UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. SAN DIEGO 
 
 3 1822017002494 
 
 y notes 
 
 George Kgerton 
 
 4 1 
 i <i 
 
 London 
 Elkin Mathews fc? John Lane 
 
 Thr Bociley Head, Vigo Street. W. 
 
 Boston. : Roberts Brother*
 
 '^7002494 
 
 Central University Library 
 
 University of California, San Diego 
 Please Note: This item is subject to recall. 
 
 Date Due 
 
 JUL 8 1994 
 
 JUN 1 1
 
 KEYNOTES
 
 Copyrighted in the United States 
 All rights reserved
 
 Keynotes 
 
 by 
 
 George Egerton 
 
 London : Elkm Mathews 
 
 and John Lane, Vigo St. 
 Boston : Roberts Brothers 
 
 1893
 
 TO 
 
 KNUT HAMSUN
 
 ' I gave him such a pretty toy to play with, ami 
 he is breaking it up. Wlien / say: "You arc 
 very naughty, llijf; if you break it I shall ivki/, 
 you ! " l<c only says '. 
 
 ' " But I must, Miuiiscy, I must .' " ' 
 
 KRAGMKNT OK A I.ETTEK, log;.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I'AGF. 
 
 A CROSS I. INF, . I 
 
 NOW SPRING HAS COME, . 37 
 
 THE SPEI.L OF THE WHITE ELF, . . 6S 
 
 A LITTLE GREY GLOVE, . 91 
 
 AN EMPTY FRAME, . "5 
 UNDER NORTHERN SKY 
 
 I. HOW MARIE I.ARSEN EXORCISED A DEMON, . 124 
 
 ii. A SHADOW'S SLANT, . . . 140 
 
 III. AN Eli! 1 , TIDE, . . I.S5
 
 A CROSS LINE 
 
 THE rather flat notes of a man's voice float 
 out into the clear air, singing the refrain of a 
 popular music-hall ditty. There is something 
 incongruous between the melody and the sur- 
 roundings. It seems profane, indelicate, to 
 bring this slang}-, vulgar tune, and with it the 
 mental picture of footlight flare and fantastic 
 dance into the lovely freshness of this perfect 
 spring da}\ 
 
 A woman sitting on a felled tree turns her 
 head to meet its coming, and an expression flits 
 across her face in which disgust and humorous 
 appreciation are subtly blended. Her mind is 
 nothing if not picturesque ; her bus}- brain, with 
 all its capabilities choked by a thousand vagrant 
 fancies, is always producing pictures and finding 
 associations between the most unlikely objects. 
 She has been reading a little sketch written in 
 the daintiest language of a fountain scene in 
 Tanagra, and her vivid imagination has made 
 A
 
 2 KEYNOTES 
 
 it real to her. The slim, graceful maids grouped 
 around it filling their exquisitely-formed earthen 
 jars, the dainty poise of their classic heads, and 
 the flowing folds of their draperies have been 
 actually present with her ; and now ? why, it is 
 like the entrance of a half-tipsy vagabond player 
 bedizened in tawdry finery the picture is 
 blurred. She rests her head against the trunk 
 of a pine tree behind her, and awaits the singer. 
 She is sitting on an incline in the midst of a 
 wilderness of trees ; some have blown down, 
 some have been cut down, and the lopped 
 branches lie about ; moss and bracken and 
 trailing bramble, fir-cones, wild rose bushes, 
 and speckled red ' fairy hats ' fight for life in 
 wild confusion. A disused quarry to the left is 
 an ideal haunt of pike, and to the right a little 
 river rushes along in haste to join a greater 
 sister that is fighting a troubled way to the sea. 
 A row of stepping-stones crosses it, and if you 
 were to stand on one you would see shoals of 
 restless stone loach ' Beardies ' darting from side 
 to side. The tails of several clucks can be seen 
 above the water, and the paddle of their balanc- 
 ing feet, and the gurgling suction of their bills 
 as they search for larva, 4 can be heard distinctly
 
 A CROSS LINE 3 
 
 between the hum of insect, twitter of bird, and 
 rustle of stream and leaf. The singer has 
 changed his lay to a whistle, and presently he 
 comes down the path a cool, neat, grey-clad 
 figure, with a fishing creel slung across his back, 
 and a trout rod held on his shoulder. The air 
 ceases abruptly, and his cold grey eyes scan 
 the seated figure with its gipsy case of attitude, 
 a scarlet shawl that has fallen from her shoulders 
 forming an acccntuativc background to the slim 
 roundness of her waist. 
 
 Persistent study, coupled with a varied 
 experience of the female animal, has given 
 the owner of the grey eyes some facility in 
 classing her, although it has not supplied him 
 with any definite data as to what any one of 
 the species may do in a given circumstance. 
 To put it in his own words, in answer to a 
 friend who chaffed him on his untiring pursuit 
 of women as an interesting problem : 
 
 ' If a fellow has had much experience of his 
 fellow-man he may divide him into types, and, 
 crivcn a certain number of men and a certain 
 
 o 
 
 number of circumstances, he is pretty safe on 
 hitting on the line of action each type will 
 strike ; 'taint so with woman. You ma}- always
 
 4 KEYNOTES 
 
 look out for the unexpected, she generally 
 upsets a fellow's calculations, and you are never 
 safe in laying odds on her. Tell you what, old 
 chappie, we may talk about superior intellect ; 
 but, if a woman wasn't handicapped by her 
 affection, or need of it, the cleverest chap in 
 Christendom would be just a bit of putty in her 
 hands. I find them more fascinating as pro- 
 blems than anything going. Never let an oppor- 
 tunity slip to get new data never ! ' 
 
 He did not now. He met the frank, unem- 
 barrassed gaze of eyes that would have looked 
 with just the same bright inquiry at the advent 
 of a hare, or a toad, or any other object that 
 might cross her path, and raised his hat with 
 respectful courtesy, saying, in the drawling tone 
 habitual with him 
 
 'I hope I am not trespassing?' 
 
 'I can't say; you may be, so may I. but no 
 one has ever told me so ! ' 
 
 A pause. His quick glance has noted the 
 thick wedding ring on her slim brown hand, 
 and the flash of a diamond in its keeper. A 
 lady decidedly. Fast ? perhaps. Original ? 
 undoubtedly. Worth knowing ? rather. 
 
 ' I am looking for a trout stream, but the
 
 A CROSS LINE 5 
 
 directions I got were rather vague ; micrht 
 
 O Go 
 
 I- 
 
 'It's straight ahead, but you won't catch 
 anything now, at least not here, sun 's too glar- 
 ing and water too low, a mile up you may, in 
 an hour's time.' 
 
 ' Oh, thanks awfully for the tip. You fish 
 then?' 
 
 ' Yes, sometimes.' 
 
 'Trout run big here?' (what odd eyes the 
 woman has, kind of magnetic.) 
 
 ' No, seldom over a pound, but they are very 
 game.' 
 
 ' Rare good sport isn't it, whipping a stream? 
 There is so much besides the mere catching of 
 fish. The river and the trees and the quiet 
 sets a fellow thinking kind of sermon makes 
 a chap feel good, don't it ? ' 
 
 She smiles asscntingly. And yet what the 
 devil is she amused at he queries mentally. An 
 inspiration. lie acts upon it, and says eager!}' : 
 
 ' I wonder I don't half like to ask but fish- 
 ing puts people on a common footing, don't it ? 
 You knowing the stream, you know, would you 
 tell me what are the bc.^L /lies to use ? ' 
 
 ' I tie my own, but
 
 6 KEYNOTES 
 
 ' Do you ? how clever of you ! wish I could,' 
 and sitting down on the other end of the tree, 
 he takes out his fly book, ' but I interrupted 
 you, you were going to say ? ' 
 
 ' Only,' stretching out her hand (of a perfect 
 shape but decidedly brown) for the book, ' that 
 you might give the local fly-tyer a trial, he '11 
 tell you.' 
 
 ' Later on, end of next month, or perhaps 
 later, you might try the oak-fly, the natural fly 
 you know ; a horn is the best thing to hold them 
 in, they get out of anything else and put two 
 on at a time.' 
 
 ' By Jove, I must try that dodge ! ' 
 
 He watches her as she handles his book and 
 examines the contents critically, turning aside 
 some with a glance, fingering others almost 
 tenderly, holding them daintily and noting the 
 cock of wings and the hint of tinsel, with her 
 head on one side ; a trick of hers he thinks. 
 
 'Which do you like most, wet or dry fly?' 
 (she is looking at some dry flies.) 
 
 'Oh,' with that rare smile, 'at the time I 
 swear by whichever happens to catch most fish. 
 Perhaps, really, dry fly. I fancy most of these 
 flics are better for Scotland or England. Up
 
 A C R O S S L I N E 7 
 
 to this March-brown has been the most killing 
 thing. But you might try an "orange-grouse," 
 that 's al \vays good here ; with perhaps a " hare's 
 car" for a change and put on a "coachman" 
 for the evenings. My husband (he steals a side 
 look at her) brought home some beauties 
 yesterday evening.' 
 
 ( Luck>- fellow ! ' 
 
 She returns the book. There is a tone in his 
 voice as he says this that jars on her, sensitive 
 as she is to ever}- inflection of a voice, with an 
 intuition that is almost second sight. She 
 gathers up her shawl. She has a cream-coloured 
 woollen gown on, and her skin looks duskily 
 foreign by contrast. She is on her feet before 
 he can regain his, and says, with a cool little 
 bend of her head : ' Good afternoon, I wish you 
 a full basket! ' 
 
 Before he can raise his cap she is down the 
 slope, gliding with easy steps that have a strange 
 grace, and then springing lightly from stone to 
 stone across the stream. He feds small, snubbed 
 someway, and he sits down on the spot where 
 she sat and, lighting his pipe, says ' check ! ' 
 
 -# --v 3 % 
 
 She is walking slowly up the garden path.
 
 8 KEYNOTES 
 
 A man in his shirt sleeves is stooping amongst 
 the tender young peas. A bundle of stakes lies 
 next him, and he whistles softly and all out of 
 tune as he twines the little tendrils round each 
 new support. She looks at his broad shoulders 
 and narrow flanks ; his back is too long for 
 great strength, she thinks. He hears her step, 
 and smiles up at her from under the shadow of 
 his broad-leafed hat. 
 
 ' How do you feel now, old woman ? ' 
 
 ' Beastly. I Ve got that horrid qualmish 
 feeling again. I can't get rid of it.' 
 
 He has spread his coat on the side of the 
 path and pats it for her to sit down. 
 
 ' What is it ' (anxiously) ? ' if you were a mare 
 I 'd know what to do for you. Have a nip of 
 whisky ? ' 
 
 He strides off without \vaiting for her reply 
 and comes back with it and a biscuit, kneels 
 down and holds the glass to her lips. 
 
 ' Poor little woman, buck up ! You '11 sec 
 that '11 fix you. Then you go by-ancl-by and 
 have a shy at the fish.' 
 
 She is about to say something when a fresh 
 qualm attacks her and she docs not. 
 
 He goes back to his tying.
 
 A CROSS LINE 9 
 
 ' By Jove !' he says suddenly, ' I forgot. Got 
 something to show you !' 
 
 After a few minutes he returns carrying a 
 basket covered with a piece of sacking. A dis- 
 hevelled-looking hen, with spread wings trailing 
 and her breast bare from sitting on her eggs, 
 
 o oo * 
 
 screeches after him. He puts it carefully down 
 and uncovers it, disclosing seven little balls of 
 yellow fluff splashed with olive green. They 
 look up sideways with bright round eyes, and 
 their little spoon bills look disproportionately 
 large. 
 
 ' Aren't they beauties (enthusiastically) ? 
 This one is just out,' taking up an egg, ' mustn't 
 let it get chilled.' There is a chip out of it and 
 a piece of hanging skin. ' Isn't it funny ? ' he 
 asks, showing her how it is curled in the shell, 
 with its paddles flattened and its bill breaking 
 through the chip, and the slimy feathers stick- 
 ing to its violet skin. 
 
 She suppresses an exclamation of disgust, 
 and looks at his fresh-tinted skin instead. lie 
 is covering basket, hen, and all 
 
 1 How you love young things !' she says. 
 
 ' Some. I had a fill}- once, she turned out a 
 lovely mare ! I cried when I had to sell her, I
 
 io KEYNOTES 
 
 wouldn't have let any one in God's world mount 
 her.' 
 
 ' Yes, you would ! ' 
 
 'Who?' with a qaick look of resentment. 
 
 ' Me ! ' 
 
 ' I wouldn't!' 
 
 'What ! you wouldn't?' 
 
 ' I wouldn't !' 
 
 ' I think you would if I wanted to !' with a 
 flash out of the tail of her eye. 
 
 ' No, I wouldn't!' 
 
 ' Then you would care more for her than for 
 me. I would give you your choice (passion- 
 ately), her or me !' 
 
 ' What nonsense !' 
 
 'May be (concentrated), but it's lucky she 
 isn't here to make deadly sense of it.' A 
 humble-bee buzzes close to her ear, and she is 
 roused to a sense of facts, and laughs to think 
 how nearly they have quarrelled over a mare 
 
 that was sold before she knew him. 
 
 # * * -*- 
 
 Some evenings later, she is stretched motion- 
 less in a chair, and yet she conveys an impres- 
 sion of restlessness ; a sensitively nervous person 
 would feel it. She is gazing at her husband,
 
 A CROSS LINE 
 
 1 1 
 
 her brows are drawn together, and make three 
 little lines. He is reading, reading quietly, 
 without moving his eyes quickly from side to 
 side of the page as she docs when she reads, 
 and he pulls away at a big pipe with steady 
 enjoyment. Her eyes turn from him to the 
 window, and follow the course of two clouds, 
 then they close for a few seconds, then open 
 to watch him again. He looks up and smiles. 
 
 ' Finished your book ?' 
 
 There is a singular soft monotony in his 
 voice ; the organ with which she replies is 
 capable of more varied expression. 
 
 ' Yes, it is a book makes one think. It would 
 be a greater book if he were not an Englishman. 
 
 O O 
 
 He's afraid of shocking the big middle class. 
 You wouldn't care about it.' 
 
 ' Finished your smoke ?' 
 
 ' No, it went out, too much fag to light up 
 again ! No (protestingly), never you mind, old 
 boy, why do you ?' 
 
 He has drawn his long length out of his 
 chair, and, kneeling down beside her, guards a 
 lighted match from the incoming evening air. 
 She draws in the smoke contentedly, and her 
 eves smile back with a general va"'ue tenderness.
 
 12 KEYNOTES 
 
 ' Thank you, dear old man !' 
 ' Going out again ?' negative head shake. 
 ' Back aching ?' affirmative nod, accompanied 
 by a steadily aimed puff of smoke, that she has 
 been carefully inhaling, into his eyes. 
 ' Scamp ! Have your booties off ?' 
 ' Oh, don't you bother, Lizzie will do it ! ' 
 He has seized a foot from under the rocker, 
 and, sitting on his heels, holds it on his knee, 
 whilst he unlaces the boot ; then he loosens the 
 stocking under her toes, and strokes her foot 
 
 o 
 
 gently. 
 
 'Now, the other!' Then he drops both 
 boots outside the door, and fetching a little pair 
 of slippers, past their first smartness, from the 
 bedroom, puts one on. He examines the left 
 foot; it is a little swollen round the ankle, and he 
 presses his broad fingers gently round it as one 
 sees a man do to a horse with winclgalls. Then 
 he pulls the rocker nearer to his chair and rests 
 the slipperlcss foot on his thigh. He relights 
 his pipe, takes up his book, and rubs softly from 
 ankle to toes as he reads. 
 
 She smokes and watches him, diverting her- 
 self by imagining him in the hats of different 
 periods. His is a delicate-skinned face with
 
 A CROSS LINE 13 
 
 regular features ; the eyes are fine, in colour and 
 shape with the luminous clearness of a child's ; 
 his pointed beard is soft and curly. She looks 
 at his hand, a broad strong hand with capable 
 fingers, the hand of a craftsman, a contradic- 
 tion to the face with its distinguished delicacy. 
 She holds her own up with a cigarette poised 
 between the first and second fingers, idly 
 pleased with its beauty of form and delicate 
 nervous slightncss. One speculation chases 
 the other in her quick brain ; odd questions as 
 to race arise ; she dives into theories as to 
 the why and wherefore of their distinctive 
 natures, and holds a mental debate in which 
 she takes both sides of the question impartially. 
 He has finished his pipe, laid down his book, 
 and is gazing dreamily, with his eyes darkened 
 by their long lashes, and a look of tender 
 melancholy in their clear depths, into space. 
 
 'What are you thinking of?' There is a 
 look of expectation in her quivering nervous 
 little face. 
 
 lie turns to her, chafing her ankle again. 
 
