The Gypsy Christ 
 
 And Other Tales 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM SHARP 
 
 CHICAGO 
 STONE & KIMBALL 
 
 MDCCCXCV
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY 
 STONE AND KIMBALL
 
 7/^ 
 
 TO 
 
 LADY COLIN CAMPBELL 
 
 FROM HER FRIEND 
 
 THE AUTHOR OF THESE DIVERS TALES OF 
 
 DIVERS LANDS 
 
 EIGUSH
 
 Contents 
 
 THE GYPSY CHRIST 3 
 
 MADGE O' THE POOL 75 
 
 THE COWARD 129 
 
 A VENETIAN IDYL I71 
 
 THE GRAVEN IMAGE 215 
 
 THE LADY IN HOSEA 237 
 
 FROKEN BERGLIOT 155 
 
 .f
 
 THE GYPSY CHRIST.
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 I. 
 
 There are, among the remote uplands of the 
 Peak district, regions whose solitude is that of 
 a wilderness. Over much of the country there 
 is a frown. When fair weather prevails : though 
 these lofty plateaux are seldom wholly free 
 from cloud-shadow: this frown is merely that 
 of a stern man, preoccupied with sombre 
 thoughts. When there come rain and wind, 
 and still more the dull absorbing gloom that 
 floods out of the east and the north-east, the 
 frown is forbidding, minatory even, at times 
 almost tragic. Viewed anywhere from High 
 Peak to Sir William, these uplands are like 
 the sea. They reach onward, lapse, merge into 
 each other, in a similar succession of vast bil-
 
 4 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 lows : grand as they, as apparently limitless, 
 and, at times, as overwhelmingly depressing. 
 
 The villages are scattered, insignificant: 
 built of dull, grey stone: gardenless, flowerless. 
 The people are uncouth in speech and manner : 
 cold, too, as the stone of their houses, and 
 strangely quiet in the ordinary expression of 
 emotion. 
 
 In all regions where the wind is the para- 
 mount feature in the duel between man and 
 the powers of nature, as upon the seas and 
 great moorland tracts, it is noticeable that 
 human voices are pitched in an unusually low 
 key. In remote islands, upon mountains, on 
 the billows of hill-land that sweep up from the 
 plains and fall away in dales and valleys, on 
 long flats of grass, fen, or morass, and upon 
 the seas, the human voice takes to itself in time 
 a peculiar, and to those who know the cause, 
 a strangely impressive hush. Here, it is as of 
 men subdued, but resentful, forever gloomful. 
 
 No land is so dreary as to be without redeem- 
 ing beauty. The hill-region of the Peak, that 
 most visited at any rate, has singular charm. 
 The dales are famous for their loveliness, their 
 picturesqueness ; the heather slopes for their
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 5 
 
 blithe air^'the high moors for their wide per- 
 spectives, their clear windy breath, their glory 
 of l*ght and shadow. Nevertheless, there are 
 vast districts where nature, and man, and the 
 near way and the wide prospect, and the very 
 immensity of the environing sky, are permeated 
 with the inner spirit of gloom, as the cloud- 
 caravans of July with their burden of thunder. 
 There are reasons why I do not wish to be 
 explicit topographically, in what I am about to 
 narrate : indeed, no one from what I write, 
 could find the Wood o' Wendray, or the House 
 o' Fanshawe. It must suffice, that what I have 
 to tell occurred in the remotest, perhaps the 
 grandest, certainly to me the most impressive 
 region of the Peak-Land. 
 
 Far among these uplands ; at the locality I 
 mean, from twelve or fifteen hundred to two 
 thousand feet above the sea ; there is an almost 
 trackless morass, called Grailph Moss. 
 
 The name is by some supposed to be a 
 corruption of grey wolf : for here, according to 
 rumour, the last wolf in England had its lair, 
 and might have been living still (for the hunts- 
 men aver that the grey wolf lives three hundred
 
 6 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 years ! ) but for its audacity at the time of the 
 Great Plague. Packmen and other wayfarers 
 have alleged that on wild nights of storm, or 
 in even more perilous seasons of mist or marsh- 
 fog, they have seen a gaunt shape leap towards 
 them from a dense clump of heather or from 
 behind a juniper, or have heard, behind or in 
 stealthy circuit, terrifying footfalls as of a huge 
 dog. 
 
 Grailph Moss comes right upon an old dis- 
 used highway. Along this road, at far inter- 
 vals, are desolate hamlets : in all save the three 
 summer months, apt to be isled in the mist 
 breathed from the myriad nostrils of the great 
 Fen. At these times, the most dreadful thing 
 to endure is the silence. 
 
 Not far from one of these hamlets, and some- 
 what more removed from the contagion of the 
 Moss : high-set, indeed, and healthy, if sombre 
 of aspect save under the fugitive bloom of the 
 afterglow, or where redeemed by the moonlight 
 to an austere beauty : is a strange house, the 
 strangest I have seen anywhere. 
 
 The House o' Fanshawe, it is called in the 
 neighbourhood : though what is perplexing is 
 that the name is centuries old, though for cent-
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 7 
 
 uries no family of that name occupied the Manor 
 of Eastrigg : nor is there any local legend con- 
 ceraing a Fanshawe, or record of any kind to 
 account for the persistency of the designation. 
 Long before my friend, James Fanshawe, 
 took the Manor, ruin had come upon the middle 
 as well as the northern portion. In fact, the 
 southern end, which had been the original 
 Elizabethan house, was scarce better, and had 
 been preserved at all only because of its fan- 
 tastic, often beautiful, and always extraordinary 
 roof and wainscot carvings. These were none 
 the less striking from the fact that they were 
 whitewashed. JVIany were in a fashion sugges- 
 tive of the Arabesques of Barbary, such as are 
 to be seen to this day in the private houses of 
 the rich Moors of Tlemgen or Tunis. Others 
 recalled the freaks of the later Renaissance 
 imagination : and some were of Gothic rude- 
 ness and vigor. But the most extraordinary 
 room of all was a small chamber opening from 
 a large vaulted apartment. All the panels on 
 three sides of the room, and the whole roof, 
 were covered with arabesques of the Cruci- 
 fixion : no one whitewashed carving quite like 
 any other, though all relentlessly realistic,
 
 8 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 sometimes savagely, brutally so. The fourth 
 side was of varnished black oak. Against this, 
 in startling relief, was a tall white cross, set in 
 a black stand; with a drooping and terrible 
 figure of the crucified God, the more painfully 
 arresting from the fact that the substance of 
 which it had been wrought had been dyed a 
 vivid scarlet, that, with time, had become 
 blood-red. 
 
 A word as to how I came to know this house 
 in this remote and desolate region. 
 
 Two or three years ago, when wandering 
 afoot through Croatia, I encountered James 
 Fanshawe. There is no need to narrate what 
 led up to our strange meeting, for a strange 
 meeting in strange circumstances, and in a 
 strange place, it was. It will suffice for me to 
 say that our encounter, our voluntary acquaint- 
 anceship, and our subsequent friendship, all 
 arose from the circumstance that each of us 
 could, with more justice than some who have 
 done so, claim to be a Romany Rye — which 
 is not exactly "a gentleman-gypsy," as com- 
 monly translated, but rather an amateur-gypsy, 
 or as a "brother" once phrased it to me "a
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 9 
 
 sympathising make-believe gypsy." There are 
 some who can talk the dialects of " Little 
 Egj^t," or at least understand them, and many 
 who know something of the folk-lore, habits, 
 and customs of the wandering people : but 
 there are few, I take it, who have lived the 
 gypsy-life — who have undergone, or even heard 
 of, the ordeal of the Blue Smoke, the Two 
 Fires, and the Running Water. 
 
 Thereafter, we met on several occasions : 
 frequently in Italy, or the Tyrol, or southern 
 Germany : generally by pre-arrangement. The 
 last time I saw Fanshawe, until I met him in 
 Glory Woods, near Dorking, was in the Hohen- 
 heim country, on the high plateau to the south- 
 west of Stuttgart. It was then he told me he 
 had been Jo England, and had travelled afoot 
 from Southampton to Hull : and that he had at 
 last decided to settle in that country, probably 
 in the New Forest region. I promised to visit 
 him in England when next there. I wanted to 
 fare awhile with him there and then, but as it 
 was clear he did not at that juncture wish my 
 company, I forbore. 
 
 James Fanshawe was a noticeable man. 
 Tall, sinewy, ruddy though with dark, luminous
 
 10 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 eyes, and long, trailing, coal-black moustache, 
 he would not have seemed more than thirty 
 years old but for his iron-gray hair, and the 
 deep crow's feet about his mouth, eyes, and 
 temples. As a matter of fact, he was, at the 
 time I first met him, at the Midsummer's-day 
 of human hf e ; for he had just entered his 
 fortieth year. 
 
 One early spring day, when, by the merest 
 hazard, we came across each other in Glory 
 Woods, he reminded me that nearly two years 
 had passed since my promise to visit him. He 
 had not, after all, settled in the south country, 
 but, he told me, in a strange old house, in a 
 remote and wild moorland tract of Derbyshire. 
 While he spoke, I was observant of the great 
 change in him. He had grown ten, fifteen 
 years older in appearance. The iron-gray hair 
 had become white ; the strong face, rigid ; the 
 swift, alert look now that of a visionary, or of 
 one who brooded much. Perhaps the most 
 marked change was in the eyes. What had 
 always struck me as their dusky, velvety Czech 
 beauty was no longer noticeable. They were 
 much lighter, and had a strange, staring inten- 
 sity.
 
 The Gypsy Christ. ii 
 
 But I was glad to see him again: glad to 
 pick up lost clues, and glad to be able to pro- 
 mise to be with him at Eastrigg Manor at the 
 end of the sixth week from that date. 
 
 That is how I came to know the " House o' 
 Fanshawe."
 
 12 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 II. 
 
 Eastrigg itself is more than twenty miles 
 from the nearest station. The drive thence 
 seemed the longer and drearier because of the 
 wet mist which hung over the country. Even 
 sounds were soaked up by it. I never passed 
 through a drearier land. Mid-April, and not a 
 green thing visible, not a bird's note audible ! 
 
 The driver of the gig was taciturn, yet could 
 not quite restrain his curiosity. He was not 
 an Eastrigg man, but knew the place, and all 
 connected with it. He would fain have ascer- 
 tained somewhat about its owner; perhaps, 
 too, about myself, or at any rate about my 
 object in coming to the reputed haunted, if not 
 accursed House o' Fanshawe, where my host- 
 to-be lived alone, attended only by an old man 
 named Hoare, a " foreigner " too, because 
 come from the remote south country. When, 
 however, he found me even more reserved than 
 himself, he desisted from further inquiry, or 
 indeed remarks of any kind.
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 13 
 
 It was in, silence that we drove the last ten 
 miles; in silence that we jolted along a rude, 
 grassy highway of olden days, heavily rutted ; 
 in silence that we passed, first one, then another 
 gaunt ruin, — two of the many long-deserted 
 lead-mine chimneys which stand here and there 
 throughout that country, and add unspeakably 
 to its desolation. Finally, in silence we reached 
 the House o' Fanshawe. 
 
 A small side-door, under heavy beams, 
 opened. An elderly man stood, his right hand 
 over his eyes, and his left holding a lantern 
 which emitted a pale yellow glow, beneath 
 which his face was almost as wan and white 
 as his bleached hair. 
 
 He looked at me anxiously, questioningly, I 
 thought. Instinctively, I inquired if Mr. 
 Fanshawe were imwell. 
 
 "Are you a doctor.?" he asked, almost in a 
 whisper; adding, on my reply in the negative, 
 " I hoped you might be. I fear the master is 
 dying." 
 
 Startled, I unburdened myself of my wet 
 overcoat, and then followed the man along a 
 rambling passage. On the way, he confided to 
 me that though Mr. Fanshawe was up and
 
 14 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 about, he had been very strange of late, and 
 that he ate little, slept httle, and was sometimes 
 away on the Moss or the higher moors for ten 
 or twelve hours at a time ; further, that within 
 the last few days he had become steadily 
 worse. 
 
 Even this forewarning did not adequately 
 prepare me for the change in my friend. When 
 I saw him, he was sitting in the twilight before 
 a peat fire on which a log, aflame at one end 
 though all charred at the other, burned brightly. 
 His hair was quite white: so white that that of 
 his man, Robert Hoare, was of a yellow hue by 
 comparison. It hung long and lank about his 
 cadaverous face, which, in its wanness and 
 rigid lines, was that of a corpse, except for the 
 dark luminous eyes I remembered so well, once 
 more like what they were in the days I first 
 knew him, but now so intensely, passionately 
 alive, that it was as though the flame of his life 
 were concentred there. He rose, stiffly and 
 as though with difficulty, and I saw how wo- 
 fully thin he had become. It was with a shock 
 of surprise I realized what vitality the man still 
 had, when he took my hand in his, gripped it 
 almost as powerfully as of yore, and half led,
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 15 
 
 half pushed me into an arm-chair opposite his 
 own. 
 
 Yes, he admitted, he had been ill, but was 
 now "Setter. Soon, he hoped, he would be quite 
 well again. The eyes contradicted the lie of 
 the lips. 
 
 After a time, our constraint wore off; but 
 though I avoided the subject of his health and 
 recent way of life, he interrupted me again and 
 again to assure me that he would not have let 
 me come so far, to visit so dreary a house, and 
 see so unentertaining an invalid, had he known 
 how to intercept me. 
 
 Suddenly he rose, and insisted on showing 
 me over the house. Room by room fascinated 
 me; but that small chamber of which I have 
 already spoken, that with the crucifix, gave me 
 nothing short of an uncontrollable repugnance, 
 something akin to horror. He noticed this, 
 though neither the lips offered nor the eyes 
 invited any remark. 
 
 No wonder that from the several ominous 
 circumstances of this meeting I was half pre- 
 pared for some unpleasant or even tragic de- 
 nouement. But, as a matter of fact, nothing 
 happened to alarm or further perturb me ; and
 
 l6 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 long before I went to my room I had noticed a 
 marked improvement in Fanshawe, — that is, 
 in his mental condition ; physically, he was still 
 very distraught as well as frail, and appeared to 
 suffer extremely from what I took to be nervous 
 cold, though he said it was the swamp-ague. 
 "The Moss Fiend had got him," he declared. 
 He wore a long frieze overcoat, even as he sat 
 by the fire ; and all the time, even at our frugal 
 supper, kept his hands half covered in thick 
 mittens. 
 
 Naturally enough, I did not sleep for long. 
 In the first place, sleep is always tardy with me 
 in absolutely windless or close, rainy weather; 
 then the absolute silence, the sense of isolation, 
 affected me ; and, more effectually still, I could 
 hear Fanshawe monotonously walking to and 
 fro in the room to my right. This room, more- 
 over, was no other than the fantastically deco- 
 rated ante-chamber. I could scarce bear to 
 think of my distraught friend, sleepless, and 
 wearily active, in the company of that terrifying 
 crucifix, that chamber of the myriad reduplica- 
 tions of the Passion. But at last I slept, and 
 slept well; nor did I wake till the late sunlight 
 streamed in upon me through the unshuttered 
 and blindless window.
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 17 
 
 We spent^ost of that day in the open air. 
 The morning was so blithe and sweet, Fan- 
 shawe lost something of his air of tragic ill; 
 and I began to entertain hopes of his ultimate 
 recovery. But in the early afternoon, when we 
 had returned for the meal which had been pre- 
 pared for us an hour before, the weather changed. 
 It grew sultry and overclouded. The glass, too, 
 had fallen abruptly. The change affected my 
 friend in a marked degree. He became less 
 and less communicative, and at last morose and 
 almost sullen. 
 
 I proposed another walk. He agreed, with 
 an eagerness that surprised me. " I will show 
 you one or two places where I often go," he 
 added : " places that the country people about 
 here avoid; for the moor-folk are superstitious, 
 as all who live in remote places are." 
 
 The day, as I have said, had become dull 
 and heavy; and what with the atmospheric 
 change, and the saturnine mood of my com- 
 panion, I felt depressed. The two gaunt chim- 
 neys which rose above their respective mines 
 were my skeletons at the feast. Otherwise I 
 could have enjoyed many things in, and aspects 
 of, that unfamiliar country; but these tall, 
 
 2
 
 l8 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 sombre, bat-haunted, wind-gnawed "stacks," 
 rising from dishevelled ruins, which, again, 
 overlay the deserted lead-mines, oppressed me 
 beyond all reason. 
 
 At one of these we stopped. Fanshawe 
 asked me to throw something into a hollow 
 place beyond one of the walls of a building. 
 I lifted a large stone, and threw it as directed. 
 I thought, at first, it had fallen on soft grass, or 
 among weeds and nettles, for no sound was 
 audible. Then, as it were underfoot, I heard a 
 confused clamour, followed by the faint echo of 
 a splash. 
 
 " That will give you some idea of the depth 
 of the mine," my companion remarked quietly. 
 " But it is deeper than you imagine, even now. 
 There are sloping ledges under that water in 
 which the stone fell at last ; and beneath these 
 ledges are corridors leading far into the caverns 
 whence nothing ever comes again." 
 
 " It is not a place for a nervous person to 
 come to," I answered, with as much indiffer- 
 ence as I could assume; "nor for any one after 
 sundown, and alone." 
 
 Fanshawe looked at me passively, then said 
 quietly that he often came there.
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 19 
 
 " I wond^," he added, " how many dead will 
 arise from a place like this when the trump of 
 the Resurrection stirs the land ? " 
 
 " Has anyone ever fallen into this mine, or 
 been murdered in it ? " 
 
 " They say so. It is very likely. But come : 
 I will show you a stranger thing." 
 
 So on we trudged again, for, I should think, 
 nearly a mile, and mostly through a thin wood. 
 I wondered what new unpleasant feature of this 
 unattractive country I was to see. It was with 
 half angry surprise I was confronted at last by 
 a thick scrub of gorse, overhung by three large 
 birches, and told that there was what we had 
 come to see. Naturally, there was nothing to 
 arrest my attention. When I said so, however, 
 Fanshawe rnade no reply. I saw that he was 
 powerfully affected, though whether grief or 
 some other emotion wrought him, I could not 
 determine. 
 
 Suddenly he turned, said harshly that he was 
 dead tired, and wished to go home straightway. 
 Beyond a statement about a short cut by Dalla- 
 way Moor, he did not vouchsafe another re- 
 mark until we reached the Manor. 
 
 At the entrance, Hoare met us, and was about
 
 20 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 to speak, when he saw that his master was not 
 listening, but rigid, with moving jaw, and wild 
 eyes, was staring at the panels of the door. 
 
 " Who . . . who has been here ? " he cried 
 hoarsely ; but for answer the man merely shook 
 his head stupidly, muttering at last that not a 
 soul had been near the place. 
 
 " Who has been here? Who has been here? 
 Who did this?" my friend gaspingly reiterated, 
 as he pointed to a small green cross, the paint 
 still wet, impressed a foot or more above the 
 latch.
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 21 
 
 III. 
 
 Fanshawe was taciturn throughout the first 
 part of the evening. We ate our meal in silence. 
 Afterwards, in his study, he maintained the 
 same self-absorption, and for a long time seemed 
 unaware that he was not alone. The atmos- 
 pherical oppression made this silence still more 
 obvious. Even the fire burned dully, and the 
 smoke that went up from the mist-wet logs was 
 thick and heavy. 
 
 It was with a sense of relief I heard an abrupt, 
 hollow, booming sound, as of distant guns at 
 sea. The' long-expected thunder was drawing 
 near. For many minutes after this, the silence 
 could be heard. Then there came a blast of 
 wind that struck the house heavily, for all the 
 world like an enormous billow flooding down 
 upon and all but engulfing a dismasted ship. 
 
 Fanshawe raised his head, and listened in- 
 tently. A distant, remotely thin wail was audible 
 for a few seconds : the voice of the wind-eddy 
 
 .f
 
 22 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 far away upon the moors. Then, once more, 
 the same ominous silence. 
 
 " I hope the storm will break soon," I said at 
 last. 
 
 " Yes. We '11 have one or two more blasts 
 like that, then a swift rain ; then the night will 
 become black as ink, and the thunderstorm 
 will rage for an hour or so, and suddenly come 
 back upon us again worse than before." 
 
 I looked at my friend surprisedly. 
 
 " How can you tell ? " 
 
 " I have seen many thunderstorms and gales 
 on these moorlands." 
 
 I was about to say something further, when 
 I saw a look upon my companion's face which 
 I took to be that of arrested thought or arrested 
 speech. 
 
 I was right in my surmise, for, in a low voice, 
 he resumed: — 
 
 " You will doubtless hear many another 
 storm such as this. As for me, it is the last to 
 which I shall ever listen : unless, as may well 
 be, the dead hear. After all, what grander 
 death-hymn could one have ? " 
 
 " You are ill, Fanshawe, but not so ill as you 
 believe. In any case, you do not fear you are 
 going to die to-night ? "
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 23 
 
 He looked at me long and earnestly before 
 he answered? 
 
 "I — suppose — not," he said slowly, at last, 
 but ifl the meditative way of one revolving a 
 dubious matter in his mind: "no, I suppose 
 not necessarily to-night. ''"' 
 
 A long discordant cry of the wind came wail- 
 ing across the Reach 0' Dallaway. It was 
 scarce gone, when a ponderous distant crashing 
 betokened the onset of the elemental strife to 
 be fought out overhead. 
 
 The effect upon Fanshawe was electric. He 
 rose, moved to and fro, twice went to the win- 
 dow, and drew up the blind. The second time, 
 he opened the latch. The window was of the 
 kind called half-French; that is, it was of a 
 single sheet of glass, but came no further than 
 two thirds -of the way down, the lower third 
 being of solid wood, and could be opened 
 (drawn inward) only in its glazed section. 
 
 He withdrew the fastening, stooped, and 
 peered into the yard. A stealthy, shuffling 
 sound was audible, followed by a low whine. 
 
 Fanshawe seemed satisfied, and, having 
 closed the latch, drew together the thick, heavy 
 curtains. 
 
 .r
 
 24 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 " That was my bloodhound, Grailph," he 
 explained. " I always let him out at night. 
 He keeps watch here. He is a huge beast, 
 cream-white in color, and so is as rare and 
 remarkable as he is trustworthy. I brought 
 him, as a puppy, from Transylvania. The 
 people hereabouts hate and fear him ; the more 
 so, because of his name. I have told you about 
 the legend of Grailph Moss ? Yes ? Well, the 
 rumour has filtered from mind to mind that my 
 Grailph is no other than the original Grailph, 
 or Grey Wolf ; and that in some way he, I, 
 and the ' House o' Fanshawe ' are connected 
 in an uncanny destiny." 
 
 "Are you quite sure you're not?" I inter- 
 rupted, half in badinage, half in earnest. 
 
 He took my remark seriously, however. 
 
 " No ; I am not sure. But who can tell what 
 is the secret thing that lies hidden in the ninth 
 shadow, the ninth wave, and the brain of a 
 ninth child ? " 
 
 " Ah, you remember what old Mark Zengro 
 said that day by the cavern of the Jallusietch, 
 in Bohemia ! How well I remember that after- 
 noon : how he called you Brother, and . . ." 
 
 "WeU?"
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 25 
 
 " Oh, and what a strange talk we had after- 
 wards by tht fire, when ..." 
 
 " No ; that was not what you were going to 
 say. "^ You were about to add : '• How angry you 
 •were whe?i Zeiigro viade with his forefinger the 
 sign of a circle about him ; and how you nearly 
 left the camp then and there.^ Is not that 
 true ? " 
 
 " Yes, it is true." 
 
 " I thought so. Well, I had good reason to 
 be angry." 
 
 " Oh, his action meant only that he took you 
 to be fey, as we say in the north." 
 
 " No, it meant more than that. But this 
 brings me to what I have wanted to say to you : 
 what must be. told to-night." 
 
 He stopped, for the roar about the house 
 shook it to- its foundations : one of those swift, 
 howling whirlwinds which sometimes precede 
 the steady march of the mighty host of the 
 thunder. 
 
 When it was over, he pulled away the smok- 
 ing logs from the fire and substituted three or 
 four of dry pine and larch, already dusted with 
 salt. The flame was so vivid and cheerful that, 
 when my host eclipsed the lamplight, and left 
 
 .f
 
 26 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 us in the pleasant firelit gloom, the change was 
 welcome, though the wildness of the night with- 
 out seemed to be enhanced. 
 
 For at least five minutes Fanshawe sat silent, 
 staring into the red glow over which the blue 
 and yellow tongues of flame wove an endless 
 weft. Then, abruptly, he began : ^ — 
 
 " You know that I have Gypsy blood in me. 
 It is true. But I do not think you know how 
 strong in the present, how remote in the past, 
 the strain is. In the twelfth century my par- 
 ental ancestors were of what might be called 
 the blood-royal among the Children of the 
 Wind. One of them, head of a great clan at 
 that time dispersed, during the summer months, 
 through the region of the New Forest, was 
 named John the Heron. Hunting one day in 
 these woodlands, the king's brother was set 
 
 1 His narrative, in its earlier stages, was much longer 
 than my partial reproduction of it; for some of it dealt 
 with irrelative matters, some of it was merely reminiscent 
 of our own meetings and experiences in common, and 
 some of it was abruptly discursive. Interwrought with it 
 were the sudden tumults, the tempestuous violence of that 
 night of storm : when, through it all, tlie thunder was to 
 me as the flying shuttle in the Loom of Destiny.
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 27 
 
 upon by outlaws. They would have killed, or 
 at least withlfeld him against a ransom, but for 
 the bravery of his unknown gypsy ally. The 
 royal duke was grateful, and so in turn was the 
 king. Wild John the Heron became John 
 Heron of Roehurst and the lands round Elv- 
 wick. He had seven sons, five of whom died 
 tragic deaths or mysteriously disappeared. The 
 eldest in due time succeeded his father; the 
 youngest travelled into Derbyshire in the train 
 of a great lord. In those days the most ancient, 
 the proudest, but even then the most impover- 
 ished of the old families of that region, was the 
 house of Ravenshawe. Its head was Sir Alu- 
 red Ravenshawe, a man so haughty that it was 
 said he thought the king his inferior. Gilbert 
 Heron was able to do him a great service; and 
 ultimately, through this influence, the young 
 man succeeded to the name and titles of a 
 beggared and outlawed knight. Sir Vane Fan- 
 shawe. Nevertheless, there could have been 
 no question of the marriage of the young Sir 
 Gilbert Fanshawe (for the name of Heron was 
 to be relinquished) with the lady Frida, though 
 the young people had fallen in love with each 
 other at their first meeting ; and, ultimately, it
 
 28 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 was permitted at all, and then reluctantly, only 
 because of two further happenings. The first 
 of these was the undertaking of the great lord 
 with whom the young man was (a nearkins man 
 and friend of Sir Alured Ravenshawe), that the 
 king would speedily make Sir Gilbert Fan- 
 shawe of Roehurst in Hants and Eastrigg in 
 the shire of Derby, a baron. At that time, 
 there was no actual village of Eastrigg, but only 
 a small hamlet called Fanshawe, or, as it was 
 then given, The Fan Shawe. These lands 
 belonged to Ravenshawe, and he gave them to 
 his daughter as a wedding gift, on the condition 
 that the king made her betrothed a noble, and 
 that he became known as Baron Fanshawe of 
 Fanshawe. 
 
 " All this was duly done, and yet there seems 
 to have been deception in the matter of the 
 Gypsy origin; for about the time of the birth 
 of an heir to my lord of Fanshawe, Sir Alured 
 refused to hold any communication with his 
 son-in-law, or even to see his daughter. A 
 Ravenshawe, he declared, could have nothing 
 in common with a base-born alien. 
 
 " It was some years after this that strange 
 rumors got about concerning not only Lord
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 29 
 
 Fanshawe byt also The Chase, as his castellated 
 manor was called. A wild and barbaric folk 
 sojourjied in its neighbourhood, or in the adja- 
 cent forests. A contagion of suspicion, of a 
 vague dread, of a genuine animosity, spread 
 abroad. Then it was commonly averred that 
 my lord was mad, for had he not been heard to 
 proclaim himself the Christ, or at any rate to 
 speak and act as though he were no other than 
 at least the second Christ, of whose coming men 
 dreamed ? 
 
 " One day Sir Alured Ravenshawe appeared 
 in the camp of the Egj'ptians, as the alien wan- 
 dering-folk were wont to be called. What he 
 learned from the patriarch infuriated him to 
 frenzy. ' Let the dog of the race of Kundry 
 die the death he mocks,' he cried; 'and lo, 
 herewith I give you my bond that no harm shall 
 come to you or your people's goods, though you 
 must sojourn here no more.' 
 
 " Then it was that the Egyptians waylaid their 
 kinsman, the Lord Fanshawe of Fanshawe, and 
 crowned and mocked him as the Gj'psy Christ, 
 and crucified him upon a great leafless tree in 
 the forest now known as the Wood o' Wendray. 
 Thereafter, for a long period, the place knew
 
 30 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 them no more. But, in going, they took se- 
 cretly with them the infant Gabriel, only child 
 of the House o' Fanshawe." 
 
 For a time after this, Fanshawe ceased speak- 
 ing. We both sat, our gaze intent upon the 
 fire, listening to the growing savagery of the 
 storm without. Then, without preamble, he re- 
 sumed. He had a habit, when in the least de- 
 gree wrought by impatience or excitement, of 
 clasping and unclasping his hands ; and his 
 doing so now was the more noticeable because 
 of the strange tapery look of the fingers coming 
 from the rough close mittens he wore. 
 
 "That Gabriel Fanshawe never saw England 
 again, nor yet his son Gabriel. The name was 
 retained privily, though among his blood-kin in 
 Austria or Hungary he was known simply as 
 Gabriel Zengro, the kin-name of the patriarch 
 who had adopted him after the crucifixion of 
 his father. 
 
 " Long before his grandson was a man well 
 over forty years, — and it was not till then that 
 the third Gabriel visited England to see if he 
 could claim his heritage, — the lands of East- 
 rigg, the house and hamlet of Fanshawe, and 
 Wester Dallaway, not only were exempted from
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 3T 
 
 all claim upon them by any one of the blood of 
 Gilbert Fanshawe, the baronry in whose name 
 was cancelled, but had, in turn, passed from the 
 hands of the old knight of Ravenshawe into 
 those of the family of Francis, with whom they 
 remained until the fall of the Jacobite dynasty, 
 after which they were held by the Hewsons, 
 until (sadly diminished) they came again into 
 the ownership of a Fanshawe, with my purchase 
 of them. 
 
 " But though Gabriel Zengro the third found 
 that he had lost his title and northern inherit- 
 ance, he was able to recover possession of Roe- 
 hurst. There he settled, married, and had two 
 children : known onl}-, of course, by his English 
 surname. In the fiftieth year of his age he be- 
 came markedly unpopular with his fellows. He 
 was seen at times to frequent a rude and bar- 
 baric sect of vagrants, — even to live with them ; 
 and the rumour spread that his foreign wife 
 was really one of these very aliens. Then he 
 was heard to say wild and outrageous things, 
 such as might well hang a man in those times. 
 The upshot was that one day he returned to his 
 home no more. His body was found transfixed 
 to a leafless tree in the forest beyond Grailph 
 Moss."
 
 32 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 " Beyond Roehurst, you mean?" I interrupted. 
 
 " No, I mean what I say. His crucified body 
 was found in the forest beyond Grailph Moss, 
 in that part of it called The Wood o' Wendray." 
 
 " That is," I interrupted again, " where the 
 same frightful tragedy had been enacted in the 
 instance of the victim's grandfather ? " 
 
 " Even so. But though Gabriel Fanshawe 
 had been lured or persuaded or kidnapped out 
 of Hants, he was certainly alive after he crossed 
 the Derwent, for a huntsman recognised him 
 among his people one day, and spat on the 
 ground to the north, south, east, and west. 
 The lord of Roehurst disappeared in this mys- 
 terious fashion ; and none of his neighbours of 
 the south learned aught of his doom, but only 
 his wife knew, the tidings having been conveyed 
 to her I know not how. But from the record 
 she put in writing, it is clear that with the mes- 
 sage had come a summons, perhaps a menace ; 
 for, together with her two children, she betook 
 herself to the greater safety of London. There 
 the girl died, calling vainly, and uttering strange 
 words in a tongue no one spake or understood. 
 But the boy lived, and in course of years grew 
 to manhood, and on the death of his mother
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 33 
 
 went to reside upon his own lands. Nor was it 
 till after his' marriage, and the birth of a son, 
 that he read the record his mother had caused 
 to be^writ; and so came into the knowledge 
 that has been the awe and terror of those lin- 
 eally descended from him. 
 
 " But neither he nor his son came to any harm, 
 save the common doom of all. Of his grand- 
 son wild things were said, but all that is known 
 certainly is that he hanged himself upon the 
 great oak in front of Roehurst. He too, how- 
 ever, had left a Gabriel behind him as his suc- 
 cessor: in due time a good knight and learned 
 man, who brought up his only child worthily 
 and steadfastly. Strange that the heir of two 
 such loyal and excellent men should prove so 
 feather-brained as to love the woods better than 
 the streets, and the wild people of the woods 
 better than courtiers and scholars ! Stranger 
 still that the old omens should recur, till, at last, 
 Gervase Fanshawe, after an awful curse upon 
 all of his blood, and terrifying blasphemies, 
 openly set fire to his manor ; and himself, with 
 his little daughter (though the young Gabriel 
 escaped), was consumed in the flames. 
 
 " Thus, with tragic alternations, went the lives 
 3
 
 34 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 of my forbears ; till, after many generations of 
 English Fanshawes, the house of Roehurst 
 came to an end with Jasper Fanshawe." 
 
 At that moment so savage an onslaught of 
 wind and rain was made upon the house, so 
 violent a quake of thunder shook the walls, 
 that further speech was impossible for the 
 time. But, save by his silence, my companion 
 took no notice of the tumult. His eyes were 
 very large and wild, and stared spell-bound 
 upon the fire, as though they beheld there the 
 tragic issues to the many memories or thoughts 
 which tyrannised his brain. 
 
 " I said that the family of Roehurst," he 
 resumed, as soon as comparative quietude had 
 followed that wild outburst, though the wind 
 moaned and screamed round the gables and 
 among the old chimneys, and the rain slashed 
 against the window-pane in continuous assault, — 
 " I said that the family of Roehurst came to an 
 end with Jasper Fanshawe. This was at the 
 close of the eighteenth century. Jasper was 
 the last of his race, and, the rumour ran, one of 
 the wildest. Almost on the eve of his wedding 
 it transpired, that when, in his youth, he had 
 gone away with and lived among the gypsy-
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 35 
 
 people, he had, as most if not all of his pro- 
 genitors, riiarried a Romany girl. The union 
 was not one that would be recognised by the 
 Englfsh law ; but the authentic news of it, and 
 the confirmed rumour that Squire Fanshawe 
 had a son and daughter living, brought about 
 a duel between him and the brother of his 
 betrothed. With rash folly this duel was 
 fought in the woods, and witnessed by no one 
 save the gypsy 'messenger' who kept the 
 squire always in view." 
 
 "The gypsy-messenger, Fanshawe?" 
 " Yes. That is the name sometimes used. 
 The old word means the doom-watcher. The 
 latter is the better designation, but I did not 
 care to use it. 
 
 " Well, my ancestor killed the man Charles 
 Norton. Tlie deed was the worse for the 
 survivor, in that Norton was the favorite son 
 of the most influential man in the country-side. 
 In a word, the slaying was called murder, and 
 Jasper Fanshawe was proclaimed. His sole 
 chance lay with his blood-folk. The doom- 
 watcher came into Winchester, and testified to 
 what he had seen, while hiding among the 
 bracken in the forest ; but his evidence was
 
 36 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 overborne, and, rightly or wrongly, he was him- 
 self clapped into prison on a charge of rick- 
 burning. 
 
 " No trace could be found of the fugitive, nor 
 of the ' Egyptians ' with whom he made good 
 his escape. The large encampment in Elvwick 
 Wood had broken up into sections, which had 
 severally dispersed, and all had vanished almost 
 as swiftly and effectually as the smoke of the 
 camp-fires. 
 
 " Whatever I may surmise, I do not know for 
 certain the manner of Jasper Fanshawe's death. 
 His son, James, lived for the most part in 
 Hungary; at other times in the wide-roaming 
 lands between the Caspian and the Adriatic. 
 He took in preference the old kin-name of 
 Heme, which, indeed, his father had adopted 
 after his flight from England. 
 
