears about himself, and 
 promised that her father's presence should not again be inflicted 
 upon him, come when he might to the Rosary. She would remember 
 her divided duty, and she would take care that the home which he 
 had created should be made happy for him. 
 
 " It is your house," she said. " I ought to remember that." 
 
 " There is no yours nor mine, Hettie," he answered kindly. " All 
 I possess of this world's gear is at your service ; but I am full of 
 fancies, and your father's presence chiUs my soul." 
 
 He had come to the Rosary on Saturday afternoon, meaning to 
 stay tUl Monday, and then go back to London and reconsider his 
 migration to the South. He had been somewhat disheartened by 
 being told at his club that there was snow in Naples, and that 
 people were leaving Rome in disgust at the Arctic cold. These 
 evil rumours, together with his yearning to see Hester once more, 
 had delayed his departure. He had been feeling very iU aU the 
 week, and he told himself he must lose no time in getting to a 
 balmier climate, wherever it was to be found. 
 
 He did not return to town on Monday. He was shivering and 
 depressed all through Sunday, to Hester's extreme anxiety, and on 
 Sunday night he jnelded to her entreaties, and allowed her to send 
 for Mr. Mivor, who found all the symptoms of limg trouble. . The 
 trouble declared itself before IMonday night as acute inflammation 
 of the lungs, comphcated by a feeble heart ; and for three weeks the 
 patient hung between life and death, tenderly and devotedly nursed 
 by Hester, who rested neither night nor day, and accepted only 
 indispensable aid from the hospital nurse who had been sent for at
 
 The Woi'ld, the Flesh, and the Devil. 267 
 
 the beginning of the attack. When Gerard was able to go down to 
 the drawing-room as a convalescent, he was hardly whiter or more 
 shadowy-looking than Hester herself. He was not ungrateful. He 
 knew the devotion that had been given to him, knew that in those 
 long nights of pain and semi-delirium one gentle face had always 
 watched beside his bed ; yet after the first few days of convalescence 
 an eager desire for change of surroundings took possession of him. 
 That niness, coming upon him suddenlj-, like the grip of demoniac 
 claws fastening upon lungs and heart, had given him a terrible scare. 
 He had been told that he had not a good life ; but not since his child- 
 hood had he felt the paralysing power of acute disease. Never perhaps 
 untU now had he realisedthe frailty of the thread which held all heknew 
 of or believed in — this little life and its pleasures. In his new terror 
 he was feverishly eager to get to a better climate, to Italy, to Ceylon, 
 to India, anywhere to escape the bitter treacheries of English weather. 
 
 Jermyn came down to see him, at his earnest desire. Jermyn 
 played piquet with him in the long March evenings, and amused 
 him with the news of the town ; but even this did not lessen his 
 hoiTor of the house that held Nicholas Davenport, or his ever-present 
 terror of a relapse. He arranged the details of his jomiiey with 
 JermjTi, who knew exactly what kind of weather they were having 
 along the Western Eiviera. 
 
 " You will find summer by the Mediterranean," he said ; " March 
 and April are the most delicious months on that sunny shore. 
 Nature is lovehest there just when all the smart people have left for 
 Paris or London. Leave everjiJiing to me and your valet, and all 
 you wiU have to do when your conscientious little medical man here 
 permits you to move, wUl be to take your seat in the train de luxe. 
 I am going Southward for Easter myself, and I'll be your travelling 
 companion, if you Hke." 
 
 "K I like? I should be miserable alone. You will go as my 
 guest, of course." 
 
 " As you please," replied Jermyn, shrugging his shoulders. " One 
 does not stand upon punctUio with a milhonaire on a matter of 
 pounds, shillings, and pence. I hope to earn my travelling expenses by 
 being useful to you. Does Mi-s. Hanley go with you to the South ? " 
 
 " No," Gerard answered shortly. 
 
 Mr. Jermyn went up to town next day to see Gerard's valet, and to 
 give all insti-uctions for the journey. He came back in time for dinner. 
 
 " Mrs. Hanley shuns me," he said, on this second occasion, he 
 and Gerard having dined alone on both evenings. " I hope I have 
 not offended her." 
 
 " She likes to be with her father."
 
 268 Gerard ; or, 
 
 " But surely some one told me that the old gentleman goes to bed at 
 eight o'clock. She can hardly be wanted in his room after that hour.'' 
 
 " Perhaps not, but she may hke to be there," answered Gerard, 
 and then changed the conversation abmptly. " How is your friend 
 the painter getting on with his house ? " 
 
 " Admirably. I beheve it will be finished in two years, which is 
 only a year and a quarter beyond the time specified. His contract with 
 the builder was for two thousand five hundred, and I fancy, in spite of 
 all his alterations and improvements on the original design, he will get 
 off for six or seven thousand. He finds his boat too cold a residence at 
 this time of year, and he is staying at the Inn, where he puts me up.'' 
 
 " I am sorry we have no room for you here " 
 
 " Don't mention it. I doubt whether ]\Irs. Hanley would like to have 
 me on the premises even were there half-a-dozen bachelor rooms. I'm 
 afraid I am no favourite of hers. It is a curious thing that while the 
 ladies I meet at the Petimia and the Small Hours are positively de- 
 voted to me I am imfortunate in provoking the prejudices of the 
 purely domestic mind — and Mrs. Hanley is so thoroughly domestic." 
 
 " She is the most devoted and unselfish of women. Her only 
 faults are virtues in excess," answered Gerard, gi-avely. 
 
 His convalescence lasted a week longer before the village doctor 
 gave him leave to start for the Riviera, where the weather reports 
 w^ere now of the fairest. His illness had been so carefully watched 
 by Mr. Mivor that he had implicit beUef in that gentleman's wisdom, 
 and listened without impatience to the counsel which the doctor 
 gave him on his last visit, counsel which in some points echoed Dr. 
 South's advice, given some months earlier. 
 
 Illness is apt to be selfish, and in his long illness that self-love 
 which had grown and strengthened ever since the sudden change in 
 his fortune, took a stronger growth, and in the long days of con- 
 valescence, weak, depressed, and self-absorbed, he had brooded over 
 Hester's refusal to be his companion in his Southern wanderings, 
 her choice of duty to her father rather than duty to him. Angered 
 by her opposition, he began to doubt even her love, or to count that 
 love a poor and paltry thing ; the love that can consider another 
 rather than the beloved one ; the love so closely allied with remorse 
 that it almost ceases to be love. 
 
 A long letter from Edith Champion, which reached him diuing 
 his last days at the Kosar}', seemed to accentuate Hester's coldness. 
 Edith's letter was glowing with hopeful love. Her year of widow- 
 hood was drawing towards its close. June would soon be here, and 
 then, if he still cared for her, their new life might begin. He had 
 never been absent from her thoughts during her exile. The winter
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 269 
 
 had seemed very long, but the dawn of spring meant the dawn of 
 hope. I 
 
 The letter claimed him, and, in his present mood, he had no desire to 
 dispute that claim. The pale, sweet face which looked at him in mute 
 agony on that last March morning had lost its power to move him. 
 
 " You will come back to me, Gerard ? " she entreated, clinging to 
 him in a farewell embrace. 
 
 " Perhaps ! Who knows if I may live long enough to see you 
 and England again ? You have made your choice, Hester. The 
 future must take care of itself. In any case your welfare is provided 
 for. I have taken care of all material matters — for you and yours." 
 
 That was all. There was no tender allusion to that new obligation 
 which the summer was to bring upon Hester and upon him. His 
 heart was full of a sullen anger against this woman whose sacrifice 
 just stopped short of blind obedience. 
 
 Her heart turned to ice at this cold reply. Womanly pride, the 
 pride of a deeply injured woman, rose up against him at this last 
 moment. Her arms dropped from his neck. The wan cheek that 
 had been pressed against his was turned away. She followed him 
 silently into the hall, and stood by in silence while he was being 
 helped on with his fur-lined coat, and saw him step into the snug 
 little brougham, with the dumb, tearless agony of a leaden despair. He 
 looked out of the carriage window and waved her a smiling good-bye. 
 The smile hurt her more than his harshest words could have done. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 "sing while he may, man hath no long delight." 
 
 Gerard and his companion started for the South in the train de 
 luxe that left Charing Cross early in the forenoon. A sunlit passage 
 across the Channel, a day of cigar-smoking and newspaper-reading, 
 and brief intermittent slumbers, into which they sank, not from 
 sleepiness, but from sheer weariness and vacuity : an evening at 
 piquet, played under the vacillating light of a couple of reading- 
 lamps, while the train rushed southward : and then a long weary 
 night in which the same rushing sound, the same incessant oscillation, 
 mixed itself with every dream, while now and again the sudden 
 thunder of a passing train startled the dreamer with some strange 
 image conjured instantaneously out of the distorted dream-world. 
 
 Gerard's spirits had been variable all through the long day and 
 evening, now breaking out into gaiety, anon sinking into-^loom. 
 His strongest feeling was a sense of relief. He had escaped from
 
 2/0 Gerard ; or, 
 
 a life that had beea gi'adually growing abhorrent to him. He had 
 escaped from the house of melancholy, from the atmosphere of 
 undying remorse. Most of all, he had escaped from the presence 
 of Nicholas Davenport — that living spectre, the dismal simulacrum 
 of humanity, the perpetual reminder of old age, disease, and death ; 
 the mindless automaton whose vicinity made life hideous. 
 
 " If duty is more to her than love she must find happiness in 
 doing her duty," he said to himself again and again, while his 
 thoughts set themselves to the rhythmical beat of the engine. " She 
 must find happiness — doing her duty ! " With every thud those 
 words repeated themselves. 
 
 He had done his duty by her, he told himself. He had given 
 her the option, and she had decided. Her lover or her father? 
 She had chosen to stand by the earlier tie. Obstinately, needlessly, 
 in opposition to all reason, she had sacrificed herself to the father 
 whose only claim upon her love at the best had been a father's 
 name. She had chosen. 
 
 Yes, he had done his duty. Hurried although his flight from 
 England had been, eager as he was to plunge into new scenes, to 
 wash the bitter taste of memory out of his mouth with the waters 
 of novelty, he had taken every step necessary to ensure Hester 
 Davenport's material prosperity. His last act before leaving London 
 had been to execute a deed of trust which provided for her. She 
 would be a rich woman aU the days of her life — a very rich woman 
 — able to enjoy all that wealth can offer of splendour, luxurj', 
 variety, the world's esteem, long after he would be inurned in 
 bronze or marble, a handful of mindless dust. She had known the 
 sharp sting of poverty all through the ftxirest years of her youth, 
 and would be the better able to appreciate the privileges of wealth. 
 He told himself that he could afford to think of her without one 
 remorseful pang ; yet he did not so think in the enforced vacuity 
 of long sleepless hours, cramped, with aching limbs, in his narrow 
 berth. The pathetic face, the imploring eyes, haunted him. 
 
 He thought of the infinite consolations of her life — a life not 
 measured, like his miserable existence, within the narrow limits of 
 a year or two. If she was alone now, alone with that sad phantasm 
 of mindless humanity, she would have a new companion before 
 very long — the sweetest, tenderest companion woman's life can 
 know — the child who in every attribute recalls all that was best and 
 dearest in the father. 
 
 " If I had stayed with her to the end our parting must have come 
 all the same," he told himself, " and why should I sacrifice my poor 
 remnant of life to tlic horror of an association that agonises me ?
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 271 
 
 One little year, perhaps, at the best. Only a year. Am I a wretch 
 because I try to make the most of that last year ? " 
 
 He looked at Justin Jermyn, sleeping on the other side of the 
 carriage, the image of placid repose ; his breathmg as regular as an 
 infant's ; his complexion dehcately fair in the lamplight ; his parted 
 lips rosy as the lips of a child. 
 
 " Tliere is enjoyment of hfe," mused Gerard, " and yet I don't 
 believe that man ever had an unselfish thought, or would hesitate 
 at the commission of the darkest crime, if crime could make life 
 pleasanter to him." 
 
 He remembered how Jermyn had pushed him on to his alliance 
 with Hester, and how Jermyn had urged him to sever the tie 
 directly it became irksome — a man who perhaps had done very 
 little evil on his own account, who had neither robbed the widow 
 and orphan nor murdered his friend, but who went about the world 
 giving evil advice lightly, with a graceful carelessness, a perpetual 
 happy-go-lucky air which minimised the wrongfulness in every trans- 
 action, and made so airy a jest of virtue that vice seemed non-existent. 
 And, after all, when a man has filed down his beliefs to absolute 
 materialism, when he says of that microcosm, himself, " Thou art as 
 the beasts that perish," it becomes very hard to define vice and virtue. 
 In the grey dawn Gerard envied his Mentor that childlike 
 slumber, that perfect complacency and content with life. And 
 then what physical advantages the man had ! Lungs sound as a 
 bell ; muscles which no exercise could tire — on the river, in the 
 gymnasium, on tennis-court or golf-links alike inimitable. Yes, 
 that was the glory of life — a mind without sense of good and evil ; 
 a body endowed with health and strength, and with the promise of 
 long life in every organ and every limb. Better than millions; 
 better than that plethora of gold which seemed a mockery to the 
 man whose days were numbered. 
 
 Gerard pondered on the months that he had wasted in the cottage 
 by the river, living as a man might live whose income was under 
 a thousand a year ; he who had the spending of nearly a hundred 
 thousand in the twelve months if he chose ; he whose duty it was, 
 knowing himself doomed to early death, to riot in gold, to wallow 
 in the waters of Pactolus, to melt pearls of price in his wine, to 
 achieve some mad extravagance — some folly which should be re- 
 membered when he was dust — almost every day of his life. 
 
 For fame he had done nothing. Granted that he had furnished 
 a house which in every detail testified to lavish expenditure and 
 superior taste ; but do not the wool-growers of Australia and the 
 petroleum merchants of America as much as that ? Clever as he
 
 272 Gerard; or, 
 
 fancied himself, he had made no new departure. He had given 
 recherche luncheons, and had succeeded in having his hospitality 
 spoken of as " the Hillersdon table d'hote " by the vi'itlings of his 
 circle, mostly, perhaps, by those whom he did not entertain. He 
 had bought some of the costliest books from famous collections 
 lately brought to the hammer. He had patronised some rising 
 artists, eccentrics of the French and Belgian schools ; had bought 
 statues, and had given exorbitant sums for carriage horses which 
 he rarely used, and for a Park hack which he rode so seldom that 
 every ride had been a narrow escape of sudden death. And in 
 works of beneficence — what was the record there ? He had given 
 freely, given carelessly and unquestioningly, given to all who asked, 
 tossing the letters of appeal from Charities or from individuals to 
 his secretary, with the order to send a cheque " for whatever you 
 think fit." It may be that gold distributed thus unthinkingly had 
 done as much harm as it had done good, had fed the professional 
 begging-letter writer, and encouraged the drunken hanger-on of 
 Fortune. He had devoted his wealth to no great work for the 
 public good. He had dedicated no recreation-gi-ound, no park or 
 lawn, to the joyless dwellers in the seething slums. He had built 
 no wholesome and airy habitations to replace the loathsome dens 
 of Bethnal Green or Bermondsey. No; he had done very little 
 with his money ; he, who when penniless had pondered so often on 
 the potentiahties of wealth, and had wondered at the sorry use the 
 average millionaire makes of his golden opportunities ! He, Gerard 
 Hillersdon, man of the world, thinker, dreamer, fully abreast with 
 all the newest ideas, felt that his career up to this point had been 
 a failure. And the time that remained to him for achievement was 
 BO short ! He was oppressed by a sense of hurry, an eagerness to 
 enjoy, which kept his blood at fever-point. How slow was this 
 so-called express : how uncomfortable this train de luxe ! 
 
 While the glamour of a passionate love had lasted that tranquil 
 existence by the river had been perfect happiness ; but now, by a 
 strange perversity of mind, he looked back upon the placid monotony 
 of those days with a feeling that was akin to disgust. It was not 
 that he could contemplate Hester's image without tenderness ; but 
 between the fair young face and liis picture of the Rosary there 
 came an image of horror — the face and form of the man whose 
 shattered brain was in some wise his work. He forgot all that he 
 had enjoyed of exquisite bliss — the dual joys of a supreme and 
 unselfish love — in the nearer memory of that one hideous night, in 
 the painful associations of that after time when Hester's heart had 
 been divided between love and duty.
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 273 
 
 No train could travel fast enough to carry him away from those 
 memories. They were at Monte Carlo in the golden light of after- 
 noon. Only yesterday they had breakfasted at the London 
 M^tropole in the grey gloom of an English March. To-day they 
 were taking afternoon-tea on a wide balcony overlooking the sunlit 
 Mediterranean, Monaco's promontory with its twin towers, and all 
 the theatrical gardens and turrets, stucco pinnacles, flower-decked 
 terraces, steps and balustrades of Monte Carlo. 
 
 They were to stay here for a few days, as long as the place 
 amused them, and then tliej^ were to go to Florence, rapidlj' or by 
 easy stages, as the spirit moved them. Jermyn's spirits were too 
 equable to be brightened by the change from London greyness to 
 this fairy-land of Europe, but he flung back his head with a gay 
 laugh and sniffed the balmy air witli sensuous appreciation. 
 
 " What a sensible man your doctor was to send you to the 
 South," he exclaimed, " and what a sensible man you were to invite 
 me to be your travelling companion ! " 
 
 " I should have been bored to death if I had come alone," 
 answered Gerard laughingly, " and I really think you are the one 
 man whose society suits me best — though I have the most despicable 
 opmion of your morals." 
 
 " My dear Hillersdon, I never set up for having any morals. I 
 don't know what morals mean. There are certain things that I 
 wouldn't do, because no man can do them and hold his head up in 
 society. I wouldn't cheat at cards, for instance, or open another 
 man's letter. Between men there is a kind of honesty which must 
 be observed, or society couldn't hold together. Between men and 
 women : well, I think you must have found out long before you 
 met me that the weaker sex is outside the laws of honour, and that 
 a man who would rather perish than sauter la coupe at whist or 
 introduce an extraneous king at ecart6 thinks it a bagatelle to trick 
 a woman out of her reputation. Yet, after all, in the net result of 
 life I believe women have the best of it ; and for every one whom 
 we lead astraj' there are two who fatten upon our destruction, a fact 
 which you may see exemplified in this charming place." 
 
 They were at a brand new liotel, a white walled palace built on 
 a height commanding sea and shore. La Condamine lay in a sunny 
 hollow below them, a concatenation of white villas and red roofs 
 and narrow gardens, balconies and trellises brimming over with 
 roses, the rich purple masses of the Bougainvilliers conspicuous 
 above wall and gable, hedges of pink and scarlet geranium, an 
 avalanche of azaleas pouring down the hill to the lapis blue of the 
 sea. The hotel was so new that it seemed to have been built and
 
 2 74 Gerard ; or, 
 
 furnished expressly for Mr. Hillersdon's occupation. The courtly 
 manager assured him that the suite of rooms reserved for him had 
 never been inhabited. They were on the second floor, and consisted 
 of ante-room, saloon, and dining-room, bedrooms and bathroom, all 
 upholstered in the same silvery greys and greens, with artistic 
 touches of warmer colour here and there, to accentuate the prevail- 
 ing coolness. A marble loggia extended the whole length of the 
 windows, and in this balmy climate the loggia was the most 
 delightful spot in which to live. 
 
 Gerard and his companion strolled down to the casino after their 
 eight-o'clock dinner. The season was nearly over, and there was 
 ample space for mo^^ng about in the gaudy mauresque rooms, but 
 the players gathered thickly round the tables, under the vivid light 
 concentrated on the green cloth ; and there were plenty of people 
 in the trente et quarante room, a higher class perhaps than are to be 
 found in the height of the season, when the idle and the curious 
 surge in and out and peer and watch and whisper, to the annoyance 
 of the players who mean business and nothing else. 
 
 For Gerard since his accession to fortune play had but little 
 charm. While he was still poor he had hankered after the feverish 
 delights of the baccarat table, and had frequented clubs where play 
 ran high, venturing small stakes, which when smallest were more 
 than he could afford to lose — but now that loss or gain signified 
 nothing to him he needed some stimulus from without to give a 
 flavour to play. 
 
 lie found that stimulus for the moment in the very atmosphere 
 of the trente et quarante room, where some of the handsomest 
 women and some of the quickest witted men in Paris crowded 
 round the tables and elbowed him as he leant forward to deposit 
 his stakes. He played very carelessly, sometimes letting his win- 
 nings lie on the table till they were trebled and quadrupled before the 
 inexorable rake swept them away, sometimes putting aside his gains 
 in a little heap of gold and notes, which some of those lovelj' Parisian 
 eyes watched covetously. He Avas more interested in the people at 
 the table than in the game. It surprised him to see how many of 
 these people exchanged greetings with Justin Jermyn, who had 
 elbowed his way to the front, and was playing with small stakes in 
 u light casual way. His careless nods, his sharp sudden hand- 
 shakes indicated considerable intimacy with those of the players by 
 whom he was greeted. The beautiful women smiled at him with an 
 air of patronage, and he was equally patronising to the keen-eyed men. 
 A little ripple of low laughter, a flutter of wliispers went round the 
 table, quieted only liy tlio authoritntive hush of the dealer.
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 275 
 
 Gerard, after playing lauguidlj' for half an hour, pocketed his 
 little heap of gold — the notes having been swept away by the 
 inexorable rake, and gave himself up to observation of the players. 
 How beautiful some of those faces were — and most of them how 
 wacked ! Here the bright black eyes and tilted nose of the soubrette 
 type, there a Roman profile, with eyes and hair like Erebus, and 
 there again a Saxon beauty with milky skin, pale eyes, and yellow 
 hair. They all hailed from Paris these syrens, Lutetia being the 
 paradise and happy hunting-gi'ound of their kind ; but they were of 
 various nationalities, including a hard-eyed and hard-headed English- 
 woman, with a plain face and a perfect figure, in a close-fitting 
 tailor gown, severe and uncompromising amongst the sumptuous 
 demi-toilettes of sister syrens. This lady was reputed to be richer 
 than any other of the feminine gamesters, and was further reported 
 to have refused her hand in marriage to a Bi'itish Duke. But there 
 was one face at the trente et quarante table which interested Gerard 
 Hillersdon more than all this cosmopolitan beauty, the one only 
 face which wore the typical expression of the gambler, a face 
 haggard with intensity, pinched and worn with inward fever. It 
 was the face of a small elderly woman, who sat at the end of the 
 table near the dealer, and who from time to time consulted a 
 perforated card, upon which she marked the progress of the game ; 
 a small face, with delicate aquiline features, thin lips, silvered hair, 
 and dark eyes that seemed too large for the pinched face. There 
 was that in the careless attire, the shabby little black lace hat, of a 
 fashion of four or five years ago, the Spanish lace shawl hanging in 
 slovenly folds over one shoulder, ragged and rusty with long wear, 
 the greasy black silk gown, which told of womanhood that had 
 done with womanly graces, and had sacrificed to one darling vice 
 all the small follies, caprices, and extravagances of the sex. Gerard 
 became more interested in this one player than in the fortunes of 
 the table, so absorbed indeed that Jerrayn had to touch his shoulder 
 twice before he could attract liis attention. 
 
 "It is close upon eleven o'clock," said Jermyn, "and the rooms 
 shut at eleven. AVhat are we to do with the rest of the evening? 
 There are plenty of people here whom I know. Shall I invite a 
 few of them, the most amusing, to your rooms ? " 
 
 " By all means. Ask- them to supper. Let us make believe 
 that the world is nearly two centuries younger, that we are living 
 in the Regency, and that PhiHp of Orleans is our boon companion. 
 Your follies cannot be too foolish nor your dissipation too wild for 
 my humour. Let this Rock be our Brocken, and invite all tlie 
 handsome witches of your acquaintance."
 
 276 Gerard ; or, 
 
 " What ! even the poor pretty girl with the red mouse in her 
 mouth ? And Marguerite ; what of Marguerite ? " 
 
 Gerard winced at the allusion. 
 
 " My Marguerite has chosen her destiny," he said. " If she were 
 like Goethe's Gretchen she woidd have chosen differently. Love 
 would have been all in all with her." 
 
 Gerard strolled out of the rooms alone, while Jermyn passed 
 quickly and quietly from group to group and briefly whispered his 
 invitations, wliich were accepted with a nod or a smile. The people 
 to whom these invitations were given belonged to a class which 
 might adopt the motto of a certain great border clan for their own : 
 Je suis pret ! Always ready for the chances of the moment, always 
 ready to be entertained at anybody else's expense, be the entertainer 
 a Watts or a Pullinger, ripe for Portland, or a typical vulgarian of 
 the Hibernian- American t\-pe ; always ready for ortolans and cham- 
 pagne, for turtle and whitebait, for a saturnalia on a house-boat at 
 Henlej", or an orgie at the Continental. Always ready : ready as 
 the vultures are ready, for dead hero or dead dog, when the scent of 
 the carrion is wafted to them from afar oft" on the wings of the wind. 
 
 Gerard strolled slowly, very slowly, up the hill to the big brand 
 new caravansary where the electric light gave something of that 
 elfin brilliancy which suggests the halls of Eblis. Slowly as he 
 walked up that brief ascent, carefully graduated by artful windmgs 
 for the footsteps of the weak-lunged, he was breathless when he 
 arrived in the vestibule, and had to rest for a few minutes before he 
 could give his orders to the manager. 
 
 "A supper — all that there is of the best — for, say, a party of 
 twenty. Do all you can in fifteen minutes. You can give us those 
 little green oysters, and plenty of them. Chateau Yquem, Clos 
 Vougeot. For champagne, well, Heidsec or G. H. Mumm — but I 
 leave the details to you and my friend Mr. Jermyn. Be sure there 
 are lights and flowers .in the loggia. And if you can get us any 
 music worth hearing so much the better." 
 