 ' I was wondering if lob-worms would do 
 for 
 
 lie stops. A strange look of disappointment
 
 14 KEYNOTES 
 
 flits across her face and is lost in an hysterical 
 peal of laughter. 
 
 ' You are the best emotional check I ever 
 knew/ she gasps. 
 
 He stares at her in utter bewilderment, and 
 then a slow smile creeps to his eyes and curves 
 the thin lips under his moustache, a smile at 
 her. 
 
 ' You seem amused, Gipsy ! ' 
 
 She springs out of her chair and seizes book 
 and pipe ; he follows the latter anxiously with 
 his eyes until he sees it laid safely on the 
 table. Then she perches herself, resting her 
 knees against one of his legs, whilst she hooks 
 her feet back under the other 
 
 ' Now I am all up, don't I look small ? ' 
 
 He smiles his slow smile. 'Yes, I believe 
 you are made of gutta percha.' 
 
 She is stroking out all the lines in his face 
 with the tip of her finger ; then she runs it 
 through his hair. He twists his head half 
 impatiently, she desists. 
 
 ' I divide all the people in the world,' she 
 says, 'into those who like their hair played 
 with, and those who don't. Having my hair 
 brushed gives me more pleasure than anything
 
 A CROSS LINE 15 
 
 else; it's delicious. I'd purr if I knew ho\v. 
 I notice (meditatively) I am never in sym- 
 pathy with those who don't like it ; I am 
 with those who do. I always get on with 
 them.' 
 
 ' You arc a queer little devil ! ' 
 
 ' Am I ? I shouldn't have thought you would 
 have found out I was the latter at all. I wish 
 I were a man ! I believe if I were a man, I 'd 
 be a disgrace to my family.' 
 
 ' Why ? ' 
 
 ' I 'd go on a jolly old spree ! ' 
 
 He laughs : ' Poor little woman, is it so 
 dull?' 
 
 There is a gleam of devilry in her eyes, 
 and she whispers solemnly 
 
 ( Begin with a D,' and she traces imaginary 
 letters across his forehead, and ending with a 
 flick over his ear, says, 'and that is the tail 
 of the y ! ' 
 
 After a short silence she queries 
 
 'Are you fond of me?' She is rubbing her 
 chin up and down his face. 
 
 ' Of course I am, don't you know it ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, perhaps I do,' impatiently ; 'but I want 
 to be told it. A woman doesn't care a iV for
 
 16 KEYNOTES 
 
 a love as deep as the death-sea and as silent, 
 she wants something that tells her it in little 
 waves all the time. It isn't the love, you 
 know, it 's the being loved ; it isn't really the 
 man, it 's his loving ! ' 
 
 ' By Jove, you 're a rum un ! ' 
 
 ' I wish I wasn't then. I wish I was as 
 
 commonplace as . You don't tell me 
 
 anything about myself (a fierce little kiss), 
 you might, even if it were lies. Other men 
 who cared for me told me things about my 
 eyes, my hands, anything. I don't believe you 
 notice.' 
 
 ' Yes I do, little one, only I think it.' 
 
 ' Yes, but I don't care a bit for your thinking ; 
 if I can't see what's in your head what good is 
 it to me ?' 
 
 ' I wish I could understand you. dear!' 
 
 ' I wish to God you could. Perhaps if you 
 were badder and I were goocler we 'd meet half- 
 way. You are an awfully good old chap ; it 's 
 just men like you send women like me to the 
 devil!' 
 
 ' But you are good (kissing her), a real good 
 chum ! You understand a fellow's weak points. 
 You don't blow him up if he gets on a bit. Why
 
 A CROSS LINE 17 
 
 (enthusiastically), being married to you is like 
 chumming with a chap ! Why (admiringly), 
 do you remember before \ve were married, 
 when I let that card fall out of my pocket ? 
 Why, I couldn't have told another girl about 
 her. She wouldn't have believed that I was 
 straight. She 'd have thrown me over. And 
 you sent her a quid because she was sick. You 
 are a great little woman !' 
 
 ' Don't see it! (she is biting his car). Perhaps 
 I was a man last time, and some hereditary 
 memories are cropping up in this incarna- 
 tion !' 
 
 lie looks so utterly at sea that she has to 
 laugh again, and, kneeling up, shuts his eyes 
 with kisses, and bites his chin and shakes it like 
 a terrier in her strong little teeth. 
 
 ' You imp ! was there ever such a woman ! ' 
 
 Catching her wrists, he parts his knees and 
 drops her on to the rug. Then, perhaps the 
 subtle magnetism that is in her affects him, for he 
 stoops and snatches her up and carries her up and 
 down, and then over to the windo\v and lets the 
 fading light with its glimmer of moonshine play 
 on her odd face with its tantalising changes. 
 His eyes dilate and his colour deepens as he 
 r,
 
 i8 KEYNOTES 
 
 crushes her soft little body to him and carries 
 her off to her room. 
 
 Summer is waning and the harvest is ripe 
 for ingathering, and the voice of the reaping 
 machine is loud in the land. She is stretched 
 on her back on the short heather-mixed moss 
 at the side of a bog stream. Rod and creel are 
 flung aside, and the wanton breeze, with the 
 breath of coolness it has gathered in its passage 
 over the murky dykes of black bog water, is 
 playing with the tail fly, tossing it to and fro 
 with a half threat to fasten it to a prickly spine 
 of golden gorse. Bunches of bog-wool nod 
 their fluffy heads, and through the myriad in- 
 definite sounds comes the regular scrape of a 
 strickle on the scythe of a reaper in a neighbour- 
 ing meadow. Overhead a flotilla of clouds is 
 steering from the south in a north-easterly 
 direction. Her eyes follow them. Old time 
 galleons, she thinks, with their wealth of snowy 
 sail spread, riding breast to breast up a wide blue 
 fjord after victory. The sails of the last are rose 
 flushed, with a silver edge. Somehow she thinks 
 of Cleopatra sailing down to meet Antony, and 
 a cjreat lon^iner fills her soul to sail off some-
 
 A CROSS LINE 19 
 
 where too away from the daily need of dinner- 
 getting and the recurring Monday with its 
 washing ; life with its tame duties and virtuous 
 monotony. She fancies herself in Arabia on 
 the back of a swift steed. Flashing eyes set in 
 dark faces surround her, and she can see the 
 clouds of sand swirl, and feel the swing under 
 her of his rushing stride. Her thoughts shape 
 themselves into a wild song, a song to her 
 steed of flowing mane and satin skin ; an un- 
 couth rhythmical jingle with a feverish beat ; a 
 song to the untamed spirit that dwells in her. 
 Then she fancies she is on the stage of an 
 ancient theatre out in the open air, with 
 hundreds of faces upturned towards her. She 
 is gauze-clad in a cobweb garment of wondrous 
 tissue. Her arms are clasped by jewelled snakes, 
 and one with quivering diamond fangs coils 
 round her hips. Her hair floats loosely, and her 
 feet are sandal-clad, and the delicate breath of 
 vines and the salt freshness of an incoming sea 
 seems to fill her nostrils. She bounds forward 
 and dances, bends her lissom waist, and curves 
 her slender arms, and gives to the soul of each 
 man \vhat he craves, be it good or evil. And 
 she can feel now, lying here in the .-.hade of
 
 2O 
 
 Irish hills with her head resting on her scarlet 
 shawl and her eyes closed, the grand intoxicat- 
 ing power of swaying all these human souls to 
 w r onder and applause. She can see herself with 
 parted lips and panting, rounded breasts, and 
 a dancing devil in each glowing eye, sway 
 voluptuously to the wild music that rises, now 
 slow, now fast, now deliriously wild, seductive, 
 intoxicating, with a human note of passion in its 
 strain. She can feel the answering shiver of 
 feeling that quivers up to her from the dense 
 audience, spellbound by the motion of her 
 glancing feet, and she flies swifter and swifter, 
 and lighter and lighter, till the very serpents 
 seem alive with jewelled scintillations. One 
 quivering, gleaming, daring bound, and she 
 stands with outstretched arms and passion- 
 filled eyes, poised on one slender foot, asking a 
 supreme note to finish her dream of motion. 
 And the men rise to a man and answer her, and 
 cheer, cheer till the echoes shout from the sur- 
 rounding hills and tumble wildly down the 
 crags. The clouds have sailed away, leaving 
 long feathery streaks in their wake. Her eyes 
 have an insecing look, and she is tremulous with 
 excitement. She can hear yet that last grand
 
 A CROSS LINE 21 
 
 shout, and the strain of that old-time music that 
 she has never heard in this life of hers, save 
 as an inner accompaniment to the memory of 
 hidden things, born with her, not of this time. 
 
 .And her thoughts go to other women she has 
 known, women good and bad, school friends, 
 casual acquaintances, women workers joyless 
 machines for grinding daily corn, unwilling 
 maids grown old in the endeavour to get 
 settled, patient wives who bear little ones to 
 indifferent husbands until they wear out a 
 long array. She busies herself with question- 
 ing. Have they, too, this thirst for excitement, 
 for change, this restless craving for sun and 
 love and motion ? Stray words, half con- 
 fidences, glimpses through soul-chinks of sup- 
 pressed fires, actual outbreaks, domestic cata- 
 strophes, how the ghosts dance in the cells of 
 her memory ! And she laughs, laughs softly to 
 herself because the densencss of man, his 
 chivalrous conservative devotion to the female 
 idea he has created blinds him, perhaps happily, 
 to the problems of her complex nature. Ay, 
 she mutters musingly, the wisest of them can 
 only say we are enigmas. Kach one of them sets 
 about solving the riddle of the civiir :cc:'jl:chc
 
 22 KEYNOTES 
 
 and well it is that the workings of our 
 hearts are closed to them, that we are cunning 
 enough or great enough to seem to be what 
 they would have us, rather than be what we are. 
 But few of them have had the insight to find 
 out the key to our seeming contradictions. The 
 why a refined, physically fragile woman will 
 mate with a brute, a mere male animal with 
 primitive passions and love him the why 
 strength and beauty appeal more often than 
 the more subtly fine qualities of mind or heart 
 the why women (and not the innocent ones) 
 will condone sins that men find hard to forgive 
 in their fellows. They have all overlooked the 
 eternal wildness, the untamed primitive savage 
 temperament that lurks in the mildest, best 
 woman. Deep in through ages of convention 
 this primeval trait burns, an untameable quantity 
 that may be concealed but is never eradicated 
 by culture the keynote of woman's witch- 
 craft and woman's strength. But it is there, sure 
 enough, and each woman is conscious of it in 
 her truth-telling hours of quiet self-scrutiny 
 and each woman in Gocl's wide world will deny 
 it, and each woman will help another to conceal 
 it for the woman who tells the truth and is
 
 A CROSS LINE 23 
 
 not a liar about these things is untrue to her 
 sex and abhorrent to man, for he has fashioned 
 a model on imaginary lines, and he has said, 'so 
 I would have you,' and every woman is an un- 
 conscious liar, for so man loves her. And when 
 a Strindberg or a Nietzche arises and peers 
 into the recesses of her nature and dissects her 
 ruthlessly, the men shriek out louder than 
 the women, because the truth is at all times 
 unpalatable, and the gods they have set up arc 
 dear to them. . . .' 
 
 ' Dreaming, or speering into futurity? You 
 have the look of a seer. I believe you are half 
 a witch ! ' 
 
 And he drops his grey-clad figure on the 
 turf. He has dropped his drawl long ago, in 
 midsummer. 
 
 ' Is not every woman that ? Let us hope 
 I 'm, for my friends, a white one.' 
 
 ' A-ah ! Have you many friends ? ' 
 
 'That is a query! If you mean many corre- 
 spondents, man\- persons who send me Christ- 
 mas cards, or remember my birthday, or 
 figure in my address-book ? Xo.' 
 
 ' Well, grant I don't mean that 1' 
 
 ' \\ ell, perhaps, yes. Scattered over the
 
 24 KEYNOTES 
 
 world, if my death were belled out, many 
 women would give me a tear, and some a 
 prayer. And many men would turn back a 
 page in their memory and give me a kind 
 thought, perhaps a regret, and go back to their 
 work with a feeling of having lost something 
 that they never possessed. I am a creature 
 of moments. Women have told me that I 
 came into their lives just when they needed me. 
 Men had no need to tell me, I felt it. People 
 have needed me more than I them. I have 
 given freely whatever they craved from me in 
 the way of understanding or love. I have 
 touched sore places they showed me and 
 healed them, but they never got at me. I have 
 been for myself, and helped myself, and borne 
 the burden of my own mistakes. Some have 
 chafed at my self-sufficiency and have called 
 me fickle not understanding that they gave 
 me nothing, and that when I had served them, 
 their moment was ended, and I was to pass on. 
 I read people easily, I am written in black 
 letter to most 
 
 ' To your husband !' 
 
 ' He (quickly) we will not speak of him ; it 
 is not loyal.'
 
 A CROSS LINE 25 
 
 'Do not I understand you a little?' 
 
 ' You do not misunderstand me.' 
 
 ' That is something.' 
 
 ' It is much ! ' 
 
 'Is it ? (searching her face). It is not one 
 grain of sand in the desert that stretches be- 
 tween you and me, and you are as impenetrable 
 as a sphinx at the end of it. This (passionately) 
 is my moment, and what have you given me ? ' 
 
 ' Perhaps less than other men I have known ; 
 but you want less. You are a little like me, 
 you can stand alone. And yet (her voice is 
 shaking), have I given you nothing?' 
 
 He laughs, and she winces and they sit 
 silent, and they both feel as if the earth between 
 them is laid with infinitesimal electric threads 
 vibrating with a common pain. Her eyes are 
 filled with tears that burn but don't fall, and 
 she can see his somehow through her closed 
 lids, see their cool greyncss troubled by sudden 
 fire, and she rolls her handkerchief into a moist 
 cambric ball between her cold palms. 
 
 ' You have given me something something 
 to carry away with me an infernal want. You 
 ought to be satisfied. I am infernally miser- 
 able.'
 
 26 KEYNOTES 
 
 ' You (nearer) have the most tantalising 
 mouth in the world when your lips tremble 
 like that. I ... What ! can you cry ? You ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, even I can cry ! ' 
 
 ' You dear woman ! (pause) And I can't help 
 you ! ' 
 
 ' You can't help me. No man can. Don't 
 think it is because you are you I cry, but 
 because you probe a little nearer into the real 
 me that I feel so.' 
 
 ' Was it necessary to say that? (reproachfully). 
 Do you think I don't know it ? I can't for the 
 life of me think how you, with that free gipsy 
 nature of yours, could bind yourself to a 
 monotonous country life, with no excitement, 
 no change. I wish I could offer you my yacht. 
 Do you like the sea ? ' 
 
 ' I love it, it answers one's moods.' 
 
 'Well, let us play pretending, as the children 
 say. Grant that I could, I would hang your 
 cabin with your own colours ; fill it with books, 
 all those I have heard you say you care for ; 
 make it a nest as rare as the bird it would 
 shelter. You would reign supreme ; when your 
 highness would deign to honour her servant I 
 
 ir> o 
 
 would come and humour your every whim. If
 
 A CROSS LINE 27 
 
 you were glad, you could clap your hands and 
 order music, and we would dance on the white 
 deck, and we would skim through the sunshine 
 of Southern seas on a spice-scented breeze. 
 You make me poetical. And if you were angry 
 you could vent your feelings on me, and I would 
 give in and bow my head to your mood. And 
 we would drop anchor and stroll through 
 strange cities, go far inland and glean folk- 
 lore out of the beaten track of everyday tourists. 
 And at night when the harbour slept we would 
 sail out through the moonlight over silver seas. 
 You are smiling, you look so different when you 
 smile ; do you like my picture?' 
 
 ' Some of it ! ' 
 
 1 What not ? ' 
 
 1 You ! ' 
 
 ' Thank you.' 
 
 ' You asked me. Can't you understand where 
 the spell lies? It is the freedom, the freshness, 
 the vague danger, the unknown that has a 
 witchery for me, ay, for every woman ! ' 
 
 ' Are you incapable of affection, then ? ' 
 
 ' Of course not, I share ' (bitterly) ' that crown- 
 ing disability of my sex. .But not willingly, I 
 chafe under it. My God, if it were not for tiiat,
 
 28 KEYNOTES 
 
 we women would master the world. I tell you 
 men would be no match for us. At heart we 
 care nothing for laws, nothing for systems. All 
 your elaborately reasoned codes for controlling 
 morals or man do not weigh a jot with us 
 against an impulse, an instinct. We learn those 
 things from you, you tamed, amenable animals ; 
 they are not natural to us. It is a wise dis- 
 position of providence that this untameableness 
 of ours is corrected by our affections. We forge 
 our own chains in a moment of softness, and 
 then ' (bitterly) ' we may as well wear them with 
 a good grace. Perhaps many of our seeming 
 contradictions are only the outward evidences 
 of inward chafing. Bah ! the qualities that go 
 to make a Napoleon superstition, want of 
 honour, disregard of opinion and the eternal I 
 are oftener to be found in a woman than a man. 
 Lucky for the world perhaps that all these 
 attributes weigh as nothing in the balance with 
 the need to love if she be a good woman, to be 
 loved if she is of a coarser fibre.' 
 