 "This James Heme lived to an old age, and 
 became one of the ' elder brothers ' of his 
 particular tribal branch. His son Gabriel, how- 
 ever, left his kindred, and went to Vienna, 
 where he studied medicine. Then, while still 
 relatively a young man, he gained an important 
 post at Prague, and in a year or so became 
 what would here be called a magistrate. He
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 37 
 
 was noted for his severity in dealing with all 
 vagrants, but especially in the instance of any 
 gypsy delinquent. At this time, as from his 
 early Vienna days, he was known as Vansar, 
 a Romany equivalent for Fanshawe. On three 
 separate occasions, his life was attempted, 
 though each time the would-be assassin escaped. 
 Gabriel Vansar was not the man to be intim- 
 idated ; indeed, he became only the more 
 stringent and tyrannical, so that soon there 
 was not a g>'psy encampment within a twenty- 
 mile radius of Prague. In his thirty-sixth year 
 he was offered a medical professorship in 
 Vienna. In that city he met a Miss Winstane, 
 a beautiful English girl, the sole child of Edward 
 Winstane, a Justice of the Peace for South 
 Hants, and Squire of Roehurst Park and the 
 greater part of the Parish of Elvwick. Miss 
 Winstane loved her handsome wooer, and the 
 marriage was duly solemnised. Though he 
 spoke with a slight foreign accent, Mr. Vansar 
 knew his paternal language thoroughly ; for 
 though 'James Heme' had ceased to be Eng- 
 lish in all else, he had been careful to teach 
 his son his native tongue, and indeed always to 
 speak it when alone with him.
 
 38 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 " Neither Mr. Winstane nor Winifred Win- 
 stane ever knew that Gabriel Vansar was 
 Gabriel Heme the Gypsy, or, in turn, that he 
 was the grandson of that Jasper Fanshawe 
 whose flight from Roehurst had been followed 
 by the confiscation of his property, and its dis- 
 posal to Edward Winstane the elder. 
 
 " As a matter of fact, Mr. Winstane died a few 
 months after the marriage of his daughter. 
 Gabriel Vansar now relinquished his post, and 
 went to England to live the life of a country 
 squire. There he had three children born to 
 him : two sons and a daughter. Naomi was the 
 youngest by several years, and at her coming 
 her mother went. Of the two sons, Jasper was 
 the elder, I the younger."
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 39 
 
 IV. 
 
 Although not taken wholly by surprise, I 
 exclaimed, " Vou, Fanshawe ? " — adding that 
 indeed the chain of circumstances was remark- 
 able. 
 
 " Yes. . . . Well, when my brother was 
 twenty-one, and I nineteen, our father died. He 
 had changed much since our mother's decease, 
 and had become strangely depressed and even 
 morose. There was adequate explanation of 
 this in the sealed papers which he left to 
 Jasper. 
 
 " But now I must diverge for a moment. 
 I have something very strange to confide to 
 you. . . . But first ;tell me: have you heard 
 of Kundry ? " 
 
 " Of Kundry ? " I repeated, bewildered. 
 
 " You love music, I know ; and I thought 
 you might have heard of Kundry." 
 
 " Ah, yes, I know now. You mean the 
 woman in Parsifal ? " 
 
 .f
 
 40 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 " Yes. At the same time, Wagner does not 
 give the true legend. He did not even know 
 that the name is a gypsy one, and verj' ancient. 
 I have heard that some people think it imagi- 
 nary, others, that it is old-time Scandinavian. 
 But our people, the Children of the Wind, 
 are far more ancient than any one knows. 
 We had earned that very name long before 
 the Coming of the Christ. We had, however, 
 another name, which were I to translate lit- 
 erally, would be something like ' The Spawn 
 of Sheitan : ' given us because we were god- 
 less, and without belief in any after-life, and 
 were kingless and homeless and, compared 
 with other peoples, lawless. As we were 
 then, so in a sense we are now : for though 
 we do not deny God, we neither worship him 
 nor propitiate him nor fear him ; nor have we 
 any faith in a future, believing that with the 
 death of the body that which is the man is dead 
 also ; and kingless we are, save for the com- 
 mon overlords, Time and Death; and home- 
 less, except for the curtains of the forest and 
 the dome of the sky, and the lamps of sun 
 and moon ; and, even as the wind is lawless 
 and the sea, so also are we, who are more un-
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 41 
 
 stable than^he one and more vagrant than the 
 other. 
 
 " N^early nineteen hundred years ago a tribe 
 of our race, * the first tribe ' it was called, be- 
 cause it claimed to be the original stock, was 
 in the hill-country beyond Jerusalem. 
 
 " It was in the year of the greatest moment to 
 the modern world : the year of the death of 
 Jesus of Nazareth. 
 
 '' I need not repeat even in the briefest way 
 details which are universally familiar. It is 
 enough to say that some of our people were 
 on the Hill of Calvary on the Day of Anguish ; 
 that among them was a beautiful wanton 
 called Kundry; and that as the Sufferer 
 passed to His martyrdom, she laughed in bitter 
 mockery. Turning upon her, and knowing the 
 darkness of her unbelief and the evil of which 
 she was the embodiment, the Christ stopped 
 and looked at her. 
 
 "'Hail, O King!' she laughed mockingly. 
 ' Vouchsafe to me, thy Sister, a sign that thou 
 art indeed Lord over Fate; but thou knowest 
 thou canst not do this thing, and goest to thy 
 death!' 
 
 " Then the Christ spake. 'Verily, thou shalt 
 
 .f
 
 42 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 have a sign. To thee and thine I bequeath the 
 signs of my Passion, to be a shame and horror 
 among thy people, forevermore.' 
 
 " Therewith He resumed His weary way. And 
 Kundry laughed, and followed. Again, during 
 the Agony on the Cross, she laughed, and 
 again at the last bitter cry of the Son of God ; 
 but in the darkness that suddenly came upon 
 the land she laughed no more. 
 
 " From that day the woman Kundry, whom 
 some have held to be the sister of the Christ, 
 was accurst. Even among her own people she 
 went veiled. Two children she bore to the 
 man who had taken her to his tent : children of 
 one birth, a male child and a woman child. 
 
 " They were in their seventh year, when, in a 
 wild Asian land, Kundry came out among her 
 people and told them that she, the Sister of 
 Christ, had come to deliver them this message, 
 that out of the offspring of her womb soon or 
 late would arise one who would be their Re- 
 deemer, who w^ould be the Gypsy Christ. 
 
 " When the young men and maidens of her 
 people mocked, the elders reprimanded them, 
 and asked Kundry to give some proof that 
 she had not the sun-fever or the moon-mad-
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 43 
 
 ness, or othej; distemper of the mind. Where- 
 upon the woman appalled them by showing 
 upon ^er hands and feet the stigmata of the 
 Crucifixion. 
 
 " But, after the first wonder, and even awe, a 
 great horror and anger arose among the kindred. 
 Three days they gave her within which to take 
 back that which she had said, and to confess 
 the trickery of which she had been guilty, or 
 at least to reveal the way in which she had 
 mutilated herself and so healed the wounds. 
 At sundown, on the third day, the strange and 
 awful signs were still there; nor would the 
 woman retract that which she had said. So 
 they scourged her with thorny switches, and 
 put a rough crown of them round her head, and 
 led her to a place in the forest where there was 
 a blasted tree. And as she went she stopped 
 once, and looked to see whose mocking laugh 
 made her last hour so bitter; and lo, it was the 
 girl whom she had borne in her womb. Then 
 they crucified her, and she gave up the ghost 
 in the third hour before the dawn. But because 
 that the children were so young, and bore no 
 mark of the Curse, and were of the First Line- 
 age, they were spared."
 
 44 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 At this point my companion ceased. Lean- 
 ing forward, he stared into the fire as one in 
 a vision. A long silence prevailed. Outside, 
 the wind wailed wearily, rising at times into a 
 screaming violence. The heavy belching roar 
 of the thunder crashed upon us ever and again, 
 and even in the firelit room with its closed 
 curtains the lightning-glare smote the eyes. 
 
 Fanshawe apparently did not hear ; perhaps 
 he did not see. I watched him intently, the 
 more curiously because of what he told me and 
 what I inferred. At last a strange, a terrifying 
 cry startled even his abstraction. He sprang 
 to his feet, and looked wildly at the window. 
 
 " It was the wind," I said ; " I heard it like 
 that a little ago, though not so loudly, or with 
 so weird a scream." 
 
 Fanshawe made no reply. After a prolonged 
 stare at the curtained window, and a nervous 
 twisting and untwisting of his fingers, he seated 
 himself again. Then, almost as though he had 
 not broken his narration, he resumed : — 
 
 " The son and daughter of Kundry were 
 spared by the enemies of the tribe as well as by 
 their kindred, — or rather they escaped the 
 cruelty of the one as well as the fanaticism of
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 45 
 
 the other; foj; the tribe was almost extermin- 
 ated by the shores of the Euphrates, and only 
 Michaejl and Olah, the son and daughter of 
 Kundry, with a few fellow-fugitives, reached a 
 section of their race temporarily settled some 
 fifty miles to the north. 
 
 " There ' the laughing girl,' as Olah was called, 
 partly in memory of her mother, partly because 
 of her own laughter at her mother's death- 
 faring, and partly because of the musical mock- 
 ery wherewith she angered and delighted the 
 tribesmen, brought unhappiness and ruin among 
 'the rulers.' There were three brothers of 
 the ancient race, and each came to disaster and 
 death through Olah. But through their death, 
 Michael came to be what you would call the 
 Prince of the Children of the Wind. There 
 was but one evil deed recorded against him : 
 the murder of his sister. But — so the ancient 
 chronicle goes — this act was not out of coward- 
 ice or malice ; it was to remove the curse of 
 the mother, not only from those of her blood, 
 but from the race. The deed was done in the 
 year when Michael's wife bore him their second 
 child, a girl. Before Olah's death, — and she 
 died in the same way as her mother, — she took
 
 46 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 the little Sampa in her arms, and breathed 
 her life into it. On the day of the crucifixion, 
 the child turned in her sleep, in her mother's 
 arms, and laughed as child never laughed 
 before. 
 
 " The story thereafter is a long one. It is all 
 in the secret record of our people, though 
 known to a few only. I could tell it all to you, 
 with every name and every happening, but this 
 would serve no purpose to-niglit. Suffice it, 
 that link by link the chain is unbroken from 
 Michael and Sampa, the children of Michael, 
 brother of Olah, the son and daughter of 
 Kundry who laughed at the Christ on Calvary, 
 even unto the three offspring of Gabriel Fan- 
 shawe, who was called Vansar, and was of the 
 tribe of the Heron." 
 
 Could it be, I wondered, as I looked intently 
 at the speaker, that this man before me was the 
 lineal descendant of that Kundry -n'ho had 
 laughed at Christ; that he was the inheritor of 
 the Curse ; and that for him, perhaps, as for so 
 many of his race, the ancestral doom was 
 imminent ? With an effort I conquered the 
 superstitious awe which I realised had come 
 upon me.
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 47 
 
 "Do you mean this thing," I said slowly, 
 " do you meaA that you, James Fanshawe, are 
 the direct descendant of Kundry, and that the 
 Curse HVes, and that you or some one of your 
 blood, whether of this or a later generation, 
 must ' dree the weird ' even as your forbears 
 have done ? " 
 
 "Even so: I am as I say; and the Curse 
 lives ; and no man can evade the doom that is 
 nigh two thousand years old." 
 
 I waited a few minutes, pondering what best 
 to say. Then I spoke. 
 
 "The story is a strange and terrible one, 
 Fanshawe. But even if exactly as you have 
 told it, surely there is no logical necessity why 
 you or your brother or sister should inherit the 
 Curse. There has, by your own admission, 
 been frequent- admixture of a foreign and 
 Christian strain in your lineage. Your father 
 was, to all practical intents, no more a gypsy 
 than I am. He married an English girl, and 
 li'-ed the life of a country squire, and was no 
 different from his kind except in his perhaps ex- 
 aggerated bitterness against gypsies, — though, 
 by the way, not as different in this respect 
 either, for the country gentleman loveth not the
 
 48 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 vagrant. In a word, he himself, with all his 
 knowledge of the past, would have laughed at 
 your superstitious application of the legend." 
 
 Fanshawe turned upon me his great luminous 
 eyes, aflame with the fire of despair. I could 
 see that he was in passionate earnest. 
 
 '■'■ My sister might have laughed," he said in a 
 voice so low as almost to be a whisper, but with 
 significant emphasis: ";;«y sister might have 
 laughed, not my father." 
 
 "Why, Fanshawe," I exclaimed, startled, 
 " you do not mean to say that your sister is — 
 is — " 
 
 " A daughter of Kundry." 
 
 I received the remark in silence. I did not 
 know what to think, much less what to say. 
 My nerves, too, were affected by the electric 
 air, the ever-recurrent surge and tumult of the 
 thunderstorm ; and I felt bewildered by what 
 I heard, by what, despite its improbability, I 
 knew that I believed. At last I asked him to 
 resume, saying I knew he had not ended what 
 he had set himself to tell me. 
 
 " No, I have not ended. 
 
 " From what I have told you, you will have 
 gathered that the Curse does not show itself in
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 49 
 
 every generation, but in the third. I cannot 
 say that the death record is unvarj'ing, for I do 
 not know ; nor has it been possible to trace 
 every particular of a remote ancestry. But 
 here is a strange thing : that in all but three in- 
 stances, so far as known, no son or daughter of 
 Kundry has ever had more than two children. 
 From generation to generation that bitter laugh 
 has never lapsed. From generation to genera- 
 tion it has brought about disaster and shame. 
 Many, even as I have done, have dreamed that 
 the Curse might be expiated or outlived ; but it 
 may well be that even as in every generation 
 ' the laughing girl ' who is of the race of Kundry 
 mocks God, so in every third generation, till 
 the Christ come again or the world be no more, 
 there may be the tragedy of my ancestral woe. 
 
 " All this, rny father knew ere he died. He 
 had meant to carry the secret to the grave, and 
 by many precautions believed he had safe- 
 guarded his children from contact with the 
 people he hated and dreaded, though he was of 
 them himself. 
 
 " About the time when my father's morose and 
 brooding manner was first noted, my brother 
 Jasper had fallen ill. It was a mysterious 
 
 4
 
 50 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 trouble, and no doctor could name the malady. 
 Once, only, I saw my father furious, — on the 
 day when he learned that there was an encamp- 
 ment of gypsies in Elvvvick Woods, and that 
 Jasper, who was as impassioned in religion as 
 Saint Francis himself, had been among the 
 wandering people, striving to win them to the 
 Brotherhood of Christ. Our father did not 
 know that I and my sister Naomi had already 
 discovered the camp, and had been fascinated 
 by the dark people and their way of life and 
 the forest freedom, — so that we could think of 
 little else, and yearned to be in the greenwood, 
 even as a bird to spread its wings beyond the 
 bars of its cage. 
 
 " It must have been immediately after this that 
 my father made the discovery which changed 
 him from one man to another. Neither Naomi 
 nor I knew aught of it at the time, though we 
 were aware that something dire had happened, 
 something of awe, of dread. 
 
 " For when Jasper rose from his bed of sickness 
 there was upon his feet and upon his hands the 
 purple bruise and ruddy cicatrix of the great 
 nails of the Crucifixion." 
 
 For a few moments Fanshawe paused, and
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 51 
 
 drew a pain^iil, labored breath, as of a man in 
 pain or a great weakness. 
 
 " A|ter our father's death, Jasper shut himself 
 up in his room, and would see no one. I used 
 to creep along the passage at dusk, and listen 
 to the wild incoherences of his prayers. We, 
 Naomi and I, were very dismal, and it was with 
 relief when, one evening, we fled into the forest, 
 and joined our friends, more mysterious and al- 
 luring than ever because of the terrifying things 
 which had been said of them by him who was 
 now dead. 
 
 " Our shortest way was by Elvwick churchyard. 
 Perhaps but for this we would not have thought 
 of looking at our father's grave again: for we 
 did not mean to return to Roehurst. Hand in 
 hand, however, we stole to the spot we had al- 
 ready ceased to regard with the first over- 
 whelming awe. 
 
 "The shock was greater than even that of 
 his death had been, for we saw that the grave 
 had been rifled. The coffin was visible, but the 
 lid had been forced open. There was no corpse 
 within. Almost too dazed to be frightened, it 
 was some time before I realised that the out- 
 rage must have been committed that very night ;
 
 52 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 for the upturned earth had retained its fresh 
 smell, an axe was lying near the grave, and 
 there were imprints of feet in the damp soil. 
 
 " The idea flashed across my mind that our 
 father had somehow come to life again, — per- 
 haps, I thought, he knew of our intended flight 
 and had gone back to Roehurst to frustrate it, — 
 and I could scarce move with terror. Naomi 
 laughed, a strange mirthless laugh that made me 
 turn as though to strike her. Then, shivering 
 and sobbing, we crawled away. I think we were 
 about to return home, when a tall figure arose, 
 called us by our names, and invited us to come 
 and see the merry ' Dance of the Wolves ' around 
 the camp-fire. I told the man — Mat Lee, I re- 
 member his name was — what had happened. 
 To my surprise he did not appear shocked or 
 frightened. He was silent for a little ; then in a 
 whisper he urged us to run with him at once, 
 lest we should meet the dead man on his way 
 back from the house to the grave. 
 
 "That is how my sister and I went to live 
 among our unknown kindred. The very next 
 day, at dawn, the camp was lifted; a week 
 thence we were in Brittany. It was not till long 
 afterwards I learned that it was the tribesmen
 
 ^ The Gypsy Christ. 53 
 
 who had desecrated my father's grave. ' He 
 had been a renegade, and the enemy of his 
 race,' they said, 'and it was only right that 
 though he had lived in honor he should after- 
 wards be flung back to earth as a dead dog is 
 hurled among the bramble or gorse.' 
 
 " Once, only, I saw my brother again. I know 
 that he did his best for us. He traced our 
 flight, and kept in touch with us. A 'com- 
 mando' was sent to him, forbidding him to 
 come near us, or even to go among his kindred 
 anywhere. I was told I was free to go and 
 come as I liked, and that I had money always 
 at my command. Naomi, however, had to 
 abide with the tribe. For three years I roamed 
 throughout the lands east of Saxony and Ba- 
 varia, and as far south as Dalmatia and Rou- 
 mania. I had been well educated, and was a 
 student ; and I learned much, though in my own 
 desultory fashion. 
 
 " Then tidings reached me that Jasper had dis- 
 appeared. It was said that he had been seen 
 in the shore-woods of Lymington, on the So- 
 lent; and that he had been drowned, while 
 bathing or boating. An upturned boat had 
 been discovered, in which he had certainly been
 
 54 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 that forenoon, for he had come in it from Yar- 
 mouth in the Isle of Wight. 
 
 " I went to England, and in due time entered 
 into possession of the family property. At first 
 (and this was when we met in Surrey), I 
 thought of settling there, for a time. At last, 
 however, I decided to dispose of Roehurst, and 
 realise everything that had come to me ; and I 
 had done this, and was about to leave for east- 
 ern Europe when a letter reached me from 
 Derbyshire. // was in my brother's handwrit- 
 ing. 
 
 " Bewildered, distraught, and angry, I read this 
 strange and unlooked-for communication. The 
 writer was alive, and begged me to come and 
 save him from the enmity of the kindred with 
 whom he had at the end cast in his lot. To 
 narrate briefly what might well be told with 
 lengthy and surprising detail, I reached Shef- 
 field, and thence set out across the wild and 
 remote country (to me at that time quite un- 
 known, even by repute) which lies to the north 
 of Dallaway Moor and Grailph Moss. At the 
 verge of the great forest I was met by a gypsy 
 guide. Late that night we reached the camp. 
 From an hour after my arrival till the last hour
 
 ^ The Gypsy Christ. 55 
 
 of the night I was alone with my brother. He 
 told me all that I have told you, and much else 
 beside ; also where his own and our father's 
 papers were to be found. Finally, he declared 
 that the Curse died with himself. He had had 
 this revealed to him in a vision ; besides, other 
 circumstances, with which I need not weary 
 you, pointed to this end. He had sworn this 
 to the tribesmen, and they had consented to 
 forego the manner of his death, if he would 
 further renounce all claim to be the Gypsy 
 Christ. The very name gave them a sense of 
 horror and anger; his fervent words of exhorta- 
 tion had made them sullen, and at last resentful ; 
 and, over and above this, there was the vague 
 race-legend' that, whenever the Gypsy Christ 
 should come, the days of the Children of the 
 Wind would be numbered, and they would 
 dwindle away like the leaves in October. 
 
 " An hour before dawn, three of the kindred 
 entered the tent. They put a bandage about 
 my eyes, and secured my arms. I heard them 
 lift Jasper, and put him upon a hurdle of larch- 
 boughs. In the chill air we went silently forth. 
 In about a quarter of an hour we came to a 
 standstill upon a rising ground. I heard Ja.sper
 
 56 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 repeat in a husky voice that he was not worthy 
 to be the Christ; that he was not the Christ; 
 and that he prayed that with him might pass 
 away forever the curse of Kundry. 
 
 " There was a brief silence after that; then a 
 rustling sound in the air ; then, after an interval, 
 a thud, thud, thudding, followed by a splash. 
 
 " ' No man ever comes back from the bowels 
 of the lead-mine, O James, of the tribe of the 
 Heron, of the race of Kundry,' whispered a 
 voice in my ear. 
 
 "When, an hour later, the bandage was taken 
 from my eyes, I was on the moor just above the 
 House o' Fanshawe. A boy was beside me, 
 his face covered with a slouch hat. In a few 
 words, in our ancient language, he told me that 
 I was by the village of Eastrigg, and that twenty 
 miles south of me lay Pothering Dale, whence 
 I could easily go in any direction ; any^vhere, 
 he added significantly, where the tongue can be 
 silent and the memory dead. 
 
 " I made no inquiries about the matter I have 
 told you. Fortunately I had informed no one 
 of the letter I had received. This letter I 
 burned. But I ran a great risk by returning a 
 few days later to Eastrigg. The reason was
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 57 
 
 this: I had learned, from the papers to which 
 my brother had alluded, the whole story of our 
 doomed race, the race of Kundry; and I de- 
 cided to try one more desperate hazard against 
 Fate, for I could not be sure that Jasper's death 
 would remove the Curse. In a word, I decided 
 to make my home in this place where my an- 
 cestor and brother suffered such cruel deaths, 
 and to die here ; for I found in my papers an 
 ancient prophecy, both in English and Romany, 
 to the effect that when a woman of the race of 
 Kundry would voluntarily sacrifice herself at 
 the Hill of Calvary, or when a man of the race 
 of Kundry would live and die at the place where 
 one of his kindred had suffered for the Curse, 
 the doom might be removed. 
 
 " Thus it was that I became possessor of this 
 strange 'House o' Fanshawe.' But I had 
 something to do before I settled here. 
 
 " When everything that had to be done was 
 done, I went abroad to seek my kindred, and 
 more particularly my sister Naomi. Perhaps 
 you guess iny object. I had more hope of 
 success, from the circumstance that Naomi was 
 of a passionately enthusiastic nature ; and that, 
 of late, she had even dreamed of leaving her
 
 58 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 people (for one strain in her fought against the 
 other), to enter a Sisterhood of Mercy. 
 
 " But my people had gone, and the clues were 
 already old and complicated. I went through 
 Hungary, across Transylvania, hither and 
 thither in Roumania, and from end to end in 
 Dalmatia. Everywhere I was on their track, 
 but the trail was confused. It was not till I 
 had gained the Bavarian highlands that the 
 conclusion was forced upon me I was being 
 misled. This became a certainty after I had 
 followed a sure trail through Suabia and so to 
 the Lands of the Moselle. At Treves, I was 
 directed southward, and went blindly on a false 
 track that led through southern France towards 
 the Basque provinces ; but at last, at a place 
 in Provence called Aigues-Mortes, I met a life- 
 brother (that is, one whose life had been saved 
 when otherwise it would have been lost, and 
 who has vowed his life-service to his saviour, 
 whenever required), whom I put upon his oath. 
 He told me that the Zengri, the Hemes, and 
 two other tribes were not in southern Europe 
 at all, but in England. I had hit upon the 
 right trail between Heidelberg and the Mosel, 
 but, when almost upon my people at Treves,
 
 ^ The Gypsy Christ. 59 
 
 had been skilfully diverted. And the reason 
 for'' this was the extraordinary ascendancy of 
 my sister. My heart sank as I heard this tid- 
 ing. I feared that the Curse had already shown 
 itself; but, my informant assured me, I was 
 wrong in this surmise. It was merely that 
 Naomi had fascinated the tribes-folk, and, parti- 
 cularly since the death of the old Peter Zengro, 
 had become practically a queen. Her word was 
 law. 
 
 " Of course I could not tell the exact reason 
 why she wished to evade me. Possibly she 
 feared I might resent her ascendancy, and try 
 to usurp her ; possibly she had some reason to 
 fear that the always latent enmity against any 
 of the racfe of Kundry would be directed against 
 me. As likely as not, she had several schemes 
 to fulfil, all or even one of which might be 
 frustrated by my appearance on the scene. 
 
 " Nevertheless, I decided to travel straight to 
 England, and, as soon as practicable, gain an 
 interview with Naomi. 
 
 " For some weeks after I reached this country 
 I was again purposely misled. Yet from one 
 thing and another I became more and more 
 anxious to meet Naomi soon. Strange rumours
 
 6o The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 were abroad. At Ringwood in the New Forest, 
 I overheard some words by the camp-fire (when 
 I was supposed to be asleep) which made my 
 heart shrink. 
 
 " Once again I lost all clue. Then it was that 
 I remembered Nathan Lee, — an intimate friend 
 of yours as well as of mine, — who, because of 
 his great love for his wife, had sworn never to 
 leave the neighborhood of Glory Woods, where 
 she was buried. I travelled with all speed to 
 Dorking. From Lee I learned what I wanted 
 to know. By a strange fatality, Naomi had 
 made her headquarters in the Wood o' Wen- 
 dray, beyond Eastrigg. But was it a blind 
 fatality? That was what troubled and per 
 turbed me. Why had she, why had our par- 
 ticular tribe, settled at the accursed spot where 
 Jasper Fanshawe had met his fate ! 
 
 " It was at this time that I met you in Glory 
 Woods. The next day I was back in the vil- 
 lage of Elvwick, and had arranged with Robert 
 Hoare, the late gardener at Roehurst, and his 
 wife, to come and keep house and generally 
 look after me, at Eastrigg Manor. 
 
 " Almost every day after I was settled I rode 
 over to the Wood o' Wendray; but the ban
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 6i 
 
 was upon me, and I was warned not to ap- 
 proach the camp. Thrice I set the ban at 
 defiance, and strode into the camp, but on no 
 occasion saw any sign of Naomi. This was 
 the more strange, as, on the third time, I ar- 
 rived at sunset, 'the hour of the smoke,' when 
 the gjpsies meet round the fire to talk and 
 smoke and break their long day-fast. It was 
 after this third visit I was formally warned that 
 my next defiance of the ban would be my last. 
 I knew this to be no idle threat. Thereafter I 
 had to be more cautious. I no longer rode 
 across the moor ; but, either in the morning 
 twilight or in the late afternoon, wandered here 
 and there across the uplands : sometimes by 
 the deserted lead-mines, sometimes by the 
 green pool, sometimes even within the out- 
 skirts of the Wood o' Wendray. 
 
 " I met you in Glory Woods in the spring, and 
 now it is autumn. It was exactly midway in 
 this time that I learned a dreadful thing. 
 
 " One day a message came to me, in Naomi's 
 writing, to be at the green pool beyond Dal- 
 laway mine at dawn on the morrow. 
 
 " I was there, of course. The morning was 
 raw and misty. Even at the margin of the
 
 62 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 Pool I could not see the further side. Sud- 
 denly, however, I heard whispered voices, and 
 the trampling of feet. I called, and was at once 
 answered. I was bidden not to stir from where 
 I was. The voice was that of Naomi, but with 
 a note in it I had never heard before. 
 
 " ' Is that you, James Fanshawe, of the tribe 
 of the Heron, of the race of Kundry.?' 
 
 " ' It is I, Naomi, daughter of Gabriel. It is 
 I, your blood-brother.' 
 
 "'Then know this thing. She whom you 
 wedded secretly, Sanpriella Zengro, is dead.' 
 
 " I gave a cry of pain. ... I have not told 
 you that, during my last year with my people, 
 I loved Sanpriella, the daughter of Alexander 
 Zengro, the brother of Peter Zengro, of the 
 First Tribe. But Alexander Zengro feared and 
 hated any of the race of Kundry; so we loved 
 secretly. This was one reason why I was so 
 eager to find my people again; for Naomi was 
 not, as you may have supposed, my one quest. 
 I knew that Sanpriella was with child, and I 
 longed to make her my wife before all men. 
 
 " ' Is it so .i" I cried in a shaking voice, be- 
 cause of my sore pain ; ' is it so, upon the oath 
 of the crossed sticks and the hidden way? '
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 63 
 
 " ' I say it. May tree fall on me, and water 
 gain'upon me, and the falling star light on me, 
 if I speak not truth. Sanpriella is dead. She 
 lies in the wood of Heiligenberg, beyond the 
 Neckar. And now listen to the doom, thou son 
 of Kundrj'.' 
 
 "My heart leapt at these ominous words, 
 doubly ominous and strange coming from one 
 of my own blood. 
 
 " ' Unto Sanpriella were born twin children, a 
 boy and a girl. The girl lives, though you 
 shall never see her. She is in a far land from 
 here, and the lines of her life are already known. 
 The boy . . . the boy is . . . dead. 
 
 " ' But know this thing, James my blood- 
 brother. The doom of Kundry was upon him. 
 His mother hid the thing, but after her death 
 the Curse was visible. Upon his hands were the 
 bruised wounds of the nails of the Crucifixion.' 
 
 " With a shuddering cry I sank to my knees. 
 Wildly I prayed, implored Naomi to say it was 
 not true; that it was hearsay; that some 
 natural cause had been mistaken for this 
 horrible mystery. 
 
 " ' Therefore,' she resumed unmoved, ' the 
 ban is upon you also. Take heed lest a worse
 
 64 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 thing befall you. It will be well if you leave 
 this place where you live, and forever. Be a 
 wanderer upon the face of the earth ; it will be 
 for you safer so : but avoid the trail of the 
 Children of the Wind as you would the pesti- 
 lence. And now — farewell ! ' 
 
 " * My child lives — my daughter lives ! ' I 
 cried despairingly. 
 
 " There was a long silence. I called again 
 and again, but met with no response. Thick 
 as the mist was, I raced round the pool like a 
 greyhound. There was no one near. I ran 
 out upon the moor, but there I was like a dere- 
 lict boat in wide ocean in a dense fog. I could 
 see nothing, hear nothing. All that day the 
 mist hung impermeable ; all that day I abode 
 where I was." 
 
 Once more a long silence fell upon Fanshawe. 
 Outside, the shrieking of the wind was appall- 
 ing. The rain slashed against the house as 
 though all the sluices of the thunderstorm were 
 concentred there. The thunder was no longer 
 overhead, but a raucous blast — distinct from 
 the blind, furious gale — moved to and fro like 
 a beast of prey. I was overcome by the
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 65 
 
 strange and terrible tale I had listened to. 
 Thrti and there, to that wild accompaniment, 
 it all seemed deadly true, and as inevitable as 
 Destiny. 
 
 With an abrupt gesture, Fanshawe suddenly 
 resumed : — 
 
 " On the eve of that day I walked swiftly 
 across the moor. The sun was almost on the 
 horizon as I reached the easter edge of 
 Grailph Moss. Suddenly, I stopped as one 
 changed into stone. Black against the sunset- 
 light I saw a tall figure stand : with head 
 thrown back, and arms wide outstretched from 
 the sides. Was it a vision of the Christ.? 
 That was the thought which came to me. 
 Then the figure disappeared, absorbed in the 
 mist over Grailph Moss. I turned and went 
 home. It was Naomi I had seen. 
 
 " The next evening I was in the same place, 
 at the same hour. 
 
 "Again I saw Naomi, in that sunflame Cruci- 
 fixion. Once more she disappeared, and across 
 the Moss. I knew of no encampment there, 
 but unquestionably she had moved swiftly west- 
 ward. 
 
 " On the third afternoon I was there again, 
 
 5
 
 66 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 earlier. This time I had with me my white 
 bloodhound. We crouched in good hiding till 
 Naomi passed. I made Grailph sniff her track. 
 When the sun set, she disappeared as before. 
 I held Grailph in leash, and followed swiftly. 
 In less than an hour I came upon her. She 
 was standing in a waste place, near the centre 
 of a broken circle of tall slabs. These were 
 the Druidic Stones, known almost to none save 
 the most daring explorers of the Moss, for they 
 are in a region beset with quagmires. 
 
 " She was speaking, with outstretched arms, 
 as if in prayer. There was no one visible. 
 She was, I saw, in a trance, or ecstasy. 
 
 " When, suddenly, she descried me, she leapt 
 like a deer on to a narrow dry path beyond the 
 stones. She would certainly have evaded me 
 but for Grailph. The hound slid beyond like 
 running water in a rapid. In less than a minute 
 he had headed her off. 
 
 "When I came up with her, I expected either 
 furious denunciation, or at least a summary 
 command that I should return straightway. 
 She did no more than look at me intently, how. 
 ever. She had already forgotten what had lain 
 between us. She was possessed.
 
 The Gypsy Christ. 67 
 
 ^** Naomi,'' I said, simply. 
 
 i^ ' I am Naomi, blessed among women.' 
 
 " I stared, perplexed. 
 
 " ' Why do you follow me here to spy me 
 out? Beware lest God strike thee for thy 
 blasphemy.' 
 
 " ' My blasphemy, Naomi ? ' 
 
 " ' Even so. I come here to meet the Spirit 
 of God.' 
 
 " ' Tell me, my sister, is this true what I have 
 heard: that you are with child.'" 
 
 " Her eyes flamed upon me. But her voice 
 was cold and quiet as she replied, — 
 
 " It is true. The Lord hath wrought upon me 
 a miracle. I have immaculately conceived, and 
 the child, I shall bear will be the Gypsy Christ, 
 — the long dreamed-of, the long waited-for 
 second Christ.' 
 
 " ' This is madness. Come with me ; come 
 home with me, Naomi.' 
 
 " ' The green earth is my home ; and the wind 
 is my brother, and the dust my sister.' 
 
 "'Come!' 
 
 " Then in a moment her whole look and mien 
 changed. The flame that was in her eyes 
 seemed to come from her very body. Her
 
 68 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 voice now was loud, raucous, imperious. The 
 hound whined, and sidled to my feet. 
 
 " ' I am the Sister of Jesus, I am no other than 
 Kundry, deathless in my woe until these last 
 days. I am the Mother of the Christ that is to 
 be. And you, you, son of my mother's womb, 
 you are ordained to be my prophet ! Go forth 
 even now : go unto our people in the woods : 
 declare, declare, declare, to them, to all, that 
 the Gypsy Christ cometh at last ! ' 
 
 " I was shocked, terrified even. But after a 
 throbbing silence, I spoke, and firmly, — 
 
 '"This is madness, Naomi. Already the 
 Curse is heavy enough upon us. Do you not 
 know that our brother Jasper was done to death 
 yonder because of this doom of ours ; that be- 
 cause of this awful malison on the race of Kun- 
 dry ' . . . that . . . my little son . . . 
 
 "'I know all, — what has been, what is, 
 what shall be. Once more I ask you : will you 
 be the prophet of the Gypsy Christ?' 
 
 " ' No, never, so help me God ! ' 
 
 " ' This is the fourth day of this Week of the 
 Miracle. To-morrow thou hast ; and the day 
 after; and yet again, another day. Repent 
 while there is yet time. But if thou dost not 

 
 ->• The Gypsy Christ. 69 
 
 repent, thine end shall be as that of thy dog. 
 An awful sign shall be with thee this very 
 night; yet another shall be with thee on the 
 morrow; and on the third thou shalt receive 
 the message of the Cross. Then thou shalt 
 waver no more, for whom all wavering is for- 
 ever past. And now, begone ! ' 
 
 " Broken in spirit, I turned. When, a hun- 
 dred yards thence, I looked back, there was no 
 trace of Naomi anywhere. 
 
 " That night I had the first sign." 
 
 Here Fanshawe ceased for a moment, and 
 wiped the cold sweat from his forehead with a 
 hand tremulous as a reed. His voice had sunk 
 into a dull monotony, to me dreadful. 
 
 " On the day following, I had the second sign. 
 Drops of blood oozed from the red figure of the 
 Christ that you have seen in my room. Then, 
 you came. To-day I have had the message of 
 the Cross. You saw it yourself : a green cross 
 on the portal of the house. 
 
 " Then at last my terror overmastered me. 
 Also, I yet hoped to prevail with Naomi. Thus 
 it was that when I left you abruptly this after- 
 noon, I rode across the moor, to the Wood o' 
 Wendray. I reached the camp, but only the
 
 70 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 ashes of dead fires were there. Yet I know my 
 people wait, and Naomi has my life on the 
 hollow of her hand." 
 
 But here I broke in eagerly. 
 
 " Come, Fanshawe, come with me at once, the 
 first thing to-morrow. You must not be here 
 another day. It is madness for you to remain. 
 Why, in another week you would persuade your- 
 self that you too had inherited this so-called 
 curse ! " 
 
 "Z(?^/&/" he shouted, springing to his feet, 
 tearing the coverings from his hands, and hold- 
 ing forth the palms to me, rigid, testifying, ap- 
 palling: ''Look! Look! Look!'" 
 
 And as I live I saw upon the hands the livid 
 stigmata of the Passion ! 
 