 " There are the Neapolitan singers, monsieur ; I dare say we can 
 find them." 
 
 " Fanicoli, funicola, I suppose. C^est connu, but it will be better 
 than nothing." 
 
 Before the stroke of midnight he was sitting at a supper table 
 crowded with roses and azaleas, stephanotis and lihes of the valley, 
 and surrounded with the fine flower of the Parisian demi-monde. 
 What a fairy ring of bright eyes and jewels as dazzling, of eccentric 
 and exquisite toilettes, the very newest colours in fashion's ever- 
 changing rainbow ; a general abandonment to the delight of the
 
 The IVoi'ld, the Flesh, and the Devil. 277 
 
 hour; not ticious— for even sinners are not always bent on sin — 
 but unrestrained ! What light laughter ; what frank, joj'ous jesting ; 
 airy sentences which in that particular environment sounded like 
 epigrams, but which would seem witless in print ; lightest talk of 
 the Paris theatres, the dramas that had succeeded, Heaven knows 
 why, the brOHant comedies which had gone out in the foul smoke 
 of ridicule, failure, and disappointment ; the intrigues in the great 
 world and the half-world ; the undiscovered crimes ; the impending 
 disasters ! These careless speakers discussed everything, and decided 
 everji;hing, from dynasties to dressmakers. 
 
 Gerard Hillersdon relished that light touch-and-go of the Celtic 
 intellect, trained to folly, but folly spiced with wit. He had tried 
 pleasure in London, and had foimd it dull and dreary. The ladies 
 he met at the Small Hours were mostly so intent upon being ladies 
 that they forgot to be amusing. The days were past of that fair 
 mauvaise-langue who charmed the peerage, and whose sturdy 
 British bon-mots were circulated over ci^nlised Europe, plagiarised 
 in Paris, and appropriated in Vieima. He had sought wild gaiety, 
 and he had found decent dulness. Here, the spirit of fun was not 
 wanting, and the joyous laughter of his guests was loud enough to 
 drown the voices of the Neapolitans in the loggia, yea, even the 
 twanging of their guitars. And by-and-by the Neapolitans were 
 pushed into a corner, and bidden to twang only waltzes, and those 
 loveliest women in Paris were revolving in rhythmical movement in 
 the arms of the keen, clever men, of no particular profession, who 
 constituted their travelling body-guard. Gerard took two or three 
 turns with a lovely German girl, with a creamy complexion and 
 innocent blue eyes, who had done little more than smile sweetly upon 
 the contest of wit and animal spirits, and who was said to have rince 
 (Anghce, beggared) one of the wealthiest Jew bankers of Frankfort. 
 
 He could not stand more than those two or three gentle turns to 
 a slow three-time waltz, and he sat in the loggia breathless and 
 exhausted, while the fair Lottchen tiipped away to her friends and 
 told them that it was finished with yonder cretin, who would very 
 soon find his way to the Boulanger. 
 
 " En attendant, he has given us a capital supper," replied a lady 
 who was called Madme. la Marquise in societj', but plain Jeanuette 
 Foy in all legal documents. " I hope he will leave us money for 
 mourning. Moi,je me trouve ravissante en noir !'''' 
 
 Gerard enjoyed the restful solitude of the loggia for half an hour, 
 the fun within having waxed fast and furious, and his guests being 
 somewhat oblivious of his existence. Yes, it was a wild whirl of 
 mirthful abandonment which verily suggested the witches' danco
 
 278 Gerard ; or, 
 
 upon the haunted hills. There were little spurts of malignity now 
 and again from the lips of beauty, which were like the red mouse 
 that dropped out of the rosy girlish mouth. Gerard watched this 
 pandemonium from the cool seclusion of the loggia, while the 
 Neapolitans played languidly, and even dozed over their guitars, 
 with an occasional automatic twang. Yes, it was like a witches' 
 Sabbath, or like a dance of wicked spirits in the halls of Eblis. 
 Thank Heaven, in that gaudy, many-coloured crowd, amidst the 
 flashing of diamonds and waving of plumed fans, and flutter of silk 
 and lace, there was no ghastly warning vision of his absent love, 
 that Hester whom he had loved so fondly and left so heartlessl}'. 
 
 He pictured her in the wind-swept garden by the river, where the 
 March skies were grey and gloomy, and the hyacinths were shiver- 
 ing in the nipping air. Why was she not with him here ? Why 
 was she not sitting by his side, they two alone, looking out over the 
 sleeping town, the colony of white villas in the crescent-shaped 
 hollow, the old, old steep-roofed houses and twin-towered cathedral, 
 yonder on the jutting rock ? Why were they not together in the star- 
 shine of the balmy night ; here, as they had been on the starlit river 
 last year, all in all to each other, knowing no duty, no religion, no law 
 but to adore each other ? It was her own fault that they were parted. 
 Had she been with him, these ribald revellers would not have been 
 there. He would have found enough happiness in her sweet society. 
 He had never changed to her. It was she who had changed to him. 
 
 He was glad to have escaped from that atmosphere of remorse, 
 glad to be on his way to his first love, glad most of all to be in this 
 fairer world, by the side of the sea of deathless memories, glad to be 
 under these brighter stars. Even foUy was pleasant to him as a 
 relief from too much thought. When his new acquaintances of the 
 night remembered his existence so far as to come out into the loggia 
 to take leave, in the faint roseate glow of approaching day, he 
 invited the fairest and wittiest among them to breakfast with him. 
 
 "Not to-morrow, but to-day," lie said; "Jermyn must devise 
 new pleasures for us — picnics, excursions, by sea or mountahi. I 
 mean my brief stay here to be all holiday— if you will help me." 
 
 He held tlie fair Bavarian's hand in his, while the bright black 
 eyes and white teeth of the pug-nosed Comtesse Iligolboche smiled 
 down upon him. 
 
 " I had booked my place in the train de luxe for to-morrow," said 
 Eigolbochc, " but I'll change the date, and stay here as long as you do. 
 We'll all help you to conjugate the verb rujoler. Eujolons, rvjohz." 
 
 Tlie other voices took up the word, and the revellers departed to 
 a chorus of " Higolons, rigolez."
 
 TJie IVorld, the Flesh, and the Devil. 279 
 
 Mr. Jermyn was equal to the occasion. He ordered dejeuners 
 and dinners. He elicited the talents of the chef, he taxed the re- 
 sources of the well-found hotel. He kept the telegi'aph wires 
 employed between Monte Carlo and Nice, Marseilles, and Paris, and 
 choicest dainties were expressed along the line. Alternating with 
 messages that involved life and health, fortune, all that is gravest 
 in the destiny of man, flew orders for Perigord pies or monster 
 lobsters, Chasselas grapes, Alpine strawbemes, oysters, ortolans, 
 quails. Everything JermjTi touched was successful, and that week 
 at Monte Carlo was a triumph of gourmandise and unld amusement. 
 The hills echoed with the songs of the revellers ; the sea waves 
 danced to the music of their laughter as they sailed round the point 
 of Rocque Brune, or lay becalmed in the sheltered Gulf of Ospeda- 
 letti. The weather was exquisite — that perfect atmosphere of 
 spring-time on the Riviera which makes one forget that those lovely 
 shores have ever been \'isited by mistral and sirocco, rain and sleet. 
 It was earthquake weather, Justin Jermyn said, remembering how 
 fair had been that Febniary which was startled by an appalling 
 shock of earthquake. He told them that this glad, beautiful shore 
 was preparing itself for just such another convulsion, but the joyous 
 band laughed him to scorn. 
 
 " K a great pit were to open in this mountain and swallow us all 
 alive I should not care," said Rigolboche, emptying her glass with a 
 piquant turn of her wrist and small neat hand. '* J'ai vecu. I have 
 lived my life." 
 
 Hillersdon sighed. How lightly this woman thought of life, while 
 he counted each vanishing hour, and clung with longing desire to 
 the remnant of his days, and could not resign himself to the in- 
 evitable end, could not bring himself to say, " I have lived, and 
 am content to die." 
 
 Lijttchen, the Bavarian girl, had attached herself to him with 
 devotion since that first waltz when she had spoken of him with such 
 brutal scorn. She had gone from scorn to pity, and pity had 
 deepened into love. In all their revellings she tried to be near him, 
 hung upon his footsteps, sought his society. Her soft, clinging ways 
 touched his heart, but that heart was cold to all her charms. She 
 was no more to him than a pretty child by the roadside, holding up 
 a handful of flowers as his carriage drove by. 
 
 Rigolboche, too, the reckless and brilliant Rigolboche, who spent 
 more money and who owed more than any lady of her set, tried all 
 the keenest weapons of her wit upon the detix-fois millionaire — des 
 millions sterling, bien entendu — but the wit of the Parisienne had 
 no more power to fascinate Gerard Hillersdon than the blonde love-
 
 28o Gerard ; or, 
 
 liness of the Bavarian. It may be that he had outlived the power 
 of loving; that in his intensified anxiety for his own hfe all other per- 
 sonalities had become indifferent. If he was looking forward eagerly 
 to reunion with Edith Champion it was because to that reunion he 
 hoped to recover the freshness of his vanished youth, to become 
 once again hopeful and full of energy, as in the days that were gone. 
 
 The spirits which Jermyn had assembled served to amuse the 
 man who felt himself doomed, and that was much. That circle of 
 bright faces shut out the dark images which were wont to press 
 round him when he was alone. That festal companionship made 
 thought impossible ; and when the jight of revelry ended, mostly on 
 the edge of day, Gerard Hillersdon was so thoroughly wearied that 
 he slept more soundly than he had done for along time. 
 
 There was pleasure, too, in the knowledge that he was spending 
 his money. The more lavish the entertainment, the more extrava- 
 gant the feast, the better was he pleased. Earely had the boatmen 
 of la Condamine fared as they fared with him. It was his delight 
 to see them rioting on the surplus of the banquet, devouring quails at 
 a mouthful, swilling the costliest wines, digging their rude clasp-knives 
 into pies that had come by express train from Chevet. He flung 
 gold pieces about with the lavish bounty of an Indian Rajah. The 
 waiters at the hotel fawned upon him as if he had been an emperor ; 
 the manager addressed him in hushed accents as if he had been a god. 
 
 He spent an hour at the rooms every evening. He liked to see 
 his syrens play, and he supplied them with the funds for their 
 ventures at the trente et quarante tables. For his own part he 
 played no more after the first evening. The game did not interest 
 him, but the jjlayers did. So he moved about quietly, or stood in 
 the background, and watched the faces in the lamplight. 
 
 The little elderly woman with the dark haggard eyes was generally 
 in the same place near the dealer, her bonnet always badly put on and 
 carelessly tied, her lean, ungloved hands not conspicuously clean. 
 Gerard derived a sinister pleasure from his observations of this 
 woman. She was a study in morbid anatomy. All the forces of her 
 being were concentrated upon the card-table. There were nights 
 when she was radiant, glorified, as if some supernal lamp were burning 
 behind the dull olive complexion, and flashing through the dark Italian 
 eyes. There were other nights when her face had a marble fixity, which 
 would have been like death had not the unceasing movement of the 
 anxious eyes made that marble mask more awful than death. Gerard 
 found after a time that this woman was conscious of being observed, 
 that, in spite of the concentration of all her faculties upon the gaming 
 tablCj she had a restlessness under scrutiny, a nervous apprehension
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 281 
 
 which showed itself from time to time in birdlike glances in his 
 direction, or in an angry movement of the head or shoulders. He 
 tried, perceiving this, to disguise his interest, and watched her 
 furtively, hoping to escape observation. He had noted that on the 
 thin black cord on which her pince-nez hung she had one of those 
 horn-shaped corals which the Italian peasant deems a charm against 
 the evil eye, and he had noted how as he passed near her on two 
 or three occasions she had clutched this talisman in her skinny 
 fingers, automatically, as if moved by an instinct of self-defence. 
 
 It was his last night at Monte Carlo, and the eve of a water picnic 
 which was to signalise his departure, and was to be the bouquet in 
 the series of entertainments organised by Justin Jermyn. He had 
 spent half an hour at a jeweller's on the hiU, and had chosen farewell 
 gifts for the syrens, includmg a superb diamond hoop for the slim round 
 wrist of Lbttchen, in whose eyes he had seen tears of real tenderness 
 yesterday when a violent access of his cough had left him speechless 
 and exhausted. For every tear he would give her a diamond of 
 purest water, and yet would think her tears poorly recompensed. 
 
 He went down to the rooms for the last time that season. Would 
 he ever see those rooms again, he wondered, at any season ? Were 
 not all seasons fast closing for him : or would science, aided by 
 wealth, patch up these feeble lungs of his, and spin out the frail 
 thread of existence yet a few more years in the summer lands of 
 earth ? He would go anywhere ; to the South Seas, to the West 
 Indies, to the Himalayas ; anywhere only to live ; and he told him- 
 self that Edith Champion would deem no land a place of exile where 
 they two could hve together. She had no other ties, no superior 
 claim of duty, or exaggerated filial love. Her sacrifice to her 
 husband's manes and to society's good opinion had been made. 
 Three-quarters of her year of widowhood were spent, and when she 
 saw what need he had of a wife's protecting companionship, she 
 would doubtless waive the remnant of that ceremonial year, and 
 marry him off-hand, at the Florentine Legation. 
 
 The thought of her was in his mind to-night. He had enjoyed his 
 week of folly ; the sound of the jester's bells had been sweet in his ear; 
 but ho was weary of that silvery jingle, and he looked forward with 
 pleasure to the sober luxuries and splendours of his life with Edith. 
 
 He was in treaty, through Justin Jermyn, for the Jersey Lily, 
 one of the finest yachts at Nice, and with this j'acht he and his 
 ^\-ife would make a tour of all the fairest ports of the Mediterranean 
 —lingering or hastening as caprice prompted. 
 
 The shabby little woman was at her post as usual, and one furtive
 
 282 Gerard ; or, 
 
 glance at her face told Gerard that luck had been against her. She 
 Jiad the rigid, death-like look he knew so well. He stood on the 
 (jpposite side of the table watching her — across the burly shoulders 
 of an English bookmaker, returning from a race-meeting in the 
 Roman Campagna, and loud in his denunciation of the pari-mutuel 
 sj'stem. Her bad luck continued. Stake after stake — ventiures which 
 had dwindled to the minimum morsel of gold — were swept away by 
 the inexorable rake, until she sat with clasped hands, watching and 
 not playing ; too well known an habituee to be asked to make way 
 for the players. The officials knew her ways, and that after sitting 
 Btatue-Uke during two or three deals she would rise slowly, as one 
 awakening from a painful dream, and walk quietly away — to reappear 
 the following night with money obtained none knew how. 
 
 Gerard felt in his breast pocket for a bundle of notes, and went 
 round the table towards the back of the lady's chair, intending to 
 push the money quietly into her hand, and to vanish before she 
 had recovered from lier surprise at his action ; but his mtention 
 was frustrated, for as his hand brushed against her shoulder she 
 started up suddenly as if she had been stung, and turned upon him 
 with eyes that burnt like coals of fire in her pallid face. The 
 rapidity of her movement and that burning gaze disconcerted him. 
 He drew back in confusion. 
 
 The lady advanced upon him as he retreated, until they were 
 at some distance from the tables, away from the glare of the lamps. 
 Then she stopped, fixing him with her fiery eyes. 
 
 " You do not appear to be an ardent gambler, monsieur," she said. 
 
 " No, madame, I am not a gambler. Trente et quarante is utterly 
 without interest for me." 
 
 " Why then do you haunt these rooms? " 
 
 " I come to observe others, and to be amused." 
 
 " Amused by evil passions which you do not share, amused as 
 devils are amused with the vices and passions of humanity. Do 
 you not know that yom- presence here is odious, that your glances 
 bring misfortune wherever they rest ? " 
 
 " I do not know why that should be. I have no malicious inten- 
 tion. I am only a looker-on." 
 
 " So is death a looker-on at the game of life, knowing that sooner 
 or later he must win. Your presence here is fatal, for there is 
 death in your face ; and since this room was not built for idle 
 observers, but for business-like players, you will be doing everybody 
 a favour by absenting yourself in future. I am assured that I have 
 expressed the desire of the whole assembly." 
 
 She made him a sweeping curtsey, drew her ragged shawl about
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 28 
 
 o 
 
 her shoulders, and passed him on her way to the door. He stood 
 ■with his packet of notes still in his hand, looking after her dumbly. 
 Yet one more voice to remind him of approaching doom. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVn. 
 
 "some little sound of uskegarded tears." 
 
 The farewell festival had been arranged by Justin Jennyn with 
 especial care. He had secured the Jersey Lily, the yacht for which 
 Gerard hankered. Her owner, a rich commercial man, was tired 
 of his plaything, and was glad to sell her to a purchaser who did 
 not drive a hard bargain. The yacht, a fine sailer, with auxiliary 
 steam, was iu full working order, and Gerard's first cruise was to 
 be this water picnic. For music Mr. Jermj'n was no longer content 
 with itinerant Neapohtans. He had engaged some of the best 
 performers at the famous concerts in the Casino. But his gi'eatest 
 success was with the floral decorations. In these he had surpassed 
 himself, while he had ransacked the Algerian shops on the hill for 
 Oriental fabrics, gay \nth. gold and colour, and glittering with morsels 
 of looking-glass, to di'ape cabins and poop. 
 
 March was drawing to an end, and the weather was delicious, the 
 April summer of the South, weather that would make even the dull 
 flats of Essex or Norfolk enchanting, but which over that lovely 
 land breathes an intoxicating influence, giving to age the gladness 
 of youth, to weakness the pride of strength. 
 
 Lunch was over, and the yacht was lying to in the roadstead of 
 Antibes. Some of the more entei-prising of the partj^ had been 
 rowed ashore, and had set out on a pilgrimage to the church on the 
 height — the church with its curious votive pictures, shoAving the 
 Madonna's merciful interposition in all the perils of life, from a 
 headlong fall out of a garret window to the overturning of a bicycle. 
 Less active and exploring spirits were content to loll upon the deck, 
 where low chairs and luxm-ious cushions invited slumberous ease. 
 Fans were waving languidly in the golden light of afternoon, as if 
 in time to the languid movement of the water fanned by the western 
 •wnnd. On one side stretched the long level seafront of Nice, with 
 its line of white villas flashing in the sunlight, far off to the rock 
 crowned with the hghthouse, and that jutting point which shuts off 
 the eastern sky towards Villefranche and St. Jean. 
 
 Gerard was in high spirits. He wanted to drain this cup of 
 casual pleasures to the dregs. He wanted to steep himself in the 
 loveliness of a coast which he might never look upon again. It 
 was bliss only to stand upon the deck as the yacht lay at anchor
 
 284 Gerard ; or, 
 
 and gaze upon that nol)le range of hills, with varied lights and 
 shadows flitting across them, and that fair subtropical Eden in the 
 middle distance, where the sapphire sea kissed the low, level shore 
 — a smiling land of aloes and palms, orange groves, and grey-green 
 olive woods, with here and there white walls and pinnacles gleam- 
 ing amidst the green. It was enough of bliss only to breathe such 
 an atmosphere and feel the inexpressible beauty of earth. 
 
 " How happy you look to-day ! " said Lottchen, watching the giver 
 of the feast, as he leaned against the gimwale, and looked dreamily 
 across the harbour to the rugged hill, along whose crest straggles the 
 old-world city of Vence. 
 
 They two were alone in the bows, while the rest of the party 
 were congregated in a joyous group in the stem, whence there 
 came at intervals the deep, grave music of a 'cello, and the plaintive 
 singing sound of violins in a serenade by Schubert. Pensive music, 
 light laughter, floated towards these two on the summer wind. 
 The German gii'l had followed Gerard when he withdrew from the 
 noisy herd, leaving the inexhaustible Jermyn as its central figure, 
 inspiring and sustaining the general mirth with that joyous laugh 
 of his. Lottchen had stolen after Gerard, uninvited ; but he was 
 not so ungallant as to let her suppose that she was unwelcome. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " happy, but with only a sensuous happiness — 
 the happiness of a well-cared-for cat basking and blinking in the 
 sun ; happiness which vanishes at tlie first touch of thought. I am 
 basking in the beauty of my Mother Earth, and if I think at all 
 my only thought is that it would be sweet to live for ever — soulless, 
 mindless, immortal — amidst such scenes as these ; to hve as the 
 olives live on the slope of yonder hill, breathing the sweetness of 
 this balmy air, feeling the glad warmth of this bounteous sun." 
 
 " It would be very dull after a week or two," said Lottchen, " and 
 then what is life without love ? " 
 
 " Life is much more than love. See how utterly happy children 
 are in the enjoj'ment of the universe, and they know nothing of 
 love — or at least of the passion to which you and I attach that 
 name. To my fancy, this world would be perfect if we could be 
 immortal and always children. That is the world of the elder gods. 
 The deities of the rivers and the mountains, water-nymphs and 
 wood-nymphs, what were they all but grown-up children, drunken 
 with the sweetness and glory of life ? But for us poor worms, 
 whose ever}' breath brings us nearer to the inevitable grave, what 
 can this exquisite earth, with its infinite variety of lovehness, he 
 but a passing show ? We look, and long for its beauty ; and even 
 as we look it fades and melts into the dark. It is lovely still, but
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 285 
 
 we are gone. Some one else will be watching those hills next year, 
 some one as young as I am, and, like me, doomed to die in his youth." 
 
 Lbttchen was silent. Tears were streaming do%vn the fair cheek 
 when Gerard turned to look at her. 
 
 She was lovely, engaging, sentimental — all that might charm a 
 lover : but she left his heart cold as marble. Simply dressed in some soft 
 fabric of purest white, and with a little white sailor hat perched on the 
 artistic fluffiness of her flaxen hair, she looked the image of innocent 
 girlhood, unspotted by the world. A man might easily forget all her 
 history in such a moment as this, seeing the tears streaming from 
 the large lucid eyes, the tender lips tremulous with emotion. 
 
 " Do not waste your tears or your sympathy upon me, Friiulein," 
 Gerard said gently. '' Weep only for the dying who do not grieve 
 for themselves. I am utterly selfish, and am consumed by regi-et 
 for my own doom." 
 
 "You might live longer, perhaps, if you were more careful of 
 yourself," she said. 
 
 "There is no care that I would not take to live. It is only 
 because I know the case is hopeless that I have given myself up. 
 There is nothing left for me but concentrated pleasures. There 
 ouo'ht to be a melted pearl in every glass of wine I drink. And 
 you have given me your pity — and pity from you has been sweet." 
 
 " Pity ! " she echoed, with a deep sigh. " Well, call it pity, if 
 you Hke." 
 
 He took a little velvet case from his pocket, and opened it in the 
 sunlight. It seemed in that first flash of vivid light as if he had 
 opened a box of sunshine more brilliant than those rays that danced 
 upon the waves and turned the mountain clay to gold. The sun- 
 light flashed back from the diamond circlet with rainbow glory, 
 rose and emerald, violet, orange, blue. 
 
 •' These diamonds are for your tears, Frliulein. Will you wear 
 them sometimes as a souvenir of a dying man ? " 
 
 She held out her arm as he unclasped the diamond circlet. It 
 was a lovely arm, fair as alabaster, exquisitely modelled, dazzling 
 to look upon as the soft white fabric fell away from it, and arm 
 and wTist and tapering hand lay there, beautiful in the sunshine. 
 There were those among Mdlle. Charlotte's admirers who declared 
 that her arm and hand were her crowning beauty, and nearer the 
 perfection of Greek sculpture than any other hand and arm in Paris. 
 
 Gerard clasped the diamond hoop upon the slender WTist, as it 
 lav in languid grace upon the gunwale — clasped it without a word, 
 and waited with calm indifference for the gush of gratitude which 
 usually greets such gifts ; but Lottchen's lips were speechless. She
 
 286 Gerard; 01% 
 
 let her wrist lie for a minute or so where his fingers had hghtly 
 touched it as he clasped the hracelet, and then, with an inarticulate 
 cry of grief or rage, she tore the snap asunder, and flung the flashing 
 circlet into the sea. 
 
 " Do you think 1 care anything for your diamonds, when you care 
 nothing for me ? " she cried, and then ran away to the cabin, which 
 had been made into a miniature zenana for Jermyn's bevj' of 
 gultanas, and emerged therefrom no more tiU the boat retiuned 
 to ]\Ionte Carlo in the moonlight, minus Gerard Hillersdon, who 
 landed at Antibes, in order to be in time for the express for Genoa, 
 which left Nice before sundo\ra. 
 
 That little outbreak of Lottchen's touched him more than her 
 beauty or her tears. " Queen Guinevere in httle," he said to Imnself, 
 as he looked after the retreating figure. "I suppose women are 
 alike all the world over. Dick Steele best described the sex when 
 he called woman ' a beautiful romantic animal.' There is a spice 
 of romance in them all — even in the most experienced demi- 
 mondaine in Paris. Poor Lijttchen ! " 
 
 He saw her no more, for she was not among those who crowded 
 to the side of the yacht to see him drop into the dinghy. Her fair 
 hand was not among those which waved him farewell as the row- 
 boat moved swiftly towards the shore. 
 
 " A riverdervi next week at Florence," cried Jermyn ; and from 
 the quay where he landed Gerard looked back and saw the Fate- 
 reader's hssom figure sharply defined against the sk}- as he stood on 
 a raised portion of the deck, with the syrens grouped about him. 
 