 ' I never met any one like you, you are a 
 strange woman ! ' 
 
 ' No, I am merely a truthful one. Women 
 talk to me why, I can't say but always they
 
 A CROSS LINE 29 
 
 come, strip their hearts and souls naked, and let 
 me see the hidden folds of their natures. The 
 greatest tragedies I have ever read are child's 
 play to those I have seen acted in the inner 
 life of outwardly commonplace women. A 
 woman must beware of speaking the truth to a 
 man ; he loves her the less for it. It is the 
 elusive spirit in her that he divines but cannot 
 seize, that fascinates and keeps him.' 
 
 There is a long silence, the sun is waning 
 and the scythes arc silent, and overhead the 
 crows arc circling, a croaking irregular army, 
 homeward bound from a long day's pillage. 
 
 She has made no sign, yet so subtly is the 
 air charged with her that he feels but a few 
 moments remain to him. He goes over and 
 kneels beside her and fixes his eyes on her odd 
 dark face. They both tremble, yet neither 
 speaks. His breath is coming quickly, and 
 the bistre stains about her eyes seem to have 
 deepened, perhaps by contrast as she has 
 paled. 
 
 ' Look at me ! ' 
 
 She turns her head right round and gazes 
 straight into his face. A few drops of sweat 
 crlisten on his forehead.
 
 30 KEYNOTES 
 
 ' You witch woman ! what am I to do with 
 myself? Is my moment ended ?' 
 
 ' I think so.' 
 
 ' Lord, what a mouth ! ' 
 
 'Don't, oh don't!' 
 
 'No, I won't. But do you mean it? Am I, 
 who understand your every mood, your restless 
 spirit, to vanish out of your life? You can't 
 mean it. Listen ; are you listening to me ? I 
 can't see your face; take down your hands. Go 
 back over every chance meeting you and I 
 have had together since I met you first by the 
 river, and judge them fairly. To-day is Mon- 
 day ; Wednesday afternoon I shall pass your 
 gate, and if if my moment is ended, and you 
 mean to send me away, to let me go with this 
 weary aching . . . ' 
 
 'A-ah!' she stretches out one brown hand 
 appealingly, but he does not touch it. 
 
 ' Hang something white on the lilac bush ! ' 
 
 She gathers up creel and rod, and he takes 
 her shawl, and, wrapping it round her, holds her 
 a moment in it, and looks searchingly into her 
 eyes, then stands back and raises his hat, and 
 she glides away through the reedy grass.
 
 A CROSS LINE 31 
 
 Wednesday morning she lies watching the 
 clouds sail by. A late rose spray nods into the 
 open window, and the petals fall every time. 
 A big bee buzzes in and fills the room with his 
 
 o 
 
 bass note, and then dances out again. She 
 can hear his footstep on the gravel. Presently 
 he looks in over the half window. 
 
 ' Get up and come out, 'twill do you good. 
 Have a brisk walk ! ' 
 
 She shakes her head languidly, and he throws a 
 great soft dewy rose with sure aim on her breast. 
 
 ' Shall I go in and lift you out and put you, 
 " nighty " and all, into your tub ? ' 
 
 ' No (impatiently). I '11 get up just now.' 
 
 The head disappears, and she rises wearily 
 and gets through her dressing slowly, stopped 
 every moment by a feeling of faintness. He 
 finds her presently rocking slowly to and fro 
 with closed eyes, and drops a leaf with three 
 plums in it on to her lap. 
 
 ' I have been watching four for the last week, 
 but a bird, greedy beggar, got one this morning 
 early try them. Don't you mind, old girl, 
 I '11. pour out my own tea ! ' 
 
 She bites into one and tries to finish it, but 
 cannot.
 
 32 KEYNOTES 
 
 ' You are a good old man ! ' she says, and 
 the tears come unbidden to her eyes, and trickle 
 down her cheeks, dropping on to the plums, 
 streaking their delicate bloom. He looks un- 
 easily at her, but doesn't know what to do, 
 and when he has finished his breakfast he 
 stoops over her chair and strokes her hair, 
 saying, as he leaves a kiss on the top of her 
 head 
 
 ' Come out into the air, little woman ; do you 
 a world of good ! ' And presently she hears 
 the sharp thrust of his spade above the bee's 
 hum, leaf rustle, and the myriad late summer 
 sounds that thrill through the air. It irritates 
 her almost to screaming point. There is a 
 practical non-sympathy about it, she can dis- 
 tinguish the regular one, two, three, the thrust, 
 interval, then pat, pat, on the upturned sod. 
 To-day she wants some one, and her thoughts 
 wander to the grey-eyed man who never misun- 
 derstands her, and she wonders what he would 
 say to her. Oh, she wants some one so badly to 
 soothe her. And she yearns for the little mother 
 who is twenty years under the daisies. The 
 little mother who is a faint memory strengthened 
 by a daguerreotype in which she sits with silk-
 
 A CROSS LIN E 33 
 
 mittened hands primly crossed on the lap of 
 her moire gown, a diamond brooch fastening 
 the black velvet ribbon crossed so stiffly over 
 her lace collar, the shining- tender eyes looking 
 steadily out, and her hair in the fashion of 
 fifty-six. How that spade dominates over 
 ever}- sound ! And what a sickening pain she 
 has ; an odd pain, she never felt it before. 
 Supposing she were to die, she tries to fancy 
 how she would look. They would be sure to 
 plaster her curls down. He might be digging 
 her grave no, it is the patch where the early 
 peas grew ; the peas that were eaten with the 
 twelve weeks' ducklings ; she remembers them, 
 little fluffy golden balls with waxen bills, and 
 such dainty paddles. Remembers holding an 
 egg to her ear and listening to it cheep inside 
 before even there was a chip in the shell. 
 Strange how things come to life. What ! she 
 sits bolt upright and holds tightly to the chair, 
 and a questioning, awesome look comes over 
 her face. Then the quick blood creeps up 
 through her olive skin right up to her temples, 
 and she buries her face in her hands and sits 
 so a long time. 
 
 The maid comes in and watches her curiously,
 
 34 KEYNOTES 
 
 and moves softly about. The look in her eyes 
 is the look of a faithful dog, and she loves 
 her with the same rare fidelity. She hesi- 
 tates, then goes into the bedroom and stands 
 thoughtfully, with her hands clasped over her 
 breast. 
 
 She is a tall, thin, flat-waisted woman, with 
 misty blue eyes and a receding chin. Her 
 hair is pretty. 
 
 She turns as her mistress comes in, with an 
 expectant look on her face. She has taken 
 up a night-gown, but holds it idly. 
 
 ' Lizzie, had you ever a child ? ' 
 
 The girl's long left hand is ringless, yet she 
 asks it with a quiet insistence as if she knew 
 what the answer would be, and the odd eyes 
 read her face with an almost cruel steadiness. 
 The girl flushes painfully and then whitens, 
 her very eyes seem to pale, and her under lip 
 twitches as she jerks out huskily 
 
 ' Yes ! ' 
 
 ' What happened it ? ' 
 
 ' It died, Ala'm.' 
 
 ' Poor thing ! Poor old Liz ! ' 
 
 She pats the girl's hand softly, and the latter 
 stands dumbly and looks down at both hands,
 
 A CROSS LINK 35 
 
 as if fearful to break the wonder of a caress. 
 She whispers hesitatingly 
 
 ' Have you, have you any little things left ? ' 
 
 And she laughs such a soft, cooing little 
 laugh, like the churring of a ring-dove, and 
 nods shyly back in reply to the tall maid's 
 questioning look. The latter goes out, and 
 comes back with a flat, red-painted deal box 
 and unlocks it. It does not hold very much, 
 and the tiny garments are not of costly material, 
 but the two women pore over them as a gem 
 collector over a rare stone. She has a glimpse 
 of thick crested paper as the girl unties a 
 packet of letters, and looks away until she 
 says tenderly 
 
 ' Look, Ma'm ! ' 
 
 A little bit of hair inside a paper heart. It 
 is almost white, so silky, and so fine, that it 
 is more like a thread of bog wool than a baby's 
 hair. And the mistress, who is a wife, puts 
 her arms round the tall maid, who has never 
 had more than a moral claim to the name, 
 and kisses her in her quick way. 
 
 The afternoon is drawing on ; she is kneeling 
 before an open trunk with flushed checks and 
 sparkling eyes. A heap of unused, dainty lace
 
 36 KEYNOTES 
 
 trimmed ribbon-decked cambric garments is 
 scattered around her. She holds the soft 
 scented web to her cheek and smiles musingly. 
 Then she rouses herself and sets to work, 
 sorting out the finest, with the narrowest lace 
 
 o * 
 
 and tiniest ribbon, and puckers her swarthy 
 brows, and measures lengths along her middle 
 finger. Then she gets slowly up, as if careful 
 of herself as a precious thing, and half afraid. 
 
 ' Lizzie ! ' 
 
 ' Yes, Ma'm ! ' 
 
 ' Wasn't it lucky they were too fine for 
 every day? They will be so pretty. Look at 
 this one with the tiny Valenciennes edging. 
 Why, one nightgown will make a dozen little 
 shirts such elfin-shirts as they are too and 
 Lizzie ! ' 
 
 'Yes, Ma'm!' 
 
 'Just hang it out on the lilac bush; mind, 
 the lilac bush ! ' 
 
 ' Yes, Ma'm.' 
 
 ' Or Lizzie, wait I '11 do it myself ! '
 
 NOW SPRING HAS COME 
 
 A CONFIDENCE 
 
 ' I DON'T believe that mocking-bird line be- 
 longs to the song at all, Lizzie, you never do 
 get a thing right ! ' 
 
 The words have a partly irritated, partly 
 contemptuous tone that seems oddly at vari- 
 ance with the size of the child who utters them. 
 She is lying flat on her stomach on the floor, 
 resting her elbows at each side of a book she is 
 reading, holding her sharp chin in the palms of 
 her hands, waving her skinny legs in uncon- 
 scious time to the half tired, half feverish lilt of 
 the nurse as she jogs the baby in time to the 
 tune. She gazes, as she speaks, at the girl with 
 a pair of unusually bright penetrating eyes. 
 This mocking-bird line never fails to annoy her.
 
 38 KEYNOTES 
 
 'Troth, an if I cud get the young limb to 
 slape I wouldn't care if ' twas mockin'-birds or 
 
 tom-cats ! ' is the indifferent answer. 
 
 * * * * * * 
 
 Strange how some trivial thing will jog a 
 link in a chain of association, and set it vibrat- 
 ing until it brings one face to face with scenes 
 and people long forgotten in some prison cell 
 in one's brain ; calling to new life a red-haired 
 girl, with sherry-brown eyes, and a flat back, 
 pacing a nursery floor in impatient endeavour 
 to get a fractious child to sleep ay, her very 
 voice and her persistent mixing of mocking- 
 birds and spring time. So muses the child twenty 
 years after, as, past her first youth, with only 
 the eyes and the smile unchanged, she lies on a 
 bear-skin before the fire on a chilly evening in 
 late spring, and goes over a recent experience. 
 A half humorous smile with a tinge of mockery 
 in it plays round her lips as she says 
 
 ' Twenty years ago. Queer how it should fit 
 
 in after all that time ! ' 
 
 * * -* -* * * 
 
 ' Tell you how it was? That is not very easy, 
 pathos may become bathos in the telling. Let 
 me see. Of course it was chance, or is there
 
 NOW SPRING HAS COME 39 
 
 any such thing as chance ? Say fate, instead. 
 The three old ladies who spin our destinies 
 were in want of amusement, so they pitched 
 on me. They sent their messenger to me in 
 the guise of a paper-backed novel with a taking 
 name. I was waiting in a shop for some papers 
 I had ordered when it struck me. I took it up. 
 Tiic author was unknown to me. I opened it 
 at haphazard and a line caught me. I read on. 
 I was roused by the bookseller's suave voice. 
 
 ' That is a very bad book, Madam. One of 
 the modern realistic school, a tcndcnz rovian, I 
 would not advise Madam to read it ! ' 
 
 ' A-ah, indeed ! ' 
 
 I laid it clown and left the shop, but the 
 words I had read kept dancing before me, I 
 saw them written across the blue of the sky, 
 in the sun streaks on the pavement, and the 
 luminous delicacy of the Norwegian summer 
 nights. They were impressed on my brain in 
 vivid colour, glowing, blushing with ardour as 
 
 J C) O " O 
 
 they were. "Weeks passed ; one afternoon time 
 hung heavily on my hands, and I sent for the 
 book. I read all that afternoon ; let the telling 
 words, the passionate pain, the hungry yearning, 
 all the tragedy of a man's soul-strife with evil
 
 40 KEYNOTES 
 
 and destiny, sorrow and sin, bite into my 
 sentient being. When the book was finished 
 I was consumed with a desire to see and know 
 the author. I never reasoned that the whole 
 struggle might only be an extraordinarily clever 
 intuitive analysis of a possible experience. I 
 accepted it as real, and I wanted to help this 
 man. I longed to tell him in his loneness, that 
 one human being, and that one a woman, had 
 courage to help him. The abstract ego of the 
 novel haunted me. I have a will of my own, so 
 I set to work to find him. It was not so easy. 
 None of my acquaintances knew him, or of 
 him. He was a strange meteor, and as the book 
 was condemned by the orthodox I had to feel 
 my way cautiously. Isn't it dreadful to think 
 what slaves we are to custom ? I wonder shall 
 we ever be able to tell the truth, ever be able 
 to live fearlessly according to our own light, to 
 believe that what is right for us must be right? 
 
 o o 
 
 It seems as if all the religions, all the advance- 
 ment, all the culture of the past, has only been 
 a forging of chains to cripple posterity, a 
 laborious building up of moral and legal prisons 
 based on false conceptions of sin and shame, to 
 cramp men's minds and hearts and souls, not
 
 NOW SPRING HAS COME 41 
 
 to speak of women's. What half creatures we 
 are, we women ! Hermaphrodite by force of 
 circumstances. Deformed results of a fight of 
 centuries between physical suppression and 
 natural impulse to fulfil our destiny. Every 
 social revolution has told hardest on us : when 
 a sacrifice was demanded, let woman make it. 
 And yet there are men, and the best of them, 
 who sec all this and would effect a change, if 
 they knew how. Why it came about? Because 
 men manufactured an artificial morality, made 
 sins of things that were as clean in themselves 
 as the pairing of birds on the wing ; crushed 
 nature, robbed it of its beauty and meaning, 
 and established a system that means war, and 
 always war, because it is a struggle between 
 instinctive truths and cultivated lies. Yes, I 
 know I speak hotly, but my heart burns in me 
 sometimes, and I hate myself. It's a bad thing 
 when a man or woman has a contempt for 
 himself. There's nothing like a good dose of 
 K>ve fever (in other words, a waking to the fact 
 that one is a higher animal with a destiny to 
 fulfil) to teach one self-knowledge, to give one 
 a glimpse into the contradictor}- issues of one's 
 individual nature. Studv vourself, and what
 
 42 KEYNOTES 
 
 will you find ? Just what I did ; the weak, the 
 inconsequent, the irresponsible. In one word, 
 the untrue feminine is of man's making, whilst 
 the strong, the natural, the true womanly is of 
 God's making. It is easy to read as a primer ; 
 but how change it ? Go back to my poet ! 
 Well, at length an old bookseller I knew gave 
 me surer information. My intuition was not at 
 fault, the experiences were wrung from the 
 man's soul. As the old superstition has it, a 
 dagger dipped in a man's heart-blood will 
 always strike home, so no wonder they pierced 
 me with their passion, despair, and brave endur- 
 ance. What the old fellow wrote to him I 
 know not, but I got an unconventional pretty 
 letter from him, and it ended in our writing to 
 one another. 
 