 With a cry, I repelled him. A great horror 
 seized me. But the next moment a greater 
 pity vanquished my weakness. He had already 
 fallen. I took him in my arms, and laid him 
 back on his chair. 
 
 James Fanshawe was dead. 
 
 For some minutes I stared, paralysed, upon 
 the still face that had just been so wrought with 
 a consuming frenzy. A deep awe came upon 
 me. I crossed the room, threw back the win-
 
 ^ The Gypsy Christ. 71 
 
 dow, and looked out. Grailph the hound was 
 not there. Nor could he have been lurking 
 near, for at that moment I saw a man glide 
 swiftly across the yard, and disappear into the 
 gloom. 
 
 The rain was over, the thunder rumbled far 
 across the moors; the wind, too, had veered, 
 and I heard it crying hke a lost thing, in the 
 deep ravine of the Gap. 
 
 I stayed quietly beside my friend, keeping 
 vigil till the dawn. While it was still dark, I 
 went again to the window, and looked out. On 
 the moor I could hear two larks singing at a 
 great altitude. Doubtless they had soared to 
 meet the dawnlight. 
 
 I thought of Naomi, whose madness would 
 surely bring upon her, and that soon, the awful 
 ancestral doom. Yet of this I knew I should 
 hear nothing. The Children of the Wind have 
 a saying : The dog barks by day, and the fox by 
 night; but the Gypsy never lets any one know 
 whence he comes, where he is, or whither he 
 goes. 
 
 Sometimes the horror of it all makes me long 
 to look upon it as an evil dream. Has the 
 dreadful Curse at last worked itself out? With
 
 72 The Gypsy Christ. 
 
 a sudden terror, I remember at times that James 
 Fanshawe had two children born to him. What 
 of the girl ? Did she, too, laugh, when her kin- 
 dred led Naomi to her doom ? Even now doth 
 she move swift and sure towards that day when 
 she shall go quick with child ; when she or the 
 child or the child's child shall arise and say, 
 " Behold the Gypsy Christ is come at last ! "
 
 MADGE O' THE POOL.
 
 Madge o' the Pool 
 
 A Thames Etching. 
 
 When the January fog hangs heavy upon Lon- 
 don it comes down upon the Pool as though 
 it were sluiced there like a drain, or as a mass 
 of garbage shot over a declivity in a waste 
 place. The Pool is not a lovely spot in winter, 
 though it has a beauty of its own on the rare 
 days when the sun shines in an unclouded 
 frosty sky, or when a northwester comes down 
 from the distant heights of Highgate and 
 Hampstead, and slaps the incoming tide with 
 short splashes of waves washed up by the down- 
 ward current, till the whole reach of the Thames 
 thereabouts is a jumble of blue and white and 
 of gleaming if dirty grays and greens. On 
 midwinter nights, too, when the moon has 
 swung up out of the smoke, like a huge fire- 
 balloon adrift from the Lambeth furnaces, and
 
 >]& Madge o' the Pool : 
 
 when the stars glint like javelin points, there 
 is something worth seeing down there, where 
 the forest of masts rises sheer and black, and 
 where there is a constant cross-flash of red 
 and green rays from innumerable bow-lamps 
 and stern-windows and tipsy lanterns trailed 
 awry through the rigging. A mile up stream, 
 and it is wonderful what stillness prevails. 
 There is, of course, the dull roar of omnibuses 
 and cabs on the bridges, the muffled scraping 
 sound of hundreds of persons moving rapidly 
 afoot, and, from the banks, the tumult of indis- 
 criminate voices and sounds of all kinds round 
 and beyond the crank-crank of the cranes on 
 the grain-wharves and the bashing of the brick 
 and coal barges against the wooden piers. 
 But upon the interspaces of the river, what 
 comparative silence ! A disjointed passenger- 
 boat, with spelican funnel darting back to the 
 perpendicular, shoots from under a bridge, and 
 paddles swiftly down-stream like a frightened 
 duck ; a few moments, and it is out of sight, 
 swallowed in the haze, or swung round a Oend. 
 A trio of barges, chained to each other like 
 galley-slaves, passes up-stream, drawn by what 
 looks like a huge bluebottle-fly. The bluebottle
 
 A Thames Etching. ^y 
 
 is a tug-boat, a " barge-bug " in river parlance ; 
 and as-dt flaps the water with a swift spanking 
 smash of its screw, the current is churned into a 
 yeast of foam that is like snow against the bows 
 of the first barge, and thin as dirty steam when 
 washed from the sternmost into a narrow vanish- 
 ing wake. As likely as not, the bargees are 
 silent, pipely contemplative, taciturn in view of 
 always imminent need for palaver of a kind 
 almost unique in the scope and vigour of its 
 blasphemy. Perhaps, however, the boy at the 
 caboose forward whistles the tune of " O were 
 I sodger gay " or that perennial favourite which 
 recounts the deeds of Jack Do and Bob Did n't 
 in the too familiar groves of Pentonville ; or the 
 seedy man in shirt-sleeves, who walks the star- 
 board plank with a pole and thinks he is busy, 
 may yell a ragged joke to a comrade similarly 
 employed on one of the other barges. Or even, 
 and indeed very probably, the heavily cravated, 
 dogskin-capped helmsman may suddenly be 
 moved to a hoarse volley of words so saturated, 
 dominated, upheld, overborne by the epithet 
 " bloody," that the " coal-bunker " might almost 
 be taken for a slaughter-house escaping in dis- 
 guise. But even the barges slump up-stream
 
 78 Madge o' the Pool : 
 
 out of sight before long : and then, how quiet 
 the river is for a space ! The wharf -rats are so 
 fat that they mal<e a stone-like splash when they 
 plunge through the grain-dollops; but only a 
 practised ear could recognise the sound in the 
 rude sussurrus of the current, or "spot" the 
 shrill squeaks, as of a drowning and despairing 
 penny-whistle, when a batch of these "Thames- 
 chickens " scurries in sudden flight down a 
 granary-slide and goes flop into the quagmires 
 of mud left uncovered by the ebb. But at the 
 Pool there is never complete silence. Even if 
 there be no wind, the curses of the Poolites (in 
 at least twenty varieties of human lingo) would 
 cause enough current of air to crease the river's 
 dirty skin here and there into a grim smile. 
 
 Like the rest of the world, the Pool has its 
 sociable seasons. Broadly there are two. The 
 shorter might be called that of the concertina 
 and open-air " flings ; " the longer that of the 
 riverine singing-dens and dancing-saloons. But 
 the regular population has not much time for 
 systematic gaiety, not even in the long summer 
 nights: a bad season, in fact, when there is 
 little business to be done and too much light to 
 do it in. The stranger visiting the neighbour-
 
 A Thames Etching. 79 
 
 hood — that is to say the stranger who carries 
 in his aspect too obvious credentials as to his 
 respectabiht)- — niiglit laugh at the idea of there 
 being a Pool population at all, that is, of a per- 
 manent kind. He will find the saloons in the 
 locality haunted by a motley gathering, where as 
 a rule the ladies show no insular partiality in 
 their acceptance of partners either in the danc- 
 ing-shops or other dens of more or less repute, 
 and where, without having had the advantages 
 of an excellent training at a young ladies' acad- 
 emy, they seem quite at ease with gentlemen of 
 foreign parts, coloured or otherwise, who talk no 
 lingo but their own. It is, in fact, a cosmo- 
 politan society. The civilisation of the west 
 and the wisdom of the east meet constantly in 
 the intercourse of the Irish dock-labourer and 
 the Chinese " grubber ; " and the cooUe or 
 Malay is as much at home as the Dutchman 
 or Portugee. 
 
 There is a clan of which almost nothing is 
 known. It is the people of the Pool. Ask the 
 river-police, and they will tell you something of 
 the "water-rats," though if your informant be 
 candid he will add that he can't tell you much. 
 Many unfortunate travellers have met members
 
 8o Madge o' the Pool : 
 
 of the fraternity; for one of their favourite and 
 most reputable pursuits is the ferrying at exor- 
 bitant prices (the inevitable purloining skilfully 
 carried on at a certain stage is not charged for) 
 of would-be voyagers by the Hamburg and Bal- 
 tic steamers, when, on account of the tide, em- 
 barkation has to take place midstream. The 
 Poolites haunt Irongate and Horsleydown stairs, 
 and are given to resenting active interest in their 
 vested rights. But their chief means of life is 
 otherwise obtained. They are the vermin of 
 the Thames, and they scour its surface by night 
 with irreproachable industry and thoroughness. 
 It would not be easy to describe what they do, 
 particularly under cover of mist or fog; it is 
 simplest to say that they will do anything, ex- 
 cept speak to a " cat" or refuse a drink. A " cat," 
 it may be observed, is the name applied to a 
 member of the river-police ; and as the *' cats " 
 are always worrying, even when not directly 
 chasing the Poolites, or " rats," the result is 
 incompatibility of temper. 
 
 Many of the Poolites haunt holes and corners 
 in the neighbourhood of Horsleydown stairs. 
 Some have their lair in old boats, or among 
 rotten sheds or wood-piles ; others are as home-
 
 A Thames Etching. 8i 
 
 less, as well as unpleasant and as fierce as 
 dung^eetles. Among them there are " rats " 
 of either sex who are practically never ashore, 
 whose knowledge of London is confined to 
 familiarity with the grim river-frontages, and 
 whose sole concern in connection with " the 
 great name of England " is a chronic uneasiness 
 about her might and majesty in the guise of the 
 police. 
 
 A score or so of Poolites are marked men. 
 That is to say, either through length of expe- 
 rience in loafing and vagabondage, or owing to 
 proved crime, their names are known to the 
 " cats," and their persons occasionally wanted. 
 An invincible modesty characterises the Poolite. 
 He sees no- distinction in public arrest, and 
 the halo of a conviction does not allure him. 
 In a word, he is a water-rat, and wishes to 
 remain one. 
 
 The fact that he was so well-known, and 
 could generally be easily found, was a chronic 
 sore in the di ink-besotted mind of old Dick 
 Robins. He loathed this distinction, and could 
 he have gained prolonged credit at any other 
 gin-shop than that of his brother Bill he would 
 
 6
 
 82 Madge o' the Pool : 
 
 have shifted his quarters. The fact that, as a 
 younger man, twenty years earlier, when he was 
 about thirty, — for age does not go by years in 
 every part of the world — he had thrice served 
 his term in jail, may have prejudiced him 
 against any radical change in his way of life. 
 On the second occasion he had appropriated 
 in too conspicuous a fashion the contents of a 
 lady's pocket, the wife of a sea-captain with 
 whom he had found it difficult to come to an 
 exorbitant arrangement ; and for this very nat- 
 ural action he was condemned to three years' 
 imprisonment, with atrocious and objectionable 
 hard labour. He would have been embittered 
 against the law to the end of his days, if he had 
 not been so far mollified by the light sentence 
 on his third "go," one of six weeks, — thus 
 light, as the charge was only of having brutally 
 kicked his wife up and down a barge and then 
 into the half-frozen Thames. As she died of 
 rheumatic fever, Mr. Robins could not legally, 
 of course, be held accountable. For twenty 
 years or more Dick Robins had found gin so 
 pleasing a mistress that he had been unable to 
 give any but the most nominal attention — it 
 would be absurd to say to the education — to
 
 --A Thames Etching. 83 
 
 the growth of his daughter. Her name was 
 "girl:" that is, his name for her. Baptised 
 Margaret, she was commonly called Madge. 
 He realised that she was a girl, and comely, on 
 account of various ideas of his own and sugges- 
 tions from outside, all on the same level of pro- 
 found depravity. He first regarded her as a 
 woman when, having lost eleven and fourpence 
 at Wapping-euchre to Ned Bull, that gentleman 
 generously offered to overlook the debt, and to 
 spend the remaining eight and eightpence of 
 the broken quid in two bottles of "Jamaicy" 
 and four goes of " Aunt Maria," conditionally 
 on receipt of Madge as the legal Mrs. Bull. 
 The offer would have been accepted right off, 
 but Mr. Robins found to his chagrin that the 
 bottles of rum and goes of proof-gin would not 
 be consumable till the marriage festival. 
 
 Madge was a dark, handsome girl, tall, well- 
 made though too thin, somewhat slatternly in 
 dress, though generally with a clean face, and, 
 stranger to say, with fairly clean hands. Neither 
 she nor anyone else would have dreamed of the 
 application to her of the term "beautiful." Only 
 those who caught a glimpse of her as she stood 
 in a statuesque pose, pole in hand, on some hay
 
 84 Madge o' the Pool : 
 
 barge or hoy in ballast, or as she sculled up 
 stream or down, deft as a duck in the fen- 
 tangle, noticed the beauty of her thick-clustered, 
 ample hair, and mayhap the splendour of her 
 large, dark, velvety eyes. Madge knew very 
 little of shore-life, even that of the Horsleydown 
 neighbourhood, and nothing at all of the larger 
 life of that vast metropolis which represented 
 the world to her : though she was vaguely aware 
 that beyond the Isle of Dogs the Thames 
 widened to that sea which bore the foreign ships 
 that came to London, and brought so many 
 mariners of divers nationalities, all equally eager 
 for two things: strong drink and purchaseable 
 women. When ashore, she was generally at 
 the house of her uncle Bill the publican, or, 
 more often, at that of her sister-in-law, Nell 
 Robins. For all her rough life, her rude im- 
 aginings, her uncouth surroundings, her igno- 
 rance of refinement in speech or manner, Madge 
 was pure of heart, honourable in all her intimate 
 dealings, and as upright generally as she had 
 any call to be. 
 
 Dick Robins was coarse and brutal enough 
 in his talk when she had refused to desert the 
 river-life of the Pool in order to act as bar-maid
 
 ^A Thames Etching. 85 
 
 at her uncle's public-house, the " Jolly Rovers." 
 Witti all her experience, and she could have 
 given points to most specialists in blasphemy, 
 she learned the full vocabulary of utter degra- 
 dation when she told her father that " Gawd 
 hisself couldn't swop her to that beast, Ned 
 Bull, without her will, which would never be 
 till she was drownded, and not then." 
 
 The drink-sodden brute went so far, even 
 before he violently struck her again and again, 
 that, though he confirmed her in her abhorrence 
 of the proposed union, he was the first great 
 reforming force in her life. After that, she 
 realised, she might "dry up." Foulness of 
 speech could go no further. A disgust of it all 
 came upon the girl. She prayed an unwonted 
 prayer to that mysterious abstraction God, whose 
 name she heard as often as that of the police, 
 that she might have strength to refrain from all 
 ugly horrors of speech, except, of course, such 
 acknowledged ornaments of conversation as 
 " bloody " and " damn." 
 
 Yet no, not quite the first, if the most imme- 
 diate, reforming influence. She had already 
 incurred the wrath and contempt of the Horsley- 
 down and Irongate mudswipes, by her attitude
 
 86 Madge o' the Pool : 
 
 towards Jim Shaw, a despised and hated " cat," 
 a river policeman. He had saved her from 
 drowning, on an occasion when the most obvious 
 help lay with her own people, not one of whom, 
 boy or man, had bestirred himself. "Water- 
 rat" though she was, and acknowledged foe as 
 was every "cat," she was so little at one with 
 her kindred as to be able to feel grateful 
 towards her saviour, particularly as he was so 
 good-looking a deliverer, and possessed, in her 
 eyes, a manner of ideal grace and dignity. 
 
 It was on a dirty, foggy, December afternoon 
 that Dick Robins had tried, through a flood of 
 blasphemy and obscenity, to drift his meaning 
 alongside the wharf of the girl's mind. When 
 he found that she would have none of it, was a 
 rebel outright, he followed curses with blows, 
 till at last, wild with rage and pain, Madge 
 rushed from the low tavern whither her father 
 had inveigled her. Naturally, she made straight 
 for the river. Having sprung into a dingy, she 
 sculled rapidly amidstream. She had no idea 
 what she was going to do. To get quite away 
 from that horrible street, from that drink-den, 
 from that human beast who called himself her 
 father — that was her one overmastering wish.
 
 A Thames Etching. 87 
 
 An unpleasant fate might easily have been 
 hers -that night, had she not fortunately broken 
 an oar. The swing of the current caught the 
 boat, and in a moment she was broadside on. 
 A wood-barge and a collier were coming down, 
 and a large steamer forging up-stream, and there 
 she jobbled helplessly, right in their way, and 
 almost certain to be crushed or swamped. All 
 the girl's usual resourcefulness suddenly left her. 
 She realised that she was done for, a thought 
 at which not she but only her youth instinctively 
 rebelled. 
 
 Suddenly, slionp — slutnp — splash — came 
 the wood-barge almost upon her. She saw a 
 pole thrust past her to stave the dingy off from 
 too violent-a concussion ; and the next moment 
 some one was over the low side and in the boat 
 beside her. She recognised Jim Shaw, as in a 
 dream. 
 
 " Here, I '11 put you right," he said roughly ; 
 " hand me that oar." While sculling from the 
 stern-rollock, he told her that he had been up- 
 stream on duty, and had been given a lift 
 down again by his friend, the owner of the 
 barge " Pride of Wapping;" that he had seen 
 her predicament, and, as the distance narrowed,
 
 88 Madge o' the Pool : 
 
 recognised her face ; and that " there he 
 was." 
 
 Madge thanked him earnestly, and remarked, 
 incidentally, that " it was a bloody near squeak." 
 She saw him look at her, and glanced back with 
 a new, vague apprehension. 
 
 " You 're a pretty girl, Madge, and a good 
 girl, I believe, — too good to use that rot. Wy, 
 blast me, if I 'eard a sister o' mine use that word 
 ' bloody ' so free permiskuous, I 'd let her know 
 — damme if I would n't ! " 
 
 " Have you a sister, Mr. — Mr. — Shaw ? '* 
 asked Madge, curiously, and not in the least 
 offended. 
 
 " No, nor no mother, neither ; but I had 'em. 
 Look here, Madge, I 'm a lonely chap, an' I 've 
 took a fancy to you — did that time I hauled ye 
 out o' the Pool —and I '11 tell you wot: you cut 
 old Robins and all that gang, and be my gal ? " 
 
 Madge turned her great eyes upon him. He 
 thought she was scornful, or mayhap only 
 reckoning up the actual and possible advan- 
 tages of the connection. She, for her part, was 
 taken aback by what seemed to her his splendid 
 chivalry and the refined charm of his address. 
 
 " Now then, lass, say yes or no, for we '11 be
 
 ^ Thames Etching. 89 
 
 along p' the Irongate in a jifiFy, an' some o' your 
 lot 's tound to be there." 
 
 " I '11 be your gal, Jim Shaw," was all she 
 said, in a low voice. 
 
 Shaw thereupon gave the oar a twist, and 
 kept the boat midstream for a hundred yards 
 or so below Irongate wharf. When nearly 
 opposite a small floating quay marked No. 9, 
 he sculled alongside. Ten minutes later he had 
 obtained leave of absence for the night, and 
 then he and Madge went off together to hunt 
 for lodgings. 
 
 For the next few days Madge was fairly 
 happy. She would have been quite happy if 
 she and Jim could have been with each other; 
 but it was a busy time with the river-police, and 
 he could not get away at nights. He got back 
 to their room between six and eight in the 
 morning, but had to sleep till well after mid- 
 day ; and as he had to be on duty again by six, 
 and sometimes earlier, they had not much time 
 for going anpvhere together. But, in truth, 
 Madge cared little for the entertainments they 
 did go to. The painted tawdrj' women offended 
 her in a way they had never done before; the 
 coarse jokes of the men did not strike her as
 
 90 Madge o' the Pool : 
 
 funny. She was dimly conscious of a great 
 change in herself. Physically and mentally she 
 was another woman after that first night alone 
 with Jim. She was his "gal," and would be 
 the mother of their "kid" if she had one; 
 but it was not the obvious in wifehood or 
 motherhood that took possession of her dormant 
 imagination, but something mysterious, awful 
 even, sacred. The outward sign of this spiritual 
 revolution, this new, solemnising, exquisite ob- 
 session, was a complete cessation from even 
 such customary flowers of speech as those above 
 alluded to ; and, later, a more scrupulous tidi- 
 ness. What joy it was when Jim told her one 
 morning that he was to have Boxing-day as a 
 complete holiday. At last the heavens seemed 
 opened. He proposed all manner of wild and 
 extravagant trips : a visit to the inside of St. 
 Paul's or the Tower, so familiar externally to 
 both, to be followed by an omnibus-trip through 
 the great city to that home of splendour, Madame 
 Tussaud's, or even to the Zoological Gardens, 
 the monkey-house in which had made on Jim's 
 boyhood-mind an indelible impression of ex- 
 cruciating humour. The wildest suggestion of 
 all was a triple glory : the Tower and St.
 
 A Thames Etching. 91 
 
 Paul's, then far away to the gorgeous delights 
 of the''Crystal Palace, and at night to the Pan- 
 tomime at Drury Lane. 
 
 But in great happiness the mind sometimes 
 resents superfluity of joys. In deep love, as in 
 deep water, says a great writer, there is a gloom. 
 The gloom, in the instance of Madge, arose 
 from her profound weariness of the streets and 
 the house-life, her overmastering longing for 
 the river. If an angel had offered her a boon, 
 she would have fulfilled a passionate dream by 
 becoming a female member of the river-police, 
 and being ranked as Jim Shaw's mate. 
 
 When Jim realised what was in the girl's mind 
 and heart, he good-naturedly, though not with- 
 out a sigh, gave up his projects, and bestirred 
 himself to please Madge. One suggestion he 
 did make: that they should get "spliced;" but 
 Madge thought this a waste of time, money, 
 and even welfare — for she vaguely realised that 
 she had, and probably would continue to have, 
 more hold over Jim as her "man" than as 
 her legal husband. "It might be better," he 
 remarked once, meditatively. 
 
 "But why; don't I love you?" was Madge's 
 naive and unanswerable reply.
 
 92 Madge o' the Pool : 
 
 By Christmas Day all was arranged. Jim 
 knew the captain of a river steamer who had 
 promised to take them as far as Kew. Thence 
 they were to go by rail to Windsor, to show 
 Madge those two marvels, — where the Queen 
 lived, and " the real country ; " then they were 
 to leave in time to catch the ebb-tide below 
 Richmond, and go down stream on a friend's 
 hoy, the " Dancing Mary," all the way to 
 Gravesend. Madge would thus see the country 
 and the ocean in one day, and yet all the time 
 be on the river. The project was a mental 
 intoxication to her. She was in a dream by 
 day, a fever by night. Jim laughingly told her 
 that he would be blowed if he would ask for 
 another holiday soon. 
 
 A memorable day, indeed, it proved. Madge's 
 education received an almost perilously rapid 
 stimulus. Long before dusk she had won for 
 herself, besides a little rapture, a new pain that 
 would henceforth be a constant ally, and per- 
 haps a tyrant. 
 
 The beauty even of the winter-riverscape 
 affected her painfully. That great stillness, 
 that indescribable calm, that white peace, that 
 stainless purity of the snowy vicinage of the
 
 A Thames Etching. 93 
 
 Thames near Windsor, was an overwhelming 
 reproach upon life as she knew it, and upon 
 herself. She was conscious of three emotions : 
 horror of the past, gratitude to Jim, her saviour 
 and revealer, and a dumb sense of the glory of 
 life as it might be. But at first she was simply 
 overcome. If she had not feared how Jim would 
 take such folly, she would have screamed, if for 
 nothing else than to break the silence. He had 
 his pipe, merciful boon for the stagnant spirit 
 and the inactive mind; she had nothing to dis- 
 tract her outer from her inner self, nothing to 
 ease her from the dull perplexity and pain of 
 that incessant if almost inarticulate soul-sum- 
 mons of which she was dimly conscious. More 
 than once, even, a great home-sickness came 
 upon her ; a bodily nostalgia for that dirty, con- 
 gested, often hideous, always squalid life, to 
 which she had been born, and in which she had 
 been bred. Once, at a lonely spot, where the 
 river curved through snow-clad meadows, with 
 an austere but exquisite beauty, she was con- 
 scious of a certain relief, when she and her 
 fellow-passengers were collectively swept by a 
 volcanic lava-flood of abuse from an infuriated 
 bargee, horrible to most ears that heard, but to
 
 94 Madge o' the Pool : 
 
 her coming as inland odours to tired seamen, 
 subtly welcome as it was in its appealing 
 home-sound. 
 
 She was affected as profoundly, if not so 
 acutely, by the voyage down the lower reaches 
 of the Thames beyond the Pool. Windsor 
 itself had not greatly impressed her. It was 
 too remotely grand. 
 
 When, late that night, the hoy anchored off 
 Gravesend, and through the darkness came up 
 a moan, and a sigh, and a tumult as of muffled 
 steps and stifled whispers, that was the voice of 
 the sea, Madge, almost for the first time in her 
 life, was troubled by the thought of death. The 
 night was dark, without moon, and the stars 
 were obscured by drifted smoke and opaque films 
 of mist. An easterly wind worried the waves as 
 they came slap-slapping against the current, and 
 there was often a sound as of irregular mus- 
 ketry. A steady swish-swish accompanied the 
 now flowing tide, or the way of the wind. The 
 salt chill that came with it made the girl's blood 
 tingle. She longed to do something, she knew 
 not what. 
 
 They had two berths to themselves, screened 
 so efficiently as to give them all the privacy of
 
 A Thames Etching. 95 
 
 a bedrpom. They were very happy after their 
 long wonderful day; but what with happiness, 
 many pipefuls of tobacco, and liberal gin, Jim 
 soon fell asleep. Madge lay awake for hours. 
 It was a boisterous night seaward. The reach 
 of the Thames estuary thereabouts was all in 
 a jumble. The wind, surging overhead, had a 
 cry in it foreign to any inland wail or city scream. 
 Madge listened and trembled. The sound of 
 the sea calling : it was a revelation, a memory, 
 a prophecy, a menace.
 
 96. Madge o' the Pool : 
 
 II. 
 
 Next day, Madge learned what she had ex- 
 pected : that her voyage down-stream had been 
 duly noted by her kindred. She knew them well 
 enough to regret that she and Jim had not kept 
 out of sight from, at any rate, London Bridge 
 to the Isle of Dogs. Jim laughed at her fears, 
 but warned her to hold her weather-eye open, 
 and, in particular, to avoid the Pool. 
 
 This, unfortunately, was just what Madge 
 could not do. She had the river-water in her 
 blood. Jim might as well have put a mouse 
 near a cheese and told it to stay beside the 
 empty bread-plate. 
 
 Gradually she became a more and more fre- 
 quent visitor to her old haunts. It was com- 
 monly understood, Irongate-way, that Madge 
 had gone ofi with some seafaring chap, but 
 was getting tired, or perhaps was not finding the 
 " rhino " quite so free. On the other hand, her 
 secret was known where she would fain have 
 had it unguessed. She had a good deal to
 
 ^ Thames Etching. 97 
 
 put up with. The female Poolites had nasty 
 tongues ; the males of the species, whom she 
 had kept at bay before with comparative ease, 
 believed that they might now have a turn. An 
 unspoken but not less dreaded ban lay upon 
 her on the part of her own people. Now and 
 again she saw Ned Bull, and the savage lust in 
 the man's brutal face, with a concurrent hatred 
 and revengeful malice, sent all her nature into 
 revolt. He caught her one day on Horsleydown 
 stairs, and at once leered at her in devilish 
 fashion and taunted her. She swung round 
 and struck him full in the face. 
 
 The next moment she was in the water. 
 When a sympathetic bystander had hauled her 
 out — s}'mpathetic in the sense that he wanted 
 to see Bull "give the gal her change " in full — 
 the man strode up and hissed in her ear, — 
 
 " I '11 knife that bully-rip o' yourn as sure 's 
 I 'm death on ' cats ; ' ay, an' wot 's more, I '11 
 'ave you as my gal yet." 
 
 " Ay, Ned Bull," answered Madge, in a loud, 
 clear voice, while her great eyes flashed daunt- 
 less defiance, "that you will when the Pool's 
 run dry, an' I 'm squeaking like a rat in the 
 mud; but not afore that, s' 'elp me Gawd!" 
 
 7
 
 98 Madge o' the Pool : 
 
 After this episode Madge knew that she would 
 have to be doubly on her guard. Ned Bull was 
 not a man to have as an enemy, particularly as 
 he knew well where to strike the only blow 
 she really feared. And, as it happened, her 
 fears ultimately proved to be only too well- 
 grounded; though some months passed in ap- 
 parent security. 
 
 The only one among all whom she knew, who 
 had remained loyal to her, was a girl called 
 Arabella Goodge, to whom she had once done 
 a prompt service. The girl had sworn that 
 she would never be content till she had proved 
 her gratitude, and she meant it. The oppor- 
 tunity came at last. 
 
 Late one afternoon in June, just six months 
 after her union with Jim, Madge was astonished 
 to hear herself asked for at the door of her 
 lodging. " Is this wheer Jim Shaw's gal lives ? " 
 was not tactful, perhaps, but it was unmistak- 
 able. Madge recognised the voice, and was 
 eager to see one whom instinctively she knew 
 to be a herald of good or evil ; yet she could not 
 but enjoy a delay which involved so personal a 
 passage of arms as that which took place be- 
 tween Mrs. McCorkoran, the landlady, and
 
 ^ Thames Etching. 99 
 
 Miss Goodge. Ultimately Miss Goodge was 
 announced into the presence of " Mrs. Shaw, 
 an' Mrs. James Shaw at that, an' be damned 
 t' ye ! " 
 
 The girl came — and at what risk to herself 
 no one could better know than Madge — to give 
 warning of a plot. Two boats of " rats " were 
 to lie in wait that very night, if the fog held, 
 and run down the " Swiftsure," a particularly 
 obnoxious " cat-boat." Of course Miss Goodge 
 would not have troubled to track down and 
 visit Madge merely to tell her an interesting 
 item of news ; only it happened that Jim Shaw 
 was "stroke " in the " Swiftsure." 
 
 Madge realised the peril at once. She thanked 
 Arabella cordially, and then set off for Jim's 
 station. The news was doubly welcome to 
 Jim ; it meant promotion probably, as well as the 
 excitement of a fight and of turning the tables. 
 
 The upshot was, that a boat with three or 
 four dummy figures was at the right hour 
 set adrift through the fog just above the ap- 
 pointed spot. The bait took. The collision 
 took place, and Jim Shaw's dummy in particular 
 suffered from concussion of the brain from an 
 iron crowbar as well as from submersion in the
 
 lOO Madge o' the Pool : 
 
 river. The " rats " had scarcely realised how 
 they had been befooled when the " Swiftsure " 
 was upon them. There was a rush and struggle. 
 The Pool-boat was upset, and each of the late 
 occupants speedily nabbed, with the exception 
 of Ned Bull, — an exception which Jim Shaw 
 regretted personally for obvious reasons, and 
 officially because that individual was particu- 
 larly wanted at head-quarters, and his capture 
 meant for the captor approval, and possibly 
 promotion, by the powers that were. 
 
 Nevertheless, practical approval came. True, 
 the crew of the " Swiftsure" were individually 
 and collectively called " duffers " for having let 
 Bull escape, when at least they might have hit 
 him on the head with an oar: though to this 
 Jim Shaw replied, and of course was backed up 
 by his comrades, that Ned Bull must have sunk 
 and been carried off in the undertow. A 
 drowned Ned Bull was not so satisfactory as 
 a caught Ned Bull ; but still the fact was one 
 for congratulation. 
 
 What most concerned Shaw was his promo- 
 tion a grade higher. The superintendent who 
 informed him of this rise further hinted that 
 the young man was looked upon favourably, and
 
 ^ Thames Etching. loi 
 
 that he might expect to get on, if he kept on 
 acting on the square and was diligently alert 
 for the wicked. 
 
 On his way home next morning, eager to tell 
 Madge the good news, Jim pondered on how 
 best to celebrate the occasion. Suddenly an 
 idea occurred to him. Promotion and pros- 
 pects have a stimulating effect on ethical con- 
 ceptions. Jim decided, firstly, that he would 
 make Madge his legal wife ; secondly, that he 
 would forgive his enemies and invite old Robins 
 and Will of the "Jolly Rovers," and Bob 
 Robins and his wife, and make a day or rather 
 an evening of it. This, he was sure, would give 
 Madge a position and importance which she 
 could not otlierwise have, while it was almost 
 the only way (except the convenient if perilous 
 one of double-dealing) to remove or at least to 
 modify the resentment which Madge had in- 
 curred. Madge was delighted with his news. 
 It meant another day, sometime, up the river; 
 another night, Gravesend way, within sound of 
 the sea ; and, moreover, Jim could now carry 
 out his fascinating projects in connection with 
 Madame Tussaud's and the Crystal Palace. 
 To the question of the marriage ceremony she
 
 102 Madge o' the Pool : 
 
 preserved an indifferent front. If Jim really 
 wished it, she of course was willing; if he 
 didn't, it was equally the same to her. The 
 girl, in fact, was one of those rare natures to 
 whom the thing was everything and the symbol 
 of no moment. But she was seriously opposed 
 to Jim's Christian charity in the matter of the 
 proposed wedding-party. She loved his senti- 
 mental weakness, but, with her greater knowl- 
 edge of ineradicable depravity, she thought that 
 the honour of her father's company might be 
 dispensed with. She yielded at last to the 
 suggestion as to her brother Bob and his wife, 
 with a stipulation as to Arabella Goodge ; but 
 disparagingly combated the claims of her uncle. 
 Being a woman, however, having begun yield- 
 ing, she yielded all. Before Jim went off to 
 the river that night, the marriage-day was fixed, 
 and it was decided that, at the subsequent party 
 at the aristocratic river-side tavern, the " Blue 
 Boar," the company of Jim and his groomsman, 
 Ted Brown, and of Madge and her bridesmaid 
 Arabella Goodge, was to be further graced by 
 Mr. Dick Robins (if sufficiently sober), Mr. 
 and Mrs. Robert Robins, and Mr. William 
 Robins of the "Jolly Rovers."
 
 A Thames Etching. 103 
 
 The marriage was to take place three weeks 
 hence/ as Jim was to get his long-promised 
 holiday of a week, from the morning of Satur- 
 day the 1 8th of July till the evening of Friday 
 the 24th. What a week this was to be ! Three 
 days of it were to be spent in the remote and 
 wild country of Pinner, of which suburban local- 
 ity Jim was a native, though he had not been 
 there since he was a small boy. His aunt 
 owned a small sweet-shop and general station- 
 ery business there, and would receive him and 
 his bride for the slack days, Monday till 
 Wednesday. As for the other days, the pro- 
 posals of Madge were wild, those of Jim fantas- 
 tically extravagant. The young man was more 
 in love with -Madge than ever, having the sense 
 to see that she was one among a hundred or a 
 thousand. Their hfe together had been a happy 
 one for both. It was Jim, however, and not 
 Madge who took a pleasurable interest in the 
 fate of the child whose birth was expected in 
 September. 
 
 It was on the 15th of July, just three days be- 
 fore the projected marriage, that Madge was 
 startled, or at least perturbed, by an urgent 
 message brought to her by a pot-boy from the
 
 104 Madge o' the Pool : 
 
 " Jolly Rovers." Her father was ill, dying, and 
 wanted to see her at once. 
 
 Madge was neither hard-hearted nor a cynic, 
 but it was with perfect sincerity that she re- 
 marked, sotto voce, " I '11 be blowed if I '11 rise 
 to that fake." Later, however, something 
 troubled her. A new tenderness, if also a new 
 weariness, had come to her ever since she be- 
 came daily and hourly conscious of the burden 
 she bore within her. She was so much an 
 unsullied child of nature, despite all her dis- 
 coloured and distorted views of life, that this 
 mystery of motherhood had all the astound- 
 ing appeal of a new and extraordinary revela- 
 tion. Jim's child and hers! The thought was 
 strange and quiet as that winter-landscape she 
 had seen once and never forgotten ; though 
 at times as strangely and overmasteringly op- 
 pressive as the silence of the starry sky, seen 
 through the smoke or lifting fog, or above the 
 flare of the gas-lamps in the street. 
 
 The upshot was that she set out for Plum 
 Alley, off Thompson's Court, the trans-riverine 
 home of her father, when he was not at the 
 " Jolly Rovers " or elsewhere. On the way she 
 called at the station to see Jim, but heard to her
 
 ^ Thames Etching. 105 
 
 surprise that he was on special duty Horsley- 
 down-way. She muttered that she might per- 
 haps come across him, as she was just going 
 there herself, — a remark which the superinten- 
 dent heard disapprovingly. " Shaw 's out on 
 ticklish business, my girl," he said, kindly 
 enough ; " and it would be better if you were to 
 keep out of his way : better for us, better for 
 him, and better for you." All the same, Madge, 
 as she went on her way, hoped she might at 
 least get a glimpse of Jim. Since the " Swift- 
 sure " incident she had never felt at ease when 
 Shaw was on special duty. She was aware that 
 Ned Bull, even if he was not drowned, had left 
 a legacy of hate and revenge. 
 