 It was in the sunset that Gerard bade farevcell to the western 
 Riviera, and set his face towards Genoa. Never can that lovely 
 sliore look lovelier than just at that season of the year — than just 
 at that hour of dying day. Over all the liills there lay tlie reflected 
 flush from that crimson glory lingering yonder above the dark ridge 
 of the Esterelles; over all tlie gardens, with their purple-red bloom 
 of BongainviUiers, their luxury of roses white and^yellow, there 
 hung the glamour of sunset ; and over all the eastern sky spread an 
 opaline splendour flecked with little rosy cloudlets, which looked 
 like winged creatures full of exultant life, higli up in that enchanted 
 heaven. By every form of bay and inlet ; by every delicate and 
 gracious curve that the seashore can make, by rosy rock and 
 shadowy olive wood, by every entrancing change from light to 
 colour and from colour to light, the train sped onwards to the dark- 
 ness of fortress-crowned Ventimiglia, where there was nearly half an 
 uour's weariness and confusion, wliile !Mr. Hillersdou's servant did
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Deznl. 287 
 
 battle with the Custom House officers, and transferred his master 
 and his master's baggage to the Italian train. Then came a restless 
 endeavour to slumber, more fatiguing than absolute wakefulness, and 
 finally midnight and Genoa, where the traveller rested for a night. 
 
 He was in Florence on the following afternoon, and the first idea 
 with which that city inspired him was that he had left summer 
 behind him. Some there are to whom the western Ei\iera is the 
 supreme perfection of ItaUan landscape, and to whom all other spots 
 seem cold and sombre as compared with that rich loveliness. Some 
 there are who think that the chief glory of Italy is wanting when 
 they have turned their back upon the Mediterranean, and that all tbat 
 history, legend, and the fine arts can yield of interest and beauty is 
 tame and dull compared with the magic of that sapphire sea, and 
 the romantic variety of those rugged hills which look down upon it. 
 
 Gerard, walking through the streets of Florence on a gi-ey March 
 afternoon — March as chill and windy as he had ever known in 
 Piccadilly — felt that a glamour had gone out of his hfe, and a 
 warmth had left his veins. How dull the houses looked on the 
 Lung'arno, palatial no doubt, all that the soul of an architect could 
 desire; but are there not palatial houses in Piccadilly and Kensington? 
 How grey the river, rushing over its weirs ; how cold the colouring 
 of the stone bridge ; how bleak the snow line of the Apennines ! 
 Tired as he was after the long journey from Genoa, he had preferred 
 to walk to his destination, leaving servant and luggage to be driven to 
 the Hotel de la VOle, where his rooms had been engaged for him. 
 
 He had given Mrs. Champion no notice of his arrival. He 
 wanted to take her by surprise, to see in her face that he had lost 
 nothing of the love wliich was his a year ago. He had had his 
 caprice — had given aU that was warmest and best in his natm'e to 
 another woman ; and now he wanted to take up the thread of life 
 Avhere he had dropped it a year ago, when he followed Hester 
 Davenport across St. James' Park, and felt the swift, sudden 
 influence of love at first sight. He wanted to love again, in the old, 
 reasonable, sober fashion ; he wanted again to feel the mild affection 
 which had sustained his interest in Edith Champion during the three 
 years of her wedded hfe. 
 
 Her house was on the side of the hiU leading to San Miniato — a 
 villa in a delicious garden, where the magnolia buds shone silver- 
 white amid the dark glossy leafage, and where broad beds of flame- 
 coloured tulips relieved the velvet monotony of the lawn, while a tall 
 hedge of pink jieonies shivered in that scathing Florentine wind which 
 has not been ill described as an east wind blowing from the west. 
 
 It was a long walk from the station to that verdure-clothed hill
 
 288 Gerard; or, 
 
 on the southern side of the river, and Gerard was very weary when 
 he arrived at the Villa Bel Yisto, which overlooked the Boboli 
 Gardens, and all the glory of Cupola and Campanile, far away to 
 those fair hills northward of the city. On a sunny day the prospect 
 would have cheered him with its beauty ; but under this cold, grey 
 British sky even dome and bell-tower lost something of their 
 soothing influence, and Gerard regretted the sun-baked slopes above 
 ^Monaco, where he seemed to have left summer behind him. 
 
 The gates stood wide open, and there were a good many smart 
 carriages waiting in the semicircular drive. The hall door was also 
 open, while a distinctly British footman aired his idleness on the 
 broad flight of marble steps, and looked with supercilious gaze upon 
 the opposite hills. Gerard passed into the house uninterrogated, 
 and found himself in a vestibule, from which several doors opened. 
 The light was dim, the atmosphere warm with the friendly glow of 
 a wood fire, and beyond, through half open doors, he heard the 
 subdued murmm'ings of voices, mostly feminine, which suddenly 
 dropped into silence as he approached, silence broken by the flowing 
 phrases of a symphony, and then by a fine baritone attacking the 
 fashionable lament — Vorrei morir. A majordomo, tall, handsome, 
 and Tuscan, stood near the lofty folding doors, ready to announce 
 visitors, and looked interrogatively at Mr. Hillersdon, who waited 
 in silence till the end of the song. 
 
 Mrs. Champion was evidently receiving — it might be an afternoon 
 party, or perhaps only her " day." Her later letters had told him 
 of a few Florentine acquaintances, who dropped in occasionally to 
 cheer her solitude ; but he was unprepared for the crowd of well- 
 dressed women and distinguished-looking men amidst whom he 
 found himself when Tosti's pensive strain had died in a prolonged 
 diminuendo, and he allowed the major-domo to announce him. 
 
 The afternoon light shone full upon a window which occupied 
 nearly one side of the spacious drawing-room, and in this light 
 (xerard saw Edith Champion standing in a group of elegant women 
 of various nationalities — herself the handsomest of all, like an 
 empress among her ladies of honour. She wore deepest black, but 
 the heavy folds of the rich corded silk suggested gi-andeur rather than 
 gloom, and the tulle coif, d la Mane Stuart, only gave a piquancy to 
 the coronet of plaited hair which rose above her low, broad brow. 
 
 She started at the sound of her lover's name, and hun-ied to 
 meet liim. 
 
 " Welcome to Florence," she cried gailj', " though there is no one 
 in the world whom I less expected to see. Have you only just come ? " 
 
 " I have been in Florence less than an hour."
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 289 
 
 Her hand was iu his, her lips were parted in a pleased smile, but 
 as he came into the light of the wide window, he saw her expression 
 change suddenly to a look of grieved surprise. He knew only too 
 well what that look meant, though she gave no utterance to her 
 thoughts. A year ago his friends frequently told him that he looked 
 ill ; but of late no one had told him so. He had only read in their 
 faces the evil augury which they saw in his face. 
 
 " I have come upon a festive occasion," he said, glancing round 
 at the crowd. 
 
 " Oh, it is only my afternoon at home. People are so sociable 
 in Florence. I have more people than usual to-day, because I let 
 my friends know that Signer Amaldi had promised to sing. May 
 I introduce him to you ? No doubt you heard of him in London 
 tlie season before last. He makes a sensation wherever he goes." 
 
 She beckoned to a small gentleman with fiery black eyes, and 
 a large moustache, who loUed against the gaily draped piano, the 
 centre of an admiring gi'oup, and the introduction was made. 
 
 Gerard knew enough Itahan to compliment the singer in his own 
 language without any grave offences against gi-ammatical laws, and 
 Signer Amaldi replied effusively, protesting that his musical gifts 
 were poor things, mere wayside weeds, which he delighted to cast 
 imder the feet of the most gracious of English ladies. 
 
 Anon the piano was taken prisoner by a cadaverous German, 
 with tawny hair, as closely cropped as if he were a fugitive from 
 Portland, and this gentleman expounded Chopin for the next half 
 hour, amidst general inattention. The two lOnglish footmen were 
 handing tea and chocolate, the women were whispering together 
 in corners, and from an adjoining room came the tinkling of silver 
 and glass at a hberally suppHed bufiet, at which a good many of 
 the guests had congregated. But stiU those Hungarian war cries, 
 those funereal wailings, shrieked and crashed, sobbed and sighed 
 from the hard-ridden piano, while the German played on for his 
 own pleasure and contentment, flinging up head and hands now 
 and then in a sudden rapture during a bar of silence, and then 
 swooping down upon the black notes like a bird of prey, and firing 
 a volley of minor chords that startled the chatterers at the buffet 
 and the whisperers in the comers of the salon. 
 
 During this musical interlude Edith and Gerard had time for a 
 confidential talk. 
 
 " I hardly expected to find you so gay," he said. 
 
 "Surely you don't call this gaiety— a little music and a few 
 pleasant people who have taken pity upon my solitude, and forced 
 their acquaintance upon me. Florence is a gloomy place if on© 
 
 o
 
 290 Gerard ; or, 
 
 does not know people. There is so little to do after one has 
 exhausted the galleries, and taken the three or four excursions 
 ■which are de rigueur. But now you and the spring have come we 
 can take all the old excursions together, bask in the sunshine at 
 Fiesole,and buy perfumery from the dear old monks at the Certosa. 
 I am so glad you have come." 
 
 "And yet you commanded me not to come until your year of 
 mourning was ended. You refused to abate a single week." 
 
 '• One is glad sometimes to have one's commands disobeyed. But 
 teU me what made you come. "Why did you disobey? " 
 
 " Because my yearning for you was stronger than my obedience. 
 I was utterly miserable, and I longed to see you." 
 
 " I am afraid you have been neglecting your health while I have 
 been away," she said, looking at him earnestly. 
 
 " I have been aiUng — but I am well now that I am with you. I 
 look to you and Italy for healing. I have bought a yacht, and I am 
 going to carry you off in it, as soon as the days are fair and long." 
 
 " That will not be till June, when my year of widowhood will be 
 over." 
 
 '' I am not going to wait for June. I am not going to wait for May. 
 I snap my fingers at Mrs. Gnmdy. If you can give tea-parties you 
 can marry me. My days of submission and waiting are over." 
 
 She laughed, and laid her hand gently upon his for a moment, 
 and looked at him, and then sighed, while her eyes filled with 
 sudden teal's. She rose huiTiedly and went away to talk to people 
 who were leaving, and for the nest quarter of an hour she was 
 standing near the door bidding her friends good-bye. 
 
 Gerard moved about the rooms restlessly, but discovered no one 
 whom he knew. He saw people looking at him with that quick 
 furtive air in which good breeding struggle with curiosity. Suddenly 
 he found himself in front of a large looking-glass, and saw himself 
 from head to foot in the foregrovmd of a group of weU-dressed people, 
 the women elegant and graceful, the men trim and well set-up. 
 
 How ghastly he looked, with his cadaverous cheeks and sunken 
 eyes, doubtless a natural result of that wild week at ^lonte Carlo ! 
 How shabby, too, he to whom taOors' bills were of no consequence, he 
 who in the days of his poverty had been the monitor of other young 
 men, distinguished for the sober perfection of his toilet. Xow, with 
 his clothes hanging slackly upon liis wasted frame, with the dust of 
 travel still upon him, he looked an ugly blot upon the splendid 
 elegance of Mrs. Champion's drawing-room. He went away hurriedly, 
 Blippmg out by the dining-room door, unseen by Edith. He meant 
 to have stayed and talked with her when the guests were gone, but
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 2C)i 
 
 a sudden disgust at life and at himself seized him as he contemplated 
 his face and figure in the tall Venetian glass ; and the thought of a 
 tete-a-tete with his sweetheart was no longer pleasant to him. 
 
 He was with her next morning, hefore luncheon, and on this 
 occasion the glass reflected at least a well-dressed man. He had 
 taken particular pains with his toilet, and the pale grey complet and 
 white silk tie had all the cool freshness of spring, while from the 
 chief florist's in the Via Tornabuoni he carried a large nosegay of 
 lilies of the valley and niphetos roses, as tribute to his mistress. 
 
 She welcomed him delightedly, and complimented him upon his 
 improved appearance. 
 
 " You were really looking ill yesterday," she said ; " a long dusty 
 railway journey is so exhausting. This morning you have renewed 
 your youth." 
 
 " And I mean to keep young, if I can. Am I over bold if I invite 
 myself to your dejeuner? " 
 
 " I should think you very foolish if you waited for me to invite 
 you. Come as often and as much as you can. Your knife and fork 
 shall be laid for every meal. Mj' sheep-dog will be on duty again 
 this afternoon. She has been at Siena with some clerical friends, 
 who insisted upon carrying her off to help them with her French 
 and Italian — both of which, by the way, are odious." 
 
 " Are sheep-dogs wanted in Florence ? I have been taught to 
 think that Florentine society asks no questions." 
 
 " That shows your insular ignorance. Good society in Florence 
 is like good society everywhere else." 
 
 " I understand. Severe virtue, tempered by Russian Princesses 
 and their cavuliere servente.^'' 
 
 They lunched tete-a-tete, under the protecting eyes of the major- 
 domo and the two British footmen, in funereal liveries and powdered 
 hair. There was no opportunity for confidential talk, nor did Gerard 
 desire anything better than this hght, airy gossip about people they 
 knew, and the ways and works of their own particular world, at 
 home and on the Continent, from Eoj^altics downwards. He enjoyed 
 this light talk. It seemed to him that he had left passion, with its 
 accompaniment of sorrow, on the shores of the Thames. To sit by 
 the wood fire in Mrs. Champion's salon, playing with her Russian 
 poodle, or turning over the newest French and German books, or 
 peeping into the dainty little vellum-bound Florentine classics on 
 the book-table, while the lady sat by the window and embroidered 
 flame-coloured azalias on a ground of sea-green satin, sufllced him. 
 He felt restful, and almost happy. He was as much at ease with 
 \ns fiancee as if they were old married people. He told her of his
 
 292 Gerard ; or, 
 
 yacht, and all its luxuries and modem improvements. He talked 
 of those sunny Greek isles which they were to visit together. 
 
 " I hope you will order some Greek gowns in your trousseau," he 
 said ; " I shall want you to dress like Sappho or Lesbia when we 
 are at Cyprus or Corfu." 
 
 " I will wear anything you like, but I think a neat tailor gown 
 made of w^hite serge would be smarter and more shipshape than 
 chiton or peplum." 
 
 The long afternoon was delightfid to Gerard, and in spite of 
 occasional anxious glances at her lover's face, Mrs. Champion 
 seemed happy. It was pleasant to talk of that summer tour in the 
 Greek Archipelago and the Golden Horn — how they v/ere to go to 
 this place or that to avoid undue heat ; how they were to bask in 
 the sun so long as his rays were agreeable ; and how, before the 
 days shortened again, they were to decide whether they would 
 winter in Algiers or in Egypt, or whether it might not please them 
 to travel further afield, to Ceylon, for instance, and that strange, 
 gorgeous, antique world of Hindostan. There was all the restful 
 consciousness of wealth underlying these day-dreams, the knowledge 
 that the cost of things could make no difference. 
 
 Mrs. Gresham came buzzing in at tea-time, and after having 
 endured her chatter about the Cathedral, the mosaics, the pictures, 
 and the table (TLote at Siena — including the wonder of wonders in 
 having met Mrs. Eawdon Smith, of Chelmsford, and her daughter — 
 for nearly an hour, Gerard took his leave, promising to return next 
 day to luncheon, and to drive to Fiesole with Mrs. Champion and 
 her cousin in the afternoon, pro\'ided the sun shone, which it had 
 not done since his arrival in Florence. 
 
 He went back to his hotel, and dined in the solitude of a spacious 
 salon overlooking the river and the Piazza. The candles were 
 lighted within, clusters of candles in two tall candelabra, which 
 brightened the table, but left the angles of the room in shadow. 
 Outside the three large windows the evening was pale and grey, and 
 in that soft greyness the lights on the old bridge and all along the 
 quays shone golden. 
 
 Gerard, who was seldom able to eat alone, left his meal and went 
 over to one of the windows. Ho opened the casement, and stood 
 looking out over the marble bridge, and the rushing weir, and listen- 
 ing to the evening sounds of Florence, with his elbows resting on 
 tlie red velvet cushion which covered the sill. First came the 
 tattoo, and the sound of soldiers marching in the piazza, the trumpet- 
 call repeated and then dying away in the distance ; and then the 
 sonorous bell of the church of All Saints filled the air, calling the
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 293 
 
 faithful to an evening service. It was Holy Week, and there were 
 services daily and nightly in the church yonder— lighted altars, 
 tapers innumerable, throngs of worshippers. 
 
 The bell ceased after a while ; and there was no sound but the 
 water rushing over the weir, or occasional footsteps across the 
 empty square. Then the bell pealed out again, slow, solemn, 
 funereal, and from a cloister beside the church issued the funeral 
 train in all its Florentine awfulness — hooded monks, flaming torches, 
 darkl}'- shrouded bier. Gerard shut the casement with angiy sudden- 
 ness, and went back to the deserted dinner-table. He had dismissed 
 all ser^nce. The wine flasks and untasted desert alone remained in 
 the light of the clustering candles. 
 
 The solitude within, the dismal tolling of the bell without, the 
 heavy colouring of the dimly lighted room, weighed upon his spirits. 
 He took up his hat and went out. The streets would be infinitely 
 more agreeable than that spacious emptiness within four walls. 
 
 The streets looked gay and bright in spite of Holy Week. Lighted 
 shop windows, people passing to and fro ; far better this than the 
 shadows of an empty room. There was neither opera nor theatre 
 open, or he would have sought distraction of that kind. Great 
 flaming posters announced various performances of the lowest music- 
 hall type, and strictly British. From these he recoiled. He passed 
 the lighted portico of a fashionable club, but did not test its hospitality. 
 He turned out of a broad street into a narrow one — a short cut to the 
 Piazza Santa Maria Novella. A flare of yellow light filled the further 
 end of the street. Something festal doubtless in defiance of Lent. 
 
 No, not festal. Again the black cowls, the flaming torches, the 
 darkly shrouded bier, and suddenly from Santa Maria yonder the slow 
 and solemn bell. He turned on his heel, retraced his steps quicklv, 
 emerged into the bright broad street he had just left, only to meet 
 another procession. Again the cowls, the torches, and the bier. 
 
 Florence was alive with funerals. There was nothing doing in 
 the city, it seemed to him, but the burial of the dead. These 
 funerals creeping through the night, mysterious under that uncertain 
 flare of the torches, made death more awful. He hun-ied away 
 towards the river, overtook an empty fly, and told the man to drive 
 him to Mrs. Champion's villa, as iast as a Florentine horse would 
 go. He felt a need of human companionship, of a warm, loving 
 heart beating against his own, his own which seemed cold and dead 
 as the hearts of those quiet sleepers who were being carried througli 
 the streets to-niglit. 
 
 " I am not fit to be alone," he told himself, as the light vehicle 
 rattled over the bridge to the Porta Roraana. '• I am full of vague
 
 294 Gcj'ard ; or, 
 
 apprehensions, lilie a child that has been frightened by his nurse. 
 What is that strange fear of children, I wonder, that innate horror 
 of something unexplained, indescribable ? What but the hereditary 
 dread of death, the infinite horror handed down from generation to 
 generation, a fear which precedes knowledge, an instinct which ante- 
 dates sense. In spite of Locke and all his school, there is one 
 innate idea, if only one, and that is the fear of death. The wolf, 
 the bear, the black man of the nurse's story, are all different images 
 of that one unthinkable form." 
 
 He was ashamed of his own weakness, which had been so shaken 
 by the passing of funerals in which he had no interest ; but that 
 tolling bell and those cowled monks had filled him with gloomy 
 fancies. He thought of the plague-stricken city of the fourteenth 
 century, and how Death held his court here while a few miles 
 away in the garden in Doccia's dell light-hearted ladies hstened to 
 stories that have become part and parcel of the world's poesy, and 
 then the song which he had heard yesterday in Mrs. Champion's 
 drawing-room recurred to him — 
 
 " ' Vorrei morir ' quando tramonta il sole, 
 Quando sui prato dormon le viole, 
 Lieta farebbe a Dio Talma ritorno, 
 A prlmavera e sui morir del giorno." 
 
 Alas, and alas ! would death be any sweeter to him because of 
 a lovely sunset, or a woodland starred with primroses and banks 
 purple with sweet-scented violets? What to him was spring or 
 winter if he must die ? Whether his last breath went forth on the 
 wings of the storm, like Cromwell's and Napoleon's, or whether 
 his fading eyes turned their last look upon the placid loveliness of 
 a summer evening in a pastoral country, could matter nothing to 
 him. Death meant the end — and death was unspeakably cruel. 
 
 Mrs. Champion and her cousin were sauntering in the garden 
 after dinner, in the light of the Easter moon, very tired of each 
 other's society, and even of the garden. Every life has these dim 
 evening hours, when there seems to bo nothing to live for. 
 
 " How good of you ! " cried Edith, recognising her lover in tho 
 moonlight. 
 
 There was a fountain in a shallow marble basin sending up its 
 waters from the shadow of surrounding foliage into the silvery light, 
 and near the fountain a broad marble bench with crimson cushions 
 spread upon it, where Mrs. Champion was wont to sit. She seated 
 herself on this bench to-night, and, after a few words of common- 
 place, Gerard took his place at her side, wiiile Mrs. Gresham discreetly 
 returned to the drawing-room, the poodle, and a Tauchnitz novel.
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 295 
 
 '■'You did not expect to see me so soon again, did you, Edith?" 
 
 " I did not expect — no — but I am so much the more glad." 
 
 " I coiild not live without you, I felt an aching wish to be with 
 some one who loves me — to feel that I have still some hold upon 
 warm human life." 
 
 And then he told her about the three funerals in the streets of 
 Florence. 
 
 '• Is it often so ? " he asked. " Does Florence swarm with 
 funerals ? " 
 
 " My dear Gerard," she exclaimed laughingly. " Three ! For a 
 city of two hundred thousand inhabitants ! Does that mean much? 
 It is only the torchlight and the Brothers .of the Misericordia that 
 impressed you. How superior to am-thing one sees in England ! 
 So mediaeval ! so paintable ! But don't let us talk of funerals." 
 
 " No, indeed ! I am here to talk of something widely different- 
 I want to talk of a wedding — our wedding, Edith. "^Tien is it to be ? " 
 
 "Next June, if you hke," she answered quietly. 
 
 " But I do not like. June is ages away. Who knows if we may 
 live to June. The monks may be carrying us through the dark 
 narrow sti-eets in the flare of their torches before June. I want you 
 to marry me to-morrow " 
 
 " Gerard, in Holy Week ! " 
 
 " What do I care for Holy Week ? But if you care, let us be 
 married on Easter Monday. We can start for Spezia after the 
 ceremony, and dine on board my yacht, in the loveliest harbour in 
 Europe. We can watch yonder moon shining on the ghostly 
 whiteness of the Carrara mountains, whiter, more picturesque, than 
 those snow-peaked Apennines." 
 
 " So soon ! " 
 
 "And why not soon?" he urged impatiently. "Edith, have I 
 not waited long enough ? Did I not consume my soul in three long 
 years of waiting ? Have I not wasted the best years of my youth 
 in silken dalliance, and frittered away any talents I ever possessed 
 upon the idlest of love-letters, in wliich I was forbidden to talk of 
 love ? Edith, I have been your slave — give me something for my 
 service before it is too late ! " 
 
 " You are such a despondent lover," she said, with a forced laugh. 
 
 " Despondent, no ; but I feel the need of your love. I feel that 
 I am isolated, that I cannot live without some stronger nature than 
 my own to lean upon, and that your character can supply all that 
 is wanting in mine. We ought to be happy, Edith. We have 
 youth, wealth, freedom, all the elements of happiness." 
 
 " Yes," she answered, with a faint sigh, " we ought to be happy."
 
 296 Gerard ; or, 
 
 " Let it be Monday, tlien. I will arrange all details." 
 " Easter Monday ! What a vulgar day for a wedding ! " 
 " Is it vulgar ? No matter, our marriage will be performed so 
 quietly that hardly any one will know anything about it till they 
 Bee the announcement in the Times^ 
 
 " Well, it must be as you like. You have been very good and 
 devoted to me in all these years, and I don't think I shall be 
 wanting in respect to my poor James, if I consent to marry you in 
 AprU instead of June, though I dare say my sisters and people will 
 talk. And as for my trousseau, I have plenty of gowns that will 
 do well enough for your yacht. You must take me to Palestine, 
 Gerard. I have always longed to see the Holy Land." 
 
 "You shall go wherever you like. You shall be captain and 
 commander of the Jersey Lily,^'' he answered, bending down to 
 kiss the beautiful hand that moved in slow measure, waving a 
 feather fan. " She shall sail wherever you order her." 
 
 They went into the house after this, and found Rosa Gresham 
 yawning over her novel, and the poodle yawning on his bearskin 
 rug. Nothing could have been less romantic than this final wooing ; 
 and if Gerard had not been too self-absorbed to observe keenly, he 
 must have been struck by the contrast between !Mrs. Champion's 
 manner to-night and in old days in Hertford Street. 
 
 They drove through the dust and shabbiness of the outskirts of 
 Florence next day, and up to the hill-top, where Fiesole, the mother 
 city, hangs like an eagle's nest against a background of cloudless blue. 
 
 The day was steeped in sunshine and balmiest air, and it was a 
 happiness to escape from Lenten Florence, with her solemn bells, to 
 this winding road which went cUmbing upward by terraced gardens, 
 and cj'press hedges, and banks that glowed with tulips and anemones, 
 and fields where the young corn shone tender-green in the sunlight. 
 
 Here, while the horses rested, Mrs. Gresham went to explore the 
 cathedral, leaving Edith and Gerard free to climb the steep path 
 to the little grove on the top of the hill, where a steep flight of 
 rugged stone steps lead up to the Franciscan convent and the church 
 of St. Alessandro. Slowly, and very slowly, Gerard mounted that 
 stony way, leaning on Edith Champion's arm, with sorely labouring 
 breath. He stopped, breathless and exhausted, in front of an open 
 shop, where an old man was mending shoes, who at once laid down 
 his work, and brought out a chair for the tired Englishman. 
 Edith entreated him to go no further, tried to persuade him that 
 tlie view was quite as fine from the point they had reached as from 
 the summit, but ho persisted, and after resting for a few minutes.
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 297 
 
 he tossed a five franc piece to the civil cobbler — leaving him over- 
 powered at the largeness of the donation — and went labouring up 
 the few remaining yards to the dusty little terrace, where a group 
 of noisy Germans and a group of equally noisy Americans were 
 expatiating upon the panorama in front of them. 
 