 As my time to leave drew near, the desire to 
 see him became overpowering. I could afford 
 it ; he could not. It ended in our arranging to 
 meet at a little town on the coast. It i.s strange 
 how the idea of a person one has never seen 
 can possess one as completely as this did me. 
 I, who, as you know, think as little of starting 
 alone for say, Mexico, as another woman 
 of going to afternoon tea, who have trotted
 
 NOW SPRING H A S C O M E 43 
 
 the globe \vithout male assistance, felt as 
 tremulously stirred as at confirmation day. 
 There are days that stand out in the gallery of 
 one's remembrances clean painted as a Van 
 de Ilooge, with a sharp clearness. I slept on 
 board, and early the next morning, it was 
 Sunday, I stood on deck watching the coast as 
 \ve glided through the water that danced in 
 delicious September sunshine. I was happily 
 expectant. At dinner hour we passed a fjord, 
 a lovely deep blue fjord winding to our right 
 as \vc passed, with the spire of a church just 
 visible amongst the fir trees round the bend. 
 Boats of all kinds, from a smart cutter to a 
 pram were coming out after the service. The 
 white sails swelled as the) 7 caught the breeze, 
 Happed as the}' tacked, hung listlessly a second, 
 and then dashed with a swerve, like swift snowy- 
 winged birds, through the water. I had not 
 troubled with church-going of late years. \Yhv ? 
 
 o O J j 
 
 oh, speculation weariness of soul that found 
 no drop of consolation in religious observance, 
 maybe that might be the reason. But all those 
 honest simple folks in their Sunday bravery, fair- 
 haired girls with their psalm-books wrapped up 
 in their onlv silk kerchief, the ring of laughter
 
 44 KEYNOTES 
 
 echoing across the water, the magic of sun 
 and sky, mountain and fjord, made me feel 
 that I, too, was church-going, and I felt 
 strangely happy. It is the off-moments that 
 we do not count as playing any part in our 
 lives that are, after all, the best we have. I am 
 afraid it would be impossible to make you see 
 things as I felt them. I went up to the hotel 
 when I landed; I had the reputation of riches, 
 the hotel was at my service. I inquire for 
 him, go down to my sitting-room, send him my 
 card, and wait. I wait with an odd feeling that 
 I am outside myself, watching myself as it were. 
 I can see the very childishness of my figure, 
 the too slight hips and bust, the flash of rings 
 on my fingers ; they are pressed against my 
 heart, for it is beating hatefully ; ay, the very 
 expectant side-poise of head is visible to me 
 somehow. It flashes across me as I stand that 
 so might a slave wait for the coming of a new 
 
 o o 
 
 master, and I laugh at myself for my want-wit 
 agitation. A knock. . . . ' Come in ! ' . . . The 
 door opens, and I am satisfied. In the space 
 of a second's gaze I meet what my soul has 
 been waiting for, ah, how long ? I think- 
 always : Have I lived before in some other
 
 NOW SPRING HAS COMK 45 
 
 life, that no surprise touches me? That it is 
 
 just as if I am only meeting the embodiment of 
 
 a disintegrated floating image that has often 
 
 flashed before my consciousness, and flown 
 
 before I could fix it? Has this man or some 
 
 psychical part of this man been in touch with 
 
 me before, or how is it ? I stand still and stretch 
 
 out my hand. I check an impulse to put out both. 
 
 I feel so tremulously happy. I know before he 
 
 speaks how his voice will .sound, what his touch 
 
 will be like before he clasps my hand. It is 
 
 odd how the most important crisis of our lives 
 
 often comes upon us in the most commonplace 
 
 way. It is the fashion to decry love, yet the 
 
 vehemence of the denials, the keenness of the 
 
 weapons of satire and scepticism that arc turned 
 
 against it, only prove its existence. As long 
 
 as man is man and woman is woman, it will 
 
 he to them at some time the sweetest, and 
 
 possibly the most fatal interest in life. Thrust 
 
 it aside for ambition or gain, slight it as you 
 
 \vill, sooner or later it will have its revenge. 1 
 
 had ielt no breath of it as maid, wife, or widow. 
 
 my heart had been a free, wild, shy thing, jessed 
 
 by my will. Sometimes, by way of experiment, 
 
 I let it fly to some one for an hour, but always
 
 46 KEYNOTES 
 
 to call it back again to my own safe keeping. 
 Now it left me. We sat and talked, rather I 
 talked, I think, and he listened. He said my 
 going to see him even on literary grounds was 
 eccentric, but then it seemed I had a way of 
 doing as I pleased without exciting much com- 
 ment. How did he know that? Oh, he had 
 heard it ! Was I really going away ? How 
 tiresome it was, really awfully tiresome ! What 
 was he like ? Well, an American bison or a 
 lion. You might put his head amongst the 
 rarest and handsomest heads in the world. Pre- 
 judiced in his favour ! No, not a bit. His 
 hands, for instance, are great labourer's hands, 
 freckled too ; I don't like his gait either, indeed 
 a dozen things. What we talked about ? well, 
 as I said, he listened mostly, laughed with a 
 great joyous boyish laugh w r ith a deep musical 
 note in it. He has a deferential manner and a 
 very caressing smile ; a trick, too, of throwing 
 back his head and tossing his crest of hair. 
 Why he laughed ? well, I suppose I made 
 him. I told him all about myself, turned my- 
 self inside out, good and bad alike, as one 
 might the pocket of an old gown, laughed at my 
 own expense, hid nothing. An extraordinary
 
 N O W SPRING H AS CO M K 47 
 
 thing to do, was it ? I suppose it was but 
 the whole thing was rather unusual. He got 
 up and walked about. Sometimes he thrust his 
 hands in his pockets and exclaimed 'The Deuce,' 
 etc. I fancy he learnt a good deal about me in 
 a few hours. You see it was not as if one were 
 talking to a stranger, it was as if one had met 
 part of one's self one had lost for a long time 
 and was filling up the gaps made during the 
 absence. You can't understand. I think we 
 were both very happy. He admired no, that 
 is not the word- he was taken with me, that is 
 better. He said my hands were ' as small as a 
 child's,' the tablecloth was dark red plush 
 that made a good background. He pointed 
 timidly, as a great shy boy might, to one of my 
 rings. You see they don't as a rule wear many 
 rings up there. I suppose they gave an im- 
 pression of wealth. ' That one is very beautiful ! ' 
 I laughed, I was so glad my hands were pretty ; 
 pretty hands last so much longer than a pretty 
 face. I laughed too at his finger, it had such a 
 deferential expression about it, and I called 
 him a great child. I think we were botli like 
 two great children, we had found a common 
 interest to rejoice in we had found ourselves.
 
 48 KEYNOTES 
 
 Every moment was delightful, we were making 
 discoveries, finding we had had like experiences, 
 had both hungered, both known want, were both 
 of an age. We were both unconventional, and 
 were shaking hands mentally all the time. I 
 don't remember now what it was he said, but 
 I remember I was obliged to drop my head, 
 and I felt I was smiling from sheer delicious 
 pleasure. He cried laughingly : ' You say I am 
 a great child, you are a child yourself when 
 you smile !' He was to have supper with me, 
 and he went away for an hour. After he left I 
 walked over to a long mirror and looked at my- 
 self. Tried to fancy how he saw me ; that might 
 be different, you know. I had colour, life, eyes 
 like stars, trembling, smiling lips. There was 
 something quivering, alert about me. I scarce 
 knew myself. Of course the same hips, figure, 
 features were reflected there it was something 
 shining through that struck me as foreign. 
 Do you know what I did ? I danced all round 
 the room. Shows what an idiot an old woman 
 can be. By the way. he denied that I was old. 
 I was like a little girl but a remarkable little 
 girl. No wonder people always noticed me, as if I 
 were a somebody. How did he know that ? oh,
 
 X O W STRING II A S C O M E 49 
 
 he had heard it, for that matter seen it too, at 
 the pier. lie knew the moment I stepped off 
 the boat that it was I. Yes, people always 
 stared at me, but how could he know ? Ah ! 
 presentiment perhaps. So he was on the pier? 
 why did he not come and meet me ? No audible 
 answer, but a slow reddening up to the roots 
 of his fair hair. I do not know quite how he 
 conveyed it, but I had the sensation, a charm- 
 ing one, of being treated as a queen. But to 
 go back. I sat or rather lay in an arm-chair at 
 the window and watched the water and the 
 ships. It was getting dusk, the luminous dusk 
 of the north, as if a soft transparent purple veil 
 is being dropped gently over the world. The 
 fjord was full of lights from the different crafts 
 at anchor, and the heaven full of stars, and the 
 longer one looked up there, the more one 
 saw myriads of glimmering eyes of light, until 
 one's brain seemed full of their brightness, and 
 one forgot one's body in gazing. Long silvery 
 streaks glistened through the heaving water, 
 like the flash of feeding trout, and lads and 
 lasses in boats rowed to and fro, and human 
 vibration seemed to thrill from them, filling the 
 atmosphere with man and woman. And the 
 D
 
 50 KEYNOTES 
 
 silken air caressed my face as the touch of cool 
 soft fingers. I had a feeling of perfect well- 
 being ; one does not get many such moments 
 in one's life, does one ? I think I just was 
 happy, rehearsing the hours that flew too 
 quickly, recalling every look, tone, gesture, and 
 smile. The jomfru came in to lay the table. 
 She knew me from a previous visit and began to 
 talk, but I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. 
 So I went up stairs, washed my hands and 
 puffed them with sweet-smelling powder, and 
 then when I went down again and sat and 
 waited, I clasped them up over my head to make 
 them white. He came back, flung his hat on 
 the sofa out of sheer boyish delight at being 
 back, came over and stood and looked down 
 at me and I laughed up to him. If I were to 
 talk until Doomsday, I could not make you 
 understand what I cannot yet understand my- 
 self. After supper, at which I just sipped my 
 tea and watched him, we sat at the window 
 and looked out at the purple world. I had told 
 him he might smoke. . . Well? well, we talked, 
 and we talked when we were both silent, and he, 
 I mean his thinking self came to me, and I, well, 
 I believe, from the moment he came into the
 
 N O W S P R I N G HAS CO M K 5 1 
 
 room, all the best of me went straight to him. 
 The lights out in the harbour twinkled, a star 
 fell, and I wished well, wishes are foolish. I 
 think he must have been watching iny face, for 
 when our eyes met, he smiled as if he under- 
 stood. Sometimes he jumped up and stood 
 rocking a chair backwards and forwards. He 
 was sorry I was going away ! Yes ? oh, we 
 might meet again ! That might be difficult ! 
 Indeed? I should have thought he would be 
 the last person in the world to say it was 
 difficult to meet. He laughed at that, with a 
 quick sidelong look he has, like a Finn dog ; 
 and said I was sharp, awfully sharp, as if he 
 liked being caught. By the way, he occasion- 
 all}- used strong language, said I must forgive 
 him, he wasn't very used to ladies' society. 
 
 At ten I said I would say good-night for 
 conventionality's sake. lie begged, humbly it 
 struck me, for a little longer. I was to leave 
 by the steamer at eight in the morning would 
 be down at seven he might come to me. 
 \\ould I give him a portrait of myself? Yes, 
 I would get one specially done. As much in 
 profile as possible, he thought that would be 
 happier. Yes. lie came to the top of the
 
 52 KEYNOTES 
 
 stairs with me. and when we bade {jood-nicfht 
 
 o o 
 
 he took my hand and held it curiously as if it 
 were something fearfully fragile, and stood and 
 watched me down the corridor. And will you 
 credit it ? I felt inclined to run like an awkward 
 little school-girl. I said prayers that night, 
 thanked God I don't quite know what for I 
 suppose I did then perhaps for being happy. 
 I looked at my foreign self in the glass too 
 and when the light was out. . . . Yes ? . . . I 
 did what you and every other woman might do, 
 I cuddled my face to an imaginary face, rubbed 
 my cheek to an imaginary cheek, whispered a 
 God bless you ! and fell asleep. 
 
 I was down before seven, paid my bill, and 
 sat waiting, with the little tray, with its thick 
 white cups and lumpy yellow cream before me. 
 He came. Such a glad man, with glad eyes, glad 
 smile, and outstretched hands. And I, I was 
 so glad, too, that I could have shouted out for 
 very joy of living. I might have been drinking 
 some magic elixir instead of coffee. 
 
 ' It is tiresome !' he said impatiently. 
 
 ' What is tiresome ? You have said that so 
 often.' 
 
 ' It is tiresome when a person one wants so
 
 NOW SPRING HAS COME 53 
 
 badly to keep in the country is going out 
 of it.' 
 
 ' Supposing I were to stay in it, you would 
 probably be in one place and I in another. It 
 is only a question of a little dearer postage ! ' 
 
 We both laughed at that. It takes such a 
 little thing to make one laugh when one is 
 happy. Then the steamer came in sight, and 
 we walked down through the bright morning to 
 the pier, and went on board. He stood silently. 
 We only looked at one another. It did not then 
 strike me as odd it does now. The first bell 
 rang ! I felt a chill steal over me. ' It is tire- 
 some, it is hateful!' His smile had flown ; and 
 old deep lines and traces of past suffering I had 
 not noticed before showed plainly. . . . 
 
 ' I will come back,' I said, ' when the winter 
 is over ! ' 
 
 ' Ay, but winter is long, or it used to be ! ' 
 ' No matter, I will come with the spring ! ' 
 The second bell rang. . . . Ah, why can't we 
 do as our hearts bid us ? We have one short 
 life, and it is spoiled by chains of our own 
 forging, in deference to narrow custom. I 
 shivered. There was after all an autumn chill 
 in the air. I hate the sound of a steamer bell
 
 54 KEYNOTES 
 
 now. . . . The third bell. . . . We turn, and I 
 tighten my small fingers in his great hand, and 
 I say good-bye and God bless you ! Not from 
 a purely religious conception of God. Unless it 
 be that God, and I think it does, means all that 
 is good and beautiful, tender and best. I might 
 have said 'The best I can think of befall you !' 
 A second later and the steamer rail separates 
 us. I look into his soul through his eyes, and 
 see it is sorry, regretful ; as sorry as I am glad 
 it is so he is sorry I am going from him, and 
 in that short concentrated gaze his soul comes 
 to me as I would have it come to me. 
 
 ' When spring comes ! ' I whisper as I lean 
 over to him, whilst the steamer glides out. He 
 follows it to the end of the pier, and stands 
 there as long as we are in sight. If he had 
 held out his arms and said : ' Woman, stay with 
 me ! ' I would, I fear, have jumped down and 
 stayed. Didn't know anything about him ! 
 Xo. that is true, only that I had been waiting 
 for something ever since I was old enough to 
 have a want, and that he was that something, 
 that I was nearly thirty when I found him, and 
 . . . life is short ! 
 
 I was so glad, in spite of leaving him, that I
 
 NOW SPRING HAS COME 55 
 
 believe I thought the sun shone differently I 
 almost asked some people on deck if they did 
 not think that the day was quite the loveliest 
 day that ever dawned since the world was a 
 world ; if there was not something peculiarly 
 and singularly delicious in the very air? I 
 found a quiet sofa, and lay with closed eyes 
 and lived it over again. 
 
 The rest is more difficult to tell you. ... I was 
 insanely happy, then I was intensely miserable. 
 I sent him my portrait and a letter, and counted 
 the days and the hours to a reply. It came. 
 I stole away to read all the warm meaning ill 
 concealed under the words of it. Slept with it 
 under my pillow, carried it in my bosom, and 
 answered it straight from my heart. Why try 
 and tell you of the aftertimc ? I would not go 
 through that winter again for anything in the 
 world. Hope, fear, suspense, joy, despondency, 
 all the strongest feelings that can torture or 
 wear out a heart, were mine. I longed to be 
 up on a high mountain alone with my dream. 
 I wonder does a man ever realise the beauty 
 there is in a woman's thought of him. What 
 kind were the letters ? Warm, passionate, yet 
 with a rcscrvatio incutalis that hurt me, but
 
 56 KEYNOTES 
 
 always with a 'When spring comes!' in them. 
 It is amazing to what depths of folly a human 
 being can descend. I had his photograph on 
 my table. I greeted it as a Russian peasant 
 his household saint. ... It would be hard to 
 find my match in idiocy. I felt a letter coming, 
 and waited with strained ears and fever-racked 
 nerves for the postman's knock. Do you know 
 there is something touchingly pitiful in the way 
 one finds out all the tender bits in a letter and 
 re-reads them. I have kissed a thumb-mark 
 on the paper. Heavens, how the days dragged ! 
 I was ill with yearning thought. Night brought 
 no rest but the comfort of being alone. All the 
 years of my life were not as long as that weary 
 winter. Sleep fled, and nervous pain took its 
 place. ... It was foolish, exceedingly foolish, 
 because it was fatal to my looks. At the rare 
 times I looked at myself I got a glimpse of a 
 thin waxen yellow face with dark ringed eyes, 
 and I was certainly older-looking. Thinking 
 of it all dispassionately, I am inclined to believe 
 I was hysterical. I low many of the follies and 
 frailties of women arc really due to hysterical 
 rather than moral irresponsibility, is a question. 
 You see there is no time of sowiner wild oats
 
 NOW SPRING H A S C O M E 57 
 
 for women ; we repress, and repress, and then 
 some day we stumble on the man who just 
 satisfies our sexual and emotional nature, and 
 then there is shipwreck of some sort. When 
 \ve shall live larger and freer lives, we shall be 
 better balanced than we arc now. If what I 
 suffered is love, all I can say is I would not ask 
 a better sample of the conventional hell's pain. 
 Hu-s-sh ! Very well, I won't say those things ! 
 It is bad enough to be a fool and not to 
 know it, but to be a fool and feel with every 
 fibre of your being, every shred of your under- 
 standing that you arc one, and that there is 
 no help for it ; that all your philosophy w r on't 
 aid you ; that you arc one great want, stilled a 
 little by a letter, only to be haunted afresh by 
 the personality of another creature tortured 
 with doubts and hurt by your loss of self- 
 respect. . . . A-ah ! it was a long winter ! Then 
 the New Year came and went, and time 
 dragged slowly but surely. At length the 
 Almanacs said it was spring-time, and the 
 girls at the street corners called: ' vilets, sweet 
 vilets ! ' ; and the milliners marked down guinea 
 bonnets to 1 2s. i id., and I watched each token of 
 its coming with a fearsome joyous expectation
 
 58 KEYNOTES 
 
 . . . ' Go on,' ah yes, I '11 go on, where was I ? 
 Oh, Spring was coming, wasn't it? I do not 
 laugh as I used to, eh? How used I laugh? 
 I forget. Well, I won't laugh if it hurts you, 
 dear, not even at myself. 
 