 The July evening was heavy and sultry. The 
 air was as though it consisted of a poisonous 
 cloud of gin-flavoured human breath, with rank 
 odours of divers kinds. In the narrow courts 
 and alleys near the river the heat was stifling. 
 The thunder, which all afternoon had growled 
 menacingly round the metropolitan skirts be- 
 yond Muswell Hill and Highgate, had stolen 
 past the eastern heights of Hampstead and 
 crawled through the murky gloom of the town 
 till it rested, sulkily brooding, from Pimlico to 
 Blackfriars.
 
 I06 Madge o' the Pool : 
 
 As Madge crossed the river, and stood for 
 a few minutes to look longingly at the water, 
 she noticed first that the tide was just on the 
 turn of the ebb, and next that a thick, sultry 
 fog, scarce less dense than a typical " London 
 mixture," was crawling stealthily up-stream from 
 Shoreditch and Wapping. She was thinking 
 of Jim, and was rather glad that he was on 
 shore-duty. 
 
 When at last she reached Plum Alley, she 
 found, somewhat to her surprise, that her father 
 really awaited her. On the other hand, she saw 
 at a glance that his "sudden illness" was a 
 "fake." 
 
 Dick Robins, however, did not give his 
 daughter time for an indignant retreat, much 
 less for reproaches. 
 
 " Look 'ere, girl," he began hoarsely, " your 
 brother Bob 's in trouble, an' you 're the only 
 blarsted swipe as can 'elp 'im. S' 'elp me Gawd, 
 this yere is true, ev'ry word on it, an' no fake. 
 Wot? eh? Were is 'ee? Wy, 'ee 's down China 
 Run way. 'Ee 's waitin' there. Waitin' for 
 wot? Wy, blarst — I mean 'ee 's awaitin' fur 
 the stranger. Wot stranger ? Wy, the stranger 
 as you 've to run down through the fog to the 
 Isle o' Dogs."
 
 A Thames Etching. 107 
 
 Hoarse explanations, with remonstrances on 
 the paA of Madge, ensued, but at last she both 
 understood and agreed. She had been brought 
 up in full recognition of that cardinal rule that 
 many things have to be done in life without 
 knowing the why and the wherefore. She be- 
 lieved in the present emergency, and understood 
 why the task of conveying the stranger down- 
 stream could be intrusted to no Poolite under 
 a cloud. She was to go down to the sadly 
 miscalled Larkwhistle Wharf, where she would 
 find a boat in charge of a man. In the stern 
 would be the "bundle." She was not to speak 
 to this " bundle " on any account, and was not 
 to worry " it " with curious looks. She was to 
 row down-stream till off Pig Point in the Isle 
 of Dogs, and wait off shore till another boat 
 joined her, and relieved her of her freight. The 
 man, a friendly lighterman, would act as look- 
 out and bow-pilot. 
 
 "Wot about the weddin', father?" said 
 Madge, somewhat reluctantly, as she was about 
 to leave. 
 
 Mr. Robins put down the bottle of " Aunt 
 Maria," from which he had just taken a hoarse 
 gurgling, salival swig.
 
 io8 Madge o' the Pool : 
 
 " Oh — ah — to be sure — wot about the wed- 
 din' ! Ha, ha ! Well, I 'm blarsted if I know 
 if my noomerous parlyhairymentary dooties — 
 hiccotigh and choke — Yes, by Goramity, I 'm 
 bl. . . ." 
 
 Madge did not wait to hear any more. She 
 had done her duty so far, and the sooner the 
 rest of it was fulfilled the better content would 
 she be. 
 
 She could not leave, however, without a 
 parting shot. Dick Robins heard her voice as 
 she vanished down-stairs : " Remember, father, 
 if you and ' Aunt Maria' come together on 
 Saturday, you won't be allowed in ! " 
 
 When she reached Larkwhistle Wharf she 
 was perspiring heavily. The brooding thunder 
 overhead, the stagnant atmosphere, the airless, 
 suffocating fog, made existence a burden and 
 action a misery. Movement on the water, how- 
 ever, promised some relief. 
 
 There was no one on the wharf, nothing 
 beside it except a boat in which a muffled 
 figure crouched in the stern-sheets, with a tall 
 man seated upright in the bow. This was her 
 boat, clearly. 
 
 As she stepped across the gunwale, Madge
 
 I^ Thames Etching. 109 
 
 started and trembled. For a moment she 
 thought she recognised, in the silent surly 
 lighterman, no other than Ned Bull; but when 
 she saw that he looked away, indifferent so far 
 as she was concerned, and noticed that his 
 hair was black and curly, and that he had a 
 long beard, her sudden suspicion and fear 
 lapsed into mere uneasiness. As for the other 
 passenger, he was evidently determined to be- 
 tray himself neither by word nor by gesture. 
 
 In silence, save for the occasional splash of 
 an oar and the steady gurgling wash at the 
 bows, Madge rowed the boat down-stream. 
 Thrice she was unpleasantly conscious of the 
 hot breath of the lighterman upon her cheek ; 
 at the third lime, and without looking round, 
 she quietly asked him to keep a steady look, 
 out in front of him, as in such a fog an acci- 
 dent might occur at any moment. 
 
 At last she guessed that she was off the Isle 
 of Dogs. She was glad. Not only was she 
 exhausted with the heat and labour, but some- 
 what anxious now about the condition of the 
 boat, a rotten tub at the best. It had begun 
 to leak, and the chill muddy water clammed her 
 ankles. Suddenly, through the fog, she heard
 
 1 10 Madge o' the Pool : 
 
 the lighterman give a peculiar double-whistle. 
 Almost immediately afterwards a boat, rowed 
 swiftly by two men, shot alongside. 
 
 The next moment the lighterman was aboard 
 the new-comer. Once seated, he leaned over 
 and whispering hoarsely to Madge to row 
 straight on, after turning the boat's bow shore- 
 ward, told her that as soon as she came to a 
 pier she was to let the other passenger out. 
 The man had scarce finished speaking before 
 he and his companions became invisible in the 
 mist. 
 
 Madge was again alarmed. The voice, sure- 
 ly, was the voice of Ned Bull. She could have 
 sworn to it, and yet — .'' 
 
 Wiping the sweat from her forehead, and 
 pausing on her oars for a moment to listen 
 to the distant moan and billowy hollow roar 
 of the thunder, which had at last broken its 
 brooding silence, she noticed suddenly that 
 the leakage was rapidly becoming serious. 
 The water was high above her ankles, and 
 was swiftly rising. A gurgling sound behind 
 her betrayed where the danger lay. The boat 
 had been plugged, and the plug had just re- 
 cently been removed !
 
 ^ Thames Etching, m 
 
 Barely had she realised this when the dingy 
 raked up against a jagged spike, and began to 
 settle down. 
 
 She knew it all now, all except the mystery of 
 this taciturn, moveless stranger. So, Ned Bull 
 was to have his revenge. But the need of 
 prompt action brought all her energies into 
 play. " Now then, you there," she cried angrily 
 to her mute fellow-passenger, " you 've got ter 
 move if you don't want to fill yer boots wi' 
 bottom-mud. We 're sinkin', d 'ye 'ear .-*.... 
 Drat the bloomin' cove, 'ee 's asleep ! Hi ! " 
 
 But here there was a lurch and a rush of 
 water. The boat collapsed, as though it were 
 a squeezed sponge. 
 
 No sooner had Madge found her breath 
 after her submersion than she struck out to- 
 wards and made a dive for her companion, who 
 was evidently unable to swim, and was fast 
 drowning. 
 
 A minute later she had grasped him by his 
 rags. She was conscious at the same moment 
 of a red light piercing the gloom : the bow-light 
 of a barge-bug churning splutteringly against the 
 current and towing a half-empty hoy up-stream. 
 She gave a loud cry for help, and then another
 
 112 Madge o' the Pool: 
 
 that was more like a shriek. The second was 
 the result of a discovery that she had just made. 
 The body in her grip was not that of a living 
 man, nor even of a man who had just died. 
 It was a corpse, stiff and chill. 
 
 The shock terrified her. For a moment she 
 beheved that she had been made accessory to 
 some foul murder. She let go of the hideous 
 bundle of rag-clothed flesh she was upholding 
 as best she could. Another moment, and the 
 corpse would have been sucked under and 
 swept down-stream : a vague instinct made 
 Madge suddenly reach forward and grip the 
 body again. 
 
 The lights of the tug and the green and red 
 lanterns of the hoy now streamed right upon 
 her. Weighted as she was with her soaked 
 clothes, and the burden of her close on seven 
 months' motherhood, she struggled not only to 
 withstay the current, which fortunately was 
 sweeping her steadily towards the hoy, but to 
 keep the corpse from sinking until at least she 
 could see it clear. Still, the strain was too 
 great, and she was just about to let go, when a 
 broad ray of light flashed full athwart the dead 
 face.
 
 A Thames Etching. 113 
 
 It was that of Jim Shaw, her husband. 
 
 For'' a moment the world reeled. Death 
 called to her out of the windy darkness over- 
 head, out of the rushing river, out of the sea- 
 reaches beyond; Death sang in her ears, and 
 held her body and soul as in a vice; Death 
 was in her heart, in her brain, on her lips, in 
 the dull glaze of her staring eyes. 
 
 Suddenly a mad rage swept her back into 
 the tide of agony that was life. With a swift 
 gesture she raised the head of the corpse, and 
 stared wildly into the lightless unrecognising 
 eyes. The wash of the water and her grasp 
 had loosened the rags in which Jim had been 
 disguised, and she saw the purple bruise and 
 gaping knife-thrust wound through which his 
 young life had gone. 
 
 With a long terrible cry of despair Madge let 
 go the body of her beloved, and herself sank 
 back into the water, as a dying woman, after a 
 last flicker of life, might fall back into the 
 pillows. If all had occurred a little earlier or 
 a little later, she would have been drowned 
 then and there, and have suflfered no more. 
 
 The man at the helm on the tug-boat caught 
 sight of her, and yelled to the man at the bow 
 
 6
 
 1 14 Madge o' the Pool : 
 
 of the hoy. The bargeman missed her, owing 
 to the rapid slush and surge of the churned 
 water alongside ; but his comrade at the stern 
 caught at the swirling clothes with a bill-hook, 
 and in a few minutes she was lying unconscious 
 on the deck of " The Golden Hope." Her res- 
 cuers had seen nothing of the rowboat, nor even 
 of the body to which she had clung ; but they 
 strained their eyes and ears lest any other un- 
 fortunates should be in need of succour. 
 
 It was fortunate for Madge that there was a 
 woman on board. The wife of the master of 
 "The Golden Hope" was not, like so many 
 of the Poolites, merely a female, but a true 
 woman. 
 
 In the middle of the night, just before the 
 break of dawn, a man-child was prematurely 
 born into the world, in the stuffy deck-house 
 of the barge. It was born dead : " an' a pre- 
 cious good thing too, drat it for its imperence 
 in a-coming where it wasn't wanted," as Mrs. 
 Hawkins of "The Golden Hope" philosophi- 
 cally remarked. She had understood at once 
 that the new-comer was not born in lawful wed- 
 lock. Had the little one lived, had it even 
 been born alive and breathed feebly for a brief
 
 ^A Thames Etching. 115 
 
 season, the good woman would not only have 
 lamented its decease, but would have kept 
 close to the letter of the law. As it was, she 
 had a hurried colloquy with her husband, a 
 circumlocutory argument to the effect that the 
 poor young mother might as well be saved all 
 the shame and trouble, and perhaps worse. 
 
 Mr. Peter Hawkins listened gravely, nodded 
 once or twice in an uninterested way, spat 
 once cautiously, then again meditatively, and, 
 finally, emphatically. He left the deck-house, 
 and in a minute or two returned with a large 
 and heavy brick. 
 
 The dawn broke as " The Golden Hope " 
 entered and passed through the Pool. A soft 
 tender wave of daffodil light blotted out the 
 eastern stars. The rigging and masts of the 
 vessels at the docks and in the river became 
 magically distinct, and the red and yellow 
 lanterns flared gaudily. Here and there a 
 green lantern-light danced along a narrow 
 surface of dark water fast turning into a hue 
 of slate. A dull noise came from the city on 
 either side, though it seemed asleep. 
 
 On the river there was silence, save for an 
 indiscriminate grinding noise from a large
 
 Ii6 Madge o' the Pool: 
 
 Baltic screw steamer, timed to sail at sunrise ; 
 and, on a China tea-clipper, a Malay singing 
 shrilly, with fantastic choric variations of a 
 strange uncanny savagery. 
 
 As the barge slump-slushed through the 
 deepest part of the Pool, a small packet was 
 dropped overboard. It sank immediately. This 
 package was, in the view of Mr. and Mrs. Haw- 
 kins, a cold little body with a heavy brick tied 
 round its feet; to its mother, who had just re- 
 turned to full consciousness, the burial was as 
 that of her own joy, her own life. 
 
 Madge was much too weak to move, even 
 if kindly Mrs. Hawkins had hinted that her 
 absence would be preferable to her company. 
 The woman had taken a fancy to the poor lass, 
 with her great eyes filled with grief and longing 
 and despair, with at times, too, a wild light which 
 looked like passionate hate. 
 
 She had had a talk with her husband, and 
 had decided to keep Madge with them till the 
 barge reached Sunbury, where she had a sister, 
 who in the summer months kept a small tea 
 and ale house for her own benefit and the 
 refreshment of cheap trippers and wayfarers. 
 There slie would leave the girl for a time, in
 
 A Thames Etching. 117 
 
 care of Polly 'Awkins. If Madge could pay 
 for fier keep so much the better ; if not, why 
 then o' God's grace she and Polly betwixt them 
 would provide for her for a bit till she could 
 look round. 
 
 And at Sunbury in due course poor Madge 
 was left. She had become a different woman in 
 the few days which succeeded the death of Jim 
 and the premature birth and loss of the child 
 of their love. A frost had come over her 
 youth. She was so still and strange that, at 
 first, good, kindly, superabundantly stout Miss 
 Hawkins was quite awed by her. The woman's 
 generous kindness at last broke down the girl's 
 reserve, and the whole story was confided to 
 her. There was something so romantic in it 
 to Polly Hawkins, the very breath of wild 
 romance indeed, that, for all her disapproval 
 and misapprehension of Madge's action in the 
 matter of a legalised union, she was completely 
 won over. Never, even in the " Family Astoun- 
 der " or the " West End Mirror," monthly parts 
 or old bound volumes of which she was wont 
 to pore over in the winter nights, had she come 
 across anything that stirred her so much. But 
 she passed from her high vicarious excitement
 
 Ii8 Madge o' the Pool : 
 
 into something resembling the emotional state 
 of a participant in a tragedy in real life, when, 
 one wild rain-swept evening late in August, 
 all the bitter pain and agony and passion of 
 Madge's ruined life broke out in revolt. 
 
 She had only one wish now, she declared, 
 only one object : to be revenged on her father, 
 and, above all, on Ned Bull. She was no 
 longer a girl with a haven of happiness ahead ; 
 she was a wrecked woman, with a choice be- 
 tween going to pieces on the breakers or being 
 engulfed in a quicksand. Since all was ruin 
 ahead, was she to surrender everything, to go 
 tamely hence, a victim with no will or power 
 of retribution ? No, she swore, as with flashing 
 eyes and erect figure she moved to and fro in 
 the kitchen parlour, she would not be content 
 till she had made her father pay her for his 
 crime, pay with his life, and till she saw Ned 
 Bull swing on the gallows. 
 
 Miss Hawkins saw that she was in earnest; 
 passionately, insanely in earnest; and she 
 trembled. She had come to love the girl, and 
 though her departure would be a loss both to 
 her and her pocket (for Madge had communi- 
 cated with Jim's comrades, who had raised a
 
 A Thames Etching. iig 
 
 handsome subscription for her when they 
 found- that officially nothing could be done), she 
 would not be ill at ease. But now — now it 
 would be to let a murderess loose. Why, some 
 day it would all be in the papers ! A prospec- 
 tive perusal of certain head-lines brought out 
 a cold perspiration upon her neck and fore- 
 head : " 'Orrible murder in the Docks," " Last 
 Confession," " Execution of Madge Robins," 
 "What did the Bargee do with the Baby?" 
 "Testimony of Polly Hawkins," and so forth. 
 
 Miss Hawkins rose, looked at Madge in fear 
 and trembling and deep admiration, all merged 
 in a profound and loving pity. But she had 
 not the gift of expression, and all she could 
 say was: "My dear, 'ave some black-currant 
 cordial." 
 
 Madge, however, understood. The tears 
 broke out in a flood from her eyes, and with 
 sobs and a shaking frame she threw herself in 
 the arms of her friend. 
 
 The following day was a Sunday. As much 
 for distraction as for any other reason, Miss 
 Hawkins persuaded Madge to go with her to 
 church. Madge had never been in a church, 
 and for the first part of the service she was
 
 120 Madge o' the Pool: 
 
 too shy and bewildered to understand, much less 
 to enjoy, what she saw and heard. The sing- 
 ing soothed her, and some of tlie prayers left 
 haunting echoes in her brain. The clergyman 
 was that rare individual, a fervent Christian 
 and a perfectly simple man, who did not fulfil 
 his priestly duties perfunctorily, but as though 
 he were a wise and loving gardener watering 
 the precious flowers of a strict but beloved 
 Master. She followed, or cared to follow, 
 very little of what he said; but his earn- 
 estness impressed her. Through all his dis- 
 course sounded, like the wild moan and wail 
 of the sea-wind, the words of his text : " For- 
 give us our sins, as we forgive our enemies." 
 " Then shall we be together with the Lord " 
 were the last words she heard the vicar utter, 
 before the congregation rose at the benedic- 
 tion. 
 
 In discussing the matter later with Miss 
 Hawkins she did not gain much enlightenment. 
 Miss Hawkins said that religion was meant to 
 be took like gin, with a good allowance of 
 water. "It didn't do to take things jist as 
 they were spoke. 
 
 " Vicars an' sich like were paid same as other
 
 J^ Thames Etching. I2I 
 
 folk, an' their business was to deal out salva- 
 tion dashed wi' bell-fire. 
 
 " My dear," she added, " there 's nary a man 
 livin', be he a vicar or only a Ranting Johnny, 
 who does n't promise us more of both one and 
 the other than there 's any need for." 
 
 Madge did not sleep much that night. She 
 was vaguely troubled. The fire of her wrath 
 burned low, and though she heaped coals of 
 remembrance upon it the flare-up was a 
 failure. 
 
 At breakfast next morning she asked Miss 
 Hawkins abruptly if she had heard the vicar 
 say " Forgive us our sins, as we forgive our 
 enemies," and, if so, what she thought of it. 
 
 Miss Hawkins finished her tea. Medita- 
 tively she scooped out the sugar and slowly 
 refilled the cup. 
 
 " Not much," she said. 
 
 The rest of the meal was taken in silence. 
 The day was so glorious that Madge wandered 
 forth into a field near the river, unwittingly 
 elate with returning youth and strength, and 
 quick to answer to the sun's summons to the 
 blood and the spirit. 
 
 She lay for a long time through the noon
 
 122 Madge o' the Pool : 
 
 heat, instinctively revelling in the flood of sun- 
 shine. The sky was a dome of deepening blue, 
 flecked with a few scattered greyniare's-tails ; 
 the meadows were lush with the second hay 
 and autumnal wild-flowers. Beyond her feet 
 the river swept slowly by, the golden light 
 falling along its surface and at once transmuted 
 into silver and azure ; while at the margins the 
 overhanging trees threw a cloud of flickering 
 green shadows into the moving movelessness 
 below. 
 
 It was almost happiness to lie there so 
 quietly, and watch the swallows swooping to 
 and fro, the cows standing knee-deep in the 
 shallows and flapping lazily their long tails, the 
 purple dragon-fly shooting from reedy pool to 
 pool. For the time being, the agony of re- 
 membrance was dulled. 
 
 More and more Madge perplexed herself 
 by pondering over what she had heard in 
 church. She had never felt as she had done 
 to-day. There was a new peace, a new hope 
 almost, in her troubled mind, though it had 
 not yet taken definite form. The strange and 
 bafiiing concourse of her thoughts, however, 
 left her weary. The whole ebb and flow found
 
 A Thames Etching. 123 
 
 expression, perhaps, in the sole words she 
 spoke aloud, — 
 
 " No, that I can't : I can't make much of it. 
 But I do see that going back to that hell of 
 life at the Pool, even wi' letting my father be, 
 an' knockin' out the knifin' o' Ned Bull an' 
 leavin' 'im, as the parson says, to Goramity, is 
 not the way to get alongside o' Jim again, let 
 alone that babby wich he '11 'ave 'igh an' dry 
 sure as dixey." 
 
 It was nigh upon sundown before Madge 
 clearly saw her way of salvation. " She 'd got 
 to die somehow ; " but all her instincts were in 
 revolt against that inevitable transference to 
 the earth which would be her fate if death 
 came upon her at Polly Hawkins's or any other 
 house. •' She could n't abide the land : she 
 knew that: not for all the blessedness of it ten 
 times over." 
 
 Shortly before sunset she descried a boy 
 going along the Sunburj- towpath. She called 
 him, and for sixpence he readily agreed to 
 write a pencilled note at her dictation and 
 thereafter deliver it to Miss Hawkins. 
 
 When the boy was gone, Madge waited a 
 little while. She watched the sun grow large
 
 124 Madge o' the Pool : 
 
 and red, and fall through the river-haze into 
 the very middle of the river-reaches higher up. 
 Then she found herself listening intently to a 
 corncrake calling hoarsely close by through the 
 tall wheat. 
 
 It seemed so little to do, and after all so 
 little even to say farewell to. 
 
 A brief while after sunset a great red and 
 yellow hoy, with a tattered brown sail out- 
 spread aloft to catch what breeze there was 
 that would help the slow current, came heavily 
 down-stream. It was laden with rj'e, and the 
 man and boy on deck were drowsy with the 
 heat and labour of the day. Neither of them 
 felt the slight shock when the dilapidated bow- 
 keel caught upon some obstruction. 
 
 It was late that night when the " Lively 
 Nancy," in tow of a fat, unwieldy little barge- 
 bug, slumped heavily through the jumble in the 
 Pool. There was a heavy slashing criss-cross 
 of water above, and, below the surface, a 
 serpentine twisting and dovetailing, with cruel 
 downward suctions. The tide was running up 
 like a mill-race ; the river-current and a high 
 westerly wind tore their way seaward. 
 
 In this fierce conflict the bent keel of the
 
 A, Thames Etching. 125 
 
 " Lively Nancy " was at last cleared of its 
 obstrucfion. 
 
 For an hour or more thereafter, till the river- 
 police discovered it, a woman's body was 
 tossed to and fro in the Pool, idly drifting and 
 bumping against the slimy piers, along the 
 gaunt, deserted wharves.
 
 THE COWARD.
 
 The Coward : 
 
 An Episode of the Franco-Arab War. 
 
 There was not an eddy of air, yet through 
 the darkness of a clouded night the sound of 
 water in motion was audible. As Colonel Le 
 Marchant, mounted on his white Arab, a 
 present from the Sheik of Touaroua, listened 
 intently, he could hear that the slight wish- 
 wash of the water did not come from the 
 margin of the Chott. Clearly, the sound was 
 from far out on the stillness of the vast placid 
 lake. An immense breath came from the 
 desert. There was no wind, and the silence 
 was terrible : yet in that muffled breath, that 
 sigh, there wer^ many suspirations. To the 
 south of the Chott, sand, — leagues of stony, 
 herbless sand ; to the east, sand, long rolling 
 hills of desert-surf become hard as marl; to 
 the west, sandy pastures, freshening ever and 
 
 9
 
 130 The Coward. 
 
 again to green spaces, with small oases many 
 leagues distant from each other, the desert 
 itself stretching at last across the fron- 
 tier of Morocco to where Figuig lay, the 
 " boon of the wanderer ; " to the north, scanty 
 pasture-lands, commanded by the military 
 station of El Khadthera, the oasis of Sidi 
 Khalifa, sacred to fanatics, and the hill-villages 
 below Saida, future capital of the South- 
 Oranian Atlas. 
 
 From the south, from the east, from the 
 west, from the north, came that vague breath 
 through the silence. The panther and the 
 jackal moved along the northerly margins of 
 the Chott, for the wind had been from the 
 south, and that way still sniffed the antelopes, 
 clustered in tremulous groups beyond the tall 
 sedges where they could hear the wild boar 
 snorting and stamping. Night-wayfarers, 
 mounted on mecharis or leading their camels 
 in long lines, passed unseen along the sandy 
 ways, eager to gain haven, if possible, ere the 
 storm should break. 
 
 The storm which was feared, however, was 
 not of the atmosphere. Rumor had gone 
 abroad that Bou-Amama Bel-Arbi had not
 
 The Coward. iti 
 
 only openly defied the hated French usurpers, 
 but "^ad drawn into ambush an officer of the 
 all-powerful Bureau Arabe with his escort, and 
 slain every infidel of the company. This 
 meant war ; and, in war, peaceful travellers 
 were subject to spoliation from friends and 
 foes alike. Provisions, transport ; neither the 
 French coming from El Riod, from Saida, or 
 from El Khadthera, nor the insurgent Arabs 
 under the Man of God, Bou-Amama, could be 
 expected to resist temptation in the hour of 
 need. 
 
 But by the island in the narrow strait, to the 
 north of the great Chott El Chergui, no one 
 passed. Colonel Le Marchant, it is true, 
 underwent fhreefold risk by adventuring there 
 at that hour and alone ; but in the very cir- 
 cumstances that conduced to these risks lay 
 also sufficient warrant of safety. 
 
 Eugene Frangois Le Marchant was a man of 
 proved courage, familiar with the vicissitudes 
 of military life in Algeria, with the perils of 
 man-hunting and wild-sport in the Sahara. If 
 he feared anything this night, it was not the 
 lion or the panther that might venture on a 
 sudden rearward attack ; still less the stealthy
 
 132 The Coward. 
 
 Arab marauder, or roaming Touareg ; not even 
 insurgent tribesmen already leagued with or on 
 their way to join this fanatic Bou-Amama 
 Bel-Arbi, with his Allah-inspired mission to 
 drive the French from the southlands. His 
 fear was that he might be seen of some of his 
 comrades or troops from El Khadthera. 
 
 Had the night been clear, he would not have 
 ridden to his rendezvous on his conspicuous 
 white charger, but have come later, in disguise, 
 and covertly. As it was, he knew that in the 
 obscurity of this thunder-heavy night Vent-dii- 
 Paradis would not be recognisable fifty yards 
 away, while in the unequalled swiftness of the 
 beautiful mare was prompt escape from any 
 sudden emergency. 
 
 As he leaned from his saddle, and listened 
 with suspended breath, he gave at last a sigh 
 of relief. 
 
 A few minutes later, the wash on the Chott 
 having passed into a steady swish-swish, a 
 clumsy boat, little better than a side-boarded 
 raft, grounded in the sand, within a few feet 
 from where the white mare impatiently sniffed 
 the air and pawed the loose soil. 
 
 "Is that you, Abdallah ? " he asked in a low 
 voice, and in Arabic.
 
 -^ The Coward. 133 
 
 "Kis l.Moulaiy 
 
 "Where is Nakhala?" 
 
 '* She is not with me. Nay, Sidi, do not 
 curse : I tell you the truth. The Blind Sheik 
 went north this morning." 
 
 "What, has Mahomet El-Djebeli gone to 
 join Bou-Amama ? " 
 
 " Even so." 
 
 "May Allah keep him blind through all 
 eternity! What has he done with Nakhala?" 
 
 " She too has gone — of course." 
 
 " What message do you bring ? " 
 
 " Mahomet El-Djebeli is of the tribe of the 
 Ouled-Sidi-Sheikh." 
 
 " What dt)es that mean ? " 
 
 " That he will do the bidding of him who is 
 now chief of his tribe as well as leader of the 
 Faithful. What Bou-Amama Bel-Arbi says, 
 that will Mahomet-ibn-Mahomet-Eb-Djebel ful- 
 fil. And Bou-Amama has bidden Mahomet 
 give his adopted daughter Nakhala to Si 
 Suleiman ben Khaddour." 
 
 A deep curse broke from the lips of Colonel 
 Le Marchant. For a few moments thereafter 
 there was silence, save for the slight ripple of 
 the water of the Chott, the restless pawing of
 
 134 The Coward. 
 
 Veni-du-Paradis, and the distant howling of a 
 jackal. 
 
 " Suleiman ben Khaddour is our sworn ally," 
 he said at last, in a harsh voice. " Is it not 
 true that even now he is at Ain Sili-sifa, keep- 
 ing an eye on those rebellious fellows at G^ry- 
 ville ? " 
 
 Abdallah shifted uneasily, and muttered 
 some evasive reply. 
 
 " Well," resumed the Colonel, " I will soon 
 find something for Suleiman to do. Tell me 
 now what else Nakhala said." 
 
 " That she will try and see you, about an 
 hour before dawn, at the place of the fallen 
 columns, to the north of the village of Sidi 
 Khalifa." 
 
 Colonel Le Marchant could not repress a 
 sound of triumph. 
 
 " She will come alone — she will be alone, 
 of course ? " 
 
 " I have given you her words, Moulai^ 
 
 " Good. Go now, Abdallah. Come to me 
 to-morrow afternoon, and I will give you what 
 will more than recompense you for all you 
 have done for me. But when you leave here 
 I wish you to go straight to Ain Sifi-sifa.
 
 "^ The Coward. 135 
 
 Seelf Si Suleiman ben Khaddour, and tell him 
 that I wish his advice, and that he is to repair 
 to El Khadthera early to-morrow." 
 
 "But, Sidi Col'nell, Si Suleiman is — " 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 Again Abdallah muttered indistinctly, and 
 made a noise with his oar as though to distract 
 attention. 
 
 " What did you say, Abdallah? " 
 
 " I said, you have but to command, Moiilai^ 
 
 " Now, go ; and be wary. One moment, 
 Abdallah. Suppose Nakhala cannot come, or 
 if anything should prevent my getting to the 
 Ruins in time for the appointment, where shall 
 I seek her ? " 
 
 But by this time Abdallah had oared his 
 craft a few yards away. 
 
 "Under the green flag of Bou-Amama Bel- 
 Arbi," he cried, as guardedly as possible: 
 adding, below his breath, " or, dog of a Roumi, 
 in the arms of Si Suleiman." 
 
 A few seconds more, and the Arab was out 
 of sight in the darkness that brooded over the 
 Chott and the surrounding waste. Colonel Le 
 Marchant walked his mare a few steps, and 
 then drew rein again, pondering deeply.
 
 136 The Coward. 
 
 Suddenly Vent-du-Paradis threw back her 
 head, and sniffed anxiously, while with swift 
 uneasy motion she pawed the sand and 
 switched her long white tail to and fro. 
 
 The Colonel leant forward, and listened 
 intently. There was not a sound suggestive 
 of any one or anything approaching, not a 
 yellow spark of fl^me anywhere from crouching 
 panther or hyena. Nevertheless, the mare 
 became more and more uneasy. 
 
 With a sudden cry the horseman brought 
 his spurs against her flanks, and at the same 
 time shook free the bridle. 
 
 Vent-du-Paradis swung as if on a pivot, and 
 the next moment shot through the gloom like 
 a flash of white summer-lightning. 
 
 In less than a minute a strange thing hap. 
 pened. Two of the innumerable small sand- 
 hillocks near the margin of the Chott collapsed, 
 and simultaneously a black mass emerged from 
 each. 
 
 Two Arabs, young men, almost nude, cau- 
 tiously approached each other, one evidently in 
 some pain, though not seriously hurt — he 
 whom the French colonel's mare had trampled 
 upon in the first spring of her flight.
 
 -^ The Coward. 137 
 
 A-* few words were rapidly interchanged ; 
 then both disappeared in the gloom, one run- 
 ning swiftly to the west of El Khadthera and the 
 other taking the more circuitous eastern route. 
 
 Meanwhile Colonel Le Marchant rapidly 
 approached the fort. As he rode, he made up 
 his mind what he would do. War, he argued, 
 was inevitable now that poor Lieutenant Wim- 
 brenner and his company had been snared 
 and massacred by Bou-Amama. So, despite 
 the urgent instructions sent to him from his 
 superior officer at Tiaret, to keep the peace at 
 all hazards till the French forces could be 
 strengthened, and above all to conciliate the 
 tribesmen ef Geryville and the neighbourhood 
 (among whom Si Suleiman ben Khaddour was 
 the most influential man in authority), he per- 
 suaded himself that what would practically be 
 his abduction of Mahomet El-Djebeli's adopted 
 daughter would not be an act of treasonable 
 selfishness. In fact, he added, with a grim 
 smile, Nakhala would be a splendid hostage, 
 for with this beautiful desert-princess in his 
 possession he could control the wily and 
 dreaded Suleiman ben Khaddour. 
 
 His heart beat quicker as he thought of
 
 138 The Coward. 
 
 Nakhala, and of every incident connected with 
 her since first they had met and he had heard 
 her story. 
 
 Some three months back he had ridden out 
 alone to the village-oasis of Sidi Khalifa. He 
 had spent an evening hour with the Sheik 
 Okba, and, on leaving, had found himself in the 
 company of Mahomet El-Djebeli, who, with his 
 family, was returning to the village of Ain 
 Sifi-sifa. The Blind Sheik, as Mahomet was 
 generally called, was a Moor of ancient 
 Tlem^en lineage. In his younger days he had 
 been resident as a trader among the Spaniards 
 of Oran, and had even made a journey to the 
 southern Spanish ports and cities. In common 
 with many of the better-class Oranian Moors, 
 he spoke Spanish fluently and could converse 
 in French. 
 
 During the time of God's curse upon the 
 land — the awful years of pestilence and 
 famine, 1866 and 1867, when over two hundred 
 thousand victims perished untimely — Mahomet 
 El-Djebeli was in the region known as the 
 Metidja. His hfe was saved by a Spanish 
 settler, who not only nursed him through an at-
 
 -^ The Coward. 139 
 
 tack-'of the dreaded cholera, but gave him shel- 
 ter and employment. Early in 1867 occurred 
 the earthquake which destroyed the most 
 prosperous villages of the neighbourhood. The 
 farm of Perey Valera was laid in ruins, and the 
 worthy Spaniard killed in his attempt to save 
 his dying wife from among the debris of his 
 tottering walls. The sole thing that Mahomet 
 found amid the desolation that had been Perey 
 Valera's prosperity was his patron's only child, 
 the little five-year old Dolores. No one 
 claimed the child ; no one would have anything 
 to do with her, for Valera's ruin was complete, 
 alas, even before the earthquake had wrought 
 its culminating havoc. 
 
 Thus it was that Mahomet El-Djebeli took 
 Dolores Valera as his adopted daughter. He 
 went first to his own people on the lower slope 
 of the Djebel Toumzait near Tlemgen, and 
 there married. 
 
 Thereafter he went to Cherchel on the sea- 
 coast, but was driven thence by the French, 
 with whom he had come in conflict. He settled 
 at a village near Milianah. There occurred 
 the tragedy which altered his life. A French 
 colonist somehow saw and fell in love with his
 
 140 The Coward. 
 
 wife, and when Mahomet found that Marghya 
 had been unfaithful with the colott, he waited 
 his opportunity for revenge, and uUimately 
 killed them both. He fled for his life, but he 
 took the little Dolores with him. It was 
 shortly after this that the last outbreak of the 
 insurrection of 1871 took place. The chief 
 insurgents were the hill-tribesmen of the Beni- 
 Manassir, and the foremost rebel was Maho- 
 met-ed-Toumzait. After the revolt was finally 
 crushed, there was no peace for the outlaw in 
 the upper provinces. He made his way to the 
 Oranian Sahara, and became an adopted mem- 
 ber of the Ouled-Sidi-Sheikh. A year or two 
 before he lost his sight through a gun-accident, 
 he had taken two wives unto himself, though 
 neither for his wives nor any one did he care 
 aught in comparison with Dolores. No longer, 
 however, could he endure the infidel name. As 
 the girl was so beautiful and of extraordinary 
 grace, she seemed to him like a young date- 
 palm, " a thing of joy and rich promise of 
 peace," in the words of Abd-El-Kadr, the poet- 
 patriot; and so he called her Nakhala. 
 
 With years, Mahomet of Toumzait had 
 learned wisdom. Though he hated the French,
 
 The Coward. 141 
 
 he saw that their power was great and that 
 AUalfpermitted them to rule in the land. As 
 Mahomet El Djebeli, one of the leaders of the 
 Ouled-Sidi-Sheikh, he was safe from the ven- 
 geance of French law. And at the time when 
 he visited the Sheik Okba of Sidi Khalifa, and 
 met the Roumi-Cheik Le Marchant, there were 
 reasons why he wished to cultivate pleasant 
 relations with the foreign commander. 
 
 Thus, instead of resenting the presence of 
 Colonel Le Marchant on the night-journey from 
 Sidi Khalifa, Mahomet was courteously urgent 
 in his invitation. The French officer was 
 eager, on his part, to win the good will of a 
 man who could be either a useful ally or a 
 troublesome enemy. 
 