 He sank panting upon the rough wooden bench, and Edith sat 
 by his side in silence, holding his hand, which was cold and damp. 
 
 A deadly chill crept into her heart as she sat there, hand in 
 hand with the man whose life was so soon to be joined with her life. 
 The same vague horror had crept over her two days ago, when she 
 had stood face to face with her lover in the clear afternoon light, 
 and had seen the ravages which less than a year had made in his coun- 
 tenance — had seen that which her fear told her was the stamp of death. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVni. 
 
 "COL'LD TWO DAYS LIVE AGAIN OF THAT DEAD YEAE." 
 
 There were necessary delays which postponed the marriage till 
 the end of the coming Easter week, and the panic caused by tolling 
 bells and torchlight funerals having passed away, Gerard was less 
 impatient, willing indeed that events should follow a natural course. 
 Yet although the fever of impatience had spent itself, there was no 
 looking backward, no remorseful thought of her whose character 
 would be blasted for ever by this act of his, or of the unborn child 
 whose future he might have shielded from the chances of evil. 
 Not once did he contemplate the possibility of obtaining his release 
 from Edith Champion, by a full confession of that other tie which 
 to her womanly feeling would have been an insuperable bar to their 
 marriage. All finer scruples, all the instincts of honour and of pity 
 were lost in that tremendous self-love which, seeing life shrinking 
 to narrowest limits, was intent on one thing only, to make the most 
 of the life that remained to him, the Hfe which was all. 
 
 He rallied considerably after that day at Fiesole, and was equal 
 to being taken about from church to church by Edith and her 
 eager cousin, who could not have enough of the Florentine churches 
 in this sacred season. He met them at the great door of the 
 cathedral on Good Friday, after they had satisfied their scruples as 
 pious Anglicans by attending a service at the English church — 
 service which Rosa denounced as hatefully low — and he went with 
 them to hear a litany at the altar under Brunelleschi's dome, a 
 solemn and awe-inspiring ftmction, a double semicircle of priests 
 and choristers within the marble dado and glass screen that eu-
 
 29S Gera7'd ; or, 
 
 closed the altar — ^lugubrious chanting unrelieved by the organ — and 
 at the close of the service a sudden startling clangour. 
 
 Then the doors open, and priests and acolytes pour out in swift snc- 
 cession, priests in rich vestments, violet and gold, scarlet tippets, -white 
 fur, black stoles, a motley train, vanishing quickly towards the sacristy. 
 
 And now the crowd troop into the sanctuary, and ascend the 
 steps of the altar, Gerard and his companions following, he curious 
 only, they deeply impressed by that old-world ceremonial. And 
 one by one devout worshippers bend to kiss the jasper slab of the 
 altar, on which stands a golden cross, richly jewelled, which con- 
 tains a frasrment of that cross whereon the Man of Sorrows died for 
 sinful, sorrowing man. 
 
 " I hope it was not wrong of me to do as the others did," said Edith 
 presently, as they left the cathedral, her eyes still dim with tears. 
 
 " Wrong ! " ejaculated Rosa, who had performed the Romanistic 
 rite with unction. " No, indeed. I look forward to the day when 
 we shall have reUcs in our own churches." 
 
 On Holy Saturday there was the spectacular display in front of 
 the cathedral, and at this Gerard was constrained to assist, and to 
 sit in a sunlit window for nearly an hour, watching the humours of 
 the good-tempered crowd in the Piazza, while the great black taber- 
 nacle, covered with artificial roses, squibs, and Catherine wheels, 
 awaited the sacred flame which was to set all its fireworks explod- 
 ing — flame which descended in a lightning flash on the wings of a 
 dove from the lamp of the altar within the cathedral, sacred light 
 which a pious pilgrim had carried unextinguished from the temple 
 in Jerusalem to this Tuscan city. The dove came rushing down 
 the invisible guiding wire at the first stroke of noon, and then with 
 much talk and laughter the crowd melted out of the Piazza, and the 
 daily traffic was resumed, and Mrs. Champion's landau came to the 
 door of the umbrella shop over which she had hired her window, 
 and they drove away to the Via Tornabuoni, and the house of 
 Doney, where luncheon had been ordered and a room engaged for 
 them, luncheon at which Mrs. Champion's powdered slave ofiiciated. 
 and got in the way of the brisk waiters, to whom his slow and 
 solemn movements were an abomination. Only out of England 
 could there come such sad and solemn bearing, thought the waiters. 
 
 On Sunday there was High Mass at the Church of S. Maria 
 Annunziata, and Gerard and the two ladies had seats under the dome, 
 •where Mozart's Twelfth Mass was nobly sung by the best choir in 
 Florence, and where priests in vestments of gold and silver, flashing 
 with jewels, gorgeous with embroidery, officiated at the high altar; 
 priests whose splendid raiment suggested the Priesthood of Egypt, in
 
 TJic lJ^07'ld, the Flesh, and the Devil. 299 
 
 the days when Eg}"ptiaa splendour was the crowning magnificence of 
 the earth, to be imitated by younger nations, but never to be surpassed. 
 
 The music and the splendour, the strain on eye and ear wearied 
 Gerard Hillersdon. He gave a sigh of relief as he took his seat in 
 the landau opposite Edith and Mrs. Gresham, who regaled them 
 with her raptures about the choir, the voices — that exquisite treble 
 — that magnificent bass. She descanted on every number in the 
 Mass, being one of those persons who wear every subject to tatters. 
 
 " And now I think we have had enough of churches," said 
 Gerard, "and we may spend the rest of our Hves in the sunshine 
 tin we sail away to the Greek Archipelago." 
 
 " And till I go back to Suffolk," sighed Mrs. Gresham. " I shall 
 be very glad to see my dear good man again ; but, oh, how dismal 
 Sandyholme wUl be after Florence ! And you two happy creatures 
 will be sailing from island to island, and your life will be one delicious 
 dream of summer. Well, I can never be grateful enough to you, 
 Edith, for having let me see Italy. Kobert Browning said that if his 
 heart were cut open Italy would be found WTitten upon it ; and so 
 Fm sure it would upon mine, if any one thought such an insignificant 
 person's heart worth looking at. And Florence, dear Florence ! " 
 
 " And the Via Tornabuoni where all the fashionable shops are — 
 and Doney's, and the Enghsh tea-parties, and the English Church. 
 I think these things would be found to hold the highest rank in your 
 Florentine heart, Mrs. Gresham, though they don't belong to the 
 Florence of the Medici," said Gerard, glad to damp middle-aged 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 " That shows how very little you understand my character, Mr. 
 Hillersdon. As for the shops — they are very smart and artistic, but 
 I would give all the shops in the Via Tornabuoni for Whiteley's. 
 I adore Florence most of all for her historical associations. To 
 think that Catherine de Medici was reigning Duchess in that noble 
 Palazzo Vecchio — who were the Vecchios, by-the-by? — some older 
 family, I suppose — and that Dante died here, and that Giordino 
 Bruno was burnt here, and Rossini lived here, and Browning ! 
 Such a flood of delightful memories ! " concluded Rosa with a sigh. 
 
 The preparations for the wedding hung fire somehow. The day 
 was again postponed. Mrs. Champion had discovered that it would 
 be impossible for her to marry without an interview with her soUci- 
 tor, and that gentleman had telegraphed his inability to arrive in 
 Florence before the end of the following week. 
 
 " He is my trustee," she explained to Gerard, " and I am so un- 
 business-like myself that I am peculiarly dependent upon him. I
 
 300 Geraj^d ; or^ 
 
 know that I am rich, and that my income is derived from things in 
 the City, railways and foreign loans, don't you know. I writo 
 cheques for whatever I want, and Mr. Maddickson has never accused 
 me of being extravagant, so I have no doubt I am very well off. 
 But if I were to marry you without his arranging my affairs I don't 
 know what entanglement might happpen." 
 
 " What entanglement could there be ? Am I not rich enough to 
 live without touching your fortune ? " 
 
 " My dear Gerard, I didn't mean any doubt of you — not for one 
 moment — but the more money we have the more necessary it must 
 be to aiTange things legally, must it not ? " 
 
 " I don't think so. To my mind we are as free as the birds of 
 the air, and all these delays wound me." 
 
 "Don't say that, Gerard. You know how firmly I made up my 
 mind not to marry for a year after poor James' death ; and if I give 
 way upon that point to gratify a whim of yours " 
 
 "A whim! How lightly you speak ! Perhaps you would rather 
 we never married at all." 
 
 He was white with anger. She reddened and averted her face. 
 
 " Is it so ?" he asked. 
 
 " No, no, of course not," she answered, " only I don't want to be 
 hustled into marriage." 
 
 "Hustled, no, but life is short. If you can't make up your mind 
 to man-y me within a fortnight from this day, we will cry quits for 
 my three years' slavery, and will bid each other good-bye. There 
 is a woman in England who won't set up imaginary impediments if 
 I ask her to be my wife." 
 
 Ilis voice broke in a suppressed sob as he spoke the last words. 
 Ah, that woman in England, that woman for whom love had been 
 more than honour, that woman who was to be the mother of his child ! 
 
 " How cruel you are, Gerard ! " exclaimed Edith, scared at the 
 thought of losing him ; " no doubt there are hundreds of women in 
 England who would like to marry you, with your wealth, just as 
 there are hundreds of men who would pretend to be passionately in 
 love with me, for the same motive. We can be married within a 
 fortnight, I have no doubt. I'll telegraph again to Mr. Maddickson, 
 and tell him he must come. I am having my wedding-gown made. 
 You would not like me to be married in black." 
 
 " I don't know that I should care. I want to make an end of 
 senseless delays. The Jersey Lily is at Spezia, ready for us. 
 Jermyn is to be here this afternoon." 
 
 " Jermyn? How strange that you should bo so fond of that un- 
 canny {)ersonage."
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 301 
 
 " I never said I was fond of him. He amuses me, that's all. As 
 for his uncanniness, that's a mere fashion. I believe he has left off 
 reading fate in faces. He is too clever to ride any hobby to death." 
 '' And he really got nothing for his fate-reading ? " 
 " He got into society. I think that was all he wanted." 
 " Bring him to dinner this evening, and he can tell our fortunes 
 again, if he likes." 
 
 " Not for me. I prefer a happy ignorance." 
 
 Justin Jermyn brought a considerable relief to that party of three 
 which had begun to feel the shadow of an overpowering ennui, 
 Edith ashamed to be sentimental in Rosa Gresham's presence, Rosa 
 infinitely bored, and boring the other two. Mrs. Champion liad 
 shrunk from inviting her Florentine friends to meet her betrothed. 
 He looked so wretchedly ill, his humours were so fitful and capri- 
 cious, that she felt in somewise ashamed of her choice. She could 
 not tell these people how handsome, how brilliant, how charming he 
 had been two or three years ago. She could not inform the world 
 that this intended mamage was the outcome of a girlish romance. 
 She preferred to keep her little Florentine world in complete ignor- 
 ance of the approaching event. It would be time enough for them 
 to know when she and Gerard were wafted far away on the white 
 wings of the Jersey Lily. And later, when he should have recovered 
 his health and good looks, and easy, equable manners, later, when he 
 and she had become leading lights in London societ}', she would 
 be proud of him and their romantic union. 
 
 When he recovered his health ? There were moments in which she 
 asked herself shudderingly, would that ever be ? He pretended to be 
 confident about himself. He told her that to live he needed only happi- 
 ness and a balmy climate ; but she knew that it was a feature of that 
 fatal malady for the patient to be hopeful in the very teeth of despair ; 
 and she had seen many indications that had filled her with alarm, 
 
 " How I wish you would consult Dr. Wilson ! " she said one day, 
 when he sat breathless on the marble bench by the fountain, after 
 ten minutes' quiet walking. " He has immense experience in — in 
 — all chest complaints. I am sure he would be of use to ycu." 
 
 *"I have my own doctor in London," Gerard answered curtly. 
 " Your Florentine doctor cannot tell me anything about myself that 
 I don't know ; and as for treatment, my valet knows what to do for 
 me. I shall be well when we get further south. Your Florence is 
 as treacherous as her Medicis. The winds from the Apennines are 
 laden with evil." 
 
 Jermyn, under existing circumstances, was a decided acquisition.
 
 302 Gerard ; or, 
 
 His familiarity with Florence astonished and charmed the two 
 ladies. He knew every church, every palace, every pictm-e, the 
 traditions of every great family that had helped to make the history 
 of the city. Knowledge like this makes every stone eloquent. He 
 was asked to join in all their saunterings and in all their drives, and 
 his presence gave an air of freshness to the simplest pleasures — to 
 the afternoon tea in the garden, and the long evenings in the salon, 
 when Mrs. Gresham played Chopin and Schubert to her heart's 
 content, while the other three sat afar off and talked. 
 
 " My cousin is better than an orchestrion," said Mrs. Champion, 
 " one has only to turn the handle and she will discourse excellent 
 music the whole evening, and forgive us for not listening to her." 
 
 " Yes, but I know that in her inmost heart Mrs. Gresham is pity- 
 ing us for having a sense wanting," said Jermyn, and then went on 
 with his talk, caring no more for the most delicate rendering of a, 
 Rubinstein reverie, than if it had been a hurdy-gurdy grinding a 
 tuneless polka in the road beyond the garden. 
 
 41 « If >i< * « 
 
 They all went to Spezia to look at the yacht, a railroad journey 
 of some hours, through a hot, arid country, which tried Gerard 
 severely, and bored the other three. 
 
 " Who would care to live at Pisa ? " said Jermyn, while the train 
 was stopping in the station outside that ancient city. " After one 
 had looked at the Cathedral and Baptistry, the leaning tower and 
 the Campo Santo one would feel that life was done. There is 
 nothing more. And it is a misfortune for everybody but the Cook's 
 tourist that the four things are close together. One can't even 
 pretend to take a long time in seeing them." 
 
 Mrs. Champion professed herself delighted with the yacht. She 
 explored every cabin and corner. There was a French clief engaged, 
 and an Italian butler, everything was ready for a tour in the 
 Mediten-anean, and the Mediterranean as seen to-day in this sunlit 
 harbour of Spezia, seemed a sea that could do no wrong. Jermyn 
 showed Mrs. Champion her boudoir-dressing-room, with its ingenious 
 receptacles for her gowns and other finery, and the cabin for her 
 maid — an infinitesimal cabin, but full of comforts. He showed her 
 the grand piano, the electric lamps, all the luxuries of modern 
 yachting. There was to be no roughing it on board the Jersey 
 Lily. The arrangements of this three-hundred-ton yacht left nothing 
 to be regi'ettcd after the most perfect of continental hotels. 
 
 Edith was enchanted with everything ; but even in the midst ol 
 her enthusiasm a chilling fear came over her at the thought ot 
 Gerard lying ill in that luxurious cabin, with its silken curtains and
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 303 
 
 satin pillows, its white and gold Worcester, in which porcelain was 
 made to imitate carved ivory. Sickness there — death there — in 
 that narrow space tricked out for the Loves and Graces — disease, 
 with its loathly details, playing havoc with all the beauty of life, 
 iUness tending inevitably towards death. She turned from that 
 costlj' prettiuess with a vague horror. 
 
 "Don't you like the style?" asked Jermjm, quick to see that 
 revulsion of feeling. 
 
 "No; it is much too fine. I think a yacht should be simpler. 
 One does not want the colouring of the Arabian Nights on the sea. 
 Picture this cabin in a tempest — all this ornamentation tossed and 
 flying about — a tawdry chaos." 
 
 She glanced at Gerard, who stood by, unconcerned in the dis- 
 cussion, obviously caring very little whether she were pleased or 
 not, looking wnth duU indifferent eye upon the arrangements which 
 had been made for his wedding tour. He had these occasional 
 lapses of abstraction, in which he seemed to drift out of the common 
 life of those around him; moods of sullen melancholy, which made 
 Edith Champion shiver. 
 
 They lunched on board the Jersey Lily, and the luncheon was 
 gay enough, but Jermyn and Mrs. Grcsham were the chief talkers, 
 and it was Jermyn's laughter that gave an air of joyousness to the 
 meal. Gerard was dreamy and silent ; Edith was anxiously watchful 
 of his moods. He was to be her husband soon, and these moods of 
 his would make the colouring of her life. Could she be happy if the 
 mental atmosphere were always dull and dreary? The sapphire 
 blue of the bay, the afternoon light on the Can-ara Mountains gi-ew 
 dim and cold in the gloom of her lover's temper ; he who long ago, 
 in the days of his poverty, had been so joyous a spirit. 
 
 She thought of James Champion, and of those monotonous visits 
 to the house at Finchley, the weary hours she had spent trying to 
 make conversation for a sick man, weighed down by the sense of 
 his own infirmities, unable to take pleasure in anything. " Would 
 Gerard ever be like that ? " she asked herself with an aching dread ; 
 " would he, too, die as Champion had died, ' first a'top.' " She looked 
 at his sunken cheek and hollow eye ; she noted his absent manner ; 
 and she felt no assurance of exemption from that dreadful doom. 
 
 Happily, however, the dark mood did not last long, and Gerard 
 was full of animation during the return journey, full of talk about 
 the intended cruise of the Jersey Lily. He had talked it all over 
 with the sailing master. They had looked at charts, they had dis- 
 cussed the ports they were to touch — the islands which were worth 
 stopping at — so many days for Cyprus, and so many for Corfu.
 
 304 Gerard ; or, 
 
 They were to spend part of the autumn in Palestine, and to winter 
 in EgjiDt, and then come slowly back to Naples in the early spring, 
 and from Naples follow the coast in a leisurely way to Nice, and 
 then good-bye, Jersey Lily, and as fast as the Rapide can carry us 
 homeward, to London and Hillersdon House, and all the glories of 
 a London season. The prospect sounded delightful, discussed in 
 one of Gerard's brightest moods, as they travelled from Pisa to 
 Florence ; but the outlook was not quite so joyous half-an-hour later 
 when a laugh at one of Jermyn's cynical flashes brought on a violent 
 tit of coughing, one of those exhausting, suffocating paroxysms which 
 had moved the fair Bavarian to such deep pity. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 " AXD ALL SHALL PASSE, AND THUS TAKE I MY LEAVE." 
 
 Mr. Maddicksox, Mrs. Champion's solicitor and trustee, anived 
 early in the following week — three days sooner than he had declared 
 possible, urged to this haste by importunate telegrams. He was 
 bidden to a dinner at which Mr. Hillersdon and liis friend Jermyn 
 were the only guests, in order that everything might be discussed 
 that needed discussion, and that the lady's confidential adnser 
 might make the acquaintance of her future husband. 
 
 It was a delicious evening, balmier than many an English July. 
 The Easter moon had waned, and the slender crescent of the new 
 moon shone silvery pale in a rose-flushed heaven, a heaven where 
 in that lovely after-glow the first stars glimmered faint and wan. 
 Mrs. Champion was in the garden with Gerard and JermjTi when 
 the lawyer arrived, spruce and prim in his impeccable evening dress, 
 a man who deemed it a duty he owed to his profession to employ 
 only the most admirable of tailors. The two young men were 
 lounging on garden-chairs in the circle by the fountain, beyond 
 which the great 'pink peonies made a background of bloom and 
 verdure. !Mr. Maddickson's short-sighted eyes took the big pink 
 ]>lossoms for gigantic roses, such as a man might expect to find in 
 Italy. lie looked from one of the young men to the other, and at 
 once made up his mind that the lady's fiance was the fair youth 
 leaning against the fountain, liis head thrown back a httle and the 
 rosy light upon his face as he looked up at ]\Irs. Gresham, whose 
 speech had just moved him to joyous laughter. Quite the sort of 
 yomig man to catch a widow's fancy, thought ^Nlr. Maddickson, who 
 supposed it was in tlie nature of widows to be frivolous. 
 
 He felt a cold shiver — happily only perceptible to himself — when 
 Mrs. Champion introduced the pale, hollow-eyed young man, with
 
 The Wo7dd, the Flesh, and the Devil. 305 
 
 slightly bent Blioulders and an -unmistakable air of decay, as Mr. 
 Hillersdon. He lost his usual aplomb, and was awkwardly silent for 
 some minutes after that introduction. 
 
 There was a brief discussion between the lovers and the lawyer 
 late in the evening, while Rosa and Mr. Jermyn were in the loggia, 
 he smoking, she declaring she adored the odour of tobacco. 
 
 There were no difficulties, Mr. Maddickson told his client and her 
 betrothed, and the settlements might be of the simplest form. He 
 proposed as a matter of course that the lady's fortune should be 
 settled on herself and her children, giving her full disposing power if 
 there should be no children. 
 
 " You are so rich, Mr. Hillersdon," said the lawyer, " that these 
 details can hardly interest you." 
 
 " They don't. I wanted Mrs. Champion to marry me out of hand 
 ten days ago, without any legal fussitication or delay. I thought the 
 Married "Women's Property Act would protect her estate, even in the 
 event of my squandering my fortune, which I am hardly likely to do." 
 
 " It is always best to have these matters quietly discussed," said 
 Mr. Maddickson. " A hasty marriage is rarely a wise marriage." 
 
 He gave a little sigh as he uttered this tolerably safe opinion, and 
 rose to take leave ; but before departmg he paused to address Mrs. 
 Champion in a lower tone. 
 
 " I should much like to have a little talk with you to-morrow," 
 he said. " Shall I find you at home if I call? " 
 
 " Not in the afternoon. We are to drive to the Certosa." 
 
 " In the morning, then ? I can be here at any hour you like." 
 
 " Come at twelve, and stay to lunch. We lunch at half-past 
 twelve." And then, going with him towards the door of the salon, 
 she said in a lower tone, " I conclude there is really nothing now to 
 hinder my marriage ? " 
 
 " Nothing, except your own inclination. I think you are marry- 
 ing too soon ; but we will talk of that to-morrow." 
 
 When he was gone she had an uncomfortable feeling that ho 
 would have something disagi-eeable to say to her when he came in 
 the morning. People who ask for interviews in that elaborately 
 urgent manner are seldom the bearers of pleasant tidings. She had 
 a sleepless night, agitated by vague dread. 
 
 Mr. Maddickson was punctual to a minute, for the timepiece in 
 the salon chimed the hour as the footman announced him, looking 
 as fresh and trim in his checked travelling suit as he had lookccl 
 in evening dress; clean-shaved, the image of respectability not 
 unconscious of the latest fashion. 
 
 " I have spent the morning at the Academy," he said blandly, " and 
 
 X
 
 3o6 Gerard ; or, 
 
 have become a convert to the Early Italian school. I don't wonder at 
 Hunt, and Millais, and those young fellows, now I have seen those two 
 waUs — one splendid with the exquisite fiaish and lustrous colour of 
 Giotto, BoticeUi, FiMppo Lippi, Fra Angehco and their disciples, and 
 the other covered with a collectionof gloomy daubs, in the high classical 
 manner, by the worst painters of the school that came after PvaffaeUe." 
 " You have something serious to say to me ? " said Edith, not 
 caring a jot for Mi-. Maddickson's opinions on art. 
 " Something very serious." 
 
 " Then pray come at once to the point, or my cousin will have 
 returned from her walk before you have finished." 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Champion, I have not had the pleasure of much 
 social intercourse with you, but I have been interested in you 
 professionally ever since your marriage, and my position as your 
 trustee should give me some of the privileges of friendship." 
 
 " Consider that j^ou have every privilege that friendship can give," 
 she exclaimed impatiently ; " but pray don't beat about the bash." 
 " Are you seriously attached to Mr. HiUersdon ? " 
 " Of course I am, or I should not be thinking of marrying him 
 within a year of my husband's death. We were boy and girl sweet- 
 hearts, and I would have married him without a penny if it hadn't 
 been for my people. They insisted upon my marrying Mr, Champion, 
 and he was very good to me, and I was very happy with him ; but 
 the old love was never forgotten, and now that I am free what can 
 be more natural than that I should marry my first love ? " 
 " "What indeed, but for one unhappy fact." 
 "What is that, pray?" 
 
 " You have engaged yourself to a dying man. Surely, my dear 
 friend, you must see that this poor young man has the stamp of 
 death upon him." 
 
 " I know that he is out of health. He spent the winter in 
 England, which he ought not to have done. We are going on a 
 long cruise ; we shall be in a cUmate that will cure him. He has 
 been neglectful of his health, and has had no one to take care of him. 
 It will be all different when we are married." 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Champion, don't deceive yourself," the lawj'er 
 said earnestly. " You don't pretend to have the power of working 
 miracles, I suppose ; and the raising of Lazarus was hardly a greater 
 miracle than this young man's restoration to health would be. I 
 tell you — for it is my duty to tell you — that he is dying. I have 
 Been such cases before — cases of atrophy, heart and lungs both 
 attacked, a gradual extinction of life. Doctor him as you may, 
 nurse him as you may, tliis young man must die. Marry him if you
 
 The JVorld, the Flesh, and the Devil. 307 
 
 like — I shall deeply regret it if you do — and be sure you -svill be 
 again a widow before the year is out." 
 
 Tears were streaming down Mrs. Champion's cheeks. This 
 matter-of-fact, hard-headed lawyer had only put into plain words 
 the dim forebodings, the indistinct terrors which had bjen weighing 
 her down since Gerard came to Florence. The change she had seen 
 in him on his first coming had frozen her heart ; and not once in all 
 the hours they had spent together had he seemed the same man she 
 had loved a year ago. Between them there was a shadow, indescrib- 
 able, indefinable, which she now knew for the shadow of death. 
 