 Well, once again, I was standing at a table 
 in an hotel room waiting. It is the simple 
 things that are so hard to describe, and that 
 are most complicated in their effects. I said 
 again ' Come in ! ' held fast to the table with 
 my left hand and smiled to be accurate, began 
 a smile. Spring is later up there, perhaps 
 some of the winter's frost was still in the 
 atmosphere, for something froze it on my lips. 
 I felt a curious stiffening in my face, and the 
 touch of his hand did not thaw me. Feel 
 happy ? No, I was numb in one way and 
 yet keenly alive to impressions. I felt as if 
 my nerve-net was outside my skin, not under 
 it, and that the exposure to the air and sur- 
 rounding influences made it intensely, acutely 
 sensitive. I seemed to sec with my sense of 
 feeling as well as my sight. You know how 
 in great cold you seem to burn your hand 
 with an icy heat if you suddenly grasp a 
 piece of iron ; well, I felt as though I was
 
 N O \V SPRING II A S C O M E 59 
 
 touched by glowing shivers ; that sounds non- 
 sense, but it expresses the feeling. Why ? I 
 don't know why. I was analysing, being ana- 
 lysed, criticising, being criticised. It was all so 
 different, you sec. Supposing you had just 
 sipped a beaker of exhilarating, life-giving, 
 rich wine with an exquisite bouquet, and a 
 glow that steals through you and witches 
 and warms you ; and suddenly, without your 
 knowing how it happens, the draught is trans- 
 formed into lukewarm water, or 'Polly' without 
 the ' dash ' in it. What did he say? Let me 
 think. Oh yes, I was wretchedly thin, Odd 
 how things strike one. I once saw a repre- 
 sentation of Ilolberg's Stundeslose in Copen- 
 hagen. One of the characters is an ancient 
 housekeeper, with a long money-bag, who is, 
 as they term it, ' marriage-sick.' A match is 
 arranged between her and a young spark in 
 the village. The scene is this : whilst the 
 monetary part of the affair is being arranged 
 by the notary, etc., he says to her. 'Permit 
 me to pass my hand over your bosom, mistress ? ' 
 She simpers, and I shall never forget the 
 comical expression of dismay with which the 
 suitor rolls his eyes and drops his jaw as
 
 60 KEYNOTES 
 
 he turns aside. I felt rather than saw the 
 comprehensive look which accompanied his 
 comment on my thinness, and that scene 
 flashed across my inner vision. Odd, was it 
 not ? A sort of sympathetic after-compre- 
 hension. It was as if I, too, were having a 
 hand passed across the flatness of my figure. 
 
 ' Yes, I have got thin ' silence had I 
 been very ill ? Yes, very ! Was that why 
 I was so pale? It was fearful, not a tinge 
 of warm colour in my face. One would be 
 afraid to touch me. I felt as if I were being 
 totted up. Item, so much colour, item, so much 
 flesh. . . . Had I been worried ? I had lost 
 that buoyant childishness that was so attractive. 
 Ah, yes, I had dwelt too much on a trouble 
 I had. Did I sleep? not much! That was 
 foolish ! I ought to eat plenty too. I looked 
 as if I didn't eat enough, my eyes and cheeks 
 were hollowed out. Ah, yes, no doubt I did 
 look older than in Autumn ! I was not con- 
 tradicted. I would have told a little lie to 
 spare a man's feelings. Men are perhaps more 
 conscientious. What else ? I am rehearsing 
 it all as best I can. Oh, my hands were 
 altered, he thought they were not so small,
 
 NOW SPRING HAS COME Ci 
 
 eh ? ... Might be my wrists were less round, 
 
 that made a difference! Did it? They certainly 
 
 were larger, and not so white. . . . Did he kiss 
 
 me ? Oh, yes. You see I wanted to sift this 
 
 thing thoroughly to get clear into my head 
 
 what ground I was standing on. So I let 
 
 him. They were merely lip kisses ; his spirit 
 
 did not come to mine, and I was simply 
 
 analysing them all the time. Did I not 
 
 feel anything? Yes, I did, deeply hurt. Ah, 
 
 I can't say how they hurt me ; they lacked 
 
 everything a kiss, as the expression of the 
 
 strongest, best feeling of a man and woman, 
 
 can hold. How do I know ? My dear woman, 
 
 have you never dreamt, felt, had intuitive c.v- 
 
 pcriuiccst I have. I am not sure that I had 
 
 not a keen sense of the ludicrous side of the 
 
 whole affair, that one portion of my soul was 
 
 not having a laugh at the other's expense. 
 
 I do not quite know what I had been expecting. 
 
 'Tis true he had written me beautiful letters. 
 
 You see he is too much of a word-artist to 
 
 write anything else. Treated me badly ? . . . 
 
 Xo, I am not prepared to say that he did. 
 
 I am gkul he was too honest to hide his 
 
 startled realisation of the fact that Autumn
 
 62 KEYNOTES 
 
 and Spring are different seasons, and that 
 one's feelings may undergo a change in a winter. 
 I do not see why I should resent that. Why, 
 it would be punishing him for having cared 
 for me. To put it in his words : ' I came as 
 a strangely lovely dream into his life.' Pro- 
 bably the whole mistake lay in that. He 
 thought of me as a dream lady with dainty 
 hands, idealised me and wrote to the dream 
 creature. When I came back in the flesh, 
 he realised that I was a prosaic fact, with less 
 charming hands, a tendency to leanness, and 
 coming crow's feet. His look of dismayed 
 awakening was simply delicious. I wish I 
 could catch and fasten the fleeting images that 
 flit across my memory, you would grasp my 
 mental attitude better. In the midst of all my 
 pain, I was sitting next him, and he was strok- 
 ing my hand mechanically, I noticed a glass 
 case on the wall containing an Italian landscape 
 with ball-blue sky and pink lakes. Pasteboard 
 figures of Dutch-peasant build, with Zouave 
 jackets, Tyrolese hats, and bandaged legs, 
 figured in the foreground. You wound it up, 
 and the figures danced to a varsoviana. I 
 was listening to him, and yet at the same time
 
 NOW SPRING HAS COM K 63 
 
 I caught myself imagining how he and I would 
 look dressed like that, bobbing about to the 
 old-fashioned tune. I could hardly keep from 
 shrieking with laughter. He had a turn-down 
 collar on ; he ought always to wear unstarched 
 linen it and his throat didn't fit. You can- 
 not understand me ? Dearest woman, I do not 
 pretend to understand the thing myself. 
 
 Did we not talk about anything ? Of course 
 we did. Tolstoi and his doctrine of celibacy. 
 Ibsen's Hedda. Strindberg's view of the female 
 animal. And we agreed that Friedrich Nietzche 
 appealed to us immensely. You must make 
 allowances. Here was a man passionately 
 attached to his art. His art that he had been 
 treating churlishly for months, for the sake of 
 a dream. The dream was out, and he feared 
 her revenge. That is the one potent element 
 of consolation for me. If one has made an 
 idiot of onc's-self, it is at least self-consoling to 
 
 o 
 
 have clone so for a genius. He chose the better 
 part, if you come to think of it. The man or 
 woman who jeopardises a great talent, be it of 
 writing, painting, or acting- for marriage's sake, 
 is bartering a precious birthright for a mess 
 of pottage mostly indifferent pottage. And
 
 64 KEYNOTES 
 
 even if it were excellent, it is bound to pall, 
 when one has it every day. There never was 
 a marriage yet in which one was not a loser ; 
 and it is generally the more gifted half who 
 has to pay the heavier toll. ... I believe he 
 was intensely sorry for me ; I asked him once 
 you know, half playfully, half maliciously, if he 
 had meant something ; something deliciously 
 tender which I quoted out of one of his letters. 
 He paled to his lips, closed his eyes for a 
 second, and I saw drops of sweat break out on 
 his forehead. I sprang up and turned aside 
 his answer. I remember when I was a little 
 child I never would pick a flower. I always 
 fancied they felt it and bled to death. I used 
 to sneak behind and gather up all those my 
 playmates threw down on the road or fields, 
 and put them, stalks down, into the water in 
 the ditch or brook even now I can't wear them. 
 I did not wish to hurt him cither, he could not 
 help his passion-flower withering. I suppose it 
 was written that my love should turn, like fairy 
 gold, into withered leaves in my grasp . . . 
 What, dear ? a white hair ! oh, I saw several 
 lately. How did it end? Oh, he said that 
 he was going away to glean material for anew
 
 NOW SPRING HAS COME 65 
 
 book ; that he would burn my letters ; it was 
 safer and wiser to burn letters. No, I did not 
 ask him, he volunteered it. He asked me, did 
 I not think so ? I said Yes. But is it not 
 marvellous how dazzlingly swift our thoughts 
 can travel ; like light. Whilst I was saying ' yes,' 
 one often regretted not having burned letters ; 
 receipts, receipts for bills were really the only 
 things of importance to keep. I was thinking 
 and crying inwardly over my letters. Such 
 letters. One only writes once like that, I think. 
 All the perfume of the flowers I ever smelt, all 
 the sun-glints on hill and sea, all the strains of 
 music and light and love I had garnered from 
 the glad fresh young years, when I tossed cow- 
 slip balls in the meadows, were crystallised 
 into love-words in those letters of mine. It 
 seemed to me often that the words burnt 
 with a white flame as I wrote them, and I was 
 shy when I saw them written. And he said : ' I 
 shall burn them ! ' much as you might say : ' I 
 shall take the trimming off that last summer hat 
 of mine.' I did not like to think of his burning 
 them, perhaps with his old washing bills. Do 
 you kno\v, if I had a finger or toe cut off, I 
 wouldn't like them to take it away, I 'd like to 
 K
 
 66 KEYNOTES 
 
 bury it. A sort of feel, I suppose. . . . Well, we 
 said good-bye ! I felt as if I had a sponge with 
 a lot of holes in it, instead of a heart, and that 
 all the feeling had oozed away through them. 
 He was glad to go, I think ; he felt a brute, I 
 
 daresay, yet how could he help it? 
 
 ***** 
 
 Were you ever at the Scandinavian church 
 in the Docks ? 1 went one Sunday after I 
 came back. I like those blue-eyed, seafaring 
 folk ; and the priest wears a black gown and 
 stiff ruff like Luther of mixed renown. An 
 apple-tree outside the open door was struggling 
 to open its delicate pink blossoms ; each petal 
 had a tinge of soot ; it reminded me of the 
 pretty cheeks of a grimy maid-of-all-work. I sat 
 still. A sunbeam came in and pierced Judas's 
 heart, as he sat at his section of the Last Supper 
 table, and it wrapped me up in a sun haze, so 
 that all was misty around me. The sermon 
 only struck my ear with a soothing, drowsy roll, 
 something like the wave-note of the in-curling 
 sea in the Mediterranean, a legato accompani- 
 ment to my thoughts ; and I had a grand 
 burial all by myself. I dug a deep grave and 
 laid all my dreams and foolish wishes and
 
 NOW SPRING HAS COME 67 
 
 sweet hopes in it. A puff of wind rustled 
 through the riggings of the ships and set the 
 flags with their yellow cross fluttering, and 
 scattered a few of the tender blooms over it ... 
 and, ah well ... it seems hard to realise now 
 Spring has gone ! 
 
 Do you really think that crinolines will be 
 worn ?
 
 THE SPELL OF THE WHITE ELF 
 
 HAVE you ever read out a joke that seemed 
 excruciatingly funny, or repeated a line of 
 poetry that struck you as being inexpressibly 
 tender, and found that your listener was not 
 impressed as you were? I have, and so it may 
 be that this will bore you, though it was 
 momentous enough to me. 
 
 I had been up in Norway to receive a little 
 legacy that fell to me, and though my summer 
 visits were not infrequent, I had never been up 
 there in mid-winter, at least not since I was a 
 little child tobogganing with Hans Jorgen (Hans 
 Jorgen Dahl is his full name), and that was 
 long ago. We are connected. Hans Jorgen 
 
 O O J O 
 
 and I were both orphans, and a cousin we 
 called her aunt was one of our guardians. He 
 was her favourite ; and when an uncle on my 
 mother's side she was Cornish born ; my father, 
 a ship captain, met her at Dartmouth offered 
 to take me, I think she was glad to let me go. I
 
 THE SPELL OF THE WHITE ELF 69 
 
 was a lanky girl of eleven, and Hans Jorgen 
 and I were sweethearts. We were to be 
 married some day, we had arranged all that, 
 and he reminded me of it when I was going 
 away, and gave me a silver perfume box, with 
 a gilt crown on top, that had belonged to his 
 mother. And later when he was going to 
 America he came to see me first ; he was a 
 long freckled hobbledehoy, with just the same 
 true eyes and shock head. I was, I thought, 
 quite grown up, I had passed my 'intermediate' 
 and was condescending as girls are. But I don't 
 
 o o 
 
 think it impressed Hans Jorgen much, for he 
 gave me a little ring, turquoise forget-me-nots 
 with enamelled leaves and a motto inside a 
 quaint old thing that belonged to a sainted aunt 
 they keep things a long time in Norway 
 and said he would send for me ; but of course 
 I laughed at that. He has grown to be a great 
 man out in Cincinnati and waits always. I 
 wrote later and told him I thought marriage a 
 vocation and 1 hadn't one for it; but Hans 
 Jorgen took no notice ; just said he 'd wait. He 
 understands waiting, I'll say that for Hans 
 Jorgen. 
 
 I have been alone now for five vcars, work-
 
 70 KEYNOTES 
 
 ing away, though I was left enough to keep me 
 before. Somehow I have not the same glad- 
 ness in my work of late years. Working for 
 one's-self seems a poor end even if one puts by 
 money. But this has little or nothing to do 
 with the white elf, has it ? 
 
 Christiania is a singular city if one knows 
 how to see under the surface, and I enjoyed 
 my stay there greatly. The Hull boat was to 
 sail at 4.30, and I had sent my things down 
 early, for I was to dine at the Grand at two 
 with a cousin, a typical Christiania man. It 
 was a fine clear day, and Karl Johann was 
 thronged with folks. The band was playing in 
 the park, and pretty girls and laughing students 
 walked up and down. Every one who is any- 
 body may generally be seen about that time. 
 Henrik Ibsen if you did not know him from 
 his portrait, you would take him to be a pro- 
 sperous merchant was going home to dine; but 
 Bjornstjerne Bjornson, in town just then, with 
 his grand leonine head, and the kind, keen eyes 
 behind his glasses, was standing near the 
 Storthing House with a group of politicians, pro- 
 bably discussing the vexed question of separate 
 consulship. In no city does one see such
 
 THE SPELL OF THE WHITE ELF 71 
 
 characteristic odd faces and such queerly cut 
 clothes. The streets are full of students. The 
 farmers' sons amongst them are easily recognised 
 by their homespun, sometimes home-made suits, 
 their clever heads and intelligent faces ; from 
 them come the writers, and brain carriers of 
 Norway. The Finns, too, have a distinctive 
 type of head and a something elusive in the 
 expression of their changeful eyes. But all, the 
 town students, too, of easier manners and 
 slangier tongues all alike are going, as 
 finances permit, to dine in restaurant or steam- 
 kitchen. I saw the menu for to-day posted up 
 outside the door of the latter as I passed 
 ' Rice porridge and salt meat soup, 6d.,' and 
 Hans Jorgcn came back with a vivid picture of 
 childhood days, when every family in the little 
 coast-town where we lived had a fixed menu 
 for every day in the week ; and it was quite a 
 distinction to have meat balls on pickled 
 herring day, or ale soup when all the folks in 
 town were cooking omelettes with bacon. How 
 he used to eat rice porridge in those days ! I 
 can see him now put his heels together and 
 give his awkward bow as he said, ' Tak for 
 Maden tante ! ' Well, we are sitting in the
 
 72 KEYNOTES 
 
 Grand Cafe after dinner, at a little table near 
 the door, watching the people pass in and out. 
 An ubiquitous ' sample-count ' from Berlin is 
 measuring his wits with a young Norwegian 
 merchant ; he is standing green chartreuse ; it 
 pays to be generous even for a German, when 
 you can oust honest Leeds cloth with German 
 shoddy. At least so my cousin says. He 
 knows every one by sight, and points out all 
 the celebrities to me. Suddenly he bows pro- 
 foundly. I look round. A tall woman with very 
 square shoulders, and gold-rimmed spectacles 
 is passing us with two gentlemen. She is 
 English by her tailor-made gown and little 
 shirt-front, and noticeable anywhere. 
 