 But when half way to Ain Sifi-sifa an un- 
 looked-for episode happened. A band of 
 marauding Touaregs had made their way 
 northward, and, in the cloudy night, had sur- 
 rounded the small party of wayfarers. Colonel 
 Le Marchant, hearing the screams of a woman 
 close by him, was amazed to hear it followed 
 by an appeal to him first in Spanish, then in 
 French. The next moment he saw a girl of 
 extraordinary beauty by his side, and, scarce
 
 142 The Coward. 
 
 thinking what he was doing, lifted her on to 
 his high Moorish saddle. The rest of the 
 party was almost overpowered. Drawing his 
 revolver, Le Marchant soon disposed of the 
 two Touaregs nearest him, and the next mo- 
 ment was out and away upon the desert. 
 
 He reached El Khadthera with his beautiful 
 burden, though not to see much more of her ; 
 for, on the morrow, Mahomet El-Djebeli ap- 
 peared, having bought his freedom from his 
 captors. Nevertheless, there had been time 
 for her rescuer to learn Nakhala's story, and 
 to fall hopelessly, passionately, in love with 
 the Spanish daughter of the Blind Sheik. The 
 love was returned, and from the first moment. 
 Eug&ne Le Marchant was her hero and lover 
 from the moment when, with his strong arm 
 round her, he had galloped away from the 
 Touaregs. True, Mahomet speedily veiled her 
 and took her back to his home, but already 
 Nakhala had become Dolores. Love called to 
 love, and, also, blood to blood. The twain had 
 pledged each other, with solemn words of fealty. 
 
 Thereafter, Le Marchant had seen the girl 
 three or four times, but with difficulty and 
 serious peril. Their passion grew apace. It
 
 The Coward. 143 
 
 had become a flame to withstand the wind of 
 death itself when the fanatic Bou-Amama sud- 
 denly preached his DJehad, and, a few weeks 
 later, massacred Lieutenant Wimbrenner of 
 the Bureau Arabe and his small escort. The 
 anti-French feeling was at its height, even 
 among the still nominally loyal tribesmen. 
 Mahomet El-Djebeli forbade any communica- 
 tion between his people and the Roumi. 
 
 Through a step-brother of Nakhala's, Ab- 
 dallah, sworn to secrecy and won to service, 
 Colonel Le Marchant sent word to his beautiful 
 Dolores that at last he would hesitate no 
 longer, but take her as his bride in the face of 
 any opposition or peril. She was to send word 
 through A-bdallah as to how and when and 
 where they were to meet to this end. 
 
 It was for this message that, on this sultry 
 evening in April, Colonel Le Marchant had 
 ridden out of El Khadthera — or El Kreider, 
 as the French call it — and, notwithstanding 
 the earnest remonstrance of Major Cazin, with- 
 out escort. 
 
 It did not take long for Vent-du-Paradis to 
 reach the fortified village. As the Colonel
 
 144 The Coward. 
 
 passed the three sentries of the outer lines he 
 asked of each if he had seen any one come or 
 go since he, the Colonel, had ridden out. It 
 was with satisfaction he learned that no one 
 had been seen. 
 
 When he reached his quarters he astonished 
 his orderly by the request to have Vent-du- 
 Paradis ready at his door two hours before 
 dawn. Within, he found Major Cazin, poring 
 anxiously over a despatch just to hand, calling 
 for immediate care on the part of the garrison 
 of El Khadthera. Bou-Amama had not been 
 content with his victory over poor Wimbrenner, 
 but had sacked the French settlements, and was 
 carrying ruin over a wide region : and it was now 
 doubtful if he would wait Colonel Le Mason's 
 column marching from Tiaret. In this event, 
 he might be expected to retreat towards the 
 Sahara with his booty and captives, either to 
 rouse the tribes in a more thorough manner, or 
 to foil his pursuers till the summer fully set in. 
 It was advisable to prevent this, even apart 
 from the imperative need to rescue the captives, 
 the greater portion of whom were French and 
 Spanish women. 
 
 No one knows what passed between Colonel
 
 The Coward. 145 
 
 Le Marchant and Major Cazin ; but, certainly, 
 high words arose when the latter strongly 
 pressed the immediate despatch of troops to 
 occupy the village of Sidi Khalifa, particularly 
 now that, as the Major had just learned, the 
 Sheik Okba had been joined by Mahomet El- 
 Djebeli. 
 
 " At the first sight of our troops," he urged, 
 " Mahomet and his followers will decamp. 
 Not a man, woman, or child will be left in Sidi 
 Khalifa. It would be a good riddance, for the 
 place is a hotbed of treason and fanaticism, 
 and, once destroyed, things would go better 
 here, even apart from that bloodthirsty devil, 
 Bou-Amama." 
 
 This, however, was just what Colonel Le 
 Marchant wished to avoid at all hazard. If 
 Nakhala were to slip from his grasp now he 
 might never see her again. 
 
 As a counter-movement he proposed sending 
 out at once a detachment to Ain Sifi-sifa to 
 "bring in " Si Suleiman ben Khaddour. 
 
 " Good heavens, mon colonel^^ exclaimed 
 Major Cazin, exasperated, " that would be the 
 signal for revolt all over the North-Sahara. In 
 a few days there would not be a Frenchman 
 
 10
 
 146 The Coward. 
 
 left alive on this side of the Atlas or the Aurfes. 
 As it is, our countrymen at Gdryville are in 
 hourly peril of their lives." 
 
 " Nonsense, Major. Come . . . excuse my 
 brusqueness, but I know what I am about. I 
 am determined to have this fellow Suleiman 
 under my eye. I have already, as a matter of 
 fact, ordered him to come here to-morrow." 
 
 Thus much was overheard. It was after 
 this that angry words arose between the two 
 officers, with the result that Major Cazin left 
 his colonel in high dudgeon and went straight 
 to his own apartment, refusing word with any 
 
 one. 
 
 Eugene Le Marchant did not even attempt 
 to sleep that night. To and fro he walked with 
 feverish restlessness. Perhaps the thought 
 of the wrong he was about to do Dolores 
 Valera troubled him more than the probable 
 and more immediate consequences of his 
 projected act; for though the lady in Paris 
 with whom he had made an unhappy mar- 
 riage had practically separated from him, she 
 was none the less still his wife. Yet per- 
 haps no such regret perturbed him. He said 
 over and over again, arguing with himself,
 
 -^ The Coward. 147 
 
 that fhe girl loved him ; that she was not an 
 Arab but a European, and was necessarily 
 wretched in her present circumstances ; that 
 now more than ever she would be miserable if 
 he deserted her ; that as his mistress she would 
 be far happier than she could be as the wife 
 of Si Suleiman ; that even in the event of that 
 failing she would still be better rather than 
 worse off. All that he said was more than 
 merely probable ; but none the less he realised 
 that he was not going to give Dolores any 
 option. 
 
 Again and again he looked at his watch to 
 see if the moment of his departure were at 
 hand. At last the time came. He looked 
 carefully at his revolver once more, descended, 
 gave some directions to his orderly, and then 
 sprang into the saddle. 
 
 The sentries who saw and recognised Vent- 
 du-Paradis were astonished. The orders 
 against any man, even an officer, leaving the 
 fort after midnight and before sunrise, were 
 imperative. But, granting the necessity for 
 what almost seemed a forlorn-hope rider, 
 why should the emissary be the Colonel him- 
 self?
 
 148 The Coward. 
 
 Unheeding their probable questionings among 
 themselves, Colonel Le Marchant rode steadily 
 forward. He knew that the journey would 
 occupy nearly an hour, for though Sidi Khalifa 
 was at no great distance, the old Roman ruins 
 where he was to meet Nakhala were to the 
 north-west of the oasis, and had to be reached 
 by a circuitous detour. He had to ride care- 
 fully, for not only did the route lie across a 
 rough, uneven, and occasionally dangerously 
 ravined country, but there was momentary 
 peril of a surprise on the part of stray followers 
 or would-be adherents of Bou-Amama. 
 
 When, at last, he drew rein close to a con- 
 fused heap of fallen columns and blocks, he 
 felt as though he had already almost succeeded 
 in his enterprise. Dismounting, he listened 
 awhile intently. Then, satisfied that he was 
 alone, he secured the mare, and leaned against 
 one of the three or four ruined columns still 
 standing. He knew he was before the ap- 
 pointed time, but he could not refrain from the 
 hope that Nakhala would be consumed by a 
 feverish impatience equal to his own. Still, 
 the time passed as if it were water oozed drop 
 by drop from an almost closed crevice.
 
 The Coward. 149 
 
 Colonel Le Marchant was a brave man. 
 Nevertheless he was conscious of a thrill of 
 paralysing fear when, out of the silence and 
 the darkness, and apparently from the ground 
 close by, three veiled figures approached. He 
 had heard no one, not even the faintest rustle. 
 For a moment he knew the instinctive dread 
 of the supernatural ; then he feared that he 
 was caught in an ambush. 
 
 " Eugene ! " said a woman's voice — a low 
 thrilling whisper that sent the blood surging 
 from his heart again, and made him take a 
 quick step forward. 
 
 " Dolores . . . Nakhala ... I am here ! . . . 
 Who are those with you ? " 
 
 The girl moved rapidly towards him, and 
 the next moment was in his arms. 
 
 "Eugene . . . Eugene ... I love you. Oh 
 that we could escape from those who are 
 jealous of our happiness ! " 
 
 " So we can, my beautiful Dolores, and at 
 once — now ! Who are those with you ? " 
 
 " But you know how bitter my father is 
 against the French — against all Routni in 
 truth. And — " 
 
 " But you are a Spaniard."
 
 150 The Coward. 
 
 " Nay, I am of the Beni-Es-Saara — the 
 People of the Desert." 
 
 " But now you are free, Dolores ! Come, do 
 not let us linger. Any moment you may be 
 followed, any moment we may be intercepted. 
 Tell me, who are those who — " 
 
 " And my father, Eugene, Mahomet El- 
 Djebeli, wishes me to wed Si Suleiman ben 
 Khaddour. What can I do ? I cannot be a 
 curse to my own people. There is but one 
 way to happiness, but that is a way you will 
 not take." 
 
 " Speak, Nakhala, what is this way ? " 
 
 " To-morrow, Eugene, Bou-Amama and his 
 followers and prisoners will pass southward. 
 Si Suleiman will join him with a thousand men 
 as soon as Bou-Amama reaches the western 
 and southern shores of the Chott-El-Chergui." 
 
 " Do not disturb yourself about Suleiman, 
 Nakhala. I have him in my power." 
 
 In the gloom Le Marchant did not see the 
 girl's sudden start, and he was too preoccupied 
 to notice a curious movement in the dark 
 shadow that lay enmassed behind the very 
 column against which he had been leaning. 
 
 " You — have — Si Suleiman — in your 
 power ? "
 
 The Coward. 151 
 
 .-<• 
 
 "Yes. He is to come to me to-morrow. He 
 will jiever leave El Khadthera — or, at any 
 rate, not till this war is over and you and I 
 have gone hence. But now, quick, tell me 
 what it is you would have me do ? " 
 
 " Eugene Le Marchant, if you will keep your 
 troops in garrison to-morrow, I will come to 
 you in the evening. If you will not do this, 
 then you never see me again." 
 
 For a moment Colonel Le Marchant did not 
 fully grasp what Nakhala meant. Then the 
 whole thing flashed upon him as if in a sudden 
 flare of light. 
 
 " Dolores, you do not know what you ask. 
 If Bou-Amama is making for Gdryville he must 
 pass close Xo us. What will my troops think 
 if they see me allowing an insurgent Arab to 
 give us the slip, a victorious rebel, rich with 
 booty, encumbered with Christian prisoners? 
 The thing is impossible ! " 
 
 " Then it is as I feared. We must part at 
 once." 
 
 " But this is monstrous. You cannot ask 
 me to do this thing, Nakhala." 
 
 " It is not I who ask, Eugene. I have no 
 choice. We are snared, you and I, as though 
 we were helpless quails."
 
 152 The Coward. 
 
 " Snared — how snared ! " 
 
 " My father discovered my flight. On 
 menace of immediate death I confessed that 
 I was hastening to meet you. He gave me 
 the choice, — death, or to win you over. And 
 as the Arabs have done you no harm, it seemed 
 to me that you would not condemn us both to 
 death merely for the sake of molesting Bou- 
 Amama." 
 
 " My God, Nakhala, I do not care a g^ain 
 of sand for Bou-Amama : but duty . . . duty . . . 
 and, above all, the prisoners . . . the unfortu- 
 nate women ! But what do you mean about 
 Mahomet's condemning us both to death?" 
 
 " We are surrounded. Ah, do not attempt 
 to use your revolver, — it is too late ; a cry from 
 either of these men, and we shall be captives 
 in a moment." 
 
 " This is an ambush ! " 
 
 " Even so ; but what could I do, Eugene ? " 
 
 " We must make an effort to escape. As 
 soon as I fire, leap on my mare. I will fire 
 again, and then leap up beside you. We may 
 even yet get away." 
 
 " No, it is too late. We are surrounded, I 
 tell you."
 
 The Coward. 153 
 
 " WeU ? " 
 
 " This : we are to be buried alive beneath 
 two of these great columns." 
 
 The next moment Colonel Le Marchant 
 raised his arm. Almost simultaneously a flare 
 of flame and a crashing report came from 
 behind the nearest column. The revolver he 
 had held was blown from his hand, while his 
 arm fell to his side temporarily paralysed. 
 
 A profound silence ensued. There were 
 still only Nakhala and the two impassive veiled 
 Arabs. The Colonel was convinced. 
 
 " Life . . . your life . . . our life, Nakhala 
 ... is at stake. I cannot lose you, Dolores. 
 It may mean ruin to me ; but I agree." 
 
 "Oh, Eugene, Eugene, you have saved us!" 
 
 " Can you not come with me now ? I will 
 keep my promise." 
 
 "No. It is impossible. To-morrow night 
 without fail, but not to-night." 
 
 " Then I suppose I am to go now . . . and 
 in safety ? " 
 
 " Yes. All will now be well. But . . . 
 Eugene . . . remember! If you break your 
 troth you will not only never see me again, but 
 will be the cause of my ruin, my death."
 
 154 The Coward. 
 
 " I have given my word, Dolores. And see, 
 I accept yours. You say you will come to me 
 to-morrow night. Voild : I believe it." 
 
 " She will come ! " 
 
 Le Marchant swung round as he heard the 
 harsh gutteral voice, a voice that seemed 
 vaguely familiar to him. But there was no one 
 visible. He strode forward. A momentary 
 glimpse he caught of a tall figure, then it was 
 lost in the darkness. When he looked round 
 again, Nakhala had disappeared. 
 
 He seemed to be absolutely alone. Was it 
 all a dream, he wondered. No : there was the 
 evidence of his shattered revolver, his still 
 aching arm. He had a presentiment of further 
 ill : but of what avail were presentiments } He 
 had made his choice, and must abide by it. 
 There was nothing to be done but to ride back 
 and await the course of events. 
 
 Dawn was breaking as he saluted the sen- 
 tinel at the gate of El Khadthera. He had 
 seen no one on the road, had in no way been 
 molested ; yet more than once his strained ears 
 told him that he was not alone on the sandy 
 wilderness which lay between the fort and Sidi 
 Khalifa.
 
 The Coward. 155 
 
 The sentry who passed him did not know 
 which^was the whiter: the white dawn that 
 stole above the barren hills and undulating 
 desert, the white body of Vent-dii-Paradis, 
 or the white face of Colonel Le Marchant. 
 
 The morning passed slowly, the noontide 
 more slowly still. The officers of the garrison 
 were seated at dejeuner when an orderly en- 
 tered with the news that a large body of Arab 
 troops was visible to the north-west, apparently 
 coming from Sidi Khalifa and bound south- 
 ward by the G^rj-ville route. 
 
 " It must be Bou-Amama ! " cried Major 
 Cazin ; " the news must be true about his being 
 on the march south ! " 
 
 " Now we shall have some fighting ! " mut- 
 tered the junior officers to each other; "and 
 high time too. In a few days more even 
 El Khadthera would be under the spell of 
 that rebel." 
 
 Even while the excitement was still novel, 
 further tidings arrived. It was indeed Bou- 
 Amama. He was passing, however, as a vic- 
 torious captain making a wise movement : not 
 as a defeated warrior in flight. His banners 
 were flying, and in the midst of his irregular
 
 156 The Coward. 
 
 following was the Green Standard. The last 
 messenger vowed that Bou-Amama Bel-Arbi 
 openly jeered at the French, telling his still 
 only half convinced army that the French were 
 afraid, and that even the powerful garrison of 
 £1 Khadthera would not venture to molest him. 
 
 By this time not only the officers but the 
 troops were in a state of eager excitement. 
 This became frenzy when yet another mes- 
 senger came in with confirmation of the news 
 that there were about two hundred European 
 prisoners in Bou-Amama's train, and among 
 them no fewer than sevenscore women and 
 girls. 
 
 From where Colonel Le Marchant and his 
 officers stood, on a low mamelon near the 
 western gate of the fort, the rebel Arab army 
 could be seen with ease. To the amazement 
 of all, it was rapidly approaching. A furtive 
 movement became noticeable among the na- 
 tives crowded along the old grassy rampart to 
 the south of the gate. 
 
 " See there, mon colonel^'' said Captain 
 Roussel, significantly : " what does that mean ? " 
 
 "Natural curiosity, I presume," was the 
 response, in a cold hard voice.
 
 The Coward. 157 
 
 " We had better keep an eye on them all the 
 same. -'It may be a concerted movement. Ma 
 foi, it looks as though Bou-Amama were 
 coming within rifle-range ! He can't be mad 
 enough to be bent on a show-off, and surely 
 he's not going to try and take the fort at a 
 rush." 
 
 " Be so good as to keep your opinions to 
 yourself till they are asked for, Captain 
 Roussel," said Colonel Le IMarchant, with 
 sudden anger. His junior regarded him for a 
 moment with a resentful flush, saluted, and 
 stiffly drew back. 
 
 Soon there was no longer doubt that Bou- 
 Amama was coming close to El Khadthera. 
 Was it to attempt an assault, or to lure the 
 garrison to issue to open combat, or in sheer 
 bravado ? 
 
 All eyes were now turned upon the Colonel, 
 who stood fixedly regarding the advancing 
 force, whose derisive cheers and shouts of 
 mockery and defiance were now clearly heard. 
 
 At last Major Cazin could restrain himself 
 no longer. 
 
 " Shall we open fire, Colonel Le Marchant ? " 
 
 >'No."
 
 158 The Coward. 
 
 " But . . . pardon me, mon colonel . . . Bou- 
 Amama may take the fort by a rush ; and the 
 Arabs here — they are already excited enough ! 
 If they rose while we were beating back a 
 sudden onrush it might go badly with us." 
 
 " Bou-Amama will not attack us, Major 
 Cazin. This is mere bravado on his part." 
 
 " But, good heavens, sir, we can't allow this 
 successful rebel to tarnish us with cowardice — 
 to slip past us ! Why, with that rag-tag follow- 
 ing of his we could send him to the right-about 
 in ten minutes ; and if he is fool enough to 
 fight we could pulverize his force, simply pul- 
 verise it ! " 
 
 " / am the sole judge of what is best to be 
 done, Major Cazin." 
 
 "But, Colonel Le Marchant . . . why, my 
 God ! . . . mon colonel — the prisoners ! the 
 hundred and fifty women and girls ! " 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " Well . . . Colonel, I — I — don't under- 
 stand," stammered Major Cazin, while those 
 about him looked on with mingled astonish- 
 ment, anger, and rising shame. 
 
 The Colonel turned, and again steadfastly 
 regarded the enemy, whose vanguard was now
 
 The Coward. 159 
 
 _>« 
 within five or six hundred yards distance. 
 Suddeoly a mounted Arab dashed forward 
 and rode at full speed towards the fort, his 
 burnous streaming in the wind and the sunhght 
 flashing on the barrel of his long rifle as it lay 
 in the hollow of his left arm. 
 
 When within fifty yards from the rampart 
 he swerved, and, managing his horse with 
 consummate skill, went slowly caracoling along 
 the whole western front of the fort. 
 
 As he rode he shouted alternately in Ara- 
 bic and French : " Ho there, dogs and sons 
 of dogs ! Let every infidel tremble ! Bou- 
 Amama laughs at you ! He spits in your 
 faces! But he spares you yet a little while. 
 Eat, drink, aod be merry while you can, for in 
 a few days he will come again and wipe both 
 you and El Khadthera from the face of the 
 earth. See ! he passes, scorning and deriding 
 you ! We have slain your comrades like 
 jackals, and the vultures are busy with your 
 young Sheik Weimbrenner ! " 
 
 Here a deep hoarse growl arose from the 
 French soldiers in the fort, terrible, menacing, 
 like the savage snarl of an infuriated tiger 
 before it leaps against the bars of its cage,
 
 i6o The Coward. 
 
 and, breaking them, springs upon the fools 
 wlio taunt him. 
 
 " Bou-Amama Bel-Arbi will be compassion- 
 ate, dogs though ye be ! " went on the envoy, 
 in a loud mocking voice, rising to a scream 
 ever and again : " ay, he will have mercy upon 
 you, if you will lay down your arms, and bow 
 down before the great name of the Prophet 
 of Allah ! Otherwise he will grind you like 
 dust, he will stamp you under his heel, as the 
 horse stamps the dry dung into the sand, for 
 ye too are carrion — Djifa — djifa — djifa / " 
 
 The hoarse growl rose now to fierce execra- 
 tions, savage gripping of rifles, a panting, 
 shuddering breath of murderous fury. 
 
 "See! The great Sheik scorns you! He 
 will not go one yard out of his way. We are 
 treading on the skirts of El Khadthera and 
 will rest at Ain Sifi-sifa : will you meet us 
 there ? Pah : you will not stir from your fort ! 
 You do not even dare to fire a shot ; though, 
 sheltered as you are, you could slay scores of 
 us with your rifles ! No : you are not men, as 
 we Arabs are. Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! That is what 
 your wives and daughters and young women 
 will say ! Ha ! Ha ! Ha ! sevenscore goodly
 
 The Coward. l6i 
 
 women have we carried away to be our slaves 
 and concubines ! " 
 
 Through the whole force went a shock as 
 though an electric flash had stricken it. The 
 sudden silence, save for a dull sound as of 
 sobbing breath, was full of unspeakable rage, 
 of unutterable menace. The officers on the 
 mamelon looked at their colonel. They could 
 see his face in profile only ; but saw that it was 
 ashy white, and that the muscles twitched 
 convulsively. 
 
 An expression of consternation came into 
 the faces already hard-set in anger and indig- 
 nation. Each man looked at his companions, 
 then at the Colonel, then at Major Cazin, then 
 at the Colonel again. Meanwhile, tossing his 
 rifle and catching it on high, flaunting his 
 loose burnous, and making his horse swerve 
 and rear, the Arab champion leisurely retraced 
 his way. But as he went he laughed again 
 and again, now taunting the French with 
 cowardice, now mocking the fate of the un- 
 happy women in the grip of Bou-Amama. 
 
 There was the dead silence of intense 
 expectation as Major Cazin strode to the side 
 of his superior officer. 
 
 II
 
 l62 The Coward. 
 
 " Colonel Le Marchant, we are ready. Will 
 you give the word of command ? " 
 
 The Colonel slowly looked round. His 
 features were drawn ; his face was of a dull 
 greyish hue. 
 
 " For what ? " 
 
 The voice was dry, harsh, as though the 
 man were dying of thirst. 
 
 " For what ... for what . . . Colonel ! " 
 exclaimed Major Cazin, whose eyes gleamed 
 like those of a beast of prey. " You are not 
 going to let the French flag be so grossly 
 insulted ! you are not going to make every man 
 of the garrison drink the bitterest cup of shame 
 a Frenchman has ever been asked to drink ! 
 Good God, sir, you are not going to stand by 
 while that devil Bou-Amama marches by un- 
 molested and takes with him two hundred of 
 our kith and kin, a hundred and forty wives 
 and maidens ! " 
 
 " I have my orders," was the reply in a low 
 voice, yet not so low but that every officer 
 heard it, and, hearing, flushed with bitter 
 shame and wrath. 
 
 "We know your orders, Colonel Le Mar- 
 chant. But no orders could stand in the way
 
 The Coward. 163 
 
 ->• 
 of our present duty. We will be for ever dis- 
 graced in the eyes of the Arabs, of our com- 
 rades in North Africa, of our nation, of our 
 enemies, of the whole world, if we do not at 
 once sally forth. There is not a man of us 
 who would not gladly die to avert this stain 
 on the honour of France ! " 
 
 " Major Cazin, you forget yourself. I, and I 
 alone, have the right to decide what is our 
 duty. I will not argue the matter with you ; 
 but be so good as to understand that, while we 
 shall defend ourselves from actual attack, I 
 will not meanwhile engage in battle with Bou- 
 Amama." 
 
 " But, sir, mo7i colonel, the women — the 
 prisoners ! " . 
 
 " I have spoken." 
 
 A look of fierce contempt came into every 
 face. One sentiment pervaded the whole force, 
 officers and men : their colonel was afraid ! 
 
 Major Cazin did not bow. At first he made 
 no sign, no movement, though a strange 
 purplish tinge spread from his lips to his 
 cheeks. When he did speak everj' one heard, 
 and with indrawn breath awaited the answer. 
 
 " Colonel Le Marchant, as an officer of the
 
 164 The Coward. 
 
 Army of the Republic, I protest. As a soldier 
 of France, I curse this hour of shame. Even 
 now, will you save us this disgrace ? " 
 
 There was no answer. A tremulous move- 
 ment was visible in the Colonel's ashy face. 
 
 "Eugene Le Marchant, you are a coward! " 
 
 The suspense was terrible. After this insult, 
 this gross dereliction from duty, even the most 
 long suffering man must turn. 
 
 Colonel Le Marchant veered slowly. With 
 a mechanical gesture he pointed westward : 
 
 " See : the enemy is now in full retreat." 
 
 But, save for a momentary glance, no one 
 looked at the enemy. 
 
 " Major Cazin! " 
 
 "Sir!" 
 
 " Give me your sword. I place you under 
 arrest. You will answer for this revolt, for 
 this insult, at a court where your bravado will 
 be of no avail." 
 
 " Colonel Le Marchant, it is you who fear 
 me, not I who fear what you can do. See, 
 here is my sword, but, lest it should ever be 
 said that Lucien Cazin surrendered his sword 
 to a coward and traitor, I break it across my 
 knee."
 
 The Coward. 165 
 
 As he spoke, Major Cazin suited his action 
 to h\g words. Then, flinging the splintered 
 weapon on the ground, he turned abruptly on 
 his heel and walked away. 
 
 With a slow step Colonel Le Marchant 
 followed. As he passed the group of officers, 
 not one saluted. 
 
 The afternoon went past in a gloom full of 
 sullen wrath and menace. The soldiers talked 
 of nothing but the Colonel's cowardice, Major 
 Cazin's insult, Bou-Amama's insolent triumph, 
 the fate of the prisoners, the events of the 
 morrow, the outcome of the inevitable court- 
 martial. 
 
 In his room, sitting with his bowed head in 
 his hands, Eugene Le Marchant thought only 
 of Nakhala. 
 
 "It is for you, Dolores ! It is for you ! " 
 he kept muttering over and over. 
 
 A sudden blare of a bugle broke the stillness. 
 It was sundown. The Colonel rose, went out 
 into the wide sandy road, and walked swiftly 
 towards the south gate. 
 
 A little group was clustered round the sentry 
 on duty. It gave way as the Colonel ap- 
 proached. The first person he recognised was 
 Abdallah : but blind, newly mutilated.
 
 1 66 The Coward. 
 
 On the ground before the renegade Arab 
 was a figure clad in a long white robe. Colonel 
 Le Marchant noticed how ghastly white it 
 looked with the long black hair streaming 
 across it like a flood of ink. 
 
 "Where is the Sheik of El Khadthera," 
 Abdallah was crying in Arabic over and over 
 in a strained hysterical voice. 
 
 " Here." 
 
 " Ah, it is you," said the mutilated wretch, 
 gasping in his excitement. " I come from Si 
 Suleiman ben Khaddour. It was he who took 
 me before Bou-Amama ; it was he who at the 
 Sheik's order did this''' — and as he spoke he 
 pointed with shaking hand at his ember-bleared 
 eyes. 
 
 " What do you want with me ; what is your 
 message ? " interrupted Colonel Le Marchant 
 stonily, with his eyes fixed on the white fig- 
 ure lying so inertly upon the ground, the 
 white figure with the long black hair streaming 
 across it. 
 
 "Before I was sent hence I was summoned 
 before Bou-Amama, Si Suleiman, and Maho- 
 met El-Djebeli. They bade me tell you that 
 the Children of the Desert always keep their
 
 The Coward. 167 
 
 pledges. Nakhala, the adopted daughter of 
 the' Blind Sheik, promised to be with you this 
 evening. So, she has kept her pledge. But I 
 have a message to give you along with this 
 dead woman." 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 Colonel Le Marchant spoke as if uncon- 
 cernedly. His eyes were still on the motion- 
 less white figure, but he seemed to regard with 
 little save curiosity what he knew to be the 
 corpse of his beautiful Dolores. 
 
 "Si Suleiman said to me: 'Tell the French 
 Sheik, Le Marchant, that I send my wife 
 Nakhala to keep her tr>'st with him. Tell him 
 that as she was mine in life, he is welcome to 
 her in death.' " 
 
 Colonel Le Marchant stooped, lifted back 
 the burnous from the corpse, and looked for 
 a few seconds at the beautiful face. 
 
 " Let her be buried according to the rites of 
 the Catholic Church," he said simply, and then 
 walked back to his quarters. 
 
 On his way he met and stopped the senior 
 captain. 
 
 "Captain Roussel, I have just received in- 
 structions to pursue Bou-Amama and prevent
 
 i68 The Coward. 
 
 his taking and fortifying Gdryville. Si Sulei- 
 man ben Khaddour has at last seceded to the 
 rebels. We must march at once. You will 
 act in place of Major Cazin." 
 
 Captain Roussel drew himself up stiffly, 
 saluted, and, with an ill-disguised look of con- 
 tempt, turned to give the necessary orders.
 
 A VENETIAN IDYL.
 
 A Venetian Idyl. 
 
 They are pleasant rooms, those which my friend 
 and I shared in Venice early last summer. 
 Situate as they are at the eastern extremity 
 of the Traghetto San Gregorio, the windows to 
 the front look out on all the life and beauty of 
 the Grand Canal, though the house itself is 
 entered by a closed courtyard opening off the 
 quiet Rio. It is true that not infrequently in 
 the evenings loud voices and laughter and shrill 
 cries are heard ; for, as the name discloses, 
 the Traghetto is one of those stations where 
 gondoliers await their customers, and any one 
 who has lived in Venice will realise at once 
 that the poetic silence universally supposed 
 to characterise the widowed queen of the 
 Adriatic is a hollow delusion if, in the neigh- 
 bourhood, there be a gondola station. The 
 men have a habit, also, convenient for them-
 
 1/2 A Venetian Idyl. 
 
 selves, but hardly so agreeable to inoffensive 
 outsiders ignorant even of the cause of dis- 
 pute, of quarrelling from opposite banks of a 
 canal, whence any amount of ferocious vituper- 
 ation can be hurled with perfect safety — the 
 common methods by which nearly all disputes 
 in Venice are settled. But, after all, such oc- 
 casional noisiness is more than balanced by 
 the otherwise delightful situation. Almost since 
 the day of our arrival in the ever-new and ever- 
 beautiful city, we had employed the same gon- 
 dolier, by name Alessandro Luigi Tremazzi 
 (as we afterwards learned, for at first he was 
 known to us only by his familiar appellation 
 Luigi), and had ultimately engaged his exclu- 
 sive services for a month at the moderate rate 
 of four and a half lire a day. 
 
 It was this Luigi who, early one morning, 
 towards the end of last May, brought us our 
 coffee and asked what were the immediate or- 
 ders of the Signori. We had felt, even before 
 perceiving the fact, that a scirocco was blow- 
 ing ; and before Luigi's advent we had de- 
 bated for some time whether to spend the first 
 part of the day with Tintoretto and Titian, or 
 to sail northward to Torcello, so as, on our
 
 A Venetian Idyl. 173 
 
 return, to see Venice and the lagoons in the 
 beairtiful silver-and-amethyst veil of a scirocco 
 sunset. We had decided on the latter course ; 
 so, having given the needful orders, we des- 
 patched our rolls and coffee and fruit. We be- 
 fore long found ourselves installed in the roomy 
 gondola which we had told Luigi to direct first 
 to the Lido, so that we might have a swim 
 before starting in earnest on our journey. As 
 we passed San Giorgio on the right, and found 
 the Lion of St. Mark's and the Doge's Palace 
 on our left giving place to the busy Riva degli 
 Schiavoni, we noticed that the little wind there 
 was seemed to be decreasing, so much so as to 
 promise to fail altogether ere long. We deter- 
 mined, therefore, to wait till after our bathe 
 before deciding finally as to Torcello ; for we 
 could not in fairness ask Luigi to take us such 
 a distance during the prostrating and thundery 
 heat of a windless scirocco day. 
 
 As we neared Sant' Elisabetta (or " the Lido," 
 as this part o^ the Lido of Malamacco is now, 
 even by the Venetians themselves, invariably 
 called) the flagging breeze regained a little 
 of its energy; and though neither the sky 
 above nor the lagoon beneath had anything of
 
 1/4 A Venetian Idyl. 
 
 that wonderful azure transparency so character- 
 istic of them at most other times, yet they had 
 a delicate pale blue that was almost as lovely. 
 Right alongside the gondola, indeed, the water 
 had a dull greenish hue, chiefly imparted to it by 
 the masses of green trailing sea-hair which the 
 morning tide waved up from the shallow depths. 
 
 Leaving Luigi and our boat in the little 
 harbour, we strolled across the island, and 
 in ten minutes felt the sea-wind on our faces, 
 and saw before us the Adriatic sparkling away 
 into seemingly illimitable distance, leagues be- 
 yond leagues of moving blue, relieved only by 
 a white crest here and there, a snowy gull 
 sweeping suddenly in its flight, and some half- 
 dozen widely dispersed fishing-boats endeav- 
 ouring to make the most of the wind that, at 
 intervals, puffed out their orange, brick-red, or 
 saffron-hued sails. 
 
 Endlessly beautiful as was this view, we 
 soon deserted it for the Stabilimento, whence, 
 after a long and delightful swim in the salt 
 and buoyant waves, we joined Luigi : for we 
 had noticed a deepening of the blue to the 
 south, and were now intent upon reaching Tor- 
 cello. As we passed the green promontory of
 
 A Venetian Idyl. 175 
 
 the Public Gardens we heard the gondolier 
 make^some remark about the weather, but his 
 meaning escaped us, and it was not till we 
 were close upon San Michele that he spoke 
 again. Beyond this island graveyard an ex- 
 quisite silveriness permeated the already hazy 
 atmosphere to the north and west, till at last 
 it seemed as if a veil of thinnest gossamer had 
 been invisibly spun from below and above, an 
 aerially transparent veil that caused every dis- 
 tant object or outline upon which we looked to 
 seem as though beheld in a mirage. In what 
 might have been mere dreamland vision, we 
 saw, thus, the Venetian district of Canarreggio 
 and the dim islands of the lagoons to the south 
 of Mestre ; and even adjacent Murano lost some 
 of its unsightliness, and gleamed as a great, 
 dusky nectarine on a sunside wall. But while 
 we were silently watching this visible scirocco- 
 breath, we heard Luigi's second interruption, a 
 politely-worded hint that it would not be an 
 agreeable day for the signori to proceed to 
 Torcello. On asking him wherefore, he told 
 us that it would be exceptionally close and 
 thundery till the afternoon, and that then a 
 storm of more or less severity would probably
 
 1/6 A Venetian Idyl. 
 
 break. Knowing from experience how weather- 
 wise our gondolier was, we at once relinquished 
 our project : and straightway agreed to return 
 homeward, to disembark at San Nicoletto, and 
 have our luncheon and afternoon smoke under 
 the shadowy acacias at that most beautiful, 
 though least known, part of the Lido. An hour 
 later, then, we were sitting in the cool and ex- 
 quisitely fragrant acacia shade, and by no 
 means disappointed at the enforced change in 
 our plans. While lazily smoking after our light 
 luncheon, and as lazily looking out upon the 
 metallic grey-blue of the lagoons beyond us, 
 or listening to the humming of the wild bees 
 among the innumerable white clusters over- 
 head, one of us asked Luigi to tell us a story, 
 true or legendary, as he preferred. Our gon- 
 dolier himself looked the hero of some Vene- 
 tian romance. Tall and strong, but lithe rather 
 than largely built, with wavy masses of black 
 hair curling over his sun-tanned forehead and 
 down upon his brown neck ; with dark grey 
 eyes that were at once indolent and fiery in 
 their expression ; and with a pleasant smile 
 lingering always about his mouth ; he bore his 
 thirty years so well, and with such unconscious
 
 A Venetian Idyl. 177 
 
 grace, that neither painter nor romancist could 
 havcfound a better model amongst the gon- 
 doliers of Venice or the fisherfolk of Chioggia. 
 