 Mr. Maddickson made no ill-advised attempt at consolation. He 
 knew that in such a case there must be tears, and he let her cry, 
 waiting deferentially for anj-thing she might have to say. 
 
 " I had such a sad time with Mr. Champion," she said presently. 
 " It was so painful to see his mind gi-adually going. You know 
 what a long, long illness it was, nearly a year. I was a great deal 
 with him. I wanted him to feel that he was never abandoned. 
 It was my duty — but it was a sad trial. It left me an old woman." 
 
 This was a mere/acoTi de parler, since Mrs. Champion's suffer- 
 ings during her husband's illness had not written a line upon her 
 brow or silvered a single hair. 
 
 "It was a dreadful time," she sighed, after a pause. "I don't 
 think I could go through it again." 
 
 " It would be very hard if you were called upon to do so," said 
 Mr. Maddickson ; and Mrs. Champion felt that it would be hard. 
 
 She wanted the joys of life ; not to be steeped to the lips in the 
 apprehensions and agonies of fast-approaching death. 
 
 " Does he really seem to you so very ill ? " she asked presently. 
 
 " Nobody can doubt it who looks in his face. He has some 
 medical attendant in Florence, I suppose ? " 
 
 " No. I wanted him to see Dr. Wilson, but he refused. He says 
 that he knows aU about himself, that he has nothing to learn from 
 any doctor." 
 
 " And is he hopeful about himself? " 
 
 " Yes, fairly hopef-jl, I think." 
 
 " Poor fellow. I am sorry for him ; but I should be sorrier for 
 you if you were foolish enough to marry him." 
 
 Mrs. Gresham came in from her mornmg walk, loquacious and 
 gushing as usual. She had been up the hUl, and had taken another 
 look at that noble David, and at the view of Florence from the terrace. 
 
 "Florence is in one of her too deUcious moods," she said, "all 
 sunlight and colour. My heart aches at the thought of going away.
 
 1 
 
 o8 Gerard ; or, 
 
 but the place will live in my memory for the rest of my life. I 
 shall often be thinking of San Miniato on that hill of gardens, and 
 the afternoon light stealing in through the transparent marble in the 
 apse, when I am sitting in our o\vn dear old grey church." 
 
 Gerard and his friend appeared before Rosa had left off talking, 
 and there Wi.s an immediate adjournment to luncheon, at which 
 meal conversation was chiefly sustained by Mr. Maddickson and 
 Mr. Jermyn, with a running accompaniment by Eosa, who broke in 
 at every point of the argument upon Italian art to express opinions 
 which were as irrelevant as they were enthusiastic. 
 
 Edith Champion was silent and thoughtful all tlu'ough luncheon, 
 and more than usually observant of her lover, who looked tired and 
 depressed, scarcely ate anything, and drank only a single glass of 
 claret. Seeing this, she proposed a postponement of the drive to 
 the Cailhusian monaster}'. The afternoon was warm to sultriness, 
 the road would be dusty, and the going up and down steps would 
 tire Gerard. He was altogether indifferent, would go or not go as 
 she pleased ; whereupon she settled that Mr. Jermyn and Mr. 
 Maddickson should drive -uath Mrs. Gresham, who was greedy of 
 sight-seeing, and always anxious to repeat expeditions, while Gerard 
 and his /ancee could spend their afternoon in the garden. 
 
 That afternoon in the garden himg somewhat heavily on the 
 engaged lovers. They had spent a good many afternoons and 
 evenings together since Gerard's arrival in Florence, afternoons and 
 evenings that had been ^'irtuaIly tete-a-tete, inasmuch as Eosa was 
 very discreet, and preferred her piano to the society of the lovers. 
 Thus they had talked of the past and of the future — their plans, 
 their houses, their views of society, till there was no fresh ground 
 left to travel over. Edith could talk only of actualities. The dim 
 labjTinth of metaphysical speculations, the dreamland of poets were 
 worlds that were closed against her essentially earthly intellect. 
 Gerard had never so felt the something wanting in her mind as he 
 felt it now that he had known the companionship of Hester's more 
 spiritual nature. With Hester he had never been at a loss for sub- 
 jects of conversation, even in the monotony of their isolated lives. 
 
 The fountain, with its border of aram lilies, the pink peonies, the 
 blood-red cups of tulips that filled a border on a lower terrace, the 
 perfume of lilac and hawthorn, were all a weariness to him, as lie 
 sat upon the marble bench, and watched the water leaping towards 
 tlie sunlight, only to fall and break in rainbow-coloured spray — 
 symbolic of the mind of man, always aspiring, never attaining. He 
 was in one of those listless moods when every nerve seems relaxed, 
 every sense dulled. Moods in which a man cares for nothing, hopes
 
 TJie World, the Flesh, and the Dciil. 309 
 
 for nothing, and, save for the dread of death, would willingly have 
 done with life. Was it so vast a boon, after all, he asked himself, 
 this hfe to which he clung so passionately ? No boon, perhaps, but 
 it was all. There was the rub. After this nothing. He might 
 sicken of the loveliness around him, of the glory of colour and the 
 endless variety of Hght, of the distant view of the mountains, where 
 the snow yet hngered. These might pall, but who would willingly 
 exchange these for darkness and dust, and the world's forgetfulness ? 
 
 In the discussion on the previous evening it had been settled that 
 the wedding was to take place on the coming Saturday. IMr. 
 Maddickson had tried his utmost, by various suggestions, to defer 
 the date, but Gerard had been inflexible, and had carried his point. 
 In three days these two who sat listless and silent in the afternoon 
 sunlight, she sheltered by a large white parasol, he baring his head 
 to the warmth, were to be man and wife. There was nothing more 
 for them to talk about. Their future was decided. 
 
 Gerard did not wait for the return of the party from the Certosa, 
 or for afternoon tea. He pleaded letters that must be wi-itten for 
 the evening post, and left before five o'clock, promising to dine at 
 the villa as usual. Edith walked with him to the gate, and kissed 
 him affectionately at parting, detaining him a little at the last, as if 
 she were loth to let him leave her. And then, when his carriage 
 wheels were out of hearing she went slowly back to the house, -nith 
 streaming eyes, went straight to her room, and flung herself upon a 
 sofa, and sobbed as if her heart would break. She was so sorry for 
 him. She mourned him as one already dead. She mourned for 
 her old love, which had ched with the man she had loved, the light- 
 hearted lover of five years ago. It was hard to acknowledge, it was 
 bitter to bear, but she knew that Mr. IMaddickson was right, and 
 that to marry Gerard Hillersdon was only to take upon herself the 
 burden of an inevitable son'ow. 
 
 "HI believed that I could make his last days happy, I would 
 gladly many him," she told herself. " I would think nothing of 
 myself or of my own sorrow afterwards, my second widowhood ; 
 but I have seen enough of him now to know that I can't make him 
 happy. He is no happier with me than he is anywhere else. He 
 is only bored and wearied. I am nothing to him, and his wish to 
 man-y me can only be the desire to keep his promise. I believe it 
 ■wnU be a rehef to his mind if I release him from that promise. It 
 was wrong of me to exact such a vow ; very, very wrong." 
 
 She remembered that day in Hertford Street, when she had 
 urged him to be true to her, when she had said to him of his 
 promise — "It is an oath! " Ah, how passionately she had loved
 
 3IO Gerard; or, 
 
 him in those daj's, how impossible happiness had seemed to her 
 •without him ! She had thought that if he were to marry any other 
 woman she would die. There would be no help for her, nothing 
 left. Wealth, and all that it can buy, independence, beauty, youth, 
 would be worthless without him. And now she was meditating 
 with what words, with what gentle circumlocution she should free 
 herself from a tie that had become terrible to her, the bond between 
 the li\'ing and the dead. Mr. Maddickson's warning had suggested 
 no new idea ; the mournful conviction had been growing in her 
 mind ever since Gerard came to Florence. She knew that he was 
 doomed, and that the day of doom could not be far off. 
 
 Gerard wrote his letters — to his mother, telling her of the intended 
 wedding, to his banker, to his lawyer — and then threw himself down 
 to rest upon a sofa. He slept more than an hour, and was only 
 awakened by some one conaing into the room. It was Jermyn, who 
 approached him with an open letter in his hand. 
 
 " Have you come straight from the Certosa, or did you stop to tea 
 at the villa ? " Gerard asked, and then seeing the altered hght, " Is 
 it time to dress for dinner? " 
 
 " I don't think you wiU. care about dining in Florence to-night. 
 I have some bad news for you," replied Jermyn gravely, looking 
 down at the letter. 
 
 " Bad news — you have bad news — for me ? From Helmsleigh — 
 no, from Lowcombe ? " 
 
 " Yes, it is from Lowcombe. It comes by a side wind, in a letter 
 from Matt Muller." 
 
 " Give me the letter," cried Gerard, ghastly pale, snatching it 
 from JermjTi's hand. 
 
 He was too agitated for the first few moments to see the portion 
 of the letter which referred to his own evil fortune. He saw only 
 words about the house Muller was building — abuse of architect and 
 builder — the mistakes of one, the dilatoriness of the other. It was 
 only when Jermjii put a hand over his shoulder and pointed to the 
 bottom of a closely written page that he saw where the bad news began. 
 
 " You are interested I know in that pretty young woman at the 
 Eosary, though I could never persuade you to introduce me to her. 
 You will be sony to hear that she is in sad trouble, poor girl, 
 trouble which is all the sadder because the man who called himself 
 her husband seems to have deserted her. There was a baby bom 
 at the Rosary — a baby that came upon this mortal scene before he 
 was expected, poor little beggar. The old father's sudden death, I 
 beheve, was the cause of this premature event — and ten days or a 
 fortnight after the baby's birth the young mother went clean off
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 311 
 
 her head, and only last night she escaped from the two nurses who 
 had care of her, and wandered away hy the river, with, I beheve, 
 the intention of drowning herself. The baby was drowned, and the 
 mother only escaped by the happy chance of a couple of Cockneys 
 who were rowing down from Oxford, one of whom swam to the 
 poor girl's rescue very pluckily. There is to be an inquest on the 
 infant this afternoon, and I don't know in whose custody' the mother 
 now is, but I suppose some one is looking after her. My builder's 
 foreman Hves at Lowcombe, and he tells me there has been a great 
 deal of excitement about the affair, for this Mr. Hanley is supposed 
 to be a man of large means, and he is thought to have acted cruelly to 
 this poor young woman, wife or no wife, in leaving her at such a time." 
 " Cruelly," muttered Gerard, " yes, with the cruelty of devils. 
 But she would not come with me — it was her choice to stay. How 
 could I teU ? Is it true, JeiTuyn ? Is this some trick of yours to 
 frighten me ? " 
 
 " It is no trick. I thought it best to show you the letter, that you 
 should know the worst at once." 
 
 " The worst, yes. Hester, perhaps, a prisoner — accused of murder- 
 ing her child ! The worst ! Oh, what a wretch I have been ! 
 When can I get away from here ? How soon can I get to London ? " 
 " Tou can leave Florence to-night ; I will go \vith you. The 
 Mont Cenis, I think, is the quickest way. I'll arrange everything 
 with your servant. Shall you see Mrs. Champion before you go ? " 
 " See her, no. What good would that do ? " 
 " We were to have dined with her this evening. Shall I write an 
 apology in your name ? " 
 
 "Yes, you can do that. Tell her I am called away upon a 
 matter of life and death ; that I don't know how long it may be 
 before I can return to Florence. You may make my apologj' as 
 abject as you like. I doubt if she and I will ever meet again." 
 
 "You are agitating yourself too much, HiEersdon," remonstrated 
 Jermyn. 
 
 "Can there be too much in the matter? Can anything be too 
 much? Oh, how nobly that girl loved me — how generous, how 
 uncomplaining she was ! And I have murdered her ! First I slew 
 her good name, and now her child is murdered — murdered by me, 
 not by her, and she has to bear the brand of infamy, as if she were 
 a common felon." 
 
 " She will not be considered guilty. It will be known that she 
 was iiTcsponsible. People will be good to her, be sure of that." 
 
 " Will the law be good to her ? The law which takes no accoimt 
 of circumst-ances, the law which settles everything by hard and fast
 
 
 
 12 Gerard; or, 
 
 lines. To-morrow ! It will be the day after to-mon-ow before we 
 are at Lowcombe, travel how we may. What ages to wait ! Get 
 me some telegraph forms. I'U telegraph to the Eector. He is a 
 good man, and may be able to help us." 
 
 " To help 2(s," he said, making himself one with Hester in her 
 trouble, re-united to her by calamity. He forgot in his agony how 
 false he had been to her, forgot that he had planned to spend the 
 rest of his days far away from her. The thought of her sorrow 
 made her newly dear to him. 
 
 He made his appeal to the Rector in the most urgent form that 
 occmred to him. He implored that good man for Christian charit}'' 
 to be kind to the iH-used girl whom he knew as Mrs. Hanley. He 
 urged him to spare no outlay in providing legal help, if legal help were 
 needed. If she was able to understand anything she was to be assured 
 that her husband would be Avith her without the loss of an hour. 
 
 He used that word husband, careless of consequences, albeit in 
 three days he was to have become the husband of another woman. 
 
 While he wrote the telegram Jermyn looked at the time-table. 
 The train for Turin left in an hour. The order was given to the 
 valet, everything was to be ready, and a fly was to be at the door 
 in three quarters of an hour. 
 
 " You'U have some dinner served here, I suppose ? " suggested 
 Jermjm. 
 
 " Do 3'ou think I can eat at such a time ? " 
 
 " Well, no, perhaps not. You've been hard hit ; but it would be 
 better if you could fortify yom-self for along journey." 
 
 " Take care of yourself," answered Gerard curtly. 
 
 " Thanks. I always do that," said Jermyn. " I'll go down to 
 the table d'hote when I've written to Mrs. Champion." 
 
 He seated himself to write, but before he began a waiter brouo-ht 
 in a letter for Mr. IlUlersdon. Gerard knew the hand, the thick 
 vellum paper with its narrow black border and massive black mono- 
 gram; he knew the delicate perfume which always accompanied 
 such letters, a faint suggestion of violets or Uhes. 
 
 The letter was brief : — 
 
 " Deak Gerakd, — " I have a wretched headache, and am almost 
 depressed and miserable this evening, so I must ask you and your 
 friend to postpone your visit. I am not fit company for any one. I wUl 
 write again to-morrow. I have much to say to you — that must be 
 Baid somehow. It may be easier to write than to speak. — Ever yours. 
 
 " Edith." 
 
 A curious letter to be WTitten by a woman from whom he had
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 313 
 
 parted only a few hours earlier. What could she have to say to 
 him that could not have been said by the fountain when they two 
 sat silent, as if spellbound in the languid air ? He wondered at the 
 wording of her letter, but with faintest interest in the question. 
 Everything that aflected his life at Florence had grown dim and 
 blurred, like a faded photograph. The image of Edith Champion 
 had receded into the backgroimd of his thoughts. 
 
 " Here is a letter that will save you the trouble of an elaborate 
 apology," he said to Jermyu, " a letter which I can answer myself." 
 
 He scrawled a hurried line announcing his departure from Floi'ence. 
 
 " You have deferred our wedding-day twice," he wrote. " Fate 
 constrains me to defer it for the third time. I will write to you 
 from London." 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 " FROM THE WARM WILD KISS TO THE COLD." 
 
 Gerard travelled as fast as trains and boat would take him, but it 
 was noon on the second day after he had left Florence before he 
 aiTived at the nearest station to Lowcombe, with the prospect of over 
 an hour's drive behind an indifferent horse before he could reach the 
 Rosary and know the worst. He was alone. He had sent his valet 
 to Hniersdon House, and had resolutely refused Jermyn's company, 
 although Jermyn had urged that he was hardly in a state of health 
 to risk a solitary journey, or the consequences of further ill news. 
 
 " If there is anything worse to be told, you could not help me to 
 bear the blow," Gerard answered gloomily. " Nor would she care 
 to see you with me. You were no favourite of hers ; and perhaps 
 if it had not been for you I should never have left her." 
 
 They had searched all the morning papers they could obtain 
 during the journey from Dover to Charing Cross, to discover any 
 paragi-aph that might record the calamity at Lowcombe — for any re- 
 port of the inquest on the infant, or the rescue of the mother. It was 
 at least some relief to find no such record. Whatever had happened, 
 the report had, by happy chance or kindly influence, been kept out of 
 the papers. Hester's name and Hester's sorrows were not bandied 
 about in a social leader, or even made the subject of a paragraph. 
 
 Gerard reached Lowcombe, therefore, in absolute ignorance of 
 anything that might have happened since Mr. Muller's letter was 
 written. He drove straight to the Rosary, where garden and shrub- 
 beries looked dull and dreary under a sunless sky. It seemed as if 
 he had left summer on the other side of the Alps — as if he had come
 
 314 Gerard; or, 
 
 into a land where there was no summer, only a neutral season, which 
 meant gloom and smoke in London, and dim greyness in the country. 
 
 His heart grew cold at sight of the windows. The blinds were 
 down. The house was either uninhabited, or inhabited by Death. 
 
 He rang violently, and rang again, but had to wait nearly five 
 minutes, an interval of torturing suspense, before a housemaid 
 opened the door, her countenance only just composing itself after 
 the broad grin that had rewarded the baker's last sally. The 
 baker's cart rattled away from the back door while the housemaid 
 stood at the front door answering her master's eager questions. 
 
 " Where is your mistress ? She — she is not " 
 
 He could not utter the word that would have given shape to his 
 fear. Happily the girl was sympathetic, although frivolous-minded 
 as to bakers and butcher-boys. She did not prolong his agony. 
 
 " She is not any worse, sir. She's very bad, but not worse." 
 
 " Can I see her at once — would it do her any harm to see me ? " 
 he asked, going towards the staircase. 
 
 " She's not here, sh. She's at the Rectory. Mr. Gilstone had 
 her taken there after she was saved from drowning by those two 
 London gentlemen. She was took to the Eose and Crown, as that 
 was the nearest house to the river ; the two gentlemen carried her 
 there, quite unconscious, and they had hard work to bring her 
 round. And they sent here for the two nurses, and they kep' 
 her there, at the Hose, till next morning ; and then the Rector he 
 had her taken to the Rectorj^, and his sister is helping to nurse her." 
 
 " They are good souls," cried Gerard, " true Christians. What 
 shall we do in om troubles when there are no more Christians in 
 the world ? " he thought, deeply touched by kindness from the man 
 whose sympathy he had repulsed. 
 
 " Is your mistress dangerously ill ? " he asked. 
 
 " She has been in 'great danger, sir; and I don't think she's out 
 of danger yet. I was at the Rectory last night to inquire, and one of 
 the nurses told me it was a very critical case. But she's well nursed, 
 and well cared for, sir. You can make yom-self happy about that." 
 
 " Happy ! I can never Icnow happiness again ! " 
 
 " Oh, yes, but you will, sir, when Mrs. Hanley gets well. I make 
 no doubt they'll pull her through." 
 
 "And her baby " 
 
 " Oh the poor little thing t He was such a weakly Httle mite— 
 I'm sure he's better off in heaven ; if his poor mother could only 
 think so, when she comes round and has to be told about it." 
 
 " There was an inquest, wasn't there? " 
 
 " Well, yes, ^sir, there was an inquest at the Rose and Crown ;
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 315 
 
 but it wasn't much of an inquest," Mary Jane added, in a comforting 
 tone. " The baker told me the coroner and the other gentlemen 
 weren't in the room above ten minutes. ' Death by misadventure,' 
 that was the verdict. Everybody was so sorry for the poor young 
 lady. And it was a misadventure, for if the night-nurse hadn't 
 left the door unfastened, and fallen asleep in her easy-chair, nothing 
 need have gone wrong. It was all along of her carelessness. My 
 poor young mistress got up and put on her morning gown and 
 slippers, and took the baby out of his bassinette, and went down- 
 stairs and out of the drawing-room window, and slie must have 
 gone across the lawn down to the towing-path, and wandered and 
 wandered for nearly two mUes before she threw herself in just by 
 the little backwater where she and you used to be so fond of sitting 
 in the punt, where we used to send your lunch out to you." 
 
 " Yes, yes, I know. It was there, was it ? " 
 
 He thought of the hours they had spent thei;e, hours of blissful 
 tranquillity, steeped in the summer warmth, the golden light, sweet 
 odoiKS of field flowers, soothing ripple of water, and rustle of willow 
 branches. What happy hours of delight in all that is most exquisite 
 in literature, Milton, Keats, Tennyson, Kossetti, in that music of 
 words which is second only to the music of sweet concords and 
 exquisite harmonies ! Oh, happy hours, happy days, bliss which he 
 had dreamed might last out all his life, and lengthen life by its 
 reposeful sweetness. And now he had to think of his dear love, the 
 fair Egeria of those peaceful hours, wandering distraught along that 
 river bank, choosing by some dim instinct of the dreaming mind that 
 spot above all other spots in which to seek death and oblivion. 
 
 " Tell me how it all happened," he said to the girl. " Mr. Daven- 
 port's death — was it very sudden ? " 
 
 " Dreadfully sudden, sh. It was the shock of her father's death 
 which made my mistress so bad. She was very down-hearted after 
 you went abroad. "We could all see that, though none of us ever 
 Bee her cry. She was too much the lady to give way before servants ; 
 but we could tell by her face in the morning that she'd been awake 
 most of the night, and that she'd been crying a good deal. And 
 then she'd pull herself together, as you may say, and be bright and 
 cheerful with the old gentleman, and sit with him, and talk to him, 
 and walk beside his chair, and give all her thoughts and all her time 
 to making him as happy as he could be made. And it wasn't easy 
 work, for after you was gone he took a sort of restless fit, and he 
 was always asking about you, the nurse said, and he seemed uneasy 
 at not seeing you. And he used to talk to poor Mrs. Hardey in a 
 disagreeable way, and he was quite nasty to her, his man told mc,
 
 o 
 
 1 6 Gerard; or, 
 
 and was always blaming her, as if she hadn't done her best for him. 
 He was very cruel to her, I tliink ; but I suppose it must have been 
 because he was worse in himself. And one day he was particularly 
 unkind, and she left him in tears, and went out into the garden and 
 sat there alone by the river, and didn't go to her father's room to 
 sit with him while he took his lunch, as she generally did, and his 
 man found her sitting in the garden very low-spirited, when he went 
 to tell her that he and the nurse were going to dinner. Missus 
 always used to sit with the old ijentleman while those two had their 
 dinner. And she went up to his room, and found him lying quietly 
 on the sofa, and she sat there over an hour, for those two used to 
 take their time over their dinner, no doubt thinking he was asleep 
 all the time, and then, just as the nurse was going upstairs, we all 
 heard a dreadful shriek and a fall, and we found her lying insensible 
 on the floor near the sofa, where her father lay dead. She had gone 
 to him, and spoken to him, and touched him, and foimd him dead." 
 
 There was a pause, a silence broken only by Gerard's agonised 
 sobbing, as he sat at the table where he had planned his new novel, 
 in the happy morning of his love, sat with his head bent low upon 
 his folded arms. 
 
 " She was very bad all that day and night, and Dr. Mivor tele- 
 gi'aphed for a second nurse, for he said we was in for a bad business. 
 She was quite light-headed, poor young lady, and it was heart- 
 breaking to hear her asking for you, and why you didn't go to her, 
 and talking about her father, and begging him to forgive her, as if 
 she had any need of forgiveness, when she'd devoted herself to 
 making him comfortable and happy from the first hour he was took. 
 And three days after his death the poor little baby was born, and 
 she was quite out of her mind all the time and didn't seem to care 
 about the baby, though he was a dear pretty little thing — but very 
 tiny and weak, and I don't think he'd have lived long, even with 
 the best of care. A week after he was born the fever went down 
 a bit, and she seemed to be coming more to herself. There 
 was a great change in her, and she left off talking wildly, and she 
 seemed to understand that her father was dead, and that you 
 were far away ; and everybody thouglit she was better. I sup- 
 pose this made tlie night-nurse a litile less watchful. Both nurses 
 had been very careful of her while she was so bad with the fever, 
 but they began to take things easier, and to drop asleep in the arm- 
 chair. They'd both had a hard time of it for the first week. And I 
 think that's about all I can tell you, sir ; except tliat Mr. Davenport 
 was buried in Lowcombe churchyard nearly a fortnight ago." 
 
 " Thank you for telling me so much. You are a good girl."
 
 The Wo7'ld, the Flesh, and the Devil. 317 
 
 " Shall I get you a Lit of lunch, sir ? You are looking so tired 
 and ill." 
 
 " No, thank you, Mary, I shall eat nothing till I get to the Rectory. 
 Good day. Take care of the house, and keep everything in good 
 order till your mistress and I come back. By the way, who has 
 been supplying you with money since your mistress fell ill ? Have 
 you had any difficulty in providing for expenses? " 
 
 "No, sir; the cook knew where mistress kept her money, and 
 she made bold to unlock the di'awer and take out what was wanted. 
 There was a fifty-pound note and some sovereigns in the drawer. 
 There has been plenty to pay the nurses and gardeners, and to pro- 
 vide any ready money that was wanted. Cook has kept an account 
 of everj-thing. The undertaker has not been paid anything, nor 
 the doctor, but they know their money's safe." 
 