 ' That lady,' says my cousin, Ms a compatriot 
 of yours. She is a very fine person, a very 
 learned lady ; she has been looking up referats 
 in the university bibliothck. Professor Sturm 
 he is a good friend of me did tell me. I 
 forget her name ; she is married. I suppose her 
 husband he stay at home and keep the house ! ' 
 
 My cousin has just been refused by a young 
 lady dentist, who says she is too comfortably 
 off to change for a small housekeeping business, 
 so I excuse his sarcasm. We leave as the time
 
 THE SPELL OF THE WHITE ELF 73 
 
 draws on and sleigh down to the steamer. I 
 like the jingle of the bells, and I feel a little 
 sad. There is a witchery about the country that 
 creeps into one and works like a love-philter, 
 and if one has once lived up there, one never 
 gets it out of one's blood again. I go on 
 board and lean over and watch the people. 
 There are a good many for winter-time. The 
 bell rings. Two sleighs drive up and my com- 
 patriot and her friends appear. She shakes 
 hands with them and comes leisurely up the 
 gangway. The thought flits through me that 
 she would cross it in just that cool way if she 
 were facing death ; it is foolish, but most of our 
 passing thoughts are just as inconsequent. 
 She calls down a remembrance to some one in 
 such pretty Norwegian, much prettier than 
 mine, and then we swing round. Handker- 
 chiefs wave in every hand, never have I seen 
 such persistent handkerchief-waving as at the 
 departure of a boat in Norway. It is a 
 national characteristic. If you live at the 
 mouth of a fjord, and go to the market town 
 at the head of it for your weekly supply of 
 coffee beans, the population give you a ' send 
 off with fluttering kerchiefs. It is as universal
 
 74 KEYNOTES 
 
 as the ' Thanks.' Hans Jorgen says I am 
 anglicised and only see the ridiculous side, 
 forgetting the kind feelings that prompt it. I 
 find a strange pleasure in \vatching the rocks 
 peep out under the snow, the children dragging 
 their hand-sleds along the ice. All the little 
 bits of winter life of which I get flying glimpses 
 as we pass, bring back scenes grown dim in the 
 years between. There is a mist ahead ; and 
 when we pass Drobak cuddled like a dor- 
 mouse for winter's sleep I go below. A bright 
 coal fire burns in the open grate of the stove, 
 and the Rollo saloon looks very cosy. My 
 compatriot is stretched in a big arm-chair read- 
 ing. She is sitting comfortably with one leg 
 crossed over the other, in the manner called 
 ' shockingly unladylike ' of my early lessons in 
 deportment. The flame flickers over the patent 
 leather of her neat low-heeled boot, and strikes 
 a spark from the pin in her tie. There is 
 something manlike about her. I don't know 
 where it lies, but it is there. Her hair curls in 
 grey flecked rings about her head ; it has not a 
 cut look, seems rather to grow short naturally. 
 She has a charming tubbed look. Of course 
 every lady is alike clean, but some men and
 
 THE SPELL OF THE WHITE ELF 75 
 
 women have an individual look of sweet clean- 
 ness that is a beauty of itself. She feels my 
 gaze and looks up and smiles. She has a rare 
 smile, it shows her white teeth and softens her 
 features : 
 
 ' The fire is cosy, isn't it ? I hope we shall 
 have an easy passage, so that it can be kept 
 in.' 
 
 I answer something in English. 
 
 o o 
 
 She has a trick of wrinkling her brows, she 
 does it now as she says : 
 
 ' A-ah, I should have said you were Norsk. 
 Are you not really ? Surely you have a typical 
 head, or eyes and hair at the least ? ' 
 
 ' Half of me is Norsk, but I have lived a long 
 time in England.' 
 
 ' Father of course ; case of " there was a sailor 
 loved a lass," was it not ? ' 
 
 I smile an assent and add : ' I lost them both 
 when I was very young.' 
 
 A reflective look steals over her face. It is 
 stern in repose ; and as she seems lost in some 
 train of thought of her own I go to my cabin 
 and lie clown ; the rattling noises and the smell 
 of paint makes me feel ill. I do not go out 
 again. I wake next mornintr with a sense of
 
 76 KEYNOTES 
 
 fear at the stillness. There is no sound but a 
 lapping wash of water at the side of the steamer, 
 but it is delicious to lie quietly after the vibra- 
 tion of the screw and the sickening swing. I 
 look at my watch ; seven o'clock. I cannot 
 make out why there is such a silence, as we only 
 stop at Christiansand long enough to take 
 cargo and passengers. I dress and go out. 
 The saloon is empty but the fire is burning 
 brightly. I go to the pantry and ask the 
 stewardess when we arrived ? Early, she says ; 
 all the passengers for here are already gone on 
 shore ; and there is a thick fog outside, goodness 
 knows how long we '11 be kept. I go to the top 
 of the stairs and look out ; the prospect is un- 
 inviting and I come down again and turn over 
 some books on the table ; in Russian, I think. 
 I feel sure they are hers. 
 
 ' Good-morning ! ' comes her pleasant voice. 
 How alert and bright-eyed she is ! It is a pick- 
 me-up to look at her. 
 
 ' You did not appear last night ? Not given 
 in already, I hope ! ' 
 
 She is kneeling on one knee before the fire, 
 holding her palms to the glow, and with her 
 figure hidden in her loose, fur-lined coat and
 
 THE SPELL OF THE WHITE ELF 77 
 
 the light showing up her strong face under the 
 little tweed cap, she seems so like a clever-faced 
 slight man, that I feel I am conventionally 
 guilty in talking so freely to her. She looks at 
 me with a deliberate critical air, and then 
 springs up. 
 
 ' Let me give you something for your head ! 
 Stewardess, a wine-glass ! ' 
 
 I should not dream of remonstrance not if 
 she were to command me to drink sea-water ; 
 and I am not complaisant as a rule. 
 
 When she comes back I swallow it bravely, 
 but I leave some powder in the glass ; she 
 shakes her head, and I finish this too. We sat 
 and talked, or at least she talked and I listened. 
 I don't remember what she said, I only know 
 that she was making clear to me most of the 
 things that had puzzled me for a long time ; 
 questions that arise in silent hours ; that one 
 speculates over, and to which one finds no 
 answer in text-books. How she knew just the 
 subjects that worked in me I knew not ; some 
 subtle intuitive sympathy, I suppose, enabled 
 her to find it out. It was the same at break- 
 fast, she talked clown to the level of the men 
 present (of course they did not see that it might
 
 78 KEYNOTES 
 
 be possible for a woman to do that), and made 
 it a very pleasant meal. 
 
 It was in the evening we had the saloon 
 to ourselves when she told me about the white 
 elf. I had been talking of myself and of Hans 
 Jorgen. 
 
 'I like your Mr. Hans Jorgen/ she said, 'he 
 has a strong nature and knows what he wants ; 
 there is reliability in him. They are rarer 
 qualities than one thinks in men, I have found 
 through life that the average man is weaker 
 than we are. It must be a good thing to have 
 a stronger nature to lean to. I have never had 
 that.' 
 
 There is a want in the tone of her voice as 
 she ends, and I feel inclined to put out my hand 
 and stroke hers she has beautiful long hands 
 but I am afraid to do so. I query shyly 
 
 ' Have you no little ones ? ' 
 
 ' Children, you mean ? No, I am one of the 
 barren ones ; they are less rare than they used 
 to be. But I have a white elf at home and that 
 makes up for it. Shall I tell you how the elf 
 came ? Well, its mother is a connection of 
 mine, and she hates me with an honest hatred. 
 It is the only honest feeling I ever discovered
 
 THE SPELL OF THE WHITE ELF 79 
 
 in her. It was about the time that she found 
 the elf was to come that it broke out openly, 
 but that was mere coincidence. How she 
 detested me ! Those narrow, poor natures are 
 capable of an intensity of feeling concentrated 
 on one object that larger natures can scarcely 
 measure. Now I shall tell you something 
 strange. I do not pretend to understand it, I may 
 have my theory, but that is of no physiological 
 value, I only tell it to you. Well, all the time 
 she was carrying the elf she was full of simmer- 
 ing hatred and she wished me evil often enough. 
 One feels those things in an odd way. Why 
 did she? Oh, that . . . that was a family affair, 
 with perhaps a thread of jealousy mixed up in 
 the knot. Well, one day the climax came, and 
 much was said, and I went away and married 
 and got ill and the doctors said I would be 
 childless. And in the meantime the little 
 human soul I thought about it so often had 
 fought its way out of the darkness. We 
 childless women weave more fancies into the 
 " mithcring o' bairns " than the actual mothers 
 themselves. The poetry of it is not spoilt by 
 nettle-rash or chin-cough any more than our 
 figures. I am a writer by profession oh, you
 
 So KEYNOTES 
 
 knew ! No, hardly celebrated, but I put my 
 little chips into the great mosaic as best I can. 
 Positions are reversed, they often are now-a- 
 days. My husband stays at home and grows 
 good things to eat, and pretty things to look 
 at, and I go out and win bread and butter. It 
 is a matter not of who has most brains, but 
 whose brains are most saleable. Fit in with 
 the housekeeping ? Oh yes. I have a treasure, 
 too, in Belinda. She is one of those women 
 who must have something to love. She used 
 to love cats, birds, dogs, anything. She is one 
 bump of philo-progenitiveness, but she hates 
 men. She says : " If one could only have a 
 child, ma'm, without a husband or the disgrace ; 
 ugh, the disgusting men ! " Do you know I 
 think that is not an uncommon feeling amongst 
 a certain number of women. I have often 
 drawn her out on the subject. It struck me, 
 because I have often found it in other women. 
 I have known many, particularly older women, 
 who would give anything in God's world to 
 have a child of " their own " if it could be got 
 just as Belinda says, "without the horrid man 
 or the shame." It seems congenital with some 
 women to have deeply rooted in their inner-
 
 THE SPELL OF THE WHITE ELE Si 
 
 most nature a smouldering enmity, ay, some- 
 times a physical disgust to men, it is a kind of 
 kin-feeling to the race dislike of white men to 
 black. Perhaps it explains why woman, where 
 her own feelings are not concerned, w r ill always 
 make common cause with woman against him. 
 I have often thought about it. You should 
 hear Belinda's "serve him right" when some 
 fellow comes to grief. I have a little of 
 it myself (meditatively), but in a broader way, 
 you know. I like to cut them out in their own 
 province. Well, the elf was born, and now 
 comes the singular part of it. It was a wretched, 
 frail little being with a startling likeness to me. 
 It was as if the evil the mother had wished me 
 had worked on the child, and the constant 
 thought of me stamped my features on its little 
 face. I was working then on a Einland saga, 
 and I do not know why it was, but the thought 
 of that little being kept disturbing my work. 
 It was worst in the afternoon time when the 
 house seemed quietest ; there is always a lull 
 then outside and inside. Have you ever noticed 
 that ? The birds hush their singing and the 
 work is done. Belinda used to sit sewing in 
 the kitchen, and the words of a hymn she Used 
 F
 
 82 KEYNOTES 
 
 to lilt in half tones, something about 'joy bells 
 ringing, children singing,' floated in to me, and 
 the very tick-tock of the old clock sounded 
 like the rocking of wooden cradles. It made 
 me think sometimes that it would be pleasant to 
 hear small pattering feet and the call of voices 
 through the silent house. And I suppose it 
 acted as an irritant on my imaginative faculty, 
 for the whole room seemed filled with the 
 spirits of little children. They seemed to 
 dance round me with uncertain, lightsome 
 steps, waving tiny pink dimpled hands, shaking 
 sunny flossy curls, and haunting me with their 
 great innocent child-eyes ; filled with the un- 
 conscious sadness and the infinite questioning 
 that is oftenest seen in the gaze of children. I 
 used to fancy something stirred in me, and the 
 spirits of unborn little ones never to come to 
 life in me troubled me. I was probably over- 
 worked at the time. How we women digress ! 
 I am telling you more about myself than my 
 white elf. Well, trouble came to their home, 
 and I went and offered to take it. It was an 
 odd little thing, and when I looked at it I could 
 see how like we were. My glasses dimmed 
 somehow, and a lump kept rising in my throat,
 
 THE SPELL OF THE WHITE ELE 83 
 
 when it smiled up out of its great eyes and 
 held out two bits of hands like shrivelled white 
 rose leaves. Such a tiny scrap it was; it was not 
 bigger, she said, than a baby of eleven months. 
 I suppose they can tell that as I can the 
 date of a dialect ; but I am getting wiser,' with 
 an emotional softening of her face and quite a 
 proud look. ' A child is like one of those wonder- 
 ful runic alphabets ; the signs are simple but 
 the lore they contain is marvellous. " She is very 
 like you," said the mother. " Hold her." She 
 was only beginning to walk. I did. You never 
 saw such elfin ears with strands of silk floss 
 ringing round them, and the quaintest, darlingest 
 wrinkles in its forehead, two long, and one short, 
 just as I have,' putting her head forward for me 
 to see. ' The other children were strong, and 
 the one on the road she hoped would be 
 healthy. So I took it there and then, " clothes 
 and baby, cradle and all." Yes, I have a col- 
 lection of nursery rhymes from many nations ; 
 I was going to put them in a book, but I say 
 them to the elf now. I wired to my husband. 
 You should have seen me going home. I was 
 
 o <^> 
 
 so nervous, I was not half as nervous when I 
 read my paper it \\ as rather a celebrated paper,
 
 84 KEYNOTES 
 
 perhaps you heard of it to the Royal Geo- 
 graphical Society. It was on Esquimaux 
 marriage songs, and the analogy between them 
 and the Song of Solomon. She was so light, 
 and so wrapped up, and my pince-nez kept 
 dropping off when I stooped over her I got 
 spectacles after that and I used to fancy I had 
 dropped her out of the wrappings, and peep 
 under the shawl to make sure' with a sick shiver 
 ' to find her sucking her thumb. And I nearly 
 passed my station. And then a valuable book 
 indeed, it is really a case of MSS., and almost 
 unique I had borrowed for reference w r ith some 
 trouble, could not be found, and my husband 
 roared with laughter when it turned up in the 
 cradle. Belinda was at the gate anxious to 
 take her, and he said I did not know how to 
 hold her, that I was holding her like a book of 
 notes at a lecture, and so I gave her to Belinda. 
 I think the poor little thing found it all strange, 
 and when she puckered up her face, and thrust 
 out her under lip, and two great tears jumped 
 off her lashes, we all felt ready for hanging. 
 But Belinda, though she doesn't know one 
 language, not even her own, for she sows her 
 h's broadcast and picks them up at hazard, she
 
 THE SPELL OF THE WHITE ELF 85 
 
 can talk to a baby. I am so glad for that 
 reason she is bigger now ; I couldn't manage it, 
 I could not reason out any system they go on 
 in baby talk. I tried mixing up the tenses, but 
 somehow it wasn't right. My husband says it 
 is not more odd than salmon taking a fly that 
 is certainly like nothing they ever see in nature. 
 Anyway it answered splendidly. Belinda used 
 to say I made a note of some of them " Did- 
 sum was denn ? Oo did ! Was urns de prettiest 
 itta sweetums denn ? oo was. An' did um put 
 'em in a nasty shawl an' joggle 'em in an ole 
 puff-puff, um did, was a shame! Hitchy cum, 
 hitchy cum, hitchy cum hi, Chinaman no likey 
 me ! " This always made her laugh, though in 
 what connection the Chinaman came in I never 
 could fathom. I was a little jealous of Belinda, 
 but she knew how to undress her. George, 
 that 's my husband's name, said the bath water 
 was too hot, and that the proper way to test it 
 was to put one's elbow in. Belinda laughed, 
 but I must confess it did feel too hot when 
 I tried it that way ; but how did he know ? 
 I got her such pretty clothes, I was going 
 to buy a pragtbind of Nietzsche, but that 
 must wait. George made her a cot with her
 
 86 KEYNOTES 
 
 name carved on the head of it, such a pretty 
 one.' 
 
 ' Did you find she made a change in your 
 lives ? ' I asked. 
 