 Laughingly he replied to our request, that he 
 could sing the songs of his craft, but that he 
 was not a good stor}--teller, and, moreover, that 
 he remembered nothing that could interest the 
 Signori. But when my friend suggested to him 
 that he should tell us something about himself 
 if this were not asking too much, he blushed 
 slightly as though with gratified pleasure, add- 
 ing immediately that, if it would please us to 
 hear, he would tell us how he won and mar- 
 ried the pretty wife whom he had taken us to 
 visit the other day. 
 
 Throwing -himself in an easy posture in the 
 acacia shade beside us, Luigi remained silent 
 for a few moments, and then began in his soft 
 and sibilant Venetian the following narration, 
 which, however, does not pretend to follow 
 with exactness his own phraseology. 
 
 " I don't think the heroes of stories, even in 
 stories related by the chief actors themselves, 
 are possessed of only one name. So, though to 
 every one I am known only as Luigi, I may 
 
 12
 
 178 A Venetian Idyl. 
 
 begin by saying that I am the only son of 
 my dead father Giovan' Andrea, and that my 
 own name in full is Alessandro Luigi Tre- 
 mazzi. I was christened Alessandro after my 
 father's father, and Luigi after my maternal 
 grandfather, but was always called by the 
 former name until my sixth or seventh year, 
 when my father began invariably to address 
 me as Luigi, — a change that I afterwards dis- 
 covered to be due to an act of shameful treach- 
 ery on the part of his bosom friend, Alessandro 
 Dk Ru, after whom I had been named in 
 common with my father's father. I mention 
 this only because Dk Ru's son, Matteo, with 
 whom my father forbade me ever to play or 
 even to speak, turns up again in my narrative, 
 and there 's always more than one traitor in a 
 traitor's nest. However, things went on with 
 us, sometimes well and sometimes ill, till ray 
 twenty-fifth year. At this time my father 
 owned two gondolas, one quite new, and the 
 other considerably dilapidated by many years' 
 use ; and as strangers generally prefer a young 
 and active to an old man it generally happened 
 that I took up my station at the Piazzetta with 
 the new gondola, while my father did ferry
 
 A Venetian Idyl. 179 
 
 or ' barca ' duty with the other at a Traghetto 
 neafl- the Rio di S. Vito, opposite the Giudecca. 
 Between us we managed to get along without 
 getting into debt. Owing, however, to the old 
 man's mania for investing his money in lotteries 
 and other speculations of like uncertainty, it 
 was little that, even in the busy spring and 
 autumn seasons, we were able to put aside, and 
 this little certainly never survived a winter. 
 If the money had not gone in this fashion we 
 should have been very well-to-do indeed : for 
 at an average of from six to eight lire a day 
 between us throughout the year, we should 
 have been better off than nine out of every 
 ten of our neighbours, having no one to share or 
 depend upon our profits. About this time my 
 father died, the doctor saying it was from eat- 
 ing too much ripe melon, and the parish priest 
 declaring that it was a sign of divine displea- 
 sure at old Tremazzi's not having been to mass 
 for a year come Corpus Christi. My father 
 had been a rather hard and taciturn man, but 
 I missed him sorely at first ; however, the poor 
 must work however much they grieve, and, 
 moreover, my life had just become filled with 
 a new and absorbing interest. For some
 
 i8o A Venetian Idyl. 
 
 weeks before my father's death I had regularly 
 gone every leisure half-hour to a small caf^ on 
 the Riva degli Schiavoni : not because I spe- 
 cially wanted either coffee or iced orange-water, 
 but because it was next door to the tiny rope- 
 shop of old Salvatore Agujani. You may be 
 sure I did not spend my soldi at the cafd 
 merely to look at the interior of a rope-seller's 
 shop, nor even for the pleasure of occasionally 
 conversing a little with white-haired Salvatore 
 himself. But Signor Agujani had a grand- 
 daughter who lived with him, and who fre- 
 quently was to be seen in the little shop itself. 
 " It is not for me, Signori, to say too much 
 about the beauty of ' La Biondina,' as many of 
 the neighbours called her, considering that she 
 is now my wife : but you have seen her your- 
 selves, and can therefore judge if she does not 
 deserve to be known as 'Zena la Bionda.' 
 You saw how golden-fair her hair is, how dark 
 blue are her eyes, how white her beautiful neck 
 and delicate hands, how joyous is her laughter ; 
 but you can't guess how much fairer she seems 
 to me when I come home at nights for my fried 
 fish and macaroni, to see her sitting beside mc 
 and laughing at our baby's frantic efforts to
 
 A Venetian Idyl. l8l 
 
 -V 
 reach me. But I am getting on too fast, and 
 givijig you the sequel before I have done with 
 the beginning. 
 
 " When my father was buried yonder in 
 San Michele, I found myself possessor of the 
 two boats. I sold the old one, almost useless 
 as a gondola, to an acquaintance who was 
 content to get through life with such profits 
 as the ownership of a ' barca ' could bring in. 
 With the proceeds, and what little money there 
 was lying by, I paid off all debts, and began 
 the world on my own account with my nearly 
 new gondola, which I rechristened ' La Bion- 
 dina.' 
 
 " By this time, I ought to say, there was an 
 unworded, understanding between Zena and 
 myself. How well I remember the day when I 
 first took her to see the change in my boat's 
 name! It was the Festa of Corpus Christi, 
 and I had determined on two things when I 
 rose at sunrise : firstly, that I should keep the 
 day as a holiday ; secondly, that, if possi- 
 ble, I should get a definite answer from Zena, 
 whether for good or ill, before I lay down to 
 rest again. Punctually at seven o'clock I was 
 at the Riva degli Schiavoni, wishing good
 
 1 82 A Venetian Idyl. 
 
 morning to old Salvatore ; and, at that very mo- 
 ment, Zena came out, looking lovelier than any 
 flower you can see here on the Lido. Then 
 the three of us went off to the Piazza to 
 see the grand procession, and to get blessed 
 by the Cardinal Archbishop in St. Mark's. 
 Throughout the rest of the day we met and 
 talked with acquaintances, and idled and ate 
 ices like the rich forestieri themselves. After 
 sundown, when all Venice that could afford it 
 was on the water, every one eager to see the 
 hundreds of gondolas flitting to and fro upon 
 the Grand Canal, or clustering by the score 
 round the huge illuminated barge filled with 
 musicians. Then, too, there were the beautiful 
 fireworks shooting up endlessly all along the 
 banks, from the end of the Schiavoni to the 
 Rialto and the station at the extreme north- 
 west 
 
 We, too, went out on the canal in my 
 gondola, — for though I could have let it that 
 evening for so large a sum as ten lire, I swear 
 that fifty lire would not have made me forego 
 the pleasure of taking Zena out to see the end 
 of the great Festa. As we came along the Piaz- 
 zetta, her grandfather turned to speak to some
 
 A Venetian Idyl. 183 
 
 friend : so I had time to take her down to the 
 boat-'itself, and managed to swing the prow 
 aside, so as to show Zena the name freshly 
 painted on the narrow bulwark. When she 
 saw ' La Biondina ' written there she blushed as 
 red as a rose, and then asked me coquettishly 
 what had made me change its name from 
 ' La Bella Esperanza ; ' whereupon I replied 
 that to own ' La Biondina ' was my ' Bella 
 Esperanza ; ' and here she blushed again more 
 deeply than before. Knowing I might not 
 have another opportunity that night, I stooped 
 forward and whispered, ' Zena, carissi>na, I 
 love you with all my heart ; do you think you 
 will ever love me enough in return to be my 
 wife ? ' and -to my delight and joy she breathed 
 rather than said, ' I have loved you always, 
 Luigi.' Ah! the happiness of that night! I 
 shall never forget it ; and, you may be sure, 
 Signori, that we looked more at one another 
 than at the fireworks or the innumerable gon- 
 dolas filled with gayly dressed forestieri, and 
 listened more eagerly to each other's lightest 
 word than to the music which continuously was 
 swept up and down the Grand Canal by the 
 soft night wind. I said to myself that it
 
 l84 A Venetian Idyl. 
 
 seemed all too good to be true, but I little 
 guessed that my light thought was to be fol- 
 lowed by a sad reality. 
 
 " I said nothing that night to old Agujani ; 
 and even when I parted with Zena nought 
 passed between us but an ardent hand-pressure 
 and a loving glance into each other's eyes. 
 After my return home I could not sleep for a 
 long time, because of my great happiness. At 
 last, however, I fell into a sound doze ; though 
 not a dreamless one, for twice ere morning I 
 dreamt that I was a little boy once more, and 
 that my father was telling me never again to 
 play or speak with Matteo, the son of Alessan- 
 dro Dk Ru, adding the proverb I had so often 
 heard him muttering between his teeth, ' There 's 
 always more than one traitor in a traitor's nest.' 
 
 " When I woke it was with such lightness 
 of heart as I suppose the larks have on a 
 cloudless April morning. Before mid-day, 
 however, all my joy had vanished, or at any 
 rate had been sorely damped; for, you must 
 know, I was officially informed that I was a 
 navy conscript. In other words, notice was 
 given me that I must without delay join one of 
 the King's ships of war for a term of three
 
 A Venetian Idyl. 185 
 
 years. As you may imagine, this was a sad 
 blow^ to my ardent hopes. I had no way 
 of escape ; firstly, because I had no mother or 
 children dependent on me and was also in 
 good health; and secondly, because I could 
 not afford to pay for a substitute, even if 
 the authorities should permit my doing so. 
 There was nothing for it but to store up my 
 gondola for the three years, or else to sell 
 it. and then to settle matters and depart. This 
 doesn't, perhaps, seem much to do, and of 
 course many of my friends and acquaintances 
 have undergone similar experiences ; yet I 
 can tell you my heart was sore indeed when 
 I broke the news to poor Zena. She took it 
 bravely, however, and assured me with tears 
 in her eyes that three years would soon pass ; 
 that she would write often, and that she would 
 never swerve from her pledged fealty to me. 
 Also she persuaded me to say nothing about our 
 engagement to her grandfather, because the 
 latter would be sure to object to her being 
 bound down through three years of absence 
 on my part. 
 
 «' Well, Signori, I need not dwell upon what 
 were sad enough days to Zena and myself,
 
 1 86 A Venetian Idyl. 
 
 but the long and short of it is that in less than 
 a week after the ofificial intimation I was on 
 board the * R6 Umberto.' You may be sure Li- 
 vorno seemed a poor enough place to me after 
 Venice, and that the life of a man-of-war's 
 man was anything but a welcome exchange 
 from the honourable freedom of a gondolier, — 
 a gondolier, moreover, who owned his boat. 
 But I must n't weary you with details as to 
 how these three years went by, save that 
 sometimes we were stationed at Livorno, 
 sometimes at Spezzia, again at Tunis or at 
 Alexandria, but never once at Venice. On 
 one occasion my heart beat high when I heard 
 it rumoured that the ' Rd Umberto' had been 
 ordered to Trieste, for then I knew that if I 
 could get a couple of days' leave I should be 
 able to get across to Venice and have a glimpse 
 of my sweetheart; however, nothing came of 
 this rumour, and when we left Corfu we steered 
 south-westward and not towards the north. 
 
 " I should have told you before this that, when 
 I joined my ship, I found two or three acquaint- 
 ances amongst the conscripts, but on the night 
 of my arrival only one known face met my 
 gaze, — the face of Matteo Dk Ru. I had
 
 A Venetian Idyl. 187 
 
 seen little or nothing of my former playmate for 
 severa], years past, as old Dk Ru had left his 
 home in the Giudecca some five years before 
 my father's death and joined the fishing fra- 
 ternity at Chioggia, which, as you know, Sig- 
 nori, is some thirty miles to the south of this. 
 Distance as well as local prejudices continue 
 to keep the inhabitants of the northern and 
 southern lagoons apart : and even, as in the 
 Giudecca itself, intermarriage with a man or 
 woman of the town proper is not approved 
 of. But though Matteo and I had met seldom 
 of recent years, we knew each other well, and 
 I could not but have a kindly feeling to an 
 acquaintance encountered under such circum- 
 stances, — one, moreover, whom I had known 
 since we were litde boys together. Yet, curi- 
 ously enough, I experienced what was nearly 
 a feeling of repulsion when we embraced 
 one another with friendly salutations, — just as 
 >.f I heard again my old father telling me to 
 have nothing to do with kith or kin of Alessan- 
 dro Dk Ru, and muttering his proverb about 
 traitors. Although I guessed by this time 
 what it was that had come between my father 
 and his friend, I no longer thought it fitting I
 
 l88 A Venetian Idyl. 
 
 should renounce the latter's son for a crime of 
 which he was wholly guiltless; and so it was 
 that, although we never became friends in the 
 true sense of the word, we learnt to like each 
 other well enough to be decidedly friendly 
 acquaintances. 
 
 " All this time, of course, I heard at more or 
 less regular intervals from Zena, — letters al- 
 ways welcome, because they told me she was 
 well and happy. It is true these letters were 
 not written by herself. Yet though the pen- 
 manship was that of old Antonio Baruccio, the 
 public letter-writer who sits at the right-hand 
 corner of the Campo di Santa Maria Formoso, 
 to me they were the same as though she had 
 written them, partly because I knew the words 
 were hers, and partly because, I am ashamed 
 to say, I could n't at that time read handwrit- 
 ing myself. I may say now, Signori, that 
 both Zena and myself not only read but write 
 fairly well ; but at the time I am speak- 
 ing of I had always to call in assistance to 
 get through my sweetheart's notes, and to 
 indite my own in return. I had found a trust- 
 worthy confidant in Gian' Battista, the boat- 
 swain's mate, and during the greater part of
 
 A Venetian Idyl 189 
 
 my time this good friend acted the part of 
 reader *^and secretary for me, and never once 
 betrayed my sweetheart's name to my com- 
 rades. About three months before the close 
 of my time, we were stationed at Spezzia : and 
 while there I, in common with Matteo Dk Ru 
 and half-a-dozen others, was drafted off to 
 the gunboat * La Fiamma,' as the crew of the 
 latter required reinforcement owing to the 
 extra trouble smugglers from the French and 
 North African coasts had given of late. There 
 had for more than a year past been a grow- 
 ing coolness between Matteo and myself, — a 
 coolness that had arisen without any definite 
 cause, but strong enough to prevent my mak- 
 ing him a confidant in my affairs and hopes. 
 But one night, when we were together in the 
 same watch, I determined to tell him about 
 Zena and myself, having so resolved on account 
 o.^ my friend Gian' Battista being no longer 
 at hand to help me with my correspondence. 
 I knew, too, that I ought soon to hear from 
 Venice, as I had sent a letter there soon after 
 we arrived in the Gulf of Spezzia. For four 
 months past I had had no news of my sweet- 
 heart. I knew this was no fault of hers, as
 
 190 A Venetian Idyl. 
 
 I felt certain she had written to such addresses 
 as I had given her before the sudden departure 
 of the 'Umber to' for the west. During this 
 period we had been to Monte Video, return- 
 ing by the coasts of Morocco, and finally by 
 those of Algeria and Tunis: and it was not 
 surprising that Zena's letters should have per- 
 sistently wandered astray among such widely 
 apart places as Corfu, Alexandria, Messina, 
 Gibraltar, Monte Video, and the North African 
 stations. None the less I was eager for even 
 a scrap of news, and longed till another day 
 should bring me the reply to my last letter. By 
 this time I could read a little, though only 
 slowly and with difficulty ; yet I hoped to make 
 out Zena's letter by myself, or at any rate to 
 do so after it had once been read over to me 
 by a friend. 
 
 "In an emergency one cannot always be 
 particular, and thus it was I came to confide 
 in Matteo. As I said, we were one evening 
 together in the same watch; we had been 
 talking about our term, which would shortly 
 expire, and about what we would do when 
 we got our final discharge. 
 
 " • My father would like me to join him in
 
 A Venetian Idyl. 191 
 
 his fishery business at Chioggia,' said Mat- 
 teo; '*but I have no intention of doing so. 
 I have my gondola safely stored up, and will 
 try to get my old place at the Piazzetta again. 
 Then perhaps I will get a wife, and have 
 a comfortable home, after all this jumbling 
 about in the western seas.' 
 
 " ' Oh, then,' I replied, ' you are thinking 
 of marr}-ing, are you ? Come, come, my friend, 
 a man doesn't generally think that in earnest 
 unless he has some one in view. Why did 
 you never say anything of this to me before ? ' 
 
 " ' For the same reason, I suppose,' answered 
 Matteo, ' that you never confided in me. Do 
 you think I am blind, that I never saw you 
 writing letters (or rather getting Gian' Bat- 
 tista to do them for you) whenever we were 
 anywhere in port? I knew your father was 
 dead, and I did n't suppose you wrote so often 
 to Francesco, or Tito, or Paolo, or any other of 
 our fellow-gondoliers.' 
 
 '"Tell me this, then,' I said laughingly; 
 ' is your sweetheart dark or fair ? Mine is 
 as fair as a May day is to a December night. 
 I '11 swear she is the most beautiful biondina 
 in all Italy.'
 
 192 A Venetian Idyl. 
 
 " * Is she so very fair,' asked Matteo, with 
 sudden eagerness — ' is she so very fair ? I '11 
 lay you a day's wage, cam'rado mio, that she is 
 not the equal of the girl I love ! Come, tell 
 me her name, and it may be that some friend 
 here knows the girls, and so can decide as to 
 which is the fairer.' 
 
 " ' No, no,' I said, ' I asked you first. Tell 
 me the name of your sweetheart, and I '11 tell 
 you mine.' 
 
 " ' Not so ; but if you like, we '11 toss for it. 
 " Heads " to tell first.' 
 
 " ' Agreed ! ' 
 
 " Whereupon Matteo flung six soldi into the 
 air, four of which came down 'heads' upward, 
 so that it was I who had to disclose my secret 
 first. 
 
 " * Altro ! she is called La Biondina, because 
 she is so fair and beautiful, by those who know 
 her well; Zenala Bionda, by others ; and Signo- 
 rina Zena Agujani by strangers and customers 
 who call at her grandfather's shop in the Riva 
 degli Schiavoni. Ecco, la mia biondina ! ' 
 
 " Just then I heard the officer of the watch 
 call out something sharply to some one for- 
 ward, and turned my head to listen ; but,
 
 A Venetian Idyl. 193 
 
 hearing no sound of any kind from Matteo, I 
 looked^ round again, and was startled to see his 
 face ghastly pale and his dead-black eyes 
 glittering with what looked to me like un- 
 controlled hate. 
 
 " ' What 's the matter, Matteo,' I cried, ' and 
 why do you look at me thus ? ' 
 
 " He did not reply at first, but kept his 
 eyes fixed on me with the same strange ex- 
 pression ; then he stammered something about 
 not feeling well, and that I was to take no 
 notice of it. He said it was a return of the 
 same complaint he used to suffer from occa- 
 sionally after being out most of the night 
 with the fishing-boats, a kind of cramp in the 
 stomach. This fully accounted to me for 
 his ghastly look, though at first I had been 
 startled into vague alarm. 
 
 " ' Are you better now ? ' I asked ; but be- 
 fore he answered he stepped closer into the 
 dark shadow that stretched between us and 
 the foremast, just as though he were anxious 
 that I should not again see his face. If this 
 was his intention he succeeded ; for all I 
 discerned was the dim outline of his figure. It 
 was one of those moonless nights when even 
 
 13
 
 194 A Venetian Idyl. 
 
 the light of the stars seems only sufificient to 
 let us know how dark it is. 
 
 '"Yes, yes; I am all right now. And have 
 you been engaged to Zena Agujani all this 
 time? Has she promised to marry you, or 
 is there simply an understanding between 
 you? Does old Salvatore know how matters 
 stand ? ' 
 
 " ' One question at a time, my friend,' I 
 said ; ' besides, you forget you have not yet 
 fulfilled your part of the agreement. What 
 is the name of your bella biondaj is she of 
 Venice or Chioggia ? ' 
 
 " ' Oh, I was only joking, Luigi. I was in 
 love for a time with a golden-haired girl from 
 Trieste, who lived with her uncle at Fusina; 
 but she had too fiery a tongue for me, and the 
 last I heard of her was that she had married 
 Piero Carelli, the lemon merchant at Mestre. 
 I don't believe in blondes, amico mio ; I never 
 yet heard of one who was true to both lover 
 and husband. Only a dark girl is always true 
 to her lover.' 
 
 " ' And is that so, Matteo ? or is your opinion 
 not based on the simple fact of your sweet- 
 heart's having preferred good-tempered Piero
 
 A Venetian Idyl. 195 
 
 Carelli to a somewhat surly Chioggian fisher- 
 
 man 
 
 -»' 
 
 " I had been fooHshly provoked at Matteo's 
 remarks about blondes in general, and I fully 
 expected my answering sneer would have roused 
 his quick and passionate temper. To my sur- 
 prise he replied with unexpected eagerness, — 
 
 " ' Come, Luigi caro, don't let us quarrel 
 about a trifle. Here's all health and long 
 life and prosperity to you and your Zena ! ' 
 
 " ' You must surely know her by sight,' I 
 said to Matteo ; ' for there 's hardly a gondo- 
 lier on the Riva who would n't know whom 
 you meant by La Biotidina.^ 
 
 "He did n't reply for a moment or two, and 
 when he spoke it was in a somewhat strained 
 voice, — 
 
 *' ' Yes, I know whom you mean. She is 
 beautiful, without doubt. But I 'm not on 
 speaking terms with old Salvatore, for some 
 five or six years ago he used language in 
 public about my father for which I have 
 never forgiven him. He may thank his grey 
 hairs he has n't had the feel of a knife between 
 his ribs before this.' 
 
 " 1 knew this was dangerous ground, so I
 
 196 A Venetian Idyl. 
 
 began at once to talk about the delights of 
 getting away from shipboard, and of being free 
 once more. Before long our watch was up, 
 and I, at any rate, was not long in falling fast 
 asleep. For some reason I can't explain, my 
 first thought, when I awoke, was connected 
 with what Matteo had been saying about 
 blondes. I laughed at myself for my folly ; but 
 do what I would, a vague uneasiness took pos- 
 session of me, and I began to think that it was, 
 after all, very strange I had not heard from 
 Zena for so long. I remembered now, what I 
 had merely chuckled at in my sleeve before: 
 that, in the last letter I had received, my sweet- 
 heart had mentioned her grandfather's having 
 urged her to marry Filippo Faccioli, a middle- 
 aged and very well-to-do ship-chandler, who 
 had a flourishing business on the Fondamenta 
 del Ponte Luongo, in the Giudecca, and who had 
 offered, in a conversation with old Salvatore, 
 to take her with or without dowry. The mo- 
 ment this recollection flashed across my mind I 
 indignantly put it aside again, as I knew Zena 
 too well to suppose she would marry any man, 
 however rich, while she loved another. Never- 
 theless, I felt uncomfortable all day, all the
 
 A Venetian Idyl. 197 
 
 more as the expected letter had not arrived. 
 In tWe afternoon I was down below, mending 
 some clothes, and did not notice a government 
 cutter come alongside ; but in less than half an 
 hour thereafter I heard the word 'letters' 
 spoken by some one, and you may imagine I 
 bundled up quick enough. Most of the letters 
 had been distributed by the time I got to the 
 quarter-deck ; but at last my name was called 
 out, and I stepped forward and received my 
 precious note, retiring with it at once to the 
 quietest spot I could find. 
 
 "I had not till then realised how much 
 Matteo's malicious sneer had affected me. 
 The reaction of a glad certainty was so great 
 that the tears were in my eyes, and my hands 
 trembled as I opened the envelope. At this 
 moment I heard Matteo's voice behind me 
 whispering, ' Well, good news, I hope ? ' and 
 on the impulse I handed the note to him, beg- 
 ging him to read it out to me, as I couldn't 
 spell through it quick enough for my impa- 
 tience. He took it without a word, and began, 
 • Dear Luigi,' and then abruptly stopped, and 
 seemed to be glancing through the rest of the 
 letter.
 
 198 A Venetian Idyl. 
 
 "'Well,' said I, 'seeing that that letter is 
 addressed to me, I think you might as well 
 read it aloud instead of perusing it from begin- 
 ning to end by yourself.' 
 
 " ' Don't be angry, Luigi caro^ he replied ; 
 ' there is bad news in it, old friend, I am sorry 
 to say.' 
 
 " ' In Heaven's name what is it ? ' I cried out, 
 with sudden pain. ' Is there anything wrong 
 with Zena ? ' 
 
 " ' Do you remember my idle words about 
 blondes last night?' Matteo replied, in a quick 
 low tone; and then, seeing the expression of 
 agony I felt must be in my face, he added, 
 ' See, caro Luigi, a lance-thrust is a painful 
 thing, but it is better than the setting-in of a 
 disease ; be a man, and bear what many an- 
 other has had to bear before you. I '11 read 
 you the girl's note : — 
 
 " ' Dear Luigi, — I know this letter will bring you 
 a great disappointment. I would n't have minded 
 it so much if I thought you had consoled yourself 
 for my absence in any of the ports you have been 
 visiting ; but as you swear in your last letter that you 
 have been true to me all along, I believe you. 
 
 " ' It 's not my fault, Luigi, that a rich neighbour
 
 A Venetian Idyl. 199 
 
 has fallen in love with me, but such is the case, and 
 my grandfather has insisted on my accepting him. 
 He told me that he had lost everything in the world 
 by an unfortunate speculation, and that if not for 
 my own sake, at least for his, I must not refuse this 
 splendid chance. I did n't tell him I expected you 
 home again before long, as this would just have irri- 
 tated him to no good end. And to be quite honest, 
 Luigi, I must tell you that for some time past I have 
 doubted if I were fitted for you, and if we should be 
 happy. I am afraid not, and this gives me more 
 courage in writing to tell you that, before you re- 
 ceive this letter, I shall be married to our rich neigh- 
 bour, whose name I will not give you, in case you 
 should curse him in your anger. 
 
 "'Try to forgive me, dear Luigi, and believe that 
 I am acting'for the best. 
 
 " ' Still your friend, I sign myself for the last time, 
 
 " ' Zena Agujani.' 
 
 "While this letter was being read to me I 
 felt as if the vessel was sinking under my feet, 
 and then as if every drop in my body was surg- 
 ing round my heart or throbbing in my temples. 
 A blind flood of furj' suddenly overcame me, 
 and snatching the letter from Matteo's hands I 
 cursed Zena as a heartless jilt and hypocrite. 
 After that, I rushed away to the foc's'le, where
 
 200 A Venetian Idyl. 
 
 I threw myself upon my back, to spend the most 
 agonising hours I had ever experienced. 
 
 " After what seemed to me weeks of misery I 
 rose, and with trembling hands wrote out in 
 my crabbed letters the following brief note : — 
 
 " ' To Zen A Agujani, — You will never hear from 
 me again. 
 
 " ' LuiGi Tremazzi.' " 
 
 " This I likewise myself addressed to ' La 
 gentilezza signorina Zena Agujani, al'casa del 
 Signor Salvatore Agujani, Riva degli Schi- 
 avoni, 13^, Venezia.' 
 
 " Next morning this letter went on its way ; 
 and as I saw the post-bag handed over the side 
 of the ' Fiamma ' I felt as if all the happiness of 
 my life went with it also. 
 
 " But before I was summoned again on deck 
 for my watch, a sudden suspicion about Matteo 
 flashed across my mind. His conduct was 
 strange the night before, and even during the 
 agony of hearing Zena's letter read, I remem- 
 bered noting that a peculiar expression, almost 
 of mocking triumph, gleamed upon my comrade's 
 face. .Quick as thought I pulled out the letter 
 and slowly spelt it out; but every word from
 
 A Venetian Idyl. 201 
 
 • Dear Luigi ' down to ' Zena Agujani ' was 
 just "as Matteo had read. My suspicion van- 
 ished almost as swiftly as it had arisen, and 
 when I went on deck I was able to disguise 
 the utterance of my misery even from him. 
 Before we turned in again, I told him that of 
 course everything was over between Zena and 
 myself, and that the one request of him I had 
 to make was that he was never to mention her 
 name to me again. 
 
 " ' I promise,' he said ; ' but first let me ask 
 you if you have destroyed her letter. I would 
 if I were you. You 'II never forget her treach- 
 ery as long as you have it with you.' 
 
 "When I told him that I had not and did 
 not mean to destroy the letter, I saw him biting 
 his lips as though repressing some hasty ex- 
 clamation ; but he said no more, then or later. 
 Before coming on deck I had buried the cruel 
 note at the bottom of my box, because, though 
 I would not destroy it, I could not bear to carry 
 it about with me. I slept little during that 
 night, and as the dim morning light began to 
 steal in, I lay with half-closed eyes, drowsily 
 thinking of my ruined hopes and of my acute 
 misery. While thus thinking, my eyes, uncon-
 
 202 A Venetian Idyl. 
 
 sciously to myself, kept watching one of my 
 comrades, who seemed to be looking for his 
 clothes, near where my own were laid. The 
 man suddenly looked up, and instinctively I 
 almost wholly closed my eyes. In a few mo- 
 ments I opened them again, and perceived that 
 the man was Matteo, and that he was feel- 
 ing in the pockets not of his own clothes but 
 of mine. Something in his stealthy movements 
 made me suspicious. After a moment's hesi- 
 tation, I sprang from my bunk and asked him 
 what he was doing with my things. I noticed 
 that his first instinct was to snatch the knife 
 from the belt that lay alongside ; but the next 
 moment he turned and stammered out, — 
 
 " ' What do you mean ? ' adding immediately, 
 ' Oh, I beg your pardon ; I see these are your 
 things ; I thought they were mine ; I wanted to 
 get out a piece of 'baccy I left in one of the 
 pockets last night.' 
 
 " With that he turned away at once ; and 
 though I could say nothing more, it struck me 
 as strange that any one innocent of any under- 
 hand transaction should have been so startled, 
 and should have stammered out so vague ex- 
 cuses with so white a face. Even then it struck
 
 ^ A Venetian Idyl, 203 
 
 me tjjat Matteo, if nothing worse, must surely 
 be a coward. 
 
 " Well, Signori, time went "by, and at last the 
 day came when a lot of us got our official dis- 
 charge, duly signed and attested, and were 
 allowed to get ashore at Spezzia, free men once 
 more, Matteo and myself being among this 
 fortunate band. 
 
 '■^ Ecco ! The great day had come at last; 
 but instead of being overcome with joy, I wan- 
 dered about the little town and along the shores 
 of the bay, sobbing every now and again with 
 my bitter disappointment. I felt half inclined 
 to volunteer to go to sea again, and it was con- 
 siderably past midnight before I decided to 
 return to Venice; but on inquiry I discovered 
 that the night train for Pisa and Florence had 
 gone, and that I should have to wait some 
 hours. Even miserable hours — which the 
 good God keep from you, Signori — pass some- 
 how, and in due time I found myself at Pisa, 
 then at Bologna, and finally in the mail-train 
 for Venice. I heard some one in the carriage 
 saying he wished he could have left Florence 
 the day before, so as to have spent the whole 
 of Corpus Christi with his friends, and by that
 
 204 A Venetian Idyl. 
 
 I knew that this day of miserable return was 
 the great Festa, the same on which, three years 
 ago, I had asked Zena to phght me her troth. 
 Well, Signori, to make a short ending to what 
 I 'm afraid has been overlong a story, I ar- 
 rived once more in Venice, between four and 
 five in the afternoon, on the day of Corpus 
 Christi. A sudden fancy took me when I got 
 out at this station. Instead of going to look 
 out for a room for myself, I left my box at 
 the station, and, having jumped into a gondola, 
 told its owner to row me to the Fondamenta del 
 Ponte Luongo, on the Giudecca. When the 
 gondola slid alongside a deserted-looking 
 Traghetto, I told the man to wait, and then 
 walked slowly along the bank till I came to 
 the shop of Faccioli, the ship-chandler, whom 
 I had never doubted to be the man who had 
 stolen my love away from me. While standing 
 near the house and casting sidelong glances 
 up at its windows, a cripple hobbled up to me 
 and begged for a soldo in the Virgin's name ; 
 but before paying any heed to his request I 
 asked him (though I knew it well) who lived in 
 the house beside us. 
 
 " ' Why, Signor Faccioli, of course, the rich 
 ship-chandler.'
 
 A Venetian Idyl, 205 
 
 " * Ah ! ' I added, ' then I suppose you often 
 see hfm and his signora come in and out ? ' 
 
 " ' You are thinking of the wrong man, signor 
 captain,' repHed the cripple, obsequiously ; ' the 
 excellent Filippo Faccioli has no wife, though 
 report has it that he wanted to marry a golden- 
 haired child, who is grand-daughter to old Sal- 
 vatore Agujani, who is a — ' 
 
 " Without waiting to hear any more I flung 
 a half-dozen soldi to the astonished beggar, 
 and, as soon as I had regained the boat, told 
 the gondolier to take me over at once to 
 the Riva degli Schiavoni. As we shot along 
 the wide lagoon, with the Dogana di Mare 
 on the left and the Isle of St. George on 
 the right, a hundred different thoughts coursed 
 through my mind. If Zena had n't married 
 Signor Faccioli, whom had she married ? or 
 was she married at all ? or was it that death had 
 prevented her from wedding wealthy Filippo? 
 Or had she jilted him even as she had done me .'' 
 And so on, over and over again. 
 
 When I landed near the Piazzetta, I walked 
 straight toward the well-known little shop. Just 
 as I neared it, I met an acquaintance, who told 
 me (after some inquiries about myself which
 
 2o6 A Venetian Idyl. 
 
 I was forced to answer) that he had that mo- 
 ment seen old Agujani on the Piazza listening 
 to the band which was amusing every one till 
 it was dark enough for the fireworks and the 
 water-music to begin. I asked him as calmly 
 as I could if ' La Biondina' was with her grand- 
 father, and he replied he felt sure she was ; ' for 
 you don't catch a pretty girl staying at home 
 on the eve of Corpus Christi.' 
 
 " I left him then, and his assurances having 
 given me courage, I went up right to the door 
 of the old shop. I don't know why I wanted to 
 see it again, but anyway I did so want ; nor do 
 I know why it was I did n't think the door 
 would in all probability be locked, but here 
 again I did n't think anything of the kind. 
 With my heart in my mouth, so to speak, I 
 turned the handle and looked in. Some one 
 looked up and uttered a short cry. It was Zena. 
 
 " The next moment she was in my arms, sob- 
 bing and kissing me by turns, and I doing 
 pretty much the same thing. Before a happy 
 minute was out, however, she sprang back from 
 me, and, with tears still glittering in her eyes, 
 asked me suddenly what I meant by writing 
 that she would never hear from me again.
 
 A Venetian Idyl. 207 
 
 .^ 
 
 " ' Here I 've been sobbing my life away be- 
 cause of your cruel message ! What does it 
 mean, Luigi ? Tell me at once — are you mar- 
 ried — have you promised any other girl ? 
 What is it ? — tell me quick ! ' 
 
 " I stammered out, ' Why, look here, Zena, 
 it 's I that want to know what you mean by 
 writing me such a horrible letter?' 
 
 " ' What letter ? ' she asked in evident sur- 
 prise. 
 
 " ' This one,' I said, as I took it from my 
 pocket and showed it to her, and then slowly 
 read it out from beginning to end. 
 
 " ' And you believe I wrote that ? ' was all 
 she said. 
 
 " In a moment I had her in my arms again 
 and begged her to forgive me ; but she said she 
 would not till this matter was cleared up. So I 
 began and told her all about it ; but just as I 
 was describing how I went, immediately after 
 my arrival in Venice, to look at the house of 
 Signor Faccioli, she cried out, — 
 
 " ' Why, I know who 's played you this cruel 
 trick — it was Matteo Dk Ru ! ' 
 
 " ' What on earth makes you think so ? ' I 
 ^sked, already half convinced.
 
 208 A Venetian Idyl. 
 
 " ' Well, he must have arrived from Spezzia 
 by an earlier train than you did, for this morning 
 he came to see my grandfather and immediately 
 afterwards implored me to give him my troth, 
 swearing that he had loved me for five years 
 past. He begged for my love so passionately 
 that I was a little frightened ; so I put on an 
 appearance of anger, and said scornfully that I 
 would never wed him, even if I were free and 
 he were not the son of Alessandro Dk Ru. 
 Seeing I was in earnest, he suddenly drew him- 
 self up and left the room ; but as he did so, I 
 caught a glimpse of his pale face almost smil- 
 ing, and I heard him muttering, ' Well, I 've 
 had my revenge.' 
 
 " Ecco, Signori ! there 's my story. I need n't 
 tell you much more. 
 
 " We soon made all up between us again, 
 and in less than a month Zena la Bionda and 
 myself were married. Old Salvatore dowered 
 her handsomely, and now, with the profits of my 
 own gondola in addition, we are able to have all 
 ■we want. 
 