 The fly was waiting, and it took Gerard to the Rectory with very 
 little loss of time, yet to his agonised mind the distance seemed long, 
 the horse slower than such hirelings usually are. Fate had used 
 him almost better than he had hoped. The coroner's verdict freed 
 Hester from all shadow of blame in the child's death — his child ; 
 that child of whose existence he had taken so little thought, deem- 
 ing that he had done enough when he had left ample funds at the 
 mother's disposal. He had cared but for one thing, to make the 
 best and the most of his own waning days — and the thought of 
 the child that was to be born to him had awakened no tender feel- 
 ing, only an aching envy of that young fresh life in which doubtless 
 his quahties and characteristics would live again under happier 
 conditions, the life which would be tasting all the sweetest things 
 that this world can give — love, ambition, pride, luxury, the mastery 
 of men — while he was lying cold and dumb, cheated by inexorable 
 Death out of the riches which Fortune had flung into his lap. Fate 
 had given with one hand, and had taken away with the other. No, 
 he had never felt as an expectant father should feel. The thought 
 of his duty to the child had never urged him to repair the wTong 
 he had done the mother — but now remorse weighed heavy on his 
 heart, and he hated himself for the egotism which had governed 
 him in all his relations with the woman he had pretended to love. 
 He had glossed over all that was guilty in their union ; he had kissed 
 away her tears, and made hght of her remorse ; he had compared 
 her to Shelley's Mary, forgetting that Shelley was as eager to legalise 
 his union as the most conforming Christian in the land. He looked 
 back upon the happy days of their love, and knew that when he was 
 happiest Hester's life had been under the shadow of an ever-present 
 regret, knew that while she was generous and devoted he had
 
 o 
 
 1 8 Gerard; or, 
 
 been selfish and false, soothing her conscience with . shallowest 
 sophistries. 
 
 Yes, he had used her ill, the woman who loved him ; had killed 
 her, it might be ; or had killed her intellect, leaving her to go down 
 to old age through the long joyous years, a mindless wreck ; she 
 who was once so happy, a lovely ethereal creature in whom mind 
 and heart were paramount over clay. 
 
 The Eector received him coldly, and with a countenance which 
 unaccustomed anger made strange and forbidding. "When a 
 benevolent man is angry his anger has a deeper root and a more 
 chilling aspect than the ready displeasure of less kindly spirits. For 
 Mr. GOstone to be angry meant a complete upheaval of a nature 
 that was made up of sympathy and compassion. But here for once 
 was a man with whom he could not sympathise, for whom his 
 present feeling was abhorrence. 
 
 ''Is she recovering? May I see her? " asked Gerard, on the 
 threshold of the Eector's study, chilled by that stem countenance, 
 yet too full of the thought of Hester to delay his questioning. 
 
 "She is a shade better this morning," the Eector answered coldly, 
 " but she is far too Ul for you to see her — at any rate until the 
 doctor thinks it safe — and when you are allowed to see her it is 
 doubtful whether she will recognise you. She is in a world of her 
 own, poor soul, a world of shadows." 
 
 "Is her mind quite gone? " faltered Gerard. "Does the doctor 
 fear " 
 
 " The doctor fears more for her Hfe than for her mind. If we can 
 save her life, the mind may recover its balance as strength returns. 
 That is his opinion and mine. I have seen such cases before — and 
 the result has generally been happy ; but in those cases we had to 
 deal wth a ruder clay. All that is finest in this girl's nature ■wUl 
 tell against her recovery. There is a heavy account against you 
 here, Mr. Hanley." 
 
 " I know, I know," cried Gerard, with his face turned from the Eector, 
 as he stood looking out of the window, across the flame-coloured 
 tulips, the level lawn, towards the churchyard, conscious of nothing 
 which his eyes looked at, only turning his face away to hide his agony. 
 
 "A heavy account; you have brought dishonour upon a woman 
 whose every instinct makes for virtue. You have broken her heart 
 by your desertion." 
 
 " I did not desert her " 
 
 " Not as the world reckons desertion perhaps. You left her a 
 house and servants and a bundle of bank-notes ; but you left her 
 just when she had the most need of sympathy — left her to face an
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 319 
 
 ordeal which might mean death — left her mider conditions which no 
 man with a heart could have ignored." 
 
 " I was inconsiderate — selfish — cruel. Say the worst you can of 
 me. Lash me with bitter words. I acknowledge my iniquity. I 
 
 was only just recovered from a dangerous illness " 
 
 " Through which she nursed you. I have heard of her devotion." 
 " Through which she nursed me. I was not ungrateful — but I 
 was wretched, borne down by the knowledge that I had only a short 
 time to Uve. Ah, Rector, you in your green old age, sturdy, vigorous, 
 with strength to enjoy the fulness of life even now when your hair 
 is silver — you can hardly reaUse what a young man feels who has 
 imespectedly inherited a vast fortune, and who while the dehght of 
 possession is still fresh aud wonderful, is told that his hfe is narrowed 
 to a few precarious years — that if he is to last out even that short 
 span he must watch himself with jealous care, husband his emotions, 
 lest the natural joys of youth should w^aste the oil in the lamp. This 
 was -what I was told. Be happy, be calm, be tranquil, said my 
 physician ; in other words, be self-indulgent, care for nothing and 
 for no one but self. And I felt that yonder house was k i l lin g me. 
 The shadow of that old man's decaying age darkened my fading 
 youth. If Hester would have gone with me to the South there 
 would have been no break in our union — at least I think not — 
 
 though there was another claim " 
 
 " She refused to leave her father ? " 
 
 " Yes. She preferred him to me. It was her own free choice." 
 " Well, there are excuses for you, perhaps ; and the result of your 
 conduct has been so disastrous that you need no sermon from me. 
 If you have a heart, the rest of your life must be darkened by 
 remorse. Your child's death hes at your door." 
 
 " Does she remember that dreadful night — does she grieve for the 
 child? "asked Gerard. 
 
 " Happily not. I have told you she is living in a world of shadows." 
 " Let me see her," pleaded Gerard. " You don't know how fondly 
 she loves me — how dear we have been to each other. Her mind 
 will awaken at the sound of my voice." 
 
 " Awaken to the memory of all that she has suffered. Would 
 that be an advantage ? ]\Ir. Mivor must be the judge as to_ whether 
 
 she ought to see you. If he finds no objection " 
 
 " When will he be here? " 
 " Not till the evening." 
 
 " Then I'll go to his house, and bring him here if necessary. Mr. 
 Gilstone," said Gerard, stopping on the threshold, as the Rector 
 followed him to the hall, " you are a good man. However hardly
 
 320 Gerard ; or^ 
 
 you may think of me, nothing will ever lessen my gratitude to you 
 ■ — and in the short time I may yet have to Hve I hope to prove that 
 with me gratitude means something more than a word." 
 
 The Rector gave him his hand in silence, and Gerard got into the 
 lly and was driven to Mr. Mivor's comfortable cottage, a low, white- 
 walled building wdth a thatched roof, at the end of the stragghng 
 village street. 
 
 Mr. Mivor was sm-prised to see him, but asked no questions. 
 
 " I should have telegraphed to you more than a fortnight ago if I 
 had known where to find you," he said. " I am glad you have come 
 back. Mrs. Hanley is a little better to-day — only a little. We 
 must be thankful for the least improvement, and we must try not to 
 lose ground again." 
 
 " She has been dangerously ill, I am told ? " 
 
 " Dangerously ! Yes, I should think so. She has been on the 
 brink of death, not once, but several times since the birth of her 
 child. And since the fever took a bad turn — the night she tried to 
 make away with herself — her condition has been all but hopeless, 
 until yesterday, when there were signs of rallying." 
 
 "May I see her?" 
 
 " I don't think it could do her any harm. She won't know j'ou." 
 
 " Yes, she will ! She will know me. She may not recognise 
 people who are almost strangers to her, but she will know me " 
 
 " Poor lady ! She hardly knows herself. Ask her who she is, 
 and she will tell you a strange story. All we can hope is that with 
 returning strength mind and memory will return. I will go to the 
 Eectory with you, and if I find her as tranquil as she was this 
 morning you shall see her." 
 
 They were at the Rectory ten minutes later, and this time Mr. 
 Gilstone received Gerard with kindliness. He had given speech to 
 his indignation, and now his natural benevolence pleaded with him 
 for the repentant sinner. He received Gerard in his study, while 
 the doctor went to see his patient. 
 
 " You have not asked me why I took upon myself to have Mrs. 
 Hanley brought to this house, rather than to her own," he said. 
 
 " I had no need to ask. It was easj' for me to understand your kindly 
 motive. You would not let her re-enter a house in wliich she had 
 tasted such misery — you wished to surround her with fresh objects, in a 
 peaceful shelter where nothing would remind her of her past suilerings." 
 
 " That was one motive. The other was to place her under the 
 care of my sister. However devoted hired nurses may be, and I 
 have nothing to say against the woman who is now nursing Mrs. 
 Hanley, it is well that there should be some one near who is not
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 321 
 
 a hireling, who works for love, and not for wages. My sister's 
 heart has gone out to this poor lady." 
 
 Mr. Mvor appeared at the study door, which had been left open 
 while Gerard waited, his ear strained to catch every sound in the 
 quiet, orderly house, where all the machinery of life went on with 
 a calm regularity that knew no change save the changing seasons. 
 The silence of the house oppressed Gerard as he went upstairs, 
 filled with an aching fear. "Was he to find her cold and unconscious 
 of his presence — the girl who had hung upon him with despairing 
 love when they parted, less than a month ago ? 
 
 A door was opened, a woman in a white cap and apron looked at 
 him gravely, and drew aside. It was the nurse who had waited 
 upon old Nicholas Davenport, and even in this moment the association 
 made him shudder. And then, scarcely conscious of his own move- 
 ments, he was standing in a sunlit room where a young woman in 
 a white morning gown, and with hollow cheeks and soft, fair hair, 
 cropped close to the well-shaped head, was sitting at a table playing 
 with the flowers that were strewn upon it. 
 
 " Hester, Hester, my darling, I have come back to you," he cried, 
 in a heart-broken voice, and then he fell on his knees beside her 
 chair, and tried to draw the fair face down towards his quivering 
 lips, but she sb.rank away from him with a scared look. 
 
 In spite of the doctor's warning he was unprepared for this. He 
 had hugged himself with the behef that had her mind wandered ever 
 so far away, as far as east from west, or heaven from earth, she 
 would know him. To him she would be unchanged. The one 
 beloved personality would stand out clear and firm amidst the chaos 
 of delirious dreams. Much as he had prated of molecular action, 
 and nerve messages, and all the machinery of materiahsm, he had 
 expected here to find spirit working independently of matter, and 
 love dominant over the laws of physiology. 
 
 The violet eyes, dilated by madness, looked at him, looked him 
 through and through, and knew him not. She shrank from him 
 Avith distrust, gathered up the scattered flowers in the folds of her 
 loose muslin gown, and moved hastily from the table. 
 
 "I'm going to plant these in the front garden, nurse," she said, 
 " I want to get them planted before father comes from the library. 
 It'll be a surprise for him, poor dear. He was grumbUng about the 
 dust this morning, and saying how it spoils everything, and he'll bo 
 pleased to see the garden full of tulips and hyacinths. This sort 
 will grow without roots — they grow best without roots, don't they ? " 
 
 She looked down at the flowers dubiously, as if not quite clear 
 upon this point, and then with a sudden vehemence ran to the 
 
 V
 
 o 
 
 2 2 Gerard ; or, 
 
 fireplace, where a small fire was burning behind a high brass fender, 
 and flung the tulips and hyacinths into the fender. 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. Hanley, that's very naughty of you," cried the nurse, 
 as if reproving a child, " to throw away the pretty flowers that the 
 Eector brought you this morning. Why did you do that, now ? " 
 
 " I don't want them. They won't grow. It's the day for my music 
 lesson, and I haven't practised. How cross Herr Schuter will be ! " 
 
 There was a Httle cottage piano in a recess by the fireplace — a 
 little old piano on which ^liss Gilstone had practised her scales forty 
 years before. Hester ran to the piano, seated herself hastily, and 
 began to play one of Chopin's noctui-nes — a piece so familiar in her 
 girlhood that even in distraction some memory of the notes remained, 
 and she played correctly and with feeling to the end of the first 
 movement, when suddenly, at a loss for a bar, she burst into tears 
 and left the piano. 
 
 " It is all gone," she said. " Why can't I remember? " 
 
 In all these varying moods and rapid movements about the room 
 there had not been one look or one gesture which indicated con- 
 sciousness of Gerard's presence. Those large, luminous eyes looked 
 at him and saw him not, or saw him only as a stranger whose image 
 awakened no interest. 
 
 The nurse dried the patient's tears and soothed her after that 
 burst of grief at the piano, and a few minutes later Hester was 
 standing at the open window tranquillised and smiling, watching for 
 some one with an air of glad expectancy. 
 
 " How late he is," she said, '' and I've got such a nice httle 
 dinner for him ! I'm afraid it will be spoilt by waiting. It's the 
 day the new magazines are given out at the Free Library. He is 
 always late on magazine day. I ought to have remembered." 
 
 She turned quickly from the window and looked about the room. 
 
 " What has become of my sewing-machine ? " she asked. " Have 
 you taken it away ? " to the nurse ; " Or you ? " to Gerard. " Pray 
 bring it back directly, or I shall be behindhand with my work." 
 
 Her thoughts were all in the past, the days before she had entered 
 into the tragedy of life, while yet existence was passionless, and 
 meant only patience and duty. How strange it seemed to find her 
 memory dweUing upon that dull time of drudgery and care, while 
 the season of joy and love was forgotten ! 
 
 " Is she often as restless as this ? " he asked, with an agonised look 
 at the doctor, who stood by the window, calmly watchful of his patient. 
 
 " Restless, do you call her ? You would know what restlessness 
 means if you had seen her three days ago, when the dehrium was at 
 its height, and one delusion followed another at lightning pace in
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 323 
 
 that poor little head, and when it was all her two nurses could do to 
 keep, her from doing herself harm. She has improved wonderfully 
 since then, and I am a great deal more hopeful about her." 
 
 " Have you had no second opinion ? Surely in such a case as 
 this a specialist should have been consulted? " 
 
 "We have had Dr. Campbell, the famous lunacy-doctor, whose 
 opinion of the case corresponds with my own. There is very little 
 to be done. Watchfulness and good nursing are all that we have 
 to look to — and Nature, the great healer. I was right, you see. I 
 told you she would not know you, and that seeing you could do her 
 neither good nor harm." 
 
 " Yes, you were right. I am nothing to her — no more than if I 
 had been a century dead — no more than any of the dead who aro 
 lying under those crumbling old tombstones yonder." 
 
 He glanced towards the churchyard, where the soft spring sun- 
 Hght was shining upon grey granite and golden lichen, the dark 
 foliage of immemorial yews and the downy tufts upon the young 
 willows. He was standing side by side with the woman who had 
 loved him better than her life, and she took no heed of him. He 
 ti-ied to clasp her hand, but she moved away from him looking at 
 him in shy surprise, and with some touch of apprehension or dislike. 
 "Hester," he exclaimed piteously, "don't you know me?" 
 "Are you another doctor?" she asked. "There have been so 
 many doctors — so many nurses — and yet I am quite well. They 
 have cut off my hair, and they treat me as if I were a child — but there 
 is nothing the matter with me. I don't want any more doctors." 
 
 "You see how she is," said Mr. Mivor. " I think you had better 
 come away at once. Your presence excites her, although she doesn't 
 know you. Nothing can be done for her that is not being done. Miss 
 Gilstone has been all kindness. She has given up her sitting-room 
 and bedroom to your wife because they are the prettiest in the 
 house." 
 
 " She is an angel of charity," said Gerard, " and Heaven knows 
 how I can ever repay her." 
 
 " She is a Christian," said Mr. Mivor, " and she won't Ibok to you 
 for any reward. It is as natural for her to do good as it is for the 
 flowers to bloom when their season comes." 
 
 Gerard followed the doctor out of the room, his looks lingering to 
 the last upon the sweet pale face by the window, but the face gave 
 no sign of returning memory. The doctor was right, no doubt. 
 Messages of some kind were being carried swiftly enough along the 
 nerve-fibres to the nerve corpuscles, but no message told of Gerard 
 Hillersdon's existence, or of last year's love-stoiy.
 
 324 Gerai'd ; or, 
 
 Gerard Hillersdon did not go back to London immediately after 
 leaAnng the Rectory. He was fagged and faint after the long night of 
 travel, the long morning of heart-rending emotions, the unaccustomed 
 hurraing to and fro ; but he had something to do that must be done, 
 and with this business on his mind he had refused all oft'ers of refresh- 
 ment from the hospitaWe Rector, although he had eaten nothing since 
 the hurried dinner in Paris on tbe previous night. He went from the 
 Rectory at Lowcombe to the Rose and Crown, in the next village, the 
 inn to which Hester had been carried after the rescue from the river, 
 and at which the inquest upon her drowned baby had been held. He 
 went to that house thiaking that there he would be most likely to get 
 the information he wanted about the man who had saved Hester's life. 
 
 Life was saved, and reason might return ; but, alas, with returning 
 reason would come the mother's cry for the child her madness had 
 destroyed. Must she be told— or would she remember what she 
 had done ? Would she recall the circumstances of that fearful 
 night, and know that in her attempt to end her own sorrows she had 
 killed her innocent child ? 
 
 To-day his business was to find out the name of the man who had 
 saved her life, possibly at the hazard of his own ; and he argued 
 that the Rose and Crown was the likeliest place at which to get the 
 information he wanted. 
 
 He was not mistaken. The inn was kept by a buxom widow, 
 who charged abnormal prices for bedrooms in the boating season, 
 and was said to have fattened by picking the bones of boating men. 
 Although her bills were extortionate her heart was beneficent, and 
 she was eager to be serviceable to Mr. Hanley, of the Rosary. She 
 expatiated tearfully upon the loveliness of the dear young lady who 
 had been carried unconscious and apparently dead to the Rose and 
 Cro\\'n's best bedroom. She dUated upon the efforts that had been 
 made to bring life back to that cold form, and upon her own pious 
 tliankfulness when those efforts proved successful. 
 
 '• Indeed, sir, I thought the dear young lady was gone," she said, 
 " and if we hadn't had a medical student in the house who hurged 
 us to go on " — the aspirate here seemed only an element of force — 
 " and if we hadn't had the Xewmane Serciety's instructions 'anguig 
 up in the 'all, I don't suppose we should ever have had the patience 
 or the strength of mind to have kep' at it as we did." 
 
 " Can you tell me the name of the man who rescued her ? " asked 
 Gerard, somewhat curtly, considering the landlady's beneficence a 
 matter to be settled like her bills, by a cheque. 
 
 " Why, of course I can, sir. He and his friend was obliged to 
 stay the night in the 'ouse, for he'd nothing but his wet boating
 
 The World, the Elesh, and the Devil. 325 
 
 clothes and a overcoat He stopped that night, and his clothes 
 was dried at my own sitting-room fire, which I kep' up all night, on 
 purpose, and he wrote his name in the visitors' book before he left 
 next morning. I says, 'I should like to have your name in my 
 book, sir, for you're a brave-hearted man.' And he laughs and 
 say, ' Lor, landlady, you don't think what I've done anythink out of 
 the way, do you? And as for my name,' he saj's, 'it's a very 
 common one, but such as it is you're welcome to it.' " 
 
 The landlady produced a fat black quarto, in which, amidst much 
 sportive commendation of her meat and drink, and many fictitious 
 entries of Dukes and Marquises, famous politicians, and notorious 
 criminals, and a good deal of doggerel verse, there appeared the 
 following modest entry — 
 
 Lawrence Brown, 49, Parchment Place, Inner Temple. 
 
 Gerard copied the address into his pocket-book, presented the mis- 
 tress of the Kose and Crown with a bank note, for distribution among 
 those servants who had been helpful on the night of the catastrophe, 
 wished her good day, and was seated in his fly before she had time 
 to steal a glance at the denomination of the note, or to give speech to 
 her gratitude on discovering that it was not five, but five-and-twenty. 
 
 " This Mr. ilanley must be uncommonly rich to be so free witli 
 his money," she reflected, '• but for all that I don't beheve that 
 pretty young creature is his wife. She wouldn't have took to 
 wandering about with her baby if she had been. Perpetual fever 
 says the doctor. Don't tell me ! Perpetual fever would never 
 make a respectable married woman forget herself to that extent." 
 
 Two hours later Gerard IliUersdon was seated face to face with 
 Lawrence Brown, barrister of no particular circuit, and of Parch- 
 ment Place, Inner Temple. 
 
 The room was shabby almost to squahdness : the man was nearer 
 forty than thirty, with roughly modelled features, keen eyes, intelli- 
 gent brow, and dark hair already touched with grey about the temples. 
 
 He received ^Ir. Hillersdon's thanks politely, but with obvious 
 reserve. He made very light of what he had done — no man seeing 
 a life at stake could have done less. He was sorry — and here his 
 face grew pale and stern — he had not been able to save the other 
 life, the poor little" child. 
 
 " My friend and I heard a child's famt cry," he said, " and it was 
 that which called our attention to the spot, before we heard the 
 splash. Tlie current runs strong at that point. The woman rose, 
 and sank again, twice before I caught hold of her, but the child was 
 swept away upon the current. The body was found caught among 
 the rushes half a mile lower down the stream."
 
 326 Gerard; or, 
 
 There was a silence of some moments, during which Mr. Brown 
 refilled his briarwood pipe, automatically, and looked at the Httle 
 bit of fire burning duUy in a rusty iron grate. 
 
 " Mr. Brown," began Gerard abruptly, " I am a very rich man." 
 
 " I am glad to hear it," replied Brown. " There are consolations 
 in wealth which we poor men can hardly realise." 
 
 "You have called yourself a poor man," said Gerard eagerly, 
 " so you must not be angry with me if I presume to take that as a 
 fact. I am rich, but my wealth is of very little use to me. I have 
 had my death warrant. My time for spending money wiU soon 
 be over, and my wealth must pass into other hands. I am here 
 to beg your acceptance of a substantial reward for the act which 
 has saved me from a burden that would have been unbearable — the 
 thought that my absence from England had caused the death of the 
 person who is dearer to me than any one else upon earth. Will you 
 oblige me with your inkstand ? " 
 
 He stretched his hand towards a shabby china ink-pot in which 
 half a dozen much-used quills kept guard over a thimbleful of ink. 
 
 " What are you going to do, Mr. Hanley ? " 
 
 " I am going to write a cheque, if you will allow me — a cheque for 
 five thousand pounds, payable to your order." 
 
 "You are very good, but I am not a boatman, and I don't save 
 lives for hire. I have not the faintest claim upon your purse. What 
 I did for your — for Mrs. Hanley, I would have done for any love- 
 sick kitchen-wench along the river. I heard a woman fall into the 
 water, and I fetched her out. Do you suppose that I want to take 
 money for that? " 
 
 " You would take a big fee for doing everything short of perjuring 
 yourself in order to save the neck of a ruffianly burglar," said Gerard. 
 
 " I should do that in the way of business. It is my profession to 
 defend burglars, and, short of perjurj', to make believe that they are 
 innocent and lamb-hke." 
 
 " And you will not accept this recompense from me — a trifling 
 recompense as compared with my income V You will not allow me 
 to think that for once in a way my wealth has been of some service 
 to a good man ? " 
 
 " I thank you for your kind opinion of me, and for your wish to 
 do me a kindness, but I cannot take a gift of money from you." 
 
 " Because you think badly of me ? " 
 
 " I could not take a gift of money from any man who was not of 
 my own blood, or so near and dear to me by fi'iendship as to nullify 
 all sense of obligation." 
 
 " But you could feel no obligation in this case, while yom- refusal
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 327 
 
 to accept any substantial expression of my gratitude leaves me under 
 the burden of a heavj'- obligation. Do you think that is generous 
 on your part ? " 
 
 " I am only certain of one thing, Mr. Hanley — I cannot accept 
 any gift from you." 
 
 " Because you have a bad opinion of me. Come, Mi*. Brown, 
 between man and man, is not that your reason ? " 
 
 "You force me to plain speech," answered the barrister. "Yes, 
 that is one of my reasons. I could not take a favour from a man I 
 despise, and I can have no better feeling than contempt for the man 
 who could abandon a friendless and highly strung girl in the day of 
 trial — leave her to break her heart, and to try to make an end of 
 herself in her despair." 
 
 "You are very ready with your summing up of my conduct. I 
 was absent — granted ; but I had left Mrs. Hanley sun'ounded with 
 
 all proper care ■ " 
 
 " You mean you had left her with a fuU purse and three or four 
 servants. Do you think that means the care due from a husband 
 to a wife who is about to become a mother? You must not be 
 surprised if I have formed my own opinion about you, Mr. Hanley. 
 I have been up and down the river a good many times, and have 
 lived for a good many days here and there at riverside inns within 
 a few miles of the Rosary, and have heard a good deal of talk about 
 you and yom- lovely wife — or not wife, as the case may be. The 
 village gossips would have it that she was not your wife." 
 
 " The village gossips were right. I was bound by an earlier claim, 
 and I dared not marry her ; but if she and I live, and if I can release 
 myself from that other claim with honour, she shall be my wife." 
 
 " I am glad to hear that. But I doubt if your tardy reparation 
 can ever efface the past." 
 
 The man was obviously so thoroughly in earnest that even in the 
 face of those shabby chambers, that well-worn shooting-jacket and 
 those much-kneed trousers, Gerard could push his offer no further. 
 He might have been as rich as Rothschild, and this man would have 
 accepted not so much as a single piece of gold out of his treasury. 
 There are men of strong feehngs and prejudices to whom money is 
 not aU in all; men who are content to wear rhabby tweed and 
 trousers that are bulging at the knees and frayed at the edge, and to 
 sit beside a sparse fire in a rusty grate, and smoke coarse tobacco in 
 an eighteen-penny pipe, so long as that inward fire of conscience 
 burns bright and clear, and the silvering head can hold itself high 
 in the face of mankind.
 
 328 Gerard ; or, 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 "the lo%tj: telvt caught strange light from death's 
 
 OWN EYES." 
 