 'Oh, didn't she! Children are such funny 
 things. I stole away to have a look at her 
 later on, and did not hear him come after me. 
 She looked so sweet, and she was smiling in 
 her sleep. I believe the Irish peasantry say 
 that an angel is whispering when a baby does 
 that. I had given up all belief myself, except 
 the belief in a Creator who is working out some 
 system that is too infinite for our finite minds 
 to grasp. If one looks round with seeing eyes 
 one can't help thinking that after a run of 1893 
 years, Christianity is not very consoling in its 
 results. But at that moment, kneeling next the 
 cradle, I felt a strange, solemn feeling stealing 
 over me ; one is conscious of the same effect in 
 a grand cathedral filled with the peal of organ 
 music and soaring voices. It was as if all the 
 old, sweet, untroubled child-belief came back for 
 a spell, and I wondered if far back in the 
 Xazarene village Alar}' ever knelt and watched 
 the Christ-child sleep ; and the legend of how 
 he was often seen to weep but never to smile
 
 THE SPELL OF THE WHITE ELF 87 
 
 came back to me, and I think the sorrow I felt 
 as I thought was an act of contrition and faith. 
 I could not teach a child scepticism, so I 
 remembered my husband prayed, and I re- 
 solved to ask him to teach her. You see (half 
 hesitatingly) I have more brains, or at least 
 more intellectuality than my husband, and in 
 that case one is apt to undervalue simpler, 
 perhaps greater, qualities. That came home to 
 me, and I began to cry, I don't know why, and 
 he lifted me up, and I think I said something 
 of the kind to him. . . . We got nearer to one 
 another someway. He said it was unlucky to 
 cry over a child. 
 
 " It made such a difference in the evenings. I 
 used to hurry home I was on the staff of the 
 H'oi'ld's RcvitiJ just then and it was so jolly 
 to sec the quaint little phiz smile up when I 
 went in. 
 
 ' Belinda was quite jealous of George. She 
 said " Master worrittcd in an" out, an' interfered 
 with everything, she never seen a man as knew 
 so much about babies, not for one as never 'ad 
 none of 'is own. \Vot if he didn't go to Parkins 
 hissell, an' say as how she was to have the milk 
 ot one cow, an' mind not mix it.' 1 I \vish you
 
 88 KEYNOTES 
 
 could have seen the insinuating distrust on 
 Belinda's face. I laughed. I believe we were all 
 getting too serious, I know I felt years younger. 
 I told George that it was really suspicious ; how 
 did he acquire such a stock of baby lore ? / 
 hadn't any. It was all very well to say Aunt 
 Mary's kids. I should never be surprised if I 
 saw a Zwazi woman appear with a lot of tawny 
 pickaninnies in tow. George was shocked I 
 often shock him. 
 
 ' She began to walk as soon as she got 
 stronger. I never saw such an inquisitive mite. 
 I had to rearrange all my bookshelves, change 
 Le Nu de Rabelais, after Gamier, you know, 
 and several others from the lower shelves to 
 the top ones. One can't be so Bohemian when 
 there is a little white soul like that playing 
 about, can one ? When we are alone she 
 always comes in to say her prayers, and good- 
 night. Larry Moore of the Vidture he is one 
 of the most wickedly amusing of men, prides 
 himself on being fin de siccle don't you detest 
 that word ? or nothing, raves about Degas, 
 and is a worshipper of the decadent school of 
 verse, quotes Verlaine, you know well, he 
 came in one evening on his way to some music
 
 THE SPELL OF THE WHITE ELE 89 
 
 hall. She's a whimsical little thing-, not with- 
 out incipient coquetry either ; well, she would 
 say them to him. If you can imagine a 
 masher of the Jan van Beer type bending his 
 head to hear a child in a white " nighty " lisping 
 prayers, you have an idea of the picture. She 
 kissed him good-night too ; she never would 
 before ; and he must have forgotten his engage- 
 ment, for he stayed with us to supper. She 
 rules us all with a touch of her little hands, and 
 I fancy we are all the better for it. Would 
 you like to see her?' She hands me a medallion, 
 with a beautifully painted head in it. I can't 
 say she is a pretty child, a weird, elf-like thing, 
 with questioning, wistful eyes, and masses of 
 dark hair ; and yet as I look the little face draws 
 me to it, and makes a kind of yearning in me ; 
 strikes me with a ' fairy blast ' perhaps. 
 
 The journey was all too short, and when we 
 got to Hull she saw me to my train. It was odd 
 to see the quiet way in which she got everything 
 she wanted. She put me into the carriage, got 
 me a footwarmer and a magazine, kissed me and 
 said as she held my hand, ' The world is small, 
 we run in circles, perhaps we shall meet again, 
 in ail}- case I wish you a white elf I was
 
 90 KEYNOTES 
 
 sorry to part with her ; I felt richer than before 
 I knew her ; I fancy she goes about the world 
 giving graciously from her richer nature to the 
 poorer-endowed folks she meets on her way. 
 
 Often since that night I have rounded my 
 arm and bowed down my face and fancied I 
 
 had a little human elf cuddled to my breast. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 I am very busy just now getting everything 
 ready ; I had so much to buy. I don't like 
 confessing it even to myself, but down in the 
 bottom of my deepest trunk I have laid a 
 parcel of things, such pretty tiny things. I 
 saw them at a sale, I couldn't resist them, they 
 were so cheap ; even if one doesn't want the 
 things, it seems a sin to let them go. Besides, 
 there may be some poor woman out in Cin- 
 cinnati. I wrote to Hans Jorgen, you know, 
 back in spring, and .... Uu storer Gud ! 
 There is Hans Jorgen coming across the street.
 
 A LITTLE GREY GLOVE. 
 
 EARLY-SPRING, 1893. 
 
 ' The book of life begins with a man and woman in n garden 
 and ends with Revelations.' OSCAR WII.IJE. 
 
 YES, most fellows' book of life may be said to 
 begin at the chapter where woman comes in; 
 mine did. She came in years ago, when I was 
 a raw undergraduate. With the sober thought 
 of retrospective analysis, I may say she was 
 not all my fancy painted her ; indeed now that 
 I come to think of it there was no fancy about 
 the vermeil of her cheeks, rather an artificial 
 reality ; she had her bower in the bar of the 
 Golden Boar, and I was madly in love with 
 her, seriously intent on lawful wedlock. Luckily 
 for me she threw me over for a neighbouring 
 pork butcher, but at the time I took it hardly, 
 and it made me sex-shy. I was a very poor 
 man in those days. One feels one's griefs more 
 keenly then, one hasn't the wherewithal to 
 buy distraction. Besides, ladies snubbed me 
 rather, on the rare occasions I met them. Later
 
 92 KEYNOTES 
 
 I fell in for a legacy, the forerunner of several ; 
 indeed, I may say I am beastly rich. My tastes 
 are simple too, and I haven't any poor relations. 
 I believe they are of great assistance in getting 
 rid of superfluous capital, wish I had some ! 
 It was after the legacy that women discovered 
 my attractions. They found that there was 
 something superb in my plainness (before, they 
 said ugliness), something after the style of the 
 late Victor Emanuel, something infinitely more 
 striking than mere ordinary beauty. At least 
 so Harding told me his sister said, and she had 
 the reputation of being a clever girl. Being an 
 only child, I never had the opportunity other 
 fellows had of studying the undress side of 
 women through familiar intercourse, say with 
 sisters. Their most ordinary belongings were 
 sacred to me. I had, I used to be told, ridicu- 
 lous high-flown notions about them (by the 
 way I modified those considerably on closer 
 acquaintance). I ought to study them, nothing 
 like a woman for developing a fellow. So I 
 laid in a stock of books in different languages, 
 mostly novels, in which women played title 
 roles, in order to get up some definite data 
 before venturing amongst them. I can't say I
 
 A LITTLE GREY GLOVE 93 
 
 derived much benefit from this course. There 
 seemed to be as great a diversity of opinion 
 about the female species as, let us say, about 
 the salmonidoe. 
 
 My friend Ponsonby Smith, who is one of the 
 oldest fly-fishers in the three kingdoms, said to 
 me once : ' Take my word for it, there are only 
 four true salmo ; the salar, the trutta, the fario, 
 the ferox ; all the rest are just varieties, sub- 
 genuscs of the above ; stick to that. Some 
 writing fellow divided all the women into good- 
 uns and bad-uns. But as a conscientious stickler 
 for truth, I must say that both in trout as in 
 women, I have found myself faced with most 
 puzzling varieties, that were a tantalising blend- 
 ing of several qualities.' I then resolved to 
 study them on my own account. I pursued 
 the Eternal Feminine in a spirit of purely 
 scientific investigation. I knew you 'd laugh 
 sceptically at that, but it 's a fact. I was im- 
 partial in my selection of subjects for obser- 
 vation, French, German, Spanish, as well 
 as the home product. Nothing in petticoats 
 escaped me. I devoted myself to the freshest 
 ingenue as well as the experienced widow of 
 three departed ; and I may as well confess
 
 94 KEYNOTES 
 
 that the more I saw of her, the less I under- 
 stood her. But I think they understood me. 
 They refused to take me au serieux. When 
 they weren't fleecing me, they were interested 
 in the state of my soul (I preferred the former), 
 but all humbugged me equally, so I gave them 
 up. I took to rod and gun instead, pro salute 
 animcz ; it 's decidedly safer. I have scoured 
 every country in the globe ; indeed I can say 
 that I have shot and fished in woods and 
 waters where no other white man, perhaps, 
 ever dropped a beast or played a fish before. 
 There is no life like the life of a free wanderer, 
 and no lore like the lore one gleans in the 
 great book of nature. But one must have 
 freed one's spirit from the taint of the town 
 before one can even read the alphabet of its 
 mystic meaning. 
 
 What has this to do with the glove ? True, 
 not much, and yet it has a connection it 
 accounts for me. 
 
 Well, for twelve years I have followed the 
 impulses of the wandering spirit that dwells 
 in me. I have seen the sun rise in Finland 
 and gild the Devil's Knuckles as he sank behind 
 the Drachensbergf. I have caught the barba
 
 A LITTLE GREY GLOVE 95 
 
 and the gamer yellow fish in the Vaal river, 
 taken muskelunge and black-bass in Canada, 
 thrown a fly over guapote and cavallo in Central 
 American lakes, and choked the monster eels 
 of the Mauritius with a cunningly faked-up 
 duckling. But I have been shy as a chub at 
 the shadow of a woman. 
 
 Well, it happened last year I came back 
 on business another confounded legacy ; end 
 of June too, just as I was off to Finland. But 
 Messrs. Thimble and Rigg, the highly respect- 
 able firm who look after my affairs, represented 
 that I owed it to others, whom I kept out 
 of their share of the legacy, to stay near town 
 till affairs were wound up. They told me, 
 with a view to reconcile me perhaps, of a trout 
 stream with a decent inn near it ; an unknown 
 stream in Kent. It seems a junior member 
 of the firm is an angler, at least he sometimes 
 catches pike or perch in the Mcdway some 
 way from the stream where the trout rise in 
 audacious security from artificial lures. I 
 stipulated for a clerk to come down with any 
 papers to be signed, and started at once for 
 Victoria. I decline to tell the name of my 
 find, firstly because the trout are the gamcst
 
 96 KEYNOTES 
 
 little fish that ever rose to fly and run to a 
 good two pounds. Secondly, I have paid for 
 all the rooms in the inn for the next year, 
 and I want it to myself. The glove is lying 
 on the table next me as I write. If it isn't in 
 my breast-pocket or under my pillow, it is in 
 some place where I can see it. It has a delicate 
 grey body (Suede, I think they call it) with 
 a whipping of silver round the 'top, and a 
 darker grey silk tag to fasten it. It is marked 
 5| inside, and has a delicious scent about it, 
 to keep off moths, I suppose ; naphthaline is 
 better. It reminds me of a 'silver-sedge' 
 tied on a ten hook. I startled the good 
 landlady of the little inn (there is no village 
 fortunately) when I arrived with the only 
 porter of the tiny station laden with traps. 
 She hesitated about a private sitting-room, 
 but eventually we compromised matters, as 
 I was willing to share it with the other visitor. 
 I got into knickerbockers at once, collared a 
 boy to get me worms and minnow for the 
 morrow, and as I felt too lazy to unpack 
 tackle, just sat in the shiny arm-chair (made 
 comfortable by the successive sitting of former 
 occupants) at the open window and looked
 
 A LITTLE GREY GLOVE 97 
 
 out. The river, not the trout stream, winds 
 to the right, and the trees cast trembling 
 shadows into its clear depths. The red tiles 
 of a farm roof show between the beeches, and 
 break the monotony of blue sky background. 
 A dusty waggoner is slaking his thirst with 
 a tankard of ale. I am conscious of the strange 
 lonely feeling that a visit to England always 
 gives me. Away in strange lands, even in 
 solitary places, one doesn't feel it somehow. 
 One is filled with the hunter's lust, bent on 
 a ' kill ; ' but at home in the quiet country, 
 with the smoke curling up from some fireside, 
 the mowers busy laying the hay in swaths, 
 the children tumbling under the trees in the 
 orchards, and a girl singing as she spreads 
 the clothes on the swcetbricr hedge, amidst 
 a scene quick with home sights and sounds, 
 a strange lack creeps in and makes itself felt 
 in a dull, aching way. Oddly enough, too, I 
 had a sense of uneasiness, a ' something going 
 to happen.' I had often experienced it when 
 out alone in a great forest, or on an unknown 
 lake, and it always meant ' ware danger ' of 
 some kind. But why should I feel it here ? 
 Yet I did, and I couldn't shake it off. I took 
 G
 
 98 KEYNOTES 
 
 to examining the room. It was a common- 
 place one of the usual type. But there was 
 a work-basket on the table, a dainty thing, 
 lined with blue satin. There was a bit of 
 lace stretched over shiny blue linen, with the 
 needle sticking in it ; such fairy work, like 
 cobwebs seen from below, spun from a branch 
 against a background of sky. A gold thimble, 
 too, with initials, not the landlady's, I know. 
 What pretty things, too, in the basket ! A 
 scissors, a capital shape for fly-making ; a 
 little file, and some floss silk and tinsel, the 
 identical colour I want for a new fly I have 
 in my head, one that will be a demon to kill. 
 The northern devil I mean to call him. Some 
 one looks in behind me, and a light step passes 
 up-stairs. I drop the basket, I don't know 
 why. There are some reviews near it. I take 
 up one, and am soon buried in an article on 
 Tasmanian fauna. It is strange, but whenever 
 I do know anything about a subject, I always 
 find these writing fellows cither entirely ignorant 
 or damned wrong. 
 
 After supper, I took a stroll to see the river. 
 It was a silver grey evening, with just the last 
 lemon and pink streaks of the sunset staining
 
 A LITTLE GREY GLOVE 99 
 
 the sky. There had been a shower, and some- 
 how the smell of the dust after rain mingled 
 with the mignonette in the garden brought 
 back vanished scenes of small-boyhood, when 
 I caught minnows in a bottle, and dreamt of 
 
 o * 
 
 a shilling rod as happiness unattainable. I 
 turned aside from the road in accordance with 
 directions, and walked towards the stream. 
 Holloa ! some one before me, what a bore ! The 
 angler is hidden by an elder-bush, but I can see 
 the fly drop delicately, artistically on the water. 
 Fishing up-stream, too ! There is a bit of 
 broken water there, and the midges dance in 
 myriads ; a silver gleam, and the line spins out, 
 and the fly falls just in the right place. It is 
 growing dusk, but the fellow is an adept at 
 quick, fine casting I wonder what fly he has 
 on why, he's going to try down-stream now? 
 I hurry forward, and as I near him, I swerve to 
 the left out of the way. S-s-s-s ! a sudden sting 
 in the lobe of my ear. Hey ! I cry as I find I am 
 caught ; the tail fly is fast in it. A slight, grey- 
 clad woman holding the rod lays it carefully 
 down and comes towards me through the 
 gathering dusk. My first impulse is to snap 
 the gut and take to my heels, but I am held by
 
 ioo KEYNOTES 
 
 something less tangible but far more powerful 
 than the grip of the Limerick hook in my ear. 
 
 ' I am very sorry ! ' she says in a voice that 
 matched the evening, it was so quiet and soft ; 
 'but it was exceedingly stupid of you to come 
 behind like that.' 
 
 ' I didn't think you threw such a long line; I 
 thought I was safe,' I stammered. 
 
 ' Hold this !' she says, giving me a diminutive 
 fly-book, out of which she has taken a scissors. 
 I obey meekly. She snips the gut. 
 
 ' Have you a sharp knife ? If I strip the hook 
 you can push it through ; it is lucky it isn't in 
 the cartilage. 5 
 
 I suppose I am an awful idiot, but I only 
 handed her the knife, and she proceeded as 
 calmly as if stripping a hook in a man's ear 
 were an everyday occurrence. Her gown is of 
 some soft grey stuff, and her grey leather belt 
 is silver clasped. Her hands are soft and cool 
 and steady, but there is a rarely disturbing 
 thrill in their gentle touch. The thought flashed 
 through my mind that I had just missed that, 
 a woman's voluntary tender touch, not a paid 
 caress, all my life. 
 