 " Eh ! what ? you want to know what about 
 that letter, and what about Matteo ? Well, we
 
 A Venetian Idyl. 209 
 
 took the letter that had caused so much trouble 
 and sdrrow to old Antonio Baruccio, the public 
 scribe. He emphatically denied that it was in 
 his handwriting, and he suddenly convinced us 
 by showing beyond doubt (what I never thought 
 of comparing) that the writing on the envelope 
 and in the letter were decidedly different. We 
 made him a confidant in the affair, and it was 
 he who probably found the true solution when 
 he declared that Matteo must have had the 
 letter ready beforehand, and managed to ex- 
 change it for the true one when I handed him 
 the letter to read. ' It was a very different 
 note that I wrote last from the signorina's dic- 
 tation,' added old Baruccio, with a sly laugh. 
 Thereafter I -sent Matteo a note to his father's 
 house at Chioggia, and in that note I told him 
 I had found out his treachery, and that he had 
 better keep out of my way for some time to 
 come. I added that I had kept the forged let- 
 ter, and intended handing it over to the police. 
 I got no answer to this note ; but a few days 
 later I heard that he had joined ' La Bella 
 Bianca,' a merchant-ship trading between Li- 
 vorno and San Francisco, and that he intended 
 to settle down either in the latter place or in
 
 2IO A Venetian Idyl. 
 
 Melbourne, where, amongst the small Italian 
 colony, he had a well-to-do cousin. Anyway, 
 he disappeared from this neighbourhood, and we 
 have heard or seen nothing of him since. 
 
 " We are very happy, Signori, and if our little 
 baby-girl (whom we named Gioja, because of 
 the joy she brought us) grows up to be as fair a 
 woman as her mother, I hope when her time 
 comes that no ' Matteo ' will come between her 
 and her lover, to make their waiting perilous 
 and hard to bear." 
 
 Thus Luigi finished his Venetian Idyl. We 
 waited an hour or two longer under the cool 
 and shadowy acacias of San Nicoletto ; and 
 then within about half an hour of sunset we left 
 the Lido and sailed homeward past the desolate 
 Jewish cemeterj', where the dishonoured grave- 
 stones lie broken and half sunk amongst the 
 nettles and scarlet poppies that grow upon the 
 barren sand. As the prow of the gondola 
 pointed straight between the Isola di San 
 Giorgio and the Punta Motta, we saw Venice 
 as she is not often seen, except in the sultry 
 heats of late July or August. To the west, 
 between Fusina and Mestre, the sky was of a
 
 ^ A Venetian Idyl. 21 1 
 
 black-purple, with a long broad band of orange- 
 gold running through it. Nearer, overhead, 
 flakes and curdled drifts of fiery crimson clouds 
 spread out their fringed edges like red sea-weed 
 torn and serrated by a furious tide ; and over 
 and beyond Venice itself great masses of cloud, 
 tinged with lurid purplish russet and vivid 
 bronze, slowly mounted upward and inter- 
 mingled. Erelong we lost sight of this stormy 
 splendour, for only a small portion of the sky 
 was visible before us as we shot past the noble 
 pile of the Salute. 
 
 We had hardly drawn up at our Traghetto, 
 before a vivid flash of lightning darted in a 
 long level line right from San Stefano past 
 La Fenice, 'followed immediately by a wild 
 crash of thunder. How the rain came down 
 thereafter ! It was as though a flood were whirl- 
 ing earthwards in deluging spray. Sitting com- 
 fortably drinking our coffee, we felt glad that 
 our friend Luigi had a cosy home to take shel- 
 ter in, and, to tell the truth, we rather envied 
 him the greeting he was sure to get from Zena 
 la Bionda and the crowing welcome of the little 
 Gioja.
 
 THE GRAVEN IMAGE.
 
 The Graven Image. 
 
 Being the Narrative of James Trenairy. 
 
 There is an old house in Kensington which 
 is to me, dweller in the remotest part of Corn- 
 wall though I am, the most solitary place I 
 know. It is not far from the eastern boundary 
 of Holland Park, yet, I am sure, few even of 
 the residents on Campden Hill, or other Ken- 
 singtonians, are aware of its existence. 
 
 The house is a small square building, set far 
 back in a walled garden. The approach is by 
 an unattractive byway, which has all the ap- 
 pearance oi-SLCid-de-sac, though there is really a 
 narrow outlet which leads ultimately to High 
 Street. 
 
 '' The Mulberries," as it is called, was, some 
 years ago, occupied by my father's old friend, 
 John Tregarthen : as it was, in years back, by 
 at least three successive John Tregarthens be-
 
 2i6 The Graven Image. 
 
 fore him. The Tregarthens have always been 
 a solitary and even somewhat eccentric race, 
 but where the last representative of the family 
 differed from his kin was in his dislike to his 
 native Cornwall. He was the most confirmed 
 Londoner I have ever known, though by this I 
 mean only that he never left the metropolis, 
 and seldom roamed beyond Kensington. So 
 far as social intercourse was concerned, how- 
 ever, he might as well have lived in the light- 
 house of Tre Pol, or at his own desolate 
 ancestral home, Garvel Manor. 
 
 -» 
 
 In the autumn of last year, on my way to 
 spend the winter in Italy, I stayed for a few 
 days in London. One afternoon I was in the 
 Campden Hill neighbourhood, vainly in search 
 of the studio of an artist friend, who seemed to 
 me to have done his utmost to make his abode 
 indiscoverable. It was while on this quest that 
 I meandered through small streets and byways, 
 and found myself at last at an unkempt gate- 
 way, whereon I could just decipher the words, 
 " The Mulberries." 
 
 I confess that I had forgotten the very exist- 
 ence of Mr. John Tregarthen. Several years
 
 The Graven Image. 217 
 
 had passed since my father's death, and I had 
 nevrf had occasion to communicate with the 
 owner of "The Mulberries." Now, however, 
 that I was there, I was prompted by various 
 feeUngs, but particularly by that clannish senti- 
 ment which distinguishes the true Cornishman, 
 to seek Mr. Tregarthen himself. 
 
 To avoid needless details, I may say at once, 
 and succinctly, that I found Mr. Tregarthen 
 within ; that he gave me a cordial welcome, — 
 cordial, that is, for a man of so austere a life 
 and so sombre a cast of mind; and that I was 
 persuaded to remove my impedimenta from my 
 Bloomsbury hotel, and to spend my two remain- 
 ing spare nights at " The Mulberries." 
 
 When, a- few hours later, I drove up to the 
 house and rang the gate-bell, I feared that my 
 host had forgotten our appointment and gone 
 off on some errand or walk. Time after time I 
 rang, but without any result; and as a dull 
 November rain was drip-dripping from the few 
 discoloured leaves still clinging to the chestnuts 
 and elms, my position was not an agreeable 
 one. 
 
 At last, however, Mr. Tregarthen came slowly 
 along the garden path and opened the door to
 
 2i8 The Graven Image. 
 
 me. In the misty gloom, unrelieved by even a 
 flickering gas-jet, I could not discern his fea- 
 tures ; but I fancied that he spoke constrainedly, 
 and, indeed, as if he had already repented of 
 his pressing invitation. 
 
 True, when once we were housed from the rain 
 and chill, and the outer world was, as it were, 
 locked away for the night, he became more 
 genial, and even expressed heartily his pleasure 
 at seeing me there as his guest. None the less, 
 so gloomy was the lonely, silent house, so 
 cheerless the aspect of the room where we sat, 
 notwithstanding the bright flame of a wood fire 
 and the yellow glow of a large reading-lamp, 
 that I could not but regret the cheerful, if com- 
 monplace comforts of my hotel, the opulence of 
 light and sound, the pleasant intimacy of famil- 
 iar things enjoyed in common. 
 
 Still, I enjoyed my evening. We had a very 
 simple dinner, for Mr. Tregarthen's one servant, 
 an elderly Cornishwoman, was no vagrant from 
 the culinary straight path to which she had 
 been accustomed in her youth ; but the wine 
 was exceptionally good. My host talked well 
 and intelligently, and, recluse though he was, I 
 could see that he took at least a casual interest
 
 The Graven Image. 219 
 
 in the various matters of international policy 
 whiclywere at that time occupying so much 
 attention in the press. 
 
 After dinner we adjourned to a small room, 
 which he told me was his sanctum. There we 
 had coffee, and sat for a long time in silence, 
 watching the play of the firelight along the 
 dark bookcases which lined the room, and lis- 
 tening to the dreary intermittent cry of the 
 autumnal wind. Mr. Tregarthen had either 
 forgotten, or had intentionally omitted, the 
 lighting of his lamp. Though in ordinary cir- 
 cumstances, nothing delights me more than to 
 sit and dream by the fireside in a dark room, 
 I admit that on this occasion I should have 
 preferred the serene company of a lamp, or 
 even the unwavering effrontery of a gas jet. 
 Again, I am a smoker, though indifferent to 
 the pipe, and I could not but yearn for that 
 postprandial luxury to which I had grown so 
 accustomed. No cigar was offered, however, 
 and I was quick to discover proofs that tobacco 
 in any form was not to be found at " The 
 Mulberries." 
 
 After a long silence, following some casual 
 chit-chat about the places in Italy where I hoped
 
 220 The Graven Image. 
 
 to sojourn, my host suddenly made a remark 
 that surprised me, wholly inconsequent as it 
 seemed. 
 
 " You never knew him, did you ? " 
 
 Again I noticed that strange constraint of 
 voice, as if the mouth spoke while the mind 
 was otherwise preoccupied. 
 
 " Him . . . whom ? " 
 
 " My brother Richard." 
 
 " No, never. I heard — " 
 
 "What have you heard?" broke in Mr. 
 Tregarthen, at once so imperiously and so 
 sharply, and with so keen an accompanying 
 glance the while he stooped in order to scruti- 
 nise me more fully in the upswing of the flame, 
 that I realised his constraint was due to no mere 
 dreamy indolence of mind. 
 
 " Oh, merely that he was always a wanderer, 
 and that he came here at last broken in health, 
 and died of some long-standing but mysterious 
 trouble." 
 
 " Ah ! " ejaculated my companion, and said 
 no more. I did not care to broach the subject 
 again, for I knew that it was one which could 
 not be welcome. Indeed, I had heard more 
 than I was willing to admit to Mr. Tregarthen,
 
 The Graven Image. 221 
 
 _>* 
 though I knew not how much was mere rumour. 
 I remembered, however, that my father, a man 
 as exact in the spirit of his statements as pre- 
 cise in the expression of them, had told me of 
 some tragic misunderstanding having long sep- 
 arated John and Richard Tregarthen, and that 
 there was something very strange in the return 
 of the younger to his brother's house, whence 
 he had departed years before with a curse upon 
 him heavy as woe and unforgettable as death. 
 Moreover, I recollected some vague particulars 
 concerning a beautiful girl, one Catherine Tre- 
 gaskis, belonging to an old family neighbouring 
 our own, whom, as I understood, both men had 
 loved, and who, in the manner of women, was 
 a cause of infinite disturbance to both. 
 
 I was about to rise at last, for a fret of 
 impatience was on me. The dull sound of the 
 wind had grown to a moaning sough, that, in 
 my then mood, could be hearkened with equa- 
 nimity only in affluence of light and comfort. I 
 thought that if I went to the bookcase near the 
 fire my host would suggest the lighting of the 
 lamp ; but before I stirred, he broke the silence 
 once more. 
 
 " We have scarce spoken of our own parts
 
 222 The Graven Image. 
 
 yet. I wish to know something about our 
 neighbours of old. Tell me, who lives now at 
 Malfont? Is James Tregaskis still alive and 
 well.?" 
 
 *' Yes," I replied, " Mr. Tregaskis is still 
 alive, though he lives in as recluse a fashion 
 as you do. His wife died three years ago. 
 Childless and wifeless, the old man is very 
 lonely. He has never been himself since — 
 since — " 
 
 Here I stopped, embarrassed ; but Mr. Tre- 
 garthen quietly finished my sentence, — 
 
 *' Since the death of his daughter Catherine, 
 you were going to say ? " 
 
 I bowed slightly in affirmation. 
 
 "Will you tell me the actual wording of the 
 inscription on the memorial tablet which he has 
 raised in the family burial-ground behind the 
 little private chapel on Malfont Heath?" 
 
 "Well — to say the truth, I don't know — 
 that is to say, I have forgotten," I muttered, 
 confusedly, reluctant as I was to communicate 
 anything on a subject fraught with so much 
 that would be painful. 
 
 " Does it run thus? " went on Mr. Tregarthen, 
 quietly, though with a suggestion of irony in
 
 The Graven Image. 223 
 
 his voice. " Does it run thus, for I am sure 
 you cen at least correct me if I am wrong? 
 First, the date of the year ; and then — 
 
 " 'To THE Memory 
 of 
 Edward Tregaskis, aged 29 : Slain in war. 
 Olivia Tregaskis, aged 26 : Drowned at sea. 
 Catherine Tregaskis, aged 25 : Not yet avenged.' 
 
 Tell me, am I right ? " 
 
 I admitted that he was, and even ventured 
 to add that in our neighbourhood people thought 
 trouble had perverted James Tregaskis' judg- 
 ment. 
 
 " And, of course," I went on, " when he lost 
 his youngest and best-loved child, the third 
 terrible bereavement in a single year, it is no 
 wonder that he imagined vain things, and 
 turned away from those who would have won 
 him to a more generous, if not a more resigned, 
 view." 
 
 Mr. Tregarthen looked at me curiously, and 
 I fancied that for a moment a sarcastic smile 
 hovered across his face. 
 
 He said no more, however. After a brief 
 interval he rose abruptly, lighted the lamp, and
 
 224 The Graven Image. 
 
 drew my attention to some rare books on 
 Etrurian remains which he thought would in- 
 terest me, as I was on my way to Volterra and 
 other dead cities and towns of the Etruscan 
 region. 
 
 I am not accustomed to late hours, and I 
 suppose that I showed the weariness I felt. At 
 any rate, when my host asked me if I was 
 inclined to go to my room, I assented gladly. 
 
 Yet, when I was alone, my sense of sleep 
 was no longer a pleasant languor. The room 
 was a long oak-panelled chamber, both in height 
 and appearance quite unlike what one would 
 expect from an outside view of " The Mulber- 
 ries.*' The bed, an old-fashioned four poster 
 with heavy hangings, stood with its back to the 
 same wall in which was the door; beyond it, on 
 the right, was a fireplace, in which one or two 
 logs sullenly smouldered. For the rest, there was 
 nothing but a few stiff chairs set along the dark 
 panelled walls, and a great gaunt badly-carved 
 escritoire and bookcase of bog-oak. 
 
 I do not like gloomy rooms, and so it was 
 natural that I should again think with regret of 
 my comfortable lodging at the hotel, where, for 
 old associations' sake, I always put up when I
 
 The Graven Image. 225 
 
 go to London. But I had the good sense to 
 undres< and go to bed, hopeful of sleep. 
 
 Whether it was the singular silence within, 
 or the moaning voice of the wind without, with 
 a swift slash of rain ever and again upon the 
 panes, or the coffee I had drunk, or I know not 
 what, but sleep I could not. The longer I lay 
 the more restless I became, and at last I thought 
 I would rise and see if there were any readable 
 volumes in the oak bookcase. 
 
 There were not, and I turned discontentedly 
 to the fire, which I had replenished before I 
 went to bed. I leaned on the mantelpiece for 
 some time, looking into the flickering tongues 
 and jets of red and yellow flame beneath, when 
 I chanced at last to stand back and look up. 
 
 For the first time I noticed that what seemed 
 a large bronze bas-relief was deeply set in the 
 wall. I know not why I had not noticed it 
 before ; doubtless because the fire was low and 
 the shadow deep, while I had not moved the 
 candle away from the small book-table near the 
 door where I had placed it on entrance. 
 
 I was glad of anything to distract me. So I lit 
 my candle, and held it so that I could scrutinise 
 the ornament, as it appeared to be. I saw at once 
 
 15
 
 226 The Graven Image. 
 
 that it was something out of the common. It 
 seemed to be a sheet of bronze or copper, along 
 the sides and at the base and summit of which 
 were strange and perplexing arabesques and 
 other designs, most notably what I presumed to 
 be flaming swords, somewhat as represented by 
 Leonardo da Vinci. 
 
 But in the centre was a head, life-size, which 
 so far as I could tell was moulded in wax, hard- 
 ened and tinted. 
 
 I did not apprehend these and other details 
 till later, for my first feeling was one of startled 
 curiosity, my second of something akin to fear. 
 
 The face was that of a woman ; no doubt, of 
 a beautiful woman, though the expression was 
 so evil, or, rather, I should say, so forbidding, 
 that I was blind to the native loveliness of the 
 features. 
 
 What amazed me was the extraordinary life- 
 likeness. The face before me seemed almost as 
 though it were alive. The clustering black hair, 
 drawn back from the high pale brows, appeared 
 to droop with its own weight; the compressed 
 mouth, the distended nostrils, the intent star- 
 ing gaze, simulated a painful and distressing 
 actuality.
 
 The Graven Image. 227 
 
 For some time I was fascinated by this 
 Strang^ portrait or imaginative study. I re- 
 garded it with something of the same blended 
 curiosity and repugnance with which most of us 
 look at some rare and terrible reptile. No, I 
 felt sure, that woman lived once ; through those 
 sombre eyes came fire of passionate love or 
 passionate hate; from those delicately-curved 
 lips issued words fanged with scorn or sweet 
 with perilous seduction. 
 
 At last I scrutinised the base. There, wrought 
 in deep, strong lines, I read : 
 
 "The Graven Image:" 
 
 with below it the words, 
 
 " Lo, I made unto myself a graven image., that 
 unto the end of my days the eyes of the body 
 should likewise know no peace. ''^ 
 
 The inscription was mysterious, — nay, I ad- 
 mit that to me it had a terrifying suggestiveness. 
 
 I could look no more. Had I not been 
 ashamed of mv weakness, I should have dressed 
 and gone down to the sitting-room. Deter- 
 mined, however, not to yield to my nervous 
 disquiet, I went back to my bed. It was with
 
 228 The Graven Image. 
 
 a sense of relief that I felt my weariness grow- 
 ing upon me, and the stealthy tide of sleep draw 
 nearer and nearer. 
 
 When I awoke, I know not how much later, 
 it was with that abrupt sickening sensation 
 which is indescribable, but is familiar to any 
 one who has been aroused by the unheard but 
 subtly apprehended entrance of another person 
 into the room. 
 
 I lay for a few moments in a cold perspira- 
 tion, trembling the while as though in terror. 
 Then I opened my eyes. 
 
 I did not need to raise myself. The fire was 
 burning dimly, but I could clearly see a woman 
 standing beside it, looking fixedly into its em- 
 bers. So much of her face as was turned 
 towards me was in deep shadow. She was tall, 
 and of a fine grace of figure, and though simply 
 dressed in a long gown of a soft gray material, I 
 imagined her to be of good birth and breeding. 
 
 I know not how it was that for that brief 
 while fear left me, and that I could lie and 
 speculate thus quietly. I perceived, of course, 
 that my visitor was not Mr. Tregarthen's old 
 servant, but it occurred to me that she might 
 be an inmate of the house. For all I knew to
 
 JThe Graven Image. 229 
 
 the contrary, Mr. Tregarthen might be married ; 
 and, if so, this might be his wife or daughter 
 come to my room unknowing me to be there, or, 
 mayhap, as a victim to somnambuHsm. 
 
 But when suddenly a flame spurted upward 
 from the heart of the fire, almost simultane- 
 ously with the sound of an approaching step 
 along the passage, and the woman turned her 
 face towards the door, so that I saw it plainly, 
 my heart seemed as though it would burst. 
 
 For with a sense of unutterable fear I recog- 
 nised in a flash the beautiful but terrifying face 
 of the "Graven Image." 
 
 Startling as was the discovery, I had no time 
 for thought, even if I had not lain as though 
 paralysed. 
 
 The vindictive fury and scorn that shone in 
 her eyes affrighted me. If it was Mr. Tre- 
 garthen who had come along the passage and 
 was now knocking slowly at the door, his recep- 
 tion promised to be a dramatic one. 
 
 Whether the door opened or not, I cannot 
 say. All I know is that I saw the woman draw 
 back, as a tall dark man, whose features were 
 quite unknown to me, slowly advanced. 
 
 Neither seemed to be aware of my presence; 
 certainly they took no note of it.
 
 230 The Graven Image. 
 
 I wondered he did not quail under that fierce, 
 that inexpressibly malignant scorn. 
 
 As it was, he stopped abruptly. What 
 tragedy of love turned to hate was this ! In the 
 dark scowl of the man I interpreted an insatiable 
 fury. Yet I shuddered less at this speechless 
 anger than at the lacerating contempt of her 
 unwavering stare. 
 
 I looked to see the man spring at her, to do 
 her some violence. But, leaning against the 
 fireplace, he stood watching her intently. On 
 her face was such a shadow of tempest as made 
 me sick with a new and poignant terror. 
 
 I saw his lips move ; the scowl on his face 
 deepened. He drew himself erect, and as he 
 did so I thought I heard him utter a name 
 mockingly. 
 
 She did not answer, did not move. Outside I 
 heard the wind rise and fall, monotonously cry- 
 ing in a thin shrewd wail. The patter of the 
 rain had ceased, but so intense was the stillness 
 that the drip, drip, from the soaked leaves upon 
 the sodden ground was painfully audible. 
 
 Then so swiftly that I scarce saw her move, 
 she sprang forward. There was a flash, a hoarse 
 cry, and the man staggered back, with the blood
 
 The Graven Image. 231 
 
 -^ 
 
 from a knife-thrust spurting from his left 
 shouldfer. 
 
 She stood motionless. He, staring at her, 
 panted hard as he slowly stanched the blood. 
 
 Suddenly she began to scream. I thought 
 my blood would freeze with horror at the 
 awful sound ; scream after scream of deadly 
 terror, and yet neither she nor the man 
 moved. 
 
 But, looking at him, I saw that murder 
 flamed in his eyes. Before I could spring from 
 the bed to interfere, he leaped upon her like a 
 beast of prey. In a moment both were on the 
 floor, and I could see that he was strangling her 
 to the death. 
 
 With a savage exclamation I dashed to the 
 spot, but tripped, and the next moment lay un- 
 conscious, for my forehead fell against a comer 
 of the oaken bookcase. 
 
 When I woke, or came out of my stupor, I 
 was still on the floor where I had fallen, though 
 the sunlight streamed in at the window. There 
 was no sign of the horrible tragedy that had 
 been enacted before me. With a shudder I 
 looked at the " Graven Image," and recognised,
 
 232 The Graven Image. 
 
 with a new and horrible distinctness, the appall- 
 ing verisimilitude of the waxen face. 
 
 It was impossible to remain in the room. I 
 dressed hurriedly, and made my way downstairs. 
 The front door was open, and I passed into the 
 garden. The fresh air, damp as it was, was 
 cool and soothing to my throbbing nerves, and, 
 before long, I had almost persuaded myself that 
 I had been victim to nightmare. 
 
 Suddenly I caught sight of Mr. Tregarthen. 
 He was sitting in his sanctum, and beckoned to 
 me. From the appearance of the room, and, 
 indeed, of himself, I guessed that he had been 
 there all night. 
 
 " Well ? " he said, quietly : his sole greeting. 
 
 I thought it best to be frank. 
 
 " I have had a bad night," I began. 
 
 " I know it. I heard you cry out." 
 
 I looked at him amazedly and in some fear. 
 Abruptly, I demanded, in an imperative tone : 
 
 " Who was the original of the ' Graven 
 Image '? " 
 
 " Catherine Tregaskis, my betrothed wife." 
 
 I was silent, intensely surprised as I was, 
 
 Mr. Tregarthen leaned forward and handed 
 to me a vignette portrait.
 
 The Graven Image. 233 
 
 It was that of a handsome, dark-haired, dark- 
 eyedf black-bearded man. I recognised the face 
 at once, with a thrill of horrified remembrance. 
 
 " Who — who — is this man, Mr. Tregar- 
 
 then?" 
 
 " My dead brother, Richard." 
 
 I write this a year after my visit to " The 
 Mulberries," which I left that morning. Mr. 
 Tregarthen is dead. " The Mulberries," under 
 another name, is still untenanted ; but I should 
 be poor and forlorn indeed before I accepted 
 again the shelter of that roof.
 
 THE LADY IN HOSEA.
 
 The Lady in Hosea. 
 
 " And she shall follow after her lover, but she shall not 
 overtake him ; and she shall seek him, but shall not find 
 him ; then shall she say, I will go and return to my first 
 husband; for then was it better with me than now 1 — " 
 Hosea. 
 
 When John Dorian, with the help of the poker 
 and the flaming coals, had demolished Dream 
 No. LI 1 1, and last, he lit a cigar. Then he lay 
 back in a deep, padded armchair, in order to 
 enjoy to the full his evening paper. 
 
 The effort had been exhausting. He was a 
 sentimentalist, and had been wont to mark his 
 love-letters, after they had reached the tenth, 
 as "Dream I.," "Dream II.," and so on. 
 True, he had not gone through the whole fifty-
 
 238 The Lady in Hosea. 
 
 three that night. The little india-rubber bands 
 which had been round Claire's letters lay beside 
 the ash-tray on the mantelpiece, like an angler's 
 heap of worms, discarded because of their pre- 
 mature death ; but the pile could not have con- 
 sisted of more than about a score and a half. 
 As a matter of fact, Dreams XV. to XXI. had 
 escaped the ruthless poker. Covered with 
 kisses, warmed with sighs, they had been cre- 
 mated in the late days of June. They were 
 — I should say had been — animated by aspi- 
 rations of soul-union, assurances concerning 
 Immortality, and perfectly lucid and frank ex- 
 positions of a vivid passion. In a word, they 
 were so explicit that John Dorian had found 
 himself forced to submit them to a double com- 
 mittal : first, to his heart (as he designated his 
 memory), and then to the fire. Again, Dreams 
 XLV. to LI. had, though autumnal, endured a 
 like fate. True, they were without any remarks 
 about Immortality ; on the other hand, the union 
 of mind, soul, and body, particularly the third 
 partner in the trinity, was emphasised in them 
 with ardour, eloquence, and a pleading yearning. 
 By an accident, five missives from another 
 lady had been tied up with those from Claire.
 
 The Lady in Hosea. 239 
 
 These had been discovered one Sunday, when, 
 unwelK with a chill, and brooding upon the 
 immortality of a great passion, Dorian had per- 
 mitted himself the dangerous luxury of a re- 
 perusal of his love-letters. Only skilled chefs 
 should attempt pleasant surprises in the way of 
 richauffis. 
 
 In the peaceful quiet of that Sabbath after- 
 noon thirteen epistles had been done to death : 
 seven, too passionate, from Claire ; five, too 
 financially exigent, from Mademoiselle Phal^ne. 
 
 Thus it was that on this October night John 
 Dorian, on demolishing the discarded raiment 
 of his Dreams, confided to the appreciative 
 secrecy of his fire no more than four-and-thirty 
 burning missives. The epithet is hyperbolical ; 
 but there is no doubt about its actuality in the 
 past participle. 
 
 A few weeks ago " Dream LI 1 1." would have 
 meant to him no more than the fifty-third kiss 
 he had received from Claire. It would have 
 been simply a delightful link between Fifty-two 
 and Fifty-four. But when LI 1 1, is endorsed 
 " and last," the number stands forth from its 
 fellow-figures, the elect of Fate. 
 
 An effort? Yes; it had been an effort to
 
 240 The Lady in Hosea. 
 
 read through, latterly to glance at, those thirty- 
 four remnants of an undying passion. 
 
 Dorian had two small ivory figures by the 
 sculptor Dampt. They ornamented his twin 
 bookcases by the fire-side ; above the shelves to 
 the right, " Aspiration," with upraised arms and 
 trance-wrought face ; above the shelves to the 
 left, " Consummation,'' supine, satisfied, with 
 wearied eyes. 
 
 He looked at the little group to the left, while 
 Dream LI 1 1, emitted the unpleasant odour of 
 waste paper aflame. He smiled unwittingly ; 
 then, wittingly, sighed. Then he lit his cigar, 
 seated himself, and leisurely unfolded the news- 
 sheet. 
 
 The " leader " interested him. Halfway down 
 the column on the ensuing page, " The Casket 
 of Pandora," he read : " The Lover is ever a 
 sophisticator." 
 
 "True," he muttered indolently, while he 
 stretched his feet nearer the fire-glow ; " how 
 true ! one sophisticates oneself with dreams of 
 impossible virtues and charms." 
 
 " Sophisticator ! " he resumed. " Let me see 
 what the dictionary has to say, if there is such 
 a word."
 
 TJ>e Lady in Hosea. 241 
 
 With_^ slight effort, he obtained the volume 
 he sought from the swing-bookcase near his 
 chair. 
 
 " Ah ! here we are : sophistical^ sophisticate, 
 sjphisticator. H'm. . . . ^ Sophisticator:' '■onQ 
 who adulterates, debases, or injures the purity 
 of anything.' " 
 
 The dictionary must have become limp from 
 long disuse, for in a few seconds it slipped to 
 the floor, and lay there, unheeded, in a dead 
 faint. 
 
 A hunted look had come into John Dorian's 
 eyes, but it passed. For some time he stared 
 blankly into the fire. Then, suddenly, he re- 
 sumed his perusal of the " Quadrant Gazette." 
 
 With a yawn, he skipped the " Casket of 
 Pandora" column. "These paragraphists," he 
 muttered, " either talk rubbish, or bore one with 
 their rehashed hash." 
 
 There was wind without. It came down the 
 street, at times, blowing a loud clarion : a minute 
 later it would swirl away again, with a rattling 
 fanfaronade among the chimney-tops. Now 
 and again a flurry of rain slapped the window- 
 panes. 
 
 It was certainly comfortable by the fire. 
 16
 
 242 The Lady in Hosea. 
 
 Possibly it was sheer tampering with luxury 
 that made Dorian rise and wander restlessly 
 about the room. 
 
 The rumble of the Piccadilly omnibuses out- 
 side emphasised the cheerful quietude of the 
 room. 
 
 Its solitary occupant wavered between a cabi- 
 net in one corner filled with blue china, and, 
 in another corner, an escritoire. This lured 
 him. He seated himself in front of it, opened a 
 drawer, and, taking out and unfolding a diary, 
 glanced at page after page. An entry in Au- 
 gust arrested his attention. 
 
 " August 21. — Still here at Llandynys. Did not leave 
 on Monday, as Cecil T. was summoned to Chester on some 
 magisterial matter. He expected to be back that night, 
 but wired that he would be detained two or three days, and 
 hoped I would prolong my stay. I did. Claire brought 
 me the message. Her eyes were lovely. She knew I 
 would stop. What days these have been ! Never, never 
 shall I forget them ! What a deep joy it is that she and I 
 are so absolutely one with the other! To think of it; she 
 Claire; I, John Dorian, at one forever and ever I There 
 can be no end to a passion such as ours. It is the nobler, 
 the stronger, because of our great renunciation. Neither 
 she nor I will leave Cecil Trevor a mourner. Indeed, it 
 would be cruel if, having by undreamed-of hazard taken
 
 The Lady in Hosea. 243 
 
 royal possession of his wife's heart, I should also break up 
 his home -^y removing her to another clime as my wife. 
 No, we will be strong. Love has been compassionate, and 
 given each unto each. What need to go to the last extrem- 
 ity — a bitter one at the best. No ; there will be no elope- 
 „ment. But I am hers and she is mine, in life and death. 
 Ah, Death .' No ! no ! no death for us ! For all eternity 
 our love shall endure. She and I, I and she, together for- 
 ever and ever." 
 
 Dorian closed the diary with a snap. Rising, 
 he replaced the book, and then walked slowly 
 to the window. He drew back the blind. The 
 cloud-rack was broken for an interval ; over- 
 head, like dark, frozen water between ice-banks, 
 he could see a width of sky. A planet, a score 
 or more of stars, glistered icily. 
 
 " For all eternity," he muttered ; " I and she, 
 she and I, forever and ever." For a few min- 
 utes he was silent, motionless, profoundly intent. 
 Then he smiled. 
 
 " Ah, I was always a star-gazer ! " 
 
 With that he went back to his chair in front of 
 the fire, took up a new magazine in lieu of the 
 newspaper, and made ready to enjoy himself. 
 
 Doubtless he would have succeeded, but fate 
 willed otherwise. The tap of a postman was 
 the particular disguise taken by Nemesis.
 
 244 The Lady in Hosea. 
 
 " A letter for you, sir," said his man, holding 
 out a salver on which was a business-looking 
 envelope. 
 
 " H'm. Just wait a moment, George. Ah ! 
 — ah ! it 's from Anderson & Anderson. . . . 
 George, are you there ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " George, if a lady should call for me to-night 
 or to-morrow, you are to tell her I am not here. 
 Say — oh ! let me see — say that she is just too 
 late ; that I left this morning for Paris, en 
 route for the East. Tell her I won't be back 
 again for years." 
 
 " If she wants me to take or send you any 
 message ? " 
 
 "In that case tell her that you will certainly 
 do so; only, add that it had better not be 
 urgent, as you don't expect to join me in the 
 East till after I telegraph to you from — let 
 us say Egypt." 
 
 " Very good, sir." 
 
 The man hesitated, fidgeted, but thought 
 better of his intent, whatever it was. As soon 
 as he had gone Dorian eagerly scanned the 
 note he had received. It was from a firm 
 of solicitors, and was to the effect that it was
 
 The Lady in Hosea. 245 
 
 true Mrs. Cecil Trevor had left her home, that 
 she had'^called to ask his, John Dorian's, ad- 
 dress, and that to-morrow if not to-day, or the 
 day after if not to-morrow, she would certainly 
 obtain it from someone. 
 
 It is a common mistake to say that Nemesis 
 never blunders. That policeman of the gods 
 can, and does, sometimes appear on the scene 
 too soon, or too late, or otherwise inoppor- 
 tunely. He came down Piccadilly a second 
 time this evening, disguised this time as Claire 
 Trevor. 
 
 Dorian was halfway through his second cigar 
 when he heard a hansom stop beneath his 
 windows. This was followed by a tap at the 
 front-door. To the tap succeeded the opening 
 of the door ; then a sustained conversation. 
 
 " I am no coward," said John Dorian, "but I 
 will retire — ah ! — to the bath-room ! "
 
 246 The Lady in Hosea. 
 
 II. 
 
 Mrs. Trevor, as she sat before the fire in 
 her room in the Whitehall Hotel, did not know 
 whether to laugh or cry. This was not because 
 she was either amused or chagrined, but be- 
 cause she believed her heart was broken. 
 There are women, as there are men, who, front- 
 ing irredeemable disaster, with a heart almost 
 callous on account of its pain, scarce know 
 whether laughter or sobs shall best ease them. 
 
 Claire Trevor had taken the step which 
 experience tells should never be taken : that is, 
 she had burnt the ship of her married life. 
 All manner of misadventure may be wrought 
 against that vessel, but it should never be 
 burnt; at least not until another has been 
 boarded by invitation, and a license as first 
 mate duly obtained. In other words, she had 
 not only left her home and husband, but had 
 also been rash enough to leave a letter behind 
 her for Cecil Trevor. It told him that she 
 loved, and was loved by, John Dorian ; that 
 she could not live without the said John, and
 
 The Lady in Hosea. 247 
 
 that it would be criminal on her part to remain 
 a day Wnger with him, Cecil, as his wife. Lest 
 there should be any mistake, she had added a 
 few particulars. 
 
 She had no children. She did not love Cecil 
 Trevor : but she had not suspected this until — 
 well ! The suspicion developed into a fact 
 when, after a few months' acquaintanceship, 
 John Dorian read her his two-act play, " For 
 Better, for Worse." At the moving sentimen- 
 tality which did duty as a dramatic close, he 
 had informed her that she was the heroine, 
 Helen, and he Paris, the hero. 
 
 In the process she lost a few ideals. These 
 are seldom missed at first, and it was some time 
 before she realised that they were gone. She 
 sighed, with true feeling, but said to herself that 
 she would be brave. 
 
 One ideal, however, she did hold, not only 
 dear and intimate, but inviolate. This was the 
 ':hivalrous love, the unalterable devotion, of John 
 Dorian. 
 
 It had not been without difficulty that she 
 obtained his new address. Circumstances had 
 kept them apart for three months, and in that 
 time he had shifted his quarters more than once.
 
 248 The Lady in Hosea. 
 
 For a woman without much intuition, it is to 
 her credit that she was not only undeceived by 
 the instructed lie of Dorian's valet, but at once 
 guessed that her lover wished " Finis " to be 
 written to their romance. She had little imagi- 
 nation, and she did not understand how this 
 finality could be ; but she felt it in the very core 
 of her heart. The tragi-comedy had fizzled out 
 while, having left without an attempt to expos- 
 tulate with, or even to force an interview upon, 
 her lover, she drove back to her hotel. 
 
 For a long time she had stared into the fire, 
 till her eyes ached. At last she rose, and took 
 two photographs from her leather-covered desk. 
 The insolent light of the gas flamed upon her. 
 By a vague instinct she turned it lower, and also 
 avoided a glimpse of herself in the adjacent 
 mirror. 
 