 Gerard Hillersdox had no mind to occupy the cottage in which 
 he had dreamed his brief love-dream, but he went to Lowcombe 
 daily, and sat in the Eector's study, and heard the doctor's opinion, 
 and the report of the nurses, and once on each day was admitted for 
 a short time to the pretty sitting-room where Hester flitted from 
 object to object with a feverish restlessness, or else sat statue-like by 
 the open window gazing dreamily at churchyard or river. 
 
 The doctor and the nm-ses told him that there was a gradual im- 
 provement. The patient's nights were less wakeful, and she was 
 able to take a little more nourishment. Altogether the case seemed 
 hopeful, and even the violence of the earlier stages was said to 
 predicate a rapid recovery. 
 
 " If she were always as you see her just now," said Mr. Mivor, 
 glancing towards the motionless figure by the window, " I should 
 consider her case almost hopeless — but that hyper-activity of brain 
 which alarms you is an encouraging symptom." 
 
 The Eector was kind and sympathetic, but Gerard observed that 
 Miss Gilstone avoided him. He was never shown into the drawing- 
 room, but always into the Rector's study, where he felt himself shut 
 out from social intercourse, as if he had been a leper. On his third 
 visit he told the Rector that he %Yas anxious to thank Miss Gilstone 
 for her goodness to Hester ; but the Rector shook his head dubiously. 
 
 " Better not think about it yet awhile," he said. " My sister is 
 full of prejudices. She doesn't want to be thanked. She is very 
 fond of this poor girl, and she thinks j'ou have cruelly WTOnged her." 
 
 " People seem to have made up their mmds about that," said 
 Gerard. " I am not to have the benefit of the doubt." 
 
 " People have made up their minds tliat when a lovel}' and innocent 
 girl makes the sacrifice that this poor girl has made for you, a man's 
 conscience should constrain him to repair the wrong he has done — 
 even though social circumstances make reparation a hard thing to 
 do. But in this case difference of caste could have made no barrier. 
 Your victim is a lady, and no man need desire more than that." 
 
 " There was a barrier," said Gerard. " I was bound by a promise 
 to a woman who had been constant to me for years." 
 
 " But who had not sacrificed herself for you — as this poor girl has 
 done. And it was because she was a clever, hard-lieaded woman of 
 the world, perhaps, and had kept her name unstained, that you
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 329 
 
 wanted to keep your promise to her, rather than that other promise 
 — at least implied — which you gave to the girl who loved you." 
 
 Gerard was silent. What had he not promised in those impas- 
 sioned hours when love was supreme ? What pledges, what vows 
 had he not given his fond victim, in that conflict between love and 
 honour ? She had been too generous ever to remind him of those 
 passionate vows. He had chosen to cheat her, and she had sub- 
 mitted to be cheated, resigned even to his abandonment of her if 
 his happiness were to be found elsewhere. 
 
 The London season had begun, and there were plenty of people 
 in town who knew Gerard Hillersdon, people who would have been 
 delighted to welcome him back to society after his prolonged disap- 
 pearance from a world which he — or at any rate his breakfasts and 
 dinners — had adorned. But Gerard was careful to let no one know 
 of his return to London. The carriage gates of Hillersdon House 
 ■were as closely shut as when the master of the house was in Italy, 
 and Mr. HiUersdon's only visitor entered by an insignificant 'garden 
 door which opened into a shabby street at the back of the premises. 
 This visitor was Justin Jermyn, the confidant and companion whose 
 society was in some wise a necessity to Gerard since his shattered 
 nerves had made solitude impossible. They dined together every night, 
 talked, smoked, and idled in a dreamy silence, and played piquet for an 
 hour or two after midnight. The money he "won at cards was the only 
 money that JermjTi had ever taken from his millionaire friend ; but 
 he was an exceptionally fine player, Gerard a careless one, and the 
 stakes were high, whereby his winnings made a respectable revenue. 
 
 Gerard found Jermj-n waiting for him when he returned, saddened 
 and disheartened, from Lowcombe Rectory. Jermyn was sprawling 
 on a sofa in the winter-garden, with his head deep in a leviathan 
 pillow, and his legs in the air. 
 
 " There is a letter for you," he said, between two lazy puffs at a 
 large cigar, " a letter from Florence — after Ovid, no doubt. Dido 
 to Aeneas!" 
 
 "Why didn't you open it if you were curious? " sneered Gerard. "It 
 would be no worse form than to pry into the address and postmark." 
 
 " There was no necessity; you are sure to tell me all about it." 
 
 The letter was from Mrs. Champion, and a thick letter, that lady 
 scorning such small economy as the lessening of postage by the use 
 of foreign paper. 
 
 " Vci DEAR Gerahd, — I think my letter of last night may have pre- 
 pared you in some degree for the letter I find myself constrained to
 
 330 Gerard; or, 
 
 write to-day. I might have hesitated longer, perhaps, tad you been 
 BtOl at my side, might have trifled with your fate and mine, might have 
 allowed myself to drift into a marriage which I am now assured could 
 result in happiness neither for you nor me. The days are past in which 
 you and I were all in all to each other. We are good friends still, 
 shall be good friends, I hope, as long as we live ; but why should 
 friends marry, when they are happy in unfettered friendship ? 
 
 " You hurried departure makes my task easier ; and should make 
 the continuation of our friendship easier. When we meet again let 
 us meet as friends, and forget that we have ever been more than 
 friends. Day by day, and hour by hour, since you came to Florence 
 it has been made clearer to my mind that we have both changed 
 since last year. We are not to blame, Gerard, neither you nor I. 
 The glamour has gone out of our Hves somehow — we are ' the same 
 and not the same.' I have seen coldness and despondency in vou 
 where all was once warmth and hope, and I confess that a coldness 
 in my own heaii; responds to the chill that has come over yours. 
 If we were to many we should be miserable, and should perhaps 
 come to hate each other before very long. If we are frank and 
 straightforward, and true to each other at this crisis of our hves we 
 need never be lessened in each other's esteem. 
 
 "I know that I have read your heart as truly as I have read my 
 own ; I do not, therefore, appeal to you for pardon. My release will 
 be your release. Be as frank with me, my dear Gerard, as I have been 
 ■with you, and send me a few friendly lines to assure me of kindly 
 feeling towards your ever faithful friend, — Edith Chajipiox." 
 
 A deathlike chill crept through Gerard's veins as he read this 
 letter to the end. The release as a release was welcome, but the 
 imderlying meaning of the letter, the feeling which had prompted it, 
 cut him to the quick. 
 
 " She saw death in my face that first day at Florence," he told 
 himself. "I could not mistake her look of horrified surprise, of 
 repulsion almost, when I stood unexpectedly before her. She was 
 able to hide her feehngs afterwards, but in that moment love 
 perished. She saw a change in me that changed her at once and 
 for ever. I was not the Gerard HiUersdon of whom she had 
 thought, and for whom she had waited. The man who stood before 
 her was a stranger marked for death ; a doomed wretch cUnginf to 
 the hem of her garments to keep him from the grave — an embodied 
 misery. Can I wonder that her heart changed to the man whom 
 Death had changed? " 
 
 He read the letter a second time, slowly and thoughtfully. Yes,
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 331 
 
 lie could read between the lines. He had gone to his old love as 
 an escape from death— a flight to sunnier skies, as the swallows fly 
 to Africa. He had thought that somehow in that association with 
 fresh and joyous hfe, he would escape out of the jaws of death, 
 renew his boyish love, and with that renewal of youthful emotions 
 renew youth itself. He had cheated himself with this hope when he 
 turned his face towards Florence ; but the woman he had loved, that 
 embodiment of life and happiness, would have none of him. 
 
 Well, it was better so. He was free to pick up the broken 
 thread of that nearer, dearer, far more enthralling love— if he could. 
 If he could ! Can broken threads be united ? He thought of his 
 child — his mm-dered child — murdered by his abandonment of the 
 mother. No act of his — no tardy reparation — could brmg back 
 that lost life. Even if Fate were kind, and Hester's health and 
 reason were restored, that loss was a loss for ever, and would 
 overshadow the mother's life to the end. 
 
 He knew that he was dying, that for Hester and him there could 
 be no second summer of happy, unreasoning love. The meadow 
 flowers would blossom again ; the river would go ripplmg past lawn 
 and willowy bank under the September sun ; but his feet would not 
 tread the ripe grasses, his voice would not break the quiet of that 
 lonely backwater where Hester and he had dreamt their dream of a 
 world in which there was neither past nor future, neither fear nor 
 care, only ineffable love. 
 
 Jermyn watched him keenly as he walked up and down the open 
 space between a bank of vivid tulips and a cluster of palms. 
 
 "Yom- letter seems to have troubled you," he said, at last. 
 "Does she scold you for havmg run away just before your wedding? 
 To-day was to have been the day, by-the-by." 
 
 " No, she is very kind — and very patient. She will wait till it 
 suits me to go back." 
 
 " That wiU be next week, I suppose ? You have done all you 
 can do at Lowcombe. The Jersey Lily will suit you better than 
 this house — delightful as it is — -and Spezia or Sorrento will be a 
 safer climate than London in May." 
 
 " I am in no hurry to go back — and I doubt if climate can make 
 any difference to me." 
 
 " There you are wrong. The air a man breathes is of paramount 
 importance." 
 
 "I will hear what my doctor says upon that point. In the 
 meantime I can vegetate here." 
 
 He dined with Justin Jermyn. No one else knew that he was in 
 London. He had not announced his return even to his sister,
 
 332 Gerard ; or, 
 
 sbrinkirig with a sense of pain from any meeting with that happy 
 young matron, who was so full of the earnest realities of life, and 
 who on their last meeting had asked such searching questions about 
 her missing friend Hester, whether there was anjlhing that she or 
 her husband could do to find out the secret of her disappearance. 
 She had reminded her brother that Jack Cumberland was the 
 servant of Him who came to seek and to save those that were lost, 
 and that even if Hester's footsteps had wandered from the right 
 way, it was so much the more his duty to find her. Gerard had 
 answered those eager questionings as best he might, or had left 
 them unanswered ; but he felt that in the present state of things he 
 could scarcely endure to hear Hester's name, and that the mask 
 must drop if he were called upon to talk about his victim. 
 
 Hester's attempted suicide, and the drowning of her child had 
 not been made a local scandal, and bandied about in the newspapers. 
 The fact was too unimportant to attract the attention of a metro- 
 politan reporter, and Mr. Gilstone's wishes had been law to the 
 editors of the two or three papers which usually concerned them- 
 selves with the affairs of Lowcombe and other villages within 
 twenty miles of Reading. Gerard's domestic tragedy had therefore 
 been unrecorded by the public Press. 
 
 The two young men went upstairs after dinner to smoke and 
 loun"-e in the rooms which Gerard had copied from those unfor- 
 gotten chambers in the old Inn. Here they usually sat of an evening, 
 when they were alone ; and it was here that most of those games of 
 piquet had been played, the result of which had been to supply Justin 
 Jermyn with a conifortable income without impoverishing the less 
 successful player. But to-night Gerard was in no mood for piquet. 
 His nerves were strained, and his brain was fevered. The game, 
 which had generally a tranquillising influence, to-night only worried 
 him. He threw his cards upon the table in a sudden fretfulness. 
 
 "It's no use," he said. '' I hardly know what I am doing. I'll 
 play no more." 
 
 lie rose impatiently, and began to walk about the room, then 
 stopped abruptly before a Japanese curtain, which hung against the 
 panelling, and plucked it aside. 
 
 " Do you know what that is ? " he asked, pointing to the sheet of 
 drawing-paper scrawled with pen and ink lines. 
 
 " It looks as if it were meant for an outline map. Your idea of Italy, 
 perhaps, or Africa — drawn from memory, and not particularly like." 
 
 " It is my^eatt de chagrin — the talisman that shows the shrinking 
 of vital force — vital force meaning life itself— and thus marks the 
 swift passage to the grave. You see the outer line of all. Tolerably
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 333 
 
 firm and free, is it not? Scarcely drawn by the hand of a Hercules, 
 yet with no mark of actual feebleness. You see the inner lines, 
 each following each, weaker and more irresolute, the last tremulous 
 as a signature made on a beath-bed." 
 
 He snatched a pen from the table near him, and dipped it in the 
 ink, then made a dash at the chart, and tried to follow the outer 
 line with a bolder sweep, but his arm was too weak to bear the 
 strain of the upward position, and the pen ran down the paper with 
 a single swift descending stroke, till it touched the outermost edge, 
 then glanced oft" and dropped from the loosening hand. 
 
 "Do you see that?" he cried, with a burst of hysterical 
 laughter. " The line goes down — straight as a falling star — as the 
 life goes down to the grave." 
 
 " Come, come, my dear fellow, this is all womanish nonsense," said 
 Jermyn, with his smooth, soranolentvoice, in whose sound there was 
 a sense of comfort, as in the falling of summer rain. " You are tired. 
 L'e down on this delightful sofa, and let me talk you to sleep." 
 
 He laid his hand on Gerard's shoulder with a friendly movement, 
 and drew or led him to the capacious old Italian sofa, with its 
 covering made of priesth' vestments, still rich in delicate colouring, 
 despite the sunlight and dust of centuries. Brain weary, and weak 
 in body, Gerard sank on that luxurious couch, as Endymion on a 
 bed of flowers, and the soft, slow music of Jermyn's voice — talking 
 of the yacht, and the harbours where they two were to anchor 
 along the shores of the Mediterranean — was potent as mandragora 
 or moly. He sank into a delicious sleep — the first restful sleep he 
 had known since he had left Florence. 
 
 It was ten o'clock when he fell asleep, and it was past eleven 
 when he woke suddenly, his mind filled with one absorbing thought. 
 
 " My will ! " he said ; " I have made no will. If I were to die suddenly 
 — and with a weak heart who can tell when death may come — I should 
 die intestate. That would be horrible. I have settled something — • 
 but not much ; not enough " — this to himself, rather than to Jermyn, 
 who sat quietly beside the sofa, watching him. " I must make a will." 
 
 No such thought had been in his mind before he fell asleep ; no 
 idea of any such necessity. If he had thought — as a millionaire 
 must think — of the disposal of his money, he had told himself that 
 were he to die intestate his father would inherit everything, and 
 that having provided for Hester's future by a deed of trust, it 
 mattered little whether he made a will or not. A few casual 
 friends would be cheated of expected legacies — but that mattered 
 little. He had no friends^ — not even this umbra of his, Justin 
 Jermyn — whose disappointment mattered to him. But to-night his
 
 334 Gerard; or, 
 
 ■whole mind was absorbed in the necessity of disposing of his fortune. 
 He was fevered Avith impatience to get the thing done. 
 
 " Give me a sheet of that large paper," he said, pointing to hk 
 \yritin£:-table. " I will make mv will at once. You and a servant 
 can witness it. A holograph will is as good as any, and there is no 
 one who could attack my will." 
 
 " I hope j"OU won't ask me to witness the document," said Jermyn, 
 laj'ing a quire of large Bath Post before Gerard, with inkstand and 
 blotter, " for that would mean that you are not going to leave me so 
 much as a curio or a mourning ring." 
 
 " True — I must leave you something. I'll leave you your own 
 likeness — the faun yonder," said Gerard, looking up at the bust, the 
 laughing lips in marble seeming to repeat JermjTi's broad smUe. 
 
 "You must leave me something better than that. I am as poor 
 as Job, and if I outlive you where will be my winnings at piquet? 
 Leave me the scrapings of your money bags. Make me residuary 
 legatee, after you have disposed of your fortune. The phrase will mean 
 very little, though it sounds big — but there must be some scrapings." 
 
 Gerard opened an enamelled casket, a master work of the cinque- 
 cento goldsmiths, and took out a long slip of paper, the schedule of 
 his possessions, a catalogue of stocks and shares, in his o-mi neat 
 penmanship. A glance along this row of figures showed him where 
 his wealth lay, and with this slip of paper spread on the table before 
 him he began to write. 
 
 To my father, the Reverend Edward Hillersdon, Rector of Helms- 
 leigh, in Consols, so much, in South- Western Ordinary Stock — in 
 Great Western — Great Eastern — Great Northern, so much, and so 
 much, and so much, till he had disposed of the first million, Justin 
 Jermyn standing by his side and looking doAvn at him, with his 
 hand on his shoulder. 
 
 He no longer wrote the small neat hand which had once penned 
 a popular love-storj', and almost made its OAvner a name in literature. 
 To-night, in his fever and hurry of brain, his writing sprawled large 
 over the page — the first page was covered with the mere preliminary 
 statement of sound mind, etc., etc., and his father's name. Then 
 came the list of securities, covering three other pages — then to my 
 sister Lilian, wife of John Cumberland, vicar of St. Lawrence, Soho, 
 and then another list of securities — then to my mother, all my 
 furniture, pictures, plate, in my house at Knightsbridge, with the 
 exception of the marble faun in my study — then to my beloved 
 friend, Hester Davenport, fifty thousand pounds in Consols, and my 
 house and grounds at Lowcombe, with all contents thereof — and, 
 finally, to Justin Jermyn. whom I appoint residuary legatee, the
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 335 
 
 marble faun. One after another, as the pages were finished in the 
 large hurried penmanship, Justin Jermyn picked them up, and dried 
 them at the wood fire. The nights were chilly, though May had 
 begun, and Gerard's sofa had been drawn near the hearth. 
 
 It was on the stroke of midnight when the will was ready for signature. 
 
 " Kindly ring, Jermyn. My valet will be up, of course, and most 
 of the other servants, perhaps, for this is a dissipated house. I hear 
 them creeping up to bed at midnight very often when I am sitting 
 quietly here. The servants' staircase is at this end of the house." 
 
 " Talking of staircases, you haven't left Larose so much as a curio," 
 said Jermj-n, as he pressed a bronze knob beside the mantelpiece. 
 
 "Why should I leave him anything? He has made plenty of 
 money out of this house. Do you think I want to give him a 
 pleasant half-hour, when I am in my grave ? " 
 
 '• I thought you liked him." 
 
 "I like no one, in the face of death," answered Gerard fiercely. 
 " Do you think I can love the men whose lives are long — who are 
 to go on living and enjoying for the greater part of a centurj-, 
 perhaps, to be recorded approvingly in the Times obituary, after 
 drinking the wine of Ufe for ninety years, ' We regret to announce the 
 death of Archdeacon So-and-so, in his eighty-ninth year ' ? Regrets 
 for a man of eighty-nine ! And you think that I, who am doomed 
 to die before I am thirty, can feel kindly towards the long-lived of 
 my species ! Why should one man have so much, and I so httle ? " 
 
 " Why should one man be an agi'icultural labourer with fifteen 
 shillings a week for his highest wage, while you have two millions ? " 
 
 "Money! Money is nothing! Life is the only thing that is 
 precious. Death is the only thing that is horrible." 
 
 " True ; and I doubt if the man of ninety is any more in love 
 with death than you are at nine-and-twenty." 
 
 " Oh, but he is worn out ; he must know that. The machine has 
 done its work, and perishes of fair wear and tear. It doesn't go to 
 pieces suddenly because of a flaw in the metal. I grant that it is 
 a hideous thought that life should end — ever; that this Ego, so 
 strong, so distinct, so vivid and all-absorbing, should go out with 
 a snap into unknown darkness; but to die young, to die before 
 wrinkles and grey hairs, to die while hfe is still fresh and beautiful 
 — that is hard. I almost hate my own father when I think by how 
 many golden years he may survive me, and revel in this wealth that 
 was mine. They wOl make him a bishop, perhaps. Who knows ? 
 A rich man must always be a power in the Church. My father 
 would make an admirable bishop. He will live as long as Martin 
 Routh, I dare say — live on into the new century, opulent, portly,
 
 336 Gerard; or, 
 
 benevolent, happy — T\-liile T am nothing ! Oh, think how hard these 
 diSerences are ! Think of Shelley's heart turned to dust under the 
 Btone in the Roman gi-avej'ard, and Shelley's friend living for sixty 
 years after him, to lie down tired and full of years beside him who 
 went out in water and flame, like the bright wild spirit he was." 
 
 Jermyn laid his hand upon him soothingly, yet with something of 
 imperiousness. " Be calm," he said ; " you have to sign these sheets." 
 
 The door opened, and the valet whose duty it was to answer his 
 master's bell in the late evening came quietly into the room. 
 
 " Are there any of the servants still up ? " asked Jerm}'n. 
 
 " Burton has not gone to bed yet, sir." 
 
 '• Then ask Burton to come here with you to witness some papers, 
 lie is sober enough to remember what he does, I suppose? " 
 
 "Sober, sir? Yes, sir; I never saw Burton otherwise," replied 
 the valet, with dignity. 
 
 " Be quick, then," said Jermyn. " Your master is waiting." 
 
 His master waited very patiently, with fixed and dreamy eyes, 
 his hand lying loose upon the first sheet of the will, as Jermra had 
 placed it before him. Jermyn stood at his elbow, holding the other 
 leaves of the will in his left hand, while his right rested lightly upon 
 Gerard's shoulder. 
 
 The valet returned, accompanied by the butler, who looked 
 solemn, and was careful to abstain from speech. 
 
 He stood at attention, breathing brandy, but the penmanship with 
 which he witnessed his master's signature, as the sheets were signed 
 one after another, was not illegible. 
 
 The valet signed with a steady hand and a bold front. He, too, 
 had been drinking heavily, but he had a more dehcate taste in 
 liquors than his fellow-servant. 
 
 " You may as well understand the nature of this document," said 
 Jermyn to the witnesses, " but it is not legally necessary that you 
 should do so. It is your master's 'w-ill. The only will you have 
 made, I think, Hillersdon," he added, with his hand still lying upon 
 Gerard's shoulder, a large hand, with abnormal length of finger, and 
 deadly white. 
 
 " It is tlie only will I have made," Gerard said slowly. 
 
 " Or intend to make." 
 
 '• Or intend to make," replied Gerard. 
 
 " You can go," said Jermyn to the men; "I am to sleep here 
 to-night, by the way." 
 
 "Yes, sir. Your room is ready. I have put out your things." 
 
 JeiTiiyn had been stiiying in the house since his return from Italy, 
 but in a casual way, and he had daily talked of going to his own
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. ■x^'i,'] 
 
 chambers. He had rooms somewhere in the neighbourhood of 
 Piccadill}', but rarely imparted the secret of his address, and had 
 never been known to entertain anybody except at a chib. Gerard's 
 single experience of his hospitality had been that after-midnight 
 Bupper in the chambers eastward of Lincoln's Inn. 
 
 "You are very tired, my dear fellow," said JermjTi, when the 
 servants were gone. " You had better lie down again." 
 
 Gerard rose out of his chair, leaving the loose sheets of Bath Post 
 Iving on the table, without so much as a look at them, and Jermyn 
 slipped an arm through his and led him back to the sofa, where he sank 
 down with closing eyelids, and was deep asleep a few moments later. 
 
 Jermyn took up the loose pages, folded them carefully, put them 
 in an inner pocket of his dinner jacket, and went out of the room. 
 The valet was waiting on the landing. 
 
 " Your master has fallen asleep on the sofa," said Jermyn. " He 
 seems very much exhausted, and I think you had better let him 
 stay there all night rather than disturb him. You can put a rug over 
 him, and leave him till the morning. He is not ill, only tired. I'll 
 look in upon him now and then in the night. I'm a very light sleeper." 
 
 The valet paused, anxious to get to bed, yet doubtful. 
 
 '■ Do you really think he will require nothing, sir? " 
 
 '• Nothing but sleep. He is thoroughly worn out. A long night's 
 rest will do wonders for him." 
 
 The valet submitted to a friendly authority. Mr. Jermyn wore his 
 hair very short, had a scientific air, and w^as doubtless half a doctor. 
 The valet went to look at his master, and covered him carefully 
 with a soft Indian rug. Certainly that deep and peaceful sleep was 
 not to be rudely broken. It was a sleep that might mean healing. 
 
 Itwas ten o'clock next morning before Gerard awoke. Mr. Jermyn 
 had gone into the study several times during the night, but at ten he 
 left the house, and it was only as the outer door closed upon him that 
 Gerard began to stir in his sleep, and presently opened his eyes and 
 got up, Avondering to see the morning sunlight stealing through the 
 Venetian shutters, and making golden bars upon the sombre carpet. 
 
 He looked at the clock. Ten, and broad daylight. He had slept 
 nine hours, yet with no consciousness of more than the light and 
 brief slumber of a man who throws himself upon his sofa for a 
 casual nap. A sleep without dreams — a mere gap in life — that 
 blank and idealess slumber which Socrates declared to be the 
 equivalent of supremest earthly bliss. 
 
 "I never slept so many hours on end in my life," he said to 
 himself, almost appalled at his abnormal slumber. 
 
 He looked about the room, slowly recalling the events of yester- 
 
 z
 
 338 Gerard ; or, 
 
 day. His journey to Lowcorabe, his return to town, the letter from 
 Edith Champion. 
 
 He felt in his pocket for the letter. Yes, it was there. He read it a 
 third time hurriedly. He wanted to be sure that he was a free man. 
 
 "Free as air," he told himself, "whistled down the wind to prey 
 at fortune. Free to marry the woman I love — free to set right her 
 wrongs," 
 
 To right her wrongs ! Could he bring his drowned child back to 
 life — could he heal the mother's shattered brain? Such wrongs 
 can never be righted. The scar they leave is deadly. 
 
 He thought over the words of Edith's letter, so cold in their 
 hard common-sense; and then he recalled his own image as he 
 had seen it in the glass that first afternoon in the Florentine villa. 
 That face of his, with death written upon it, was enough to scare 
 away love. He was contemptuous and angry as he thought of that 
 summer-time love ; so exacting, so jealous, so insistent, while the 
 sun of life and youth rode high in the cloudless heaven ; so quick 
 to faint and fail when the shadows fell. 
 
 Of the will made at midnight he had not a moment's thought. 
 Upon that point memory was a blank. Nor did he make any 
 inquiry about Jermyn. He dressed, breakfasted, and was on the 
 way to Lowcombe before noon. 
 
 There was no change in the patient, but the doctor was not 
 unhopeful. Progress must needs be slow, and it was well if there 
 were no retrograde steps. 
 
 " Time is now the only healer we can look to," said Mr. Mivor. 
 
 There was a considerable change in the Kector after half an 
 liour's confidential talk with Gerard; and Miss Gilstono, who 
 hitherto had kept herself out of Mr. Hillersdon's way, received him 
 in her drawing-room, and talked with him for more than an hour, 
 graciously accepting his thanks for all her goodness to Hester. 
 
 " Be assured I would have done as much for the poorest girl in 
 the parish, if her sorrows had appealed to me as Hester's did," 
 said Miss Gilstone, " but I don't mind confessing that her beauty 
 and her sweetness have made a profound impression upon me. 
 Poor soul, even in her worst hours every word she spoke helped to 
 show us the gentleness and purity of her nature. I could but think 
 of what Ophelia's brother said of his sister, 
 
 ' Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, 
 She turns to favour, and to prettiness.' 
 
 Oh, Mr. Hanley, it would bo an awful thought for you in after 
 years to have led such a girl astray, and not to have made the 
 utmost reparation in your power."
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 339 
 
 "It would have been — it is an awful thought," Gerard answered 
 dejectedly. " My only desire now is that I may live long enough 
 to make Hester my wife. The day she first recognises me, the day 
 tjhe is in her right mind, I am ready to marry her. The Rector 
 has asked me to be his guest, so that I may know how she pro- 
 gresses hour by hour. Shall I be in your way. Miss Gilstone, if I 
 venture to accept his invitation? " 
 
 " In my way ? No, indeed. As if any one my brother likes to 
 ask could ever be in my way. Why, he and I have never had two 
 opinions about anything or anybody in our Hves. "We are not like 
 the husbands and wives, who seldom seem to think alike." 
 
 "Then I may stay?" 
 
 "Of com-se you may. Your room is being got ready; and we 
 can put up your servant if you like to bring him." 
 
 " You are too good ; but I have no need of a servant. I shall 
 not impose upon your kindness further than by my own presence." 
 
 He saimtered in the churchyard with the Rector during the 
 balmy hour before sunset, and in that hour he told Mr. Gilstone his 
 name and his history, frankly and fully, holding back nothing of 
 foil}' or selfishness, greed of pleasm-e or greed of wealth. 
 
 " Do not thiuk too meanly of me if I confess to having envied my 
 rich fi-iends their wealth, at the University and in the world. Tho 
 greed of gold is the vice of the age we live in. The air is charged 
 with bullion. All life is flavoured with the follies and extravagances 
 of the newly rich. Everything is given and forgiven to the miUionaire. 
 For one Nero, with his Golden House, we have Neros by the score, 
 and whole streets of golden houses. For one Lucullus we have an 
 army of dinner-givers, at whose tables the parasite fattens. It is 
 not possible for a young man to hve in the stress and turmoil of 
 London society and not hanker after gold as the one supreme good, 
 and not ache with the pangs of povertj'. The time came when I 
 meant to blow my brains out, because it was better to be dead and 
 dust than ahve and poor. And on that day of despair Fortune turned 
 her wheel, and behold ! I was a double milUonaire. But scarcely had 
 I tasted the rapture of wealth before I was told that my life was not 
 worth two years' purchase ; and from that hoiu: to this I have lived 
 with one dark spectre always at my elbow." 
 
 "I have seen so many peaceful death-beds that I can hardly 
 reahse the fear of death," said the Rector, "any more than I can 
 conceive the fear of sleep." 
 
 " Ah, but the everlasting sleep, that's the rub. Not the dreams 
 that Hamlet talks about, but the dreamless blank ! ' This sensible 
 warm motion to become a kneaded clod ! ' To give up everything! "
 
 
 
 40 Gerard; or, 
 
 " Hard indeed, if we had no hope of fairer worlds." 
 " A hope ! A mirage," Mr. Gilstone. I can fully understand that 
 it is your duty, as a minister of the Gospel, to hold that mirage 
 before the dj-ing eyes of your parishioners. But do you mean to 
 tell me, after your long life of knowledge and of thought, that the 
 fantastic vision of an after-world can be any comfort to you? 
 Where is the link that can unite the dwindling dust below those 
 gTave-stones with other planets or with future time ? New worlds 
 and fairer there may be ; new stars may teem with beings of grander 
 frame.and nobler minds than ours, star after star, in endless evolution, 
 till there be worlds peopled with gods ; but for me, for you, for this 
 dust here, there is nothing more. We have no more account in those 
 glories to come than last summer's butterflies have. We have had 
 our day. Do you remember how Csesar urged that Cataline and his 
 followers should be punished in their lives, not by death, since 
 death is only the release from suffering, and beyond death there is 
 no place either of joy or sorrow ? And you think because ninety 
 years after Csesar spoke those words a village carpenter, gifted 
 beyond the average of highly gifted humanity, codified the purest 
 system of morals ever revealed to man, and threw out random 
 hints of a future existence, and because in after-generations tradition 
 ascribed to this gifted man a miraculous return from death to life — 
 you think, because Jesus talked of a day of judgment and an after- 
 world, that the stern truths of science and fact are to weigh as 
 nothing against those vague promises of a rustic teacher ? " 
 
 " My dear friend, I will not admit that science has all the strongest 
 arguments on her side, and that faith can only sit with folded hands 
 and wait — 
 
 ' The Shadow, cloak'd from head to foot, 
 Who keeps the keys of all the creeds ; ' 
 
 but I am no dialectician, and will not attempt to argue against the 
 barren creed which modern metaphysicians give out with as much 
 delight as if they wore bringing us new hopes instead of trying to 
 kill the old ones. I will only say, as St. Paul said, ' If in this life 
 only we have hoi)e in Christ we are of all men most miserable.' " 
 
 " St. Paul was a dreamer and an enthusiast ; just the right man 
 to make a new religion ; an intellectual force, gi'eat enough to 
 cliange the face of Europe, and last nineteen hundred years. But 
 I fear the axe is laid to the root of the tree, and that before the 
 twentieth century is sped Christianity will be at best a State 
 religion — a system of ceremonials and embroidered vestments, as it 
 was in Pagan, as it is in Papal Kome."
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 34 1 
 
 The tranquil monotony of life at Lowcombe Rectory was not 
 unpleasing to Gerard. His health was too weak for London 
 pleasures. It suited him best to spend his days in a dreamy 
 idleness, nursing his shrunken stock of ^^tality as the poor sempstress 
 nurses her tiny fire, lest the pitiful half hundred of coal should burn 
 too quickly. He was glad to be away from the gay world, and 
 from the house whose splendours and luxuries had long palled upon 
 him. Here, at least, he had rest. Even the rustic simplicity of 
 his surroundings had a soothing influence, recalling his childish 
 daj's in the old parsonage beside the mouth of the Exe. Here he 
 Avas at peace, and here he was able to face the inevitable ■with more 
 resimation than he had felt hitherto. 
 
 He knew that he had not long to live. He had seen Dr. SoTith 
 once again since his return to England, and had heard the verdict 
 which he meant to be final. He would question science no more, 
 since science could do so Httle for him, giving him at most certain 
 rules of dietary, and a prescription which any village druggist could 
 make up. He had to face a future which might be but a few weeks, 
 or which, if he were careful, and Fate and climate were kind, 
 might be spun out yet a little longer. 
 
 Here, sauntering by the river on the bright May mornings, he 
 was able to plan that remnant of life, as it was to be spent when 
 Hester should be restored to health and reason, and might go with 
 him where he pleased. He would not lose an hour in making her 
 his lawful wife, and then he would take her to Spezia as fast as boat 
 and train could carry them, and instal her in the luxurious nest which 
 had been prepared for another bride. And then they two would 
 sail away together to the fairest shores of the fair inland sea, and so, 
 death kept at bay to the utmost, should at last come upon him with 
 gentlest aspect, and find liim in his wife's fond arms, her tender hand 
 wiping the last dews from his brow, her kisses on his darkening eyelids. 
 
 He rcAisited some of the old spots where he had walked with 
 Hester in the late summer time of last year, and these rambles gave 
 him only too just a measure of his vanishing strength. The fields 
 over which he had trodden so lightly last September seemed now an 
 impossible journey. He was fain to haunt the willowy bank between 
 the churchyard and the Rosarj', a distance of less than a mile. This 
 marked the limit of his power, and he had often to rest in the Rosary 
 garden before he could attempt the walk back to the Rectory. . 
 
 The garden was in perfect order, as in the days when Hester had 
 moved about it, " Queen rose of the roses." Everything was to be 
 kept as it had been under her brief tenancy of the house that he had 
 bought for her. She might wish to go back there some day, despite
 
 342 Gerard; or, 
 
 all that she had suffered within those walls. In any case it was her 
 home, and he desired that it should be kept in order for her. In all 
 this time he had ignored his own kindred. His mother and father, 
 Lilian and her husband knew nothing of his return to England. He 
 meant to see his sister again, were it only for half an hour, before he 
 went back to Italy ; but he did not want to see her until Hester was 
 his wife, and he could bring sister and wife together. He wanted 
 to secure this one faithful friend for Hester before he died. 
 
 At last, after a long month of hope and expectancy, the happy 
 chance came. Hester's wearied brain slowly awakened from its 
 troubled sleep, and memory and recognition of familiar faces came 
 back one summer morning with the opening of the June roses that 
 clustered about her window. 
 
 " Gerard," she cried, looking up at him affectionately, as he stood 
 beside her chair, where he had so often waited for the faintest sign 
 of returning memory. "You have come back from Italy at last! 
 How long you have been away ! How dreadfully long ! " 
 
 He sat with her for an hour talking of indifferent things. Memory 
 came back gradually. It was not till the next day that she remem- 
 bered her father's death, and the doctor hoped that the night of her 
 wandering by the river, and the loss of her baby, would be blotted 
 out. But that was not to be. As her mind recovered its balance, 
 the memory of all she had suffered and done in the long hours of 
 delirium came back with agonising distinctness. She remembered 
 the watchful care of her nurses, which had seemed to her a cruel 
 tjTanny. She remembered creeping out of the house, and through 
 the darkness of the dewy garden, and along by the river, to that 
 fivourite spot where she and Gerard had spent so many happy hours. 
 She remembered how she had thought that death was best for her 
 and for her child, the one refuge from a world in which no one 
 loved them or wanted them, she a deserted mistress, he a nameless 
 child. She remembered the plunge in the darkness, the buoyant 
 feeling of the Avater as it wrapped her round — and then no more, 
 except the monotony of quiet days and kindly faces, sunlit rooms 
 and sweet-scented flowers at the Rectory, a time in which she had 
 for the most part fancied herself a child again, sinless, happy, full of 
 childish thoughts. 
 
 -■o 
 
 They were married in the shadowy old parish church at half-past 
 eight o'clock one June morning, Hester, pale and wan, but with a 
 delicate loveliness which ill-health could not spoil. She was dressed 
 in a grey tweed gown, aud neat little hat, ready for a long journey. 
 Gerard was flushed and anxious-looking, hollow-eyed and hollow- 
 cheeked, and far more nervous than his wife.
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 343 
 
 They drove from the church to the station on their way to 
 London, charged -svith many blessings from the Kector and his 
 sister, who, with the parish clerk, had alone witnessed the ceremony. 
 
 " She is fast your wife," quoted the Eector, " the finest choral 
 service in "Westminster Abbey could not make the bond any stronger." 
 
 Gerard had telegraphed to his sister to meet him at luncheon at Hil- 
 lersdon House, where he and Hester arrived between twelve and one. 
 
 He spent the hour before Lilian's arrival in showing Hester his house. 
 
 " It is yours now," he said, " yours as much as the Eosary, which 
 I bought to be your plaything. It will be yours for many a year, I 
 hope, when I am at rest." 
 
 She gave him a heart-rending look. Could he think that this 
 splendour would comfort her when he was gone — or that she could 
 ever cease to think of him and of her child — the child her madness 
 tiad sacrificed ? She would not pain him by one mournful word, on 
 this day above all other days, when he had done all that he could 
 do to give her back her good name. She went with him from room 
 to room, praising his taste, admiring this and that, till she came to 
 his sanctum on the upper floor. 
 
 She had scarcely crossed the threshold when she saw the faun, 
 and gave a little cry of disgust. 
 
 " Mr. JermjTi," she said. 
 
 *' Only a chance likeness — but a good one, ain't it ? " 
 
 " Why do you have his likeness in your room ? It is an odious 
 face, and he is a hateful man. I cannot understand how you could 
 ever have chosen him for your friend." 
 
 " He has never been my friend, Hester. I have no friend but Mr. 
 Gilstone. That old man is the first person from whom I have ex- 
 perienced real friendliness since I became a millionaire. Jermynhas 
 been my companion — an amusing companion — and I have never 
 found any harm in him." 
 
 Hester looked at everything with fond interest. It was here he 
 had lived before he knew her. It was this luxurious nest he had 
 left for his riverside home with her. She looked at the books, and 
 the curios on the carved oak cabinet, bronzes, ivories, jade ; and 
 finally stopped before a curtain of Japanese embroidery, which hung 
 against the panelling. 
 
 " Is there a picture behind this curtain," she asked, " a pictm^e 
 which no one must look at without permission ? " 
 
 " No, it is not a picture. You may look, if you hke, Hester. I 
 have no secrets from the other half of my soul." 
 
 Hester drew back the curtain, and saw a large sheet of drawing- 
 paper, scrawled over with black lines, conspicuous among them a 
 long downward sweep of the pen, thick and blurred.
 
 '> 
 
 44 Gerard ; or, 
 
 " What a curious tting ! " she cried. " 'UTiat does it mean ? " 
 
 " It is the chart of my hfe, Hester. The downward stroke means 
 the end." 
 
 He ripped the sheet off the panel upon which it had been neatly 
 fastened with tiny copper naUs, and then tore it into firagments and 
 liung them into the waste-paper basket. 
 
 '• I am reconcOed to the end, Hester," he said softly, as she clung 
 to him, hiding her tears upon his shoulder, " now that you and I are 
 together — will be together to the last." 
 
 He heard Lilian's step upon the stair, and in another minute she 
 was in the room, looking at Hester in glad astonishment. 
 
 " Hester ! He has found you then, and all is well," cried Lilian ; 
 *• but, oh, my poor dear, how pale and wan you are looking ! Has 
 the world gone so badly with you since we met ? " 
 
 " Ask her no questions, Lilian, but take her to your heart as your 
 sister and my wife." 
 
 " Your wife — since when, Gerard ? " 
 
 " That is a needless question. She is my wife — my loved and 
 honoured wife." 
 
 Lilian looked at him wonderingly for a moment. Yes, he was in 
 earnest, evidently, and this union of which she had never dreamed 
 was an actualitj'. She turned to Hester without a word and kissed her. 
 
 " You shall be to me as a sister," she said gently, " and I will not 
 ask you what troiible has made you so sad and pale, or why my 
 brother has kept his marriage a secret from me until to-day." 
 
 After this they went downstairs to luncheon, a luncheon at which 
 but little was eaten, yet which was the happiest meal Gerard had 
 shared in for many a day. That shadow of the past which darkened 
 Hester's life touched him but lightly. For him the future was so 
 brief that the past mattered very little. He could not feel any 
 poignant regret for the child whose face he had never seen ; for had 
 that child lived his part in the young fresh life would have been too 
 brief to reckon. The son could have never known a father's love. 
 
 They left for Turin by the evening train, Lilian only parting with 
 them at the station, where the two pale faces vanished from her 
 view, side by side. One of those faces slie had faintest hope of ever 
 seeing again in this world. 
 
 EPILOGUE. 
 
 The London season was waning, and Justin Jerrayn was beginning 
 to talk about taking his cure — of nothing particular — in tlie 
 PjTcnees. when the gossips of those favourite literary, artistic,
 
 The World, the Flesh, and the Devil. 345 
 
 and social clubs, the Sensorium and the Heptachord, were interested 
 by a brief announcement in the Times list of deaths. 
 
 " On July 19th, on board the Jev&ey Lily, at Corfu, Gerard 
 liillersdon, aged 29." 
 
 " So that is the end of Hillersdon's luck," said Larose, " and one 
 of the most live-able houses in London will come into the market. 
 It is only a year and a half since it was finished, and we spent his 
 money like water, I can assure you. We could hardly spend it fast 
 enough to please him. The sensation was delicious from its novelty." 
 "What was his luck? Got a million or so left him for picking 
 up an old chap's umbrella, wasn't it ? " 
 
 " No ; he saved the old man's life, and almost missed the fortune 
 by not picking up the umbrella." 
 
 " Mr. Jermyn loses a useful friend. He was always about with 
 Hillersdon. And who gets all the money? Or did Hillersdon 
 contrive to run through it ? " 
 
 " Not he," said a gentleman of turfy tastes. " He was a poor 
 creature, and I don't believe he ever backed a horse from the day 
 he left Oxford. Such a man couldn't spend a million, much less 
 two millions. He was the sort of fellow who would economise and 
 live upon the interest of his money. Those are not the men who 
 make history." 
 
 " He began his career as a scribbler," said some one else. 
 " Wrote a sentimental story, and set all the women talking about 
 him, and then took to writing for the papers, and was in very low 
 water when he came into his millions." 
 
 " He ought to have run a theatre," said another. 
 " Not he ! The man didn't know how to spend money. He 
 was distinguished in nothing." 
 
 " He gave most delightful breakfasts," said Larose. 
 "Yes, to half a dozen fellows who talk fine, like you and Reuben 
 Gambler. I say he was a poor creature, upon whom good luck was 
 wasted." 
 
 This was the final verdict of the smoking-room. The dead man 
 had wasted golden opportunities. 
 
 It was on the same day that Mr. Grafton, of Messrs. Grafton and 
 Cranberry, Lincoln's Inn Fields, received a visitor, who called by 
 appointment, made by telegraph that morning. The visitor was 
 Justin Jermyn, whom Mr. Grafton had met only once in his life at 
 a dinner given by his client, Gerard Hillersdon. , 
 
 The solicitor received Mr. Jermyn with grave cordiality, the 
 recent death of an important client demanding an air of suppressed 
 mournfulness.
 
 346 Gerard ; or, 
 
 " Sad news from Corfu," said Jermyn. " You saw the announce- 
 ment in the Times, of course ? " 
 
 " Yes ; but it was not news to me. I had a telegram within two 
 hours of the event — which was not imexpected. Our chent has 
 been slowly fading out of life ever since he left England in June. 
 You have not been yachting with him, Mr. Jermyn ? " interrogatively. 
 "No; I have AVi-itten to him two or three times offering myself 
 for a short cruise. It was I who bought the yacht for him, and 
 superintended her fitting out. But his rephes were brief, and " — 
 with something of his famihar laugh, subdued to meet the circum- 
 stances — " he evidently didn't want me ; but as there was a lady 
 in the case I was not offended. Well, he is gone, poor fellow. A 
 brilhant Hfe, only too brief. One would rather jog on for a dull 
 fourscore, even without his supreme advantages." 
 
 There was a pause. Mr. Grafton looked politely anticipative of 
 he knew not what. And then, as the other sat smiling and did not 
 speak, he himself began — 
 
 "You may naturally suppose, that, as a friend of Mr. Hillersdon's, 
 you may have been remembered for some graceful gift, or even a 
 money legacy," he said blandly, " but I am sorry to tell you there 
 are no such gifts or legacies. Our lamented client died intestate." 
 
 "IIow do YOU know that — and so soon?" asked Jermyn, still 
 smiling. 
 
 " We have tlie fact under his own hand, in a letter dated only 
 three days before his death. The letter is here," taking it from a 
 brass rack on the table. " I will read you the passage." 
 He cleared his throat, sighed, and read as follows — 
 " ' My doctor, who has been hinting at wills and testaments for 
 the last month, tells me that if I have to make my will I must make 
 it without loss of an hour. But I am not gomg to make any will. 
 My fortune will go just where I am content that it shall go, and I 
 can trust those who will inherit to deal generously ^vith others whom 
 I might have named had I nerved myself to the horror of will- 
 making. I would as soon assist in the making of my cofBn. I 
 shall leave it to my father to make a suitable acknowledgment, on 
 my behalf, to you and Mr. Cranberry, whoso disinterested care of 
 ray estate,' hum, hum, Iram," murmured the lawyer, folding the 
 letter. " I need read no further." 
 
 " No. It is a curious thing that a man should write those words 
 who had three months before made a holograpli will, and had it 
 duly wtnessed, in my presence." 
 "When was this?" 
 " On the third of May in this year."
 
 The World, the Flesh, mid the Devil. 347 
 
 " Yon surprise me. Were you one of the witnesses? " 
 
 "Certainly not." 
 
 " And how did you know of the will ? " 
 
 " I was present when it was made, and it was given into my 
 possession. I have brought it to you, Mr. Crafton, in order that 
 you may do as much for me as you did two years ago for my 
 lamented friend, Gerard Hillersdon." 
 
 He handed the lawyer a document which consisted of only two 
 sheets of Bath Post, each sheet in Gerard Hillersdon's handwritinsr. 
 and each sheet duly signed and attested. 
 
 The first sheet set forth the nature of the testator's possessions, a 
 list of securities; the second sheet bequeathed these to "Justin 
 JermjTi, of 4, Norland Court, Piccadilly, whom I appoint my 
 residuary legatee." 
 
 " That will is good enough to stand, I think, Mr. Crafton." 
 
 " An excellent will, although he does not particularise half his 
 property." 
 
 " No ; but I think the words residuary legatee will cover everything." 
 
 "Assuredly. Was he of sound mind when he made this will." 
 
 " He was never of unsound mind within my knowledge. You 
 had better question the witnesses, his valet and his butler, as to his 
 mental conchtion on the evening of May the third." 
 
 " I A\'ill not trouble them. I am sorry for your disappointment, 
 }*lr. Jermyn, though less sorry than I might have been had you a 
 nearer claim on our deceased client. This will is waste paper." 
 
 "The devil it is ? You don't pretend there is any subsequent will ? " 
 
 " Not unless one was made after the letter I have read to you. 
 Your will is rendered invaUd by our Ghent's marriage." 
 
 "His man-iage?" 
 
 "Yes. He was married on the third of June, at the Parish 
 Church of Lowcombe, Berkshire. He kept his marriage dark, I 
 know. There was no announcement in the papers. The lady was 
 in poorish circumstances, I fancy, and the marriage altogether a 
 romantic affair. She has been with him on his yacht ever since." 
 
 " With him. Yes, I knew that she was with him. But his mfe ! 
 That's a fiction." 
 
 " If it is, one of the most genuine-looking marriage certificates I 
 ever handled is a forgery. I have the certificate in my possession, 
 sent to me by the clergjonan who performed the ceremony. Mr. 
 Hillersdon having died intestate, his fortune, real and personal — 
 there was very httle real property, by the way — will be divided 
 between his father and his wife. Your only chance now, Mr. 
 Jermyn, would be to try and marry the widow."
 
 34^ Gerard ; or, 
 
 " Thanks for the achice. No, I don't think I should have much 
 chance there. Well, I have lost friend and fortune — but I am here, 
 and life is sv?eet. I am not^ dashed by your news, Mr. Grafton, 
 though it is somewhat startling. Good day." 
 
 He laughed his gnomish laugh, took up his hat in one hand and 
 waved the other to the lawyer, with the lightest gesture of adieu, 
 and so vanished, joyous and tranquU to the last — a man without 
 ■ conscience and -without passion. 
 
 And what of Hester, enriched beyond the dreams of womanly 
 avarice, but widowed in the morning of her life? Gan there be 
 happiness for that lonely heart, charged with sad memories ? 
 
 Yes, there is at least the happiness of a life devoted to good 
 works, a life divided between the rural quiet of the village by the 
 Thames and those crowded allej-s and shabby slums in which John 
 Gumberland and his young wife labour, and in which Hester is 
 their devoted and zealous lieutenant. In every scheme for the 
 welfare of innocent little children, in every effort for the rescue of 
 erring women and girls, Hester is an intelligent and unwearying 
 helper. She does not scatter her wealth blindly or weakly. She is 
 not caught by flowery language or flatteries addressed to her 
 feminine vanity. She brings brain as well as heart to bear upon 
 the business of philanthropy, and in all her dealings with the poor she 
 has the gift of insight, which is second only to her gift of sympathy. 
 
 If to help others in then- sorrow is to be happy, Hester should 
 attain happiness ; but there are those who see upon the fair young 
 face the sign and token of early death ; and in those meadow paths, 
 and by the river where she and Gerard walked in their summer 
 dream of a deathless love it may be that those pathetic eyes of 
 hers already see the shadow of the end. 
 
 She brought her husband from the lovely land where he died to 
 lay him in Lowcombe churchyard, and the summer sun seldom goes 
 down without glorifying one quiet figure, seated or kneeling in the 
 secluded shelter of a great yew tree, by Gerard Ilillorsdou's grave. 
 
 THE JiXD. 
 
 LOM>ON : rUINTED BV WILLIAM CLOWES AND S'^NS, LIMITHD, 
 STA5IF0KD STKEET AND CHAEINQ CKOSS.
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 ynp ,n, 
 
 ^ 9-\%^\ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 — M'y •' 
 
 q iqq-t 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 5 133*- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 C^YLORD 
 
 
 
 PRINTED IN U S.A.
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 598 112 
 
 UNIVERSITV OF CA 
 
 BIVEBSIDE LIBRARY 
 
 3 1210 00834 2238