 There was ample light to see the photographs 
 by. One was of a man about five-and-thirty, 
 tall, elegant, graceful even, evidently dark, with 
 oval dusky eyes, short hair with a wave in it at 
 the sides, clean contours, a sensitive nose and 
 mouth, a self-conscious smile on the face, the 
 hands artistic, but with the thumbs noticeably 
 lifted backward. A good-looking man of the
 
 The Lady in Hosea. 249 
 
 world, in most judgments, no doubt. To a close 
 and feeen observer everj-thing, from the thumbs 
 to the pointed ears, betokened the refined and 
 cultured animal which had the arrogance to 
 believe it was kin to Apollo, and the blindness 
 not to see that it was of the brotherhood of Pan 
 the Satyr. All the possibilities of the epileptic 
 slept in that comely exterior. The life in him 
 was a phosphorescent fungus in a grave. 
 
 Mrs. Trevor took the ordinary view. The 
 photograph pained her by its tantalising truth. 
 Long and earnestly as she looked at it, she 
 stared longer and more intently at the other. 
 It represented a young woman who could not 
 have passed her twenty-seventh year; blonde, 
 with a graceful figure. That, really, was all you 
 or I might discern were we to come upon the 
 likeness in an album. Claire Trevor, however, 
 saw more. She evoked a woman whose tender 
 heart gave a lovely life to the blue eyes, an 
 exquisite, unwhispered whisper to the lips. She 
 saw the rippling fair hair moving in the warm 
 breath of her lover. Within, she beheld a strong 
 and heroic mind fronting the Shadow of Fate 
 — an undaunted, unselfish, greatly daring Soul. 
 As a matter of fact, what she saw were some
 
 250 The Lady in Hosea. 
 
 raiiibow-shimmerings from a land where she had 
 never fared. A great number of other people's 
 thoughts occupied almost every available cell in 
 her brain, and the accommodation for her own 
 mind was almost as limited as that dusty back- 
 parlour wherein her soul (without a capital) lay 
 bedridden and blind. 
 
 The past tense should have been more em- 
 phasised. Probably that evening a few more 
 cells had been opened, and others summarily 
 usurped by tyrannical new-comers. As for the 
 invalid in the back-parlour, it had doubtless 
 risen, and was fumbling about in the dark. 
 
 When Mrs. Trevor seated herself again she 
 took Dorian's photograph and laid it between 
 two coals which glowed vehemently, despite the 
 corroding ash at their base. The card crackled, 
 shrivelled, and became a malodorous nonentity. 
 A minute or two elapsed before Claire's photo- 
 graph was likewise cremated. It fell sideways, 
 and in the spurt of redeeming flame she read 
 the date of the night when she had given herself 
 to John Dorian, — a night which had succeeded 
 an evening of singular beauty, wherein the stars 
 moved with a polar magnificence of light, and 
 yielded in glory only to the promise of eternity
 
 ^The Lady in Hosea. 251 
 
 which the uncontrolled passion of two hearts 
 discerned in the frosty indifference of those 
 remote luminaries. 
 
 Even a cremated passion does not add fuel 
 to a fire. Perhaps the fire resents the intrusion 
 of a quenched flame, particularly if it, too, has 
 been slowly dying. At any rate, the photo- 
 graphs of two aspirants for immortality ended 
 in smoke. To expedite the burial Mrs. Trevor 
 stooped, to utilise the poker. As she reached 
 for\vard, a locket swung from her bosom, struck 
 the mantelpiece, and hung open, its two sides 
 outspread, as though it were a metallic butter- 
 fly, the emblem of hope. 
 
 She relinquished her intention, though as a 
 matter of 'fact the service of the poker was not 
 now needed. 
 
 Instead, she sat back, and stared at the minia- 
 ture in the locket. It was an excellent likeness 
 of Cecil Trevor. Looking at it, she could 
 see every feature of her husband : his rather fur- 
 rowed brow, fairly well marked ; his heavy eye- 
 brows and calm hazel eyes ; his heavy, straight 
 nose, with its rigid nostrils; his slightly curly 
 brown beard, unbroken from the ear-level, and 
 in the vogue of Henry VIII.; his large, ill-
 
 252 The Lady in Hosea. 
 
 formed, but kindly mouth ; his coarse jowl and 
 dogged chin. She knew that he was taller than 
 the broad squire suggested in the miniature, and 
 also that his voice was softer than a stranger 
 would infer. And as she looked she believed 
 she saw something in the eyes she had never 
 seen before. 
 
 With a cry she rose, then sank to her knees, 
 and hid her face in her hands, while her hair 
 swept the chair like a creeper over a ruin. 
 
 The fire had almost subsided into ash when 
 she rose and slowly began to undress. She 
 pondered the advisability of a prayer, but, on 
 second thoughts, decided not to intrude herself 
 just then on an offended and probably resent- 
 ful Providence. There would be ample time 
 on the morrow, when she would feel more 
 purged of her sin. 
 
 " I will go back," she whispered to herself. 
 She lay down in the vague discomfort of a new 
 loneliness. " I will go back. Perhaps he will 
 forgive ; perhaps he will let me atone ; perhaps 
 he loves me still." 
 
 The invalid inmate of the back-parlor mur- 
 mured indistinctly, " Oh, what a fool, what a 
 fool you have been ! "
 
 The Lady in Hosea. 253 
 
 III. 
 
 When Claire Trevor reached the station for 
 Llandynys, it was to learn that she was a 
 widow. 
 
 During the long drive she wept sincerely for 
 her resurrected affection, now so untimely 
 slain. 
 
 Did Cecil now know all ? Do the dead see, 
 understand ? The thought troubled her ; but 
 she did not disguise from herself that she was 
 more anxiorus as to how much he knew when 
 he was alive. 
 
 " Death, the result of an accident in the 
 hunting-field." That was what she had been 
 told. The accident had occurred in the after- 
 noon of the morning when she had taken her 
 fatal step. There was just a chance Mr. 
 Trevor had not seen the insensate letter she 
 had written. 
 
 That drive aged Mrs. Trevor. She felt as 
 though she were driving away from her youth.
 
 254 The Lady in Hosea. 
 
 At the threshold of her home — if it still was 
 her home — she was met by the Vicar. His 
 manner was deeply sympathetic and consider- 
 ate, — so considerate that she inferred safety 
 so far. The Vicar's profound respect indicated 
 her acceptance in his eyes as the heiress of 
 Llandynys. 
 
 Claire Trevor never quite forgave herself, 
 because when she looked upon the corpse of 
 her husband, she saw only, thought of only, 
 dreaded only, the letter he held in his folded 
 hands. 
 
 " What does it mean ? " she whispered hoarse- 
 ly to Mr. Barnby. 
 
 " Your last letter," the Vicar replied with 
 tender unction. " It was brought to him before 
 the end by the servant, who had forgotten to 
 deliver it before his master went out riding- 
 He was too weak to open it. He kissed 
 it just before he died. When he pressed 
 it against his heart, the heart had already 
 stopped. Take it, my dear madam, take it ; 
 it will be a lovely memento for you for the 
 rest of your life."
 
 FROKEN BERGLIOT.
 
 Froken Bergliot. 
 
 Ix the summer heats few foreigners are to 
 be seen at Castel Gandolfo. Half-a-dozen 
 Roman famihes may be settled in villas round 
 the hill-set Lake of Albano ; and a stray artist, 
 a Spaniard or Southern Frenchman most 
 likely, may lodge for a few days in the little 
 town. In August, however, most people who 
 c"n afford to leave Rome at all go to the sea 
 or to the mountains. For, though Castel Gan- 
 dolfo is as high and breezy a place as any in 
 the Alban hills except Rocca di Papa and 
 perhaps Nemi, the heat there can be oppres- 
 sive, and the dreaded malaria sometimes steals 
 up from the Campagna, though not till after it 
 has visited Genzano and TAriccia and even 
 Albano itself. 
 
 Nemi is lovelier, but there is no more pic- 
 turesque spot in the Alban range than Castel 
 
 17
 
 258 Froken Bergliot. 
 
 Gandolfo, that ancient summer-home of so 
 many Popes, and beloved of Romans since the 
 days of the Cassars. On its lofty crest, amid 
 its pines and ilexes and cypresses, it looks 
 down on the one side upon the beautiful Lake 
 of Albano, a vast amethyst as it seems in 
 summertide, and upon the steep volcanic slopes 
 of Alba reaching upward in a splendid semi- 
 circle. From the other, it looks across the Cam- 
 pagna, upon desolate leagues of pale blue in the 
 morning, upon a shimmering haze of mist at 
 noon, and again upon leagues upon leagues of 
 purple at wane of day. Behind the high-set 
 village run the two lovely ilex-avenues to Al- 
 bano; beyond it, or rather beyond the Papal 
 palace and gardens that give the little town its 
 name, goes straight as an arrow for a while the 
 high road to Rome. 
 
 It is a place wherein to eat the lotos, to 
 dream dreams. In the morning, when the sky 
 is of a lustrous blue and when the hill-air blows 
 freshly down the slopes from Rocca di Papa, 
 one can rest for hours looking upon the ruffled 
 lake, watching the fish leap, listening to the 
 wind among the ilexes or the chestnuts. In 
 the late afternoon the watcher upon the lower
 
 Froken Bergliot. 259 
 
 western wall will see the most impressive sight 
 in the'world, — the sun passing in a purple veil 
 of mystery athwart the desolate expanse of 
 the Campagna, shedding an evanescent flame 
 of light upon the dark patch in the distance 
 that is Rome, and illumining as with green or 
 crimson fire the remote marge of the Tyrrhe- 
 nian Sea. 
 
 Three years ago the mid-Italian summer 
 was exceptionally hot. Drought prevailed, 
 and on many of the upland pastures the 
 grass was in colour like newly-tanned leather. 
 On the Campagna cattle sickened, and human 
 beings died or crawled to and fro stricken 
 with the ague of malaria. The hill-towns of 
 the Alban ind Volscian mountains were full 
 of ragged, wild-eyed shepherd-folk ; even of 
 sea-dwellers from the pestilential shores of 
 Etruria Maritima, the desolate tract from the 
 base of the mountains of Volterra to the 
 Pontine Marshes near the frontier of the old 
 kingdom of Naples. 
 
 All through those torrid weeks of July and 
 August, Bergliot Rossi was as one in a restless 
 trance. It was the third year since this girl 
 out of the north had come to live with her
 
 26o Froken Bergliot. 
 
 uncle, Ernesto Rossi, the antiquary. She now 
 hated this glaring, burning south that had ap- 
 pealed to her so much at first; hated this 
 stifling heat, this inland weariness, this malaria 
 that everywhere brooded as an invisible beast 
 of prey; hated even the Alban hill-folk, with 
 their hard voices, their inhospitable ways, 
 their witless turning of the dear Scandinavian 
 *' Bergliot Ross " into " Bergliota Rossi," as 
 of her aunt's name " Hedwig" into " Eviga." 
 
 How gladly, she often murmured — and 
 thought ever — would she have stayed in her 
 beloved Norway when her father. Captain 
 Henrik Ross, went to join the wife whom he 
 had lost twenty years before. She would 
 have known poverty, and perhaps, at first, 
 chagrin, — for Henrik Ross had lived well, 
 and with even better pretensions than his 
 means warranted ; but she would have been 
 among her own nation, with the sweet Norsk 
 voice and tongue to charm her ears, and 
 within sight of the mountains, within sight of 
 the sea. To be away from Norway seemed 
 to her a fate to sympathise with ; to be away 
 in the far south, with a northern soul, and 
 to see no more the dark mountains and the
 
 Froken Bergliot. 261 
 
 wild, beautiful, changeful Scandinavian seas, 
 was t(fhe indeed worthy of sorrowful pity. 
 
 Still, Uncle Ernest and Aunt Hedwig had 
 been kind, and to be in that lovely hill- 
 village, and so near the mysterious city in 
 whose name is the supreme metropolitan 
 sound, was a subdued joy. But long before 
 Aunt Hedwig's deaths at the end of the second 
 year of Bergliot's exile, the girl had wearied 
 of the south, and was consumed by an abiding 
 passion for the lost north. This passion 
 haunted her dreams by night, and lent to 
 her diurnal visions what was akin to anguish. 
 The winter she could endure, particularly if 
 the ice lay on the pools and rivulets, and 
 when the snow .covered the woodland ways 
 all over the hill-tract from Frascati to Velletri. 
 The spring was so beautiful that, though she 
 longed for the leagues of gorse and the 
 green fiords of "home," she could not but 
 rejoice in the exceeding loveliness. Froken 
 Bergliot, as she wished always to be called, 
 became a well-known wanderer among the 
 towns and villages. In I'Ariccia and Genzano 
 the women thought the Norse signorina a little 
 " touched " ; for the rest, they despised what
 
 262 Froken Berg-liot. 
 
 o* 
 
 they could not understand. Latterly, she 
 avoided these places, preferring to wander 
 through the upland coppices to Nemi; or to 
 climb to high Rocca di Papa, where the 
 children are seized sometimes by vertigo and 
 are killed before their mothers can snatch 
 them from the sheer slopes ; or even to 
 make her way through the woodlands above 
 Frascati to the old ruins of Tusculum. But 
 best she loved to linger in the ilex-avenue 
 overlooking the Campagna, when afternoon 
 merged into twilight, and no sound broke 
 the stillness save distant bells summoning to 
 Ave Maria, and, above in Castel Gandolfo, 
 the cries and laughter of children ; or, througii 
 the hot noontide, to lie on the steep incline 
 to the south of the old Papal palace, and 
 look down upon the lake, and dream of 
 green fiords and precipitous rocks, yellow- 
 gray with sea-moss and lichen, furrowed by 
 ocean rains and the salt sea-wind. When 
 the summer heats set in, however, her nos- 
 talgia for the beloved north became an abid- 
 ing pain. She panted in the hot breath of 
 air and earth as might a caged swift in a 
 room. She felt as though she would die if
 
 ^ Froken Bergliot. 263 
 
 she wpre to stay much longer in this foreign 
 land, among this alien folk. An immense 
 loneliness possessed her. It was as though 
 she were a castaway. Her Uncle Ernest 
 was a taciturn man, much absorbed in his 
 vocation and its connected studies, and was, 
 moreover, often away for days at a time, in 
 Rome, or Florence, or Naples, or even farther 
 afield. In these solitary hours she would go 
 wearily to and fro, conscious of little save 
 her overmastering desire to see the north 
 once more ; to feel its cool breath in her 
 mind and in her spirit as well as upon 
 her body ; to hear the lap-lapping of the 
 waves; to watch the white sea-horses leap in 
 the sunlight when, at the fiord-mouth, a 
 mountain-wind tore against the tide-race. 
 If, in these moments of intense longing, she 
 descried, trailed across the sky like a thin 
 Japanese eyebrow, a flight of northward-wing- 
 ing birds, she would turn away sobbing in 
 her bitter pain, or throw herself upon the 
 ground and seek relief in tears. 
 
 But, alas ! she had not a soldo of her own in 
 the world. Uncle Ernest gave her nothing. 
 She had a home ; she had food, clothes, even
 
 264 Froken Bergliot. 
 
 a few luxuries, or what in that remote life 
 were looked upon as luxuries ; she had the 
 precious violin which she had bought from 
 her uncle with the small sum that Aunt 
 Hedwig had given her shortly before her 
 death. But to reach even Florence — to gain 
 the Alps — how could one do this ? There 
 was but one way : to fare afoot, to beg food 
 and shelter. This she could not do, for she 
 was bound in honor to her uncle. Some- 
 times she thought she would give lessons in 
 violin-playing ; but unfortunately she was 
 herself in sore need of instruction, and none 
 of the rich foreigners who lived some weeks 
 or months near Albano or Frascati would 
 employ an undisciplined amateur. Again, 
 she even dreamed that she might gain work 
 in teaching Italian to the children of Scan- 
 dinavian visitors ; but in the first place her 
 Italian was not good, and in the next, and 
 conclusively, no rich Scandinavians ever did 
 come to the Alban slopes. Once, before the 
 Signora Eviga was laid in the little cemetery 
 beyond the pinewood, Bergliot had met the 
 Norwegian consul in Rome, and he had 
 promised to bear her wish in mind ; but she
 
 Froken Bergliot. 265 
 
 had heard nought of him since then, and 
 even feared, what was indeed the case, that 
 her vincle had discouraged the idea. 
 
 And now in this hot August, the third she 
 had known in Italy, she realised that all the 
 savour had gone out of her life. She no 
 longer cared whether she survived to fulfil 
 her few household duties to Uncle Ernest, or 
 was laid beside Aunt Hedwig, the silent old 
 Norse lady who, while speaking in Italian to 
 her Roman nurse, suddenly said in Norsk, " Jeg 
 er troett," " I am tired," and was dead. 
 
 One morning after a sleepless night she rose 
 ere daybreak. A fever of unrest was upon her. 
 If only Uncle Ernest had not been ailing of late, 
 she could no'longer have w^ithstood the tempta- 
 tion to take her violin and play her way back to 
 the dear northland that called her from afar. 
 
 She did not know why she struck along by 
 the goatherds' path that led by the eastern 
 heights to the slopes between Frascati and Tus- 
 culum. She had not been at the last-named 
 since January, and then the snow had lain thick 
 in the hollows, and she had cried with delight 
 when sHpping often up the steep frozen lane 
 that leads from Frascati. Perhaps some vague
 
 266 Froken Bergliot. 
 
 memory of the coolness and whiteness led her 
 thither. 
 
 It was sunrise as she came to a glade a short 
 distance below the bluff overhanging the ancient 
 ruins. She stood for a time, with her out- 
 stretched left hand holding a sycamore branch, 
 and her whole figure wrought to an alert motion- 
 lessness. A slight flush was upon her beautiful 
 face, paler than its wont, owing to summer- 
 languor and sleepless nights and the long strain 
 of unsatisfied longing. In her eyes, gray-blue 
 in general but now almost violet, was a flame 
 of azure light. The sun-ray that was tangled 
 in the wave of her brown hair twisted and 
 turned in gold, and passing and coming again 
 and again, left an amber shimmer in the sweet 
 brown duskiness. 
 
 But though her joy was of the risen sun, of 
 the new day that came in radiant beauty, — stir- 
 ring afresh the Norland passion in her for sky 
 and sea and the upland air and mountainous 
 aspects, — she was intent also because of what 
 she heard. A song filled the glade with music. 
 The unseen singer was advancing, and his 
 brave lilt leaped to her ear. 
 
 While she stood entranced, herself a vision
 
 ^ Froken Bergliot. 267 
 
 of mprning music embodied, she saw the 
 musician. He was a young man, tall, robust, 
 as fair of skin and azure-eyed as herself, with 
 close-clustered hair tawny as sunlit shallows in 
 a brook. 
 
 The song ceased. The young man had seen 
 the girl, an unexpected vision indeed, at that 
 hour, in that place, in that country. She ap- 
 peared to him as something ideal. Artist as he 
 was, he had noted immediately and keenly the 
 loveliness of her colour, the perfection of her 
 form, the happy accident of her pose. " Ah ! I 
 have found my point of view now," he ex- 
 claimed ; " here is my ' morning glory ' picture 
 ready for me ! " 
 
 Bergliot slowly let her arm fall. The flicker 
 of the sycamore leaves sent dusky shadows 
 across her face. She hesitated, and then took 
 a step forward. 
 
 The stranger was coming towards her. Her 
 heart-beat quickened. This sweet singer, out 
 of the golden morning, was a Norlander too ; 
 there could be no mistake about that, she 
 thought with gladness. Was he a Norsk, a 
 Swede, a Dane? Perhaps a German or an 
 Enghshman ?
 
 268 Froken Bergliot. 
 
 But at that moment she felt a touch upon her 
 arm. Looking round, she saw Anita, the httle 
 daughter of Ermerilda Lanza, the woman whom 
 her Uncle Ernest employed to do the cooking 
 and rough work at his house. 
 
 "What is it, Anita?" 
 
 The child looked at her for a moment in 
 amazement. The caressing voice was suddenly 
 grown hard, the gentle eyes were of a cold 
 starry radiance. 
 
 " I have run . . . run hard, signorina," she 
 panted ; " my mother sent me. The Signor 
 Rossi is angry with you. He is about to go to 
 Venezia, and he wants to see you before he 
 goes. He asked thrice for you last evening, but 
 you were not to be found, and when he asked 
 again, late, you were in bed and asleep." 
 
 Bergliot turned and looked dreamily back 
 upon the wooded slope, now aglow with sun- 
 light. The young man had stopped, and was 
 looking fixedly towards her. 
 
 " Who is he ^ is he a friend ? " Anita asked, 
 with childish curiosity. 
 
 " He .... he is the voice of the North," 
 replied the girl, as if in a reverie. Then, 
 turning again abruptly, and without anotlisr
 
 Froken Bergliot. 269 
 
 look upon what she was leaving, she set off 
 at a fapid pace, with Anita trotting behind 
 her, and was soon lost to view among the 
 coppices. 
 
 Old Marco Gozzi, the charcoal-burner, on 
 his way to Rocca di Papa from Frascati, 
 nodded to her as she passed, and muttered 
 that it made him young again to see that 
 lovely image of his Caterina, a fair Venetian 
 damsel who fifty years back had withered of 
 the inland weariness and died, long before her 
 vagrant muleteer of a husband had fallen into 
 the drear estate of a charcoal-burner. 
 
 He was still looking after her, or rather upon 
 the way by which she had gone, when he heard 
 some one approach, and, turning, beheld the 
 stranger. He recognised him as the painter 
 who, three days before, had given him a five- 
 lire piece for sitting for his portrait. No doubt 
 the man was mad, Marco thought; but madmen 
 with five-lire pieces for free disposal were per- 
 sons to be treated with respect. 
 
 " Buon giorno, Signer Pittore ! " 
 
 " Ah ! buon giorno, buon giorno, Marco mio ; 
 So we are both up betimes ! Well, it 's the only 
 way in this hot weather. I say, Marco, who
 
 2/0 Froken Bergliot. 
 
 was that signorina who passed you a little 
 ago?" 
 
 " The signorina ? Oh, well," stammered the 
 man, with that strange evasive instinct so often 
 shown among Italians in remote places, "it is 
 of no importance. Eh, what, per Bacco, yes, I 
 remember; she is called Anita, daughter of 
 Ermerilda Lanza, of Castel Gandolfo." 
 
 " Not the wife of that scoundrel Michele 
 Lanza .... that would be — " 
 
 " Si, signore, sz." 
 
 " But, man, that lovely girl could not be the 
 daughter of a coarse brute like Michele Lanza. 
 Why, he, and his Ermerilda too, if I remember 
 rightly, are both as dark as a coal-pit, and this 
 girl is like a northener." 
 
 " Ah, the signor pittore means the tall one ? " 
 
 " Why, you silly idiot, whom do you think I 
 meant.? Come, Marco, don't be a fool. See 
 here ; tell me all you know, and you shall have 
 a lira with which to drink my health." 
 
 " Why, eccelLmza, every one about here 
 knows who she is. All the young men are in 
 love — and vainly in love — with the Signorina 
 Bergliota. She is the niece of the Signor 
 Antiquario Ernesto Rossi, a reputable man,
 
 Froken Bergliot. 2/1 
 
 though a foreigner, saving your worthy presence, 
 signoB' pittore. Old Rossi lives in the end 
 house at the top of the via in Castel Gandolfo 
 leading to the lower Albano Road. He lives 
 alone there, he and his niece. The woman 
 Lanza helps her." 
 
 " Bergliota .... the name is not an Italian 
 one. Why, of course, it 's Bergliot. Are they 
 Norsk ? " 
 
 " God knows. 'T is very likely. They are 
 Tedeschi ; that's all I know." 
 
 " She lives alone with him, you say ? " 
 
 "Yes; worse luck for her." 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " Because of the old man's temper. He has 
 a fiend of a temper, I assure you." 
 
 "Well, good day, Marco. The saints send 
 you luck." And with a good-humoured smile 
 and wave of his hand, Torquil Barnson turned 
 away. For some reason he did not wish to 
 accompany Marco and listen to his chit-chat 
 about the Signorina Bergliota. As he made 
 his way up the slopes to Rocca di Papa, the 
 music of a woman's name came and went upon 
 his lips with ever fresh recurrence. 
 
 ^^ Froken Bergliot — Froken Ber-gliot — Froken
 
 272 Froken Bergliot. 
 
 Bergliot^'' he muttered over and over ; and often 
 a sudden smile of delight, as when one comes 
 upon a new flower or listens to the first lark- 
 song of spring, came upon his face. 
 
 When he did reach Rocca di Papa he had 
 lost all inclination for his work. The landscape 
 he had begun seemed sunless, lifeless. He 
 wanted to paint his long projected " Morning 
 Glory." Down in the woods of the Papal villa 
 he heard the thrushes call. The sweet repeti- 
 tive note that gave the welling lilt to their song 
 was Berglioia — Bergliota. From the steep 
 crag just below the village, where he lay adream 
 in the sunshine, he could hear the wavelets far 
 below lap-lapping in the sedges, or with slow 
 wash lisping under the overhanging alders and 
 ashes that with the twisted olives fringed the 
 lake-marge. And this sweet sound that rose 
 like incense through the golden-yellow air was 
 Froken Bergliot — Broken, Broken Bergliot. 
 
 The afternoon was almost gone when the 
 young Norse painter roused himself from his 
 happy indolence. To his own surprise, perhaps, 
 and certainly to that of the few heat-sleepy 
 villagers who watched him, he walked vigorously 
 along the steep mule-path that led along the
 
 _^ Froken Bergliot. 273 
 
 old crater-edge till it joined the Marino Road to 
 Castel Gandolfo. For in August no one did 
 anything energetically. Even the few foreigners 
 who lingered in the neighbourhood employed the 
 afternoon in the luxury of the siesta. No one 
 but a poor devil of a painter, said the peasants, 
 would be about at that season. The innkeeper 
 himself, at whose house in Marino Torquil 
 Barnson lodged, thought that his good-looking 
 visitor must be very hard up that he had to 
 rise at daybreak and go dabbing paint upon a 
 canvas throughout the hot day. To Torquil 
 himself, indeed, came more than once a shy 
 recognition of the fact that his sudden energy 
 was surprising. Only the day before he had 
 admitted to himself that while winter, spring, 
 and summer, in Rome and its neighbourhood, 
 were delightful, the early autumn lacked both 
 solace and joy for a northerner. " Oh, for a 
 breath of the Blue Fiord ! " he had cried again 
 and again, filled with longing for his sea-swept 
 home. 
 
 But when he came to the junction of the 
 roads he did not turn towards Marino. He had 
 remembered that he wanted advice on some 
 matter which only an antiquary could determine 
 
 18
 
 2/4 Froken Bergliot. 
 
 for him. This point presented itself as in 
 urgent need of solution. There was not a day 
 to spare, though it had occurred to him more 
 than a year ago. Besides, did he not owe 
 a visit of courtesy to his fellow-countryman, 
 Ernest Ross — the two of them probably at 
 that time the only Norsemen within reach of 
 the Alban hill-wind ? Of course he did. And 
 was not Herr Ross a man of distinction, to 
 whom it was only civil to pay one's respects ? 
 Now that he thought of it, had he not heard 
 him spoken of in Bergen as one of the most 
 remarkable, — one of the most remarkable — 
 oh, to be sure, one of the most remarkable 
 archaeologists — no, antiquarians — of the day ? 
 
 Is it not Firdusi of Persia who says that 
 a young man in love is more shy than a wild 
 roe? 
 
 Visible shyness there was, indeed, when Tor- 
 quil Barnson knocked at the door of Signor 
 Rossi's lodging in Castel Gandolfo. 
 
 There was no response. If any one within 
 heard his repeated summons it was only to 
 treat it with sublime indifference. At last a 
 woman, leaning from a neighbouring window, 
 suggested that it was useless to wake all Castel
 
 Froken Bergliot. 275 
 
 Gandolfo, as Signer Ernesto Rossi had gone 
 away. ' 
 
 " Will he be here to-morrow ? " Torquil ven- 
 tured, with undue eagerness. 
 
 " No. He has gone among foreigners. He 
 is faring as far as Venice — the Blessed Mother 
 knows where else. He will not be here for 
 weeks. The old man swore he might never 
 come again." 
 
 " Ah-h ! And — and — the signorina > " 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! the signorina ! " 
 
 " Well, what of her ? " asked Torquil, sharply, 
 alert in resentment, for the woman's voice was 
 a sneer. 
 
 "Oh, /a bella Bergliota, no fear for her. She 
 will do well enough." 
 
 " Is she within ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Where is she?" 
 
 " Find out for yourself." 
 
 Torquil saw he had made a mistake. The 
 ice in his voice had frozen this bubbling well of 
 gossip. The woman, who looked at him an- 
 grily, was heavy and vulgar, but had once been 
 pretty. 
 
 " Ah, you beautiful women are all alike," he
 
 2/6 Froken Bergliot. 
 
 said lightly ; " but if la bella Bergliota has gone, 
 why, then Castel Gandolfo has still got youi''' 
 
 The ice was melted, wholly lost. The well 
 o'erbrimmed. 
 
 " Ah, signore, how sad it is that the good 
 Signor Ernesto should be so worried with his 
 niece ! True, he has gone far this time, very 
 far. But who can blame him wholly?" 
 
 " What has he done this time?" 
 
 " Oh, when he wanted to see his niece this 
 morning early, behold no Bergliota was to be 
 found anywhere. When at last she did come — 
 after Ermerilda's Anita had scoured the whole 
 country for her — the old man was furious. He 
 called her a useless slut. He vowed he wished 
 she had never come to Castel Gandolfo." 
 
 " What did she say ? " 
 
 " Oh, she up with her head like a wild goat 
 o' the hills, and said that she was quite ready 
 to go back to Norway. ' Go, then,' cried her 
 uncle, ' and never let me see you again ; for, 
 truth to tell, I am tired of you — and further 
 truth to tell, I am going to bring the widow Lucia 
 Lucchesi from Rome to share bed and board 
 with me, and the good wife won't care to have 
 you idling about.' And with that he went to his
 
 Froken Bergliot. 277 
 
 cabinet, and taking from it a small purse, he put 
 some g(5]d in it and flung it at her, saying it was 
 more than she was worth, but he gave it so that 
 no one could say he turned his own kindred from 
 his door without a soldo to bless herself with." 
 
 " And she ? " And as Torquil spoke with 
 eager heed, the woman noticed the flush on his 
 face and the bright light in his eyes. 
 
 "She? She took it of course, and glad to 
 get it. It 's more than she — " 
 
 "Yes; but in what way did she take it — 
 what did she say ? " interrupted the young man, 
 with a twinge of regret at learning that Bergliot 
 had not returned a gift given with a churHshness 
 so rude. 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! 'At first she grew as red as a 
 peony. The flush went over her face like wine 
 spilt in the lake — came and went just like that. 
 I almost thought that she was going to refuse to 
 take the money. The idea! She was acting — 
 chit! But suddenly she turned again. 'The 
 sen^ant is worthy of her hire,' she said quietly; 
 and with that she took the purse, put it in her 
 pocket, and then, holding out her hand to 
 Signor Rossi, said something in her own lan- 
 guage which I guessed to be a request to shake
 
 2/8 Fioken Bergliot. 
 
 hands in farewell. However, I know no more, 
 save that Ernesto Rossi went away in Andrea 
 Placci's wine-cart at eight o' the clock, and that 
 before noon Bergliota packed her things, said 
 good-bye to some o' the children and to old 
 Margherita Corleone, the blind woman, and 
 drove off in the carrier's van for Rome." 
 
 " And left no address ? " 
 
 "Eh, what, address? Perchlf Ha! ha! 
 She Ml soon find a pleasant enough place in 
 Rome, I '11 warrant." 
 
 With that Torquil Barnson's wish for anti- 
 quarian knowledge ceased. He was suddenly 
 conscious of a great longing to see Rome once 
 more. It was almost a week since he had been 
 there ! 
 
 Yes, there was the evening train. He had 
 time to walk back to Marino, pack up his be- 
 longings, and catch il ultimo convoglio. 
 
 Action was welcome. Marino was reached 
 as though he had skated thither on black ice. 
 The bill was paid ; addios were exchanged ; 
 finally, the train was caught. 
 
 That night, as he walked from his rooms in 
 the Via delle Quattro Fontane, along the Via 
 Sistina, to the antique fountain that throughout 
 
 J
 
 Froken Bergliot. 279 
 
 the year makes a joy of coolness and sound by 
 the gafes of the Pincio, he wondered what the 
 morrow would bring forth. It was strange that 
 in the falling music of the water which splashed 
 and gurgled beneath the dense ilex-dome, even 
 in the surging sigh that came up from the 
 Piazza di Spagna and all Ro?na oscura beyond, 
 he heard the same murmur as in the wind at 
 liocca di Papa, as in the wavelets lapping 
 among the sedges of Lake Albano. Bergliota, 
 came this murmur, Bergliota — Bergliot — 
 Froken^ Froken Bergliot. 
 
 In the morning he began his quest. No 
 doubt this dawn-lover whom he had met in the 
 woods of Tusculum would be up betimes ; 
 scarcely less' doubt but that she would seek 
 that high terrace whence sunrise may be seen 
 as a pink rose unfolding over the white rose of 
 Rome. 
 
 But as he walked to and fro in his solitary 
 vigil, the idea suddenly occurred to him that 
 Froken Bergliot would far more likely hasten 
 northward than linger in the city which sheltered 
 also her Uncle Ernest. 
 
 Of course: what a fool he had been! Why, 
 the north mail was due to leave in twenty min- 
 utes or so !
 
 28o Froken Bergliot. 
 
 Three minutes later he was in a vettura and 
 being driven at rattletrap speed towards the great 
 gaunt station beyond the Baths of Diocletian. 
 
 It was five minutes to the time of starting 
 when he alighted. A two-soldi platform ticket 
 enabled him to pass the barrier. There, at the 
 bookstall, he saw her: tall, beautiful, his god- 
 dess of the morning still. 
 
 '' Parienza / " cried a guard, with premoni- 
 tory urgency. 
 
 Torquil turned, aghast with a sudden reflec- 
 tion. He put his hand in his pocket. It was 
 too true. There was a little silver in his right 
 pocket; in the left, no purse. Both paper- 
 money and his purse of gold were at his rooms. 
 When he looked again, the girl had gone. 
 
 " Are you going by this train, signore ? " 
 asked a guard, imperatively. 
 
 " Yes ; that is — no." 
 
 " Then I must ask you to leave the platform- 
 His Royal Highness the Prince of Naples has 
 just arrived, and is going to Florence by the 
 express. The station is to be cleared. No, 
 signore, you cannot go to the bookstall just 
 now. Pray do not delay : go, I beg of you." 
 
 There was no help for it. But as Torquil
 
 ^ Froken Bergliot. 281 
 
 turned away he saw a small, old-fashioned 
 brass-nail-studded box lying beside the luggage- 
 wagon. His despairing eye caught at the 
 name printed in large letters : Bergliot Ross. 
 In a second he stooped to note the address. 
 
 The label was in two parts. On the lower 
 half, writ large, was " Hamburg." That, then, 
 was her immediate destination. On the upper 
 half he read, "Froken Bergliot Ross, Bergen, 
 Norvegia." 
 
 So absorbed was he that he did not at first 
 notice the arrival of the royal party. When he 
 did become aware of the fact, by the bustle 
 around him, he saw what was more to the point, 
 — his fresh opportunity. 
 
 The too attentive guard had disappeared. 
 Swiftly walking forward, Torquil reached the 
 bookstall. On the wooden shelf that projected 
 from it, beside piles of the " Fanfulla," the 
 " Popolo Romano," and other papers, was an 
 earthenware jar containing a score of lovely 
 tea-roses and ruby-red hearts-o'-love. To his 
 right was a gentleman, who laid down a five- 
 lire note, with the remark that he would have 
 the roses "for the Prince." The newsvendor 
 hesitated; the price was too low.
 
 282 Froken Bergliot. 
 
 Torquil put down all the silver he had in his 
 pocket, about twelve lire. " For the Princess," 
 he said, and quietly walked off with the glory 
 of roses. 
 
 Some died on the long northward journey ; 
 a few lingered and went seaward with the 
 steamer that sailed from Hamburg; one, a 
 deep, fragrant heart-o'-love, reached Bergen, 
 and filled a little white room with its odour and 
 beauty. 
 
 The hot autumn was followed by a lovely 
 St. Martin's summer. Norway was bathed in 
 a glow of gold and amber light by day, and 
 veiled in starlit violet by night. 
 
 To be in Norway, to breathe this Norland 
 air so loved and longed for, to rise in joy and 
 fall asleep in peace amid all this home-sweet 
 beauty, was to Froken Bergliot a delight be- 
 yond words. 
 
 Only, by St. Martin's summer she was no 
 longer Froken Bergliot, but Frue Bergliot 
 Barnson.
 
 THE PRINTING WAS DONE AT 
 THE LAKESIDE PRESS, CHICAGO, 
 FOR STONE & KIMBALL, PUB- 
 LISHERS.
 
 (^L3^T(, 
 
 r
 
 University of California Library 
 Los Angeles 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 310/8* 
 
 UCLA YRL ILL 
 
 «„^^L'— HOC 
 DUE: MAY 9 2006 
 
 o
 
 University of California, Los An eles 
 
 Illllllllllilllilll ill 
 
 L 006 213 963 9