 ' Xow you can push it through yourself. I
 
 A LITTLE GREY GLOVE 101 
 
 hope it won't hurt much.' Taking the hook, I 
 push it through, and a drop of blood follows it. 
 ' Oh ! ' she cries, but I assure her it is nothing, 
 and stick the hook surreptitiously in my coat 
 sleeve. Then we both laugh, and I look at her 
 for the first time. She has a very white fore- 
 head, with little tendrils of hair blowing round 
 it under her grey cap, her eyes are grey. I 
 didn't see that then, I only saw they were 
 steady, smiling eyes that matched her mouth. 
 Such a mouth, the most maddening mouth a 
 man ever longed to kiss, above a too pointed 
 chin, soft as a child's ; indeed, the whole face 
 looks soft in the misty light. 
 
 ' I am sorry I spoilt your sport ! ' I say. 
 
 ' Oh, that don't matter, it 's time to stop. I 
 got two brace, one a beauty.' 
 
 She is winding in her line, and I look in her 
 basket ; they are beauties, one two- pounder, the 
 rest running from a half to a pound. 
 
 ' What fly ? ' 
 
 ' Yellow dun took that one, but your assailant 
 was a partridge spider.' I sling her basket over 
 my shoulder ; she takes it as a matter of course, 
 and we retrace our steps. I feel curiously 
 happy as we walk towards the road ; there is a
 
 102 KEYNOTES 
 
 novel delight in her nearness ; the feel of woman 
 works subtly and strangely in me ; the rustle of 
 her skirt as it brushes the black-heads in the 
 meadow-grass, and the delicate perfume, partly 
 violets, partly herself, that comes to me with 
 each of her movements is a rare pleasure. I 
 am hardly surprised when she turns into the 
 garden of the inn, I think I knew from the first 
 that she would. 
 
 ' Better bathe that ear of yours, and put 
 a few drops of carbolic in the water.' She 
 takes the basket as she says it, and goes into 
 the kitchen. I hurry over this, and go into the 
 little sitting-room. There is a tray with a glass 
 of milk and some oaten cakes upon the table. 
 I am too disturbed to sit down ; I stand at the 
 window and watch the bats flitter in the gather- 
 ing moonlight, and listen with quivering nerves 
 for her step perhaps she will send for the tray, 
 and not come after all. What a fool I am to 
 be disturbed by a grey-clad witch with a 
 tantalising mouth ! That comes of loafing 
 about doing nothing. I mentally darn the old 
 fool who saved her money instead of spending 
 it. Why the devil should I be bothered ? I 
 don't want it anyhow. She comes in as I fume,
 
 A LITTLE GREY GLOVE 103 
 
 and I forget everything at her entrance. I push 
 the arm-chair towards the table, and she sinks 
 quietly into it, pulling the tray nearer. She has 
 a wedding ring on, but somehow it never strikes 
 me to wonder if she is married or a widow or 
 who she may be. I am content to watch her 
 break her biscuits. She has the prettiest hands, 
 and a trick of separating her last fingers when 
 she takes hold of anything. They remind me of 
 white orchids I saw somewhere. She led me 
 to talk ; about Africa, I think. I liked to watch 
 her eyes glow deeply in the shadow and then 
 catch light as she bent forward to say some- 
 thing in her quick responsive way. 
 
 ' Long ago when I was a girl,' she said 
 once. 
 
 ' Long ago ? ' I echo incredulously, ' surely 
 not ? ' 
 
 ' Ah, but yes, you haven't seen me in the 
 daylight,' with a soft little laugh. 'Do you 
 know what the gipsies say? "Never judge a 
 woman or a ribbon by candle-light." They 
 might have said moonlight equally well.' 
 
 She rises as she speaks, and I feel an over- 
 powering wish to have her put out her hand. 
 But she docs not, she only takes the work-
 
 104 KEYNOTES 
 
 basket and a book, and says good-night with 
 an inclination of her little head. 
 
 I go over and stand next her chair ; I don't 
 like to sit in it, but I like to put my hand where 
 her head leant, and fancy, if she were there, 
 how she would look up. 
 
 I woke next morning with a curious sense of 
 pleasurable excitement. I whistled from very 
 lightness of heart as I dressed. When I got 
 down I found the landlady clearing away her 
 breakfast things. I felt disappointed and re- 
 solved to be down earlier in future. I didn't 
 feel inclined to try the minnow. I put them in 
 a tub in the yard and tried to read and listen 
 for her step. I dined alone. The day dragged 
 terribly. I did not like to ask about her, I 
 had a notion she might not like it. I spent 
 the evening on the river. I might have filled a 
 good basket, but I let the beggars rest. After 
 all, I had caught fish enough to stock all the 
 rivers in Great Britain. There are other things 
 than trout in the world. I sit and smoke a 
 pipe where she caught me last night. If I half 
 close my eyes I can see hers, and her mouth in 
 the smoke. That is one of the curious charms 
 of baccy, it helps to reproduce brain pictures.
 
 A LITTLE GREY GLOVE 105 
 
 After a bit, I think ' perhaps she has left.' I get 
 quite feverish at the thought and hasten back. 
 I must ask. I look up at the window as I pass ; 
 there is surely a gleam of white. I throw down 
 my traps and hasten up. She is leaning with 
 her arms on the window-ledge staring out into 
 
 o o 
 
 the gloom. I could swear I caught a suppressed 
 sob as I entered. I cough, and she turns 
 
 O ' 
 
 quickly and bows slightly. A bonnet and gloves 
 and lace affair and a lot of papers are lying on 
 the table. I am awfully afraid she is going. 
 I say 
 
 ' Please don't let me drive you away, it is 
 so early yet. I half expected to see you on 
 the river.' 
 
 ' Nothing so pleasant; I have been up in town 
 (the tears have certainly got into her voice) all 
 day ; it was so hot and dusty, I am tired 
 out.' 
 
 The little servant brings in the lamp and a 
 tray with a bottle of lemonade. 
 
 ' Mistress hasn't any lemons, 'm, will this 
 do ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' she says wearily, she is shading her 
 eyes with her hand ; ' anything ; I am fearfully 
 thirsty.'
 
 106 KEYNOTES 
 
 ' Let me concoct you a drink instead. I have 
 lemons and ice and things. My man sent me 
 down supplies to-day ; I leave him in town. I 
 am rather a dab at drinks'; learnt it from the 
 Yankees; about the only thing I did learn from 
 them I care to remember. Susan ! ' The little 
 maid helps me to get the materials, and she 
 watches me quietly. When I give it to her she 
 takes it with a smile (she has been crying). 
 That is an ample thank-you. She looks quite 
 old. Something more than tiredness called up 
 
 those lines in her face. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Well, ten days passed, sometimes we met at 
 breakfast, sometimes at supper, sometimes we 
 fished together or sat in the straggling orchard 
 and talked ; she neither avoided me nor sought 
 me. She is the most charming mixture of 
 child and woman I ever met. She is a dual 
 creature. Now I never met that in a man. 
 When she is here without getting a letter in the 
 
 o o 
 
 morning or going to town, she seems like a girl. 
 She runs about in her grey gown and little cap 
 and laughs, and seems to throw off all thought 
 like an irresponsible child. She is eager to fish, 
 or pick gooseberries and eat them daintily, or sit
 
 A LITTLE GREY GLOVE 107 
 
 under the trees and talk. But when she goes to 
 town I notice she always goes when she gets 
 a lawyer's letter, there is no mistaking the 
 envelope she comes home tired and haggard- 
 looking, an old woman of thirty-five. I wonder 
 why. It takes her, even with her elasticity of 
 temperament, nearly a day to get young again. 
 I hate her to go to town ; it is extraordinary 
 how I miss her ; I can't recall, when she is 
 absent, her saying anything very wonderful, 
 but she converses all the time. She has a 
 gracious way of filling the place with herself, 
 there is an entertaining quality in her very 
 presence. We had one rainy afternoon ; she 
 tied me some flies (I shan't use any of them) ; I 
 watched the lights in her hair as she moved, it 
 is quite golden in some places, and she has a 
 tiny mole near her left ear and another on her 
 left wrist. On the eleventh day she got a 
 letter but she didn't go to town, she stayed 
 up in her room all day ; twenty times I felt 
 inclined to send her a line, but I had no excuse. 
 I heard the landlady say as I passed the 
 kitchen window : ' Poor clear ! I 'm sorry to 
 lose her ! ' Lose her ? I should think not. It 
 has come to this with me that I don't care to
 
 io8 KEYNOTES 
 
 face any future without her ; and yet I know 
 nothing about her, not even if she is a free 
 woman. I shall find that out the next time I 
 see her. In the evening I catch a glimpse of 
 her gown in the orchard, and I follow her. We 
 sit down near the river. Her left hand is lying 
 gloveless next me in the grass. 
 
 ' Do you think from what you have seen of 
 me, that I would ask a question out of any 
 mere impertinent curiosity ? ' 
 
 She starts. ' No, I do not ! ' 
 
 I take up her hand and touch the ring. ' Tell 
 me, does this bind you to any one?' 
 
 I am conscious of a buzzing in my ears and 
 a dancing blurr of water and sky and trees, as 
 I wait (it seems to me an hour) for her reply. I 
 felt the same sensation once before, when I got 
 drawn into some rapids and had an awfully 
 narrow shave, but of that another time. 
 
 The voice is shaking. 
 
 ' I am not legally bound to any one, at least ; 
 but why do you ask?' she looks me square in 
 the face as she speaks, with a touch of haughti- 
 ness I never saw in her before. 
 
 Perhaps the great relief I feel, the sense of 
 joy at knowing she is free, speaks out of my
 
 A LITTLE GREY GLOVE 109 
 
 face, for hers flushes and she drops her eyes, her 
 lips tremble. I don't look at her again, but I 
 can sec her all the same. After a while she 
 says 
 
 ' I half intended to tell you something about 
 myself this evening, now I must. Let us 
 go in. I shall come down to the sitting-room 
 
 o o 
 
 after your supper.' She takes a long look at the 
 river and the inn, as if fixing the place in her 
 memory ; it strikes me with a chill that there is 
 a good-bye in her gaze. Her eyes rest on me a 
 moment as they come back, there is a sad look 
 in their grey clearness. She swings her little 
 grey gloves in her hand as we walk back. I 
 can hear her walking up and down overhead ; 
 how tired she will be, and how slowly the time 
 goes. I am standing at one side of the window 
 when she enters ; she stands at the other, lean- 
 ing her head against the shutter with her hands 
 clasped before her. I can hear my own heart 
 beating, and, I fancy, hers through the stillness. 
 The suspense is fearful. At length she says 
 ' You have been a long time out of England ; 
 
 o o 
 
 you don't read the papers?' 
 
 ' No.' A pause. I believe my heart is beat- 
 ing inside my head.
 
 no KEYNOTES 
 
 ' You asked me if I was a free woman. I 
 don't pretend to misunderstand why you asked 
 me. I am not a beautiful woman, I never was. 
 But there must be something about me, there is 
 in some women, "essential femininity " perhaps, 
 that appeals to all men. What I read in your 
 eyes I have seen in many men's before, but 
 before God I never tried to rouse it. To-day 
 (with a sob), I can say I am free, yesterday 
 morning I could not. Yesterday my husband 
 gained his case and divorced me ! ' she closes 
 her eyes and draws in her under-lip to stop its 
 quivering. I want to take her in my arms, but 
 I am afraid to. 
 
 ' I did not ask you any more than if you were 
 free ! ' 
 
 ' No, but I am afraid you don't quite take 
 in the meaning. I did not divorce my husband, 
 he divorced me, he got a decree nisi ; do you 
 understand now ? (she is speaking with diffi- 
 culty), do you know what that implies?' 
 
 I can't stand her face any longer. I take her 
 hands, they are icy cold, and hold them 
 tightly. 
 
 ' Yes, I know what it implies, that is, I know 
 the legal and social conclusion to be drawn
 
 A LITTLE GREY GLOVE in 
 
 from it, if that is what you mean. But I 
 never asked you for that information. I have 
 nothing to do with your past. You did not exist 
 for me before the day \ve met on the river. I 
 take you from that day and I ask you to marry 
 me.' 
 
 I feel her tremble and her hands get suddenly 
 warm. She turns' her head and looks at me 
 long and searchingly, then she says 
 
 ' Sit down, I want to say something !' 
 
 I obey, and she comes and stands next the 
 chair. I can't help it, I reach up my arm, but 
 she puts it gently down. 
 
 ' No, you must listen without touching me, I 
 shall go back to the window. I don't want to 
 influence you a bit by any personal magnetism 
 I possess. I want you to listen I have told 
 you he divorced me, the co-respondent was an 
 old friend, a friend of my childhood, of my girl- 
 hood. He died just after the first application 
 was made, luckily for me. He would have 
 considered my honour before my happiness. / 
 did not defend the case, it wasn't likely ah, 
 if you knew all ? He proved his case ; given 
 clever counsel, willing witnesses to whom you 
 make it worth while, and no defence, divorce is
 
 H2 KEYNOTES 
 
 always attainable even in England. But re- 
 member : I figure as an adulteress in every 
 English-speaking paper. If you buy last week's 
 evening papers do you remember the day I 
 was in town ?' I nod 'you will see a sketch 
 of me in that day's ; some one, perhaps he, must 
 have given it ; it was from an old photograph. 
 I bought one at Victoria as I came out ; it is 
 funny (with an hysterical laugh) to buy a 
 caricature of one's own poor face at a news- 
 stall. Yet in spite of that I have felt glad. 
 The point for you is that I made no defence to 
 the world, and (with a lifting of her head) I 
 will make no apology, no explanation, no denial 
 to you, now nor ever. I am very desolate and 
 your attention came very warm to me, but I 
 don't love you. Perhaps I could learn to (with 
 a rush of colour), for what you have said to- 
 night, and it is because of that I tell you to 
 weigh what this means. Later, when your care 
 for me will grow into habit, you may chafe at 
 my past. It is from that I would save you.'^ 
 
 I hold out my hands and she comes and 
 puts them aside and takes me by the beard 
 and turns up my face and scans it earnestly. 
 She must have been deceived a good deal. I
 
 A LITTLE GREY GLOVE 113 
 
 let her do as she pleases, it is the wisest way 
 with women, and it is good to have her touch 
 me in that way. She seems satisfied. She 
 stands leaning against the arm of the chair and 
 says 
 
 ' I must learn first to think of myself as a 
 free woman again, it almost seems wrong to-day 
 to talk like this; can you understand that feel?' 
 
 I nod assent. 
 
 ' Next time I must be sure, and you must be 
 sure/ she lays her fingers on my mouth as I 
 am about to protest, ' S-sh ! You shall have a 
 year to think. If you repeat then what you have 
 said to-day, I shall give you your answer. 
 You must not try to find me. I have money. If 
 I am living, I will come here to you. If I am 
 dead, you will be told of it. In the year between 
 I shall look upon myself as belonging to you, 
 and render an account if you wish of every 
 hour. You will not be influenced by me in 
 an)- way, and you will be able to reason it out 
 calmly. If you think better of it, don't come.' 
 
 I feel there would be no use trying to move 
 her, I simply kiss her hands and say : 
 
 ' As you will, dear woman, I shall be here.' 
 
 \Ve don't say any more; she sits down on a 
 n
 
 H4 KEYNOTES 
 
 footstool with her head against my knee, and I 
 just smooth it. When the clocks strike ten 
 through the house, she rises and I stand up. I 
 see that she has been crying quietly, poor lonely 
 little soul. I lift her off her feet and kiss her, 
 and stammer out my sorrow at losing her, and 
 she is gone. Next morning the little maid 
 brought me an envelope from the lady, who left 
 by the first train. It held a little grey glove ; 
 that is why I carry it always, and why I haunt 
 the inn and never leave it for longer than a 
 week ; why I sit and dream in the old chair that 
 has a ghost of her presence always ; dream 
 of the spring to come with the May-fly on the 
 wing, and the young summer when midges 
 dance, and the trout are growing fastidious ; 
 when she will come to me across the meadow 
 grass, through the silver haze, as she did before ; 
 come with her grey eyes shining to exchange 
 herself for her little grey glove.
 
 AN EMPTY FRAME. 
 
 IT was a simple pretty little frame, such as you 
 may buy at any sale cheaply ; its ribbed wood, 
 aspinalled white, with an inner frame of pale 
 blue plush ; its one noticeable feature, that it 
 was empty. And yet it stood on the middle 
 of the bedroom mantel-board. 
 
 It was not a luxurious room, none of the 
 furniture matched, it was a typical boarding- 
 house bedroom. 
 
 Any one preserving the child habit of endow- 
 ing inanimate objects with human attributes 
 might fancy that the flickering flames of the 
 fire took a pleasure in bringing into relief the 
 bright bits in its dinginess. For the}- played 
 over the silver-backed brushes, and the cut- 
 glass perfume-bottles on the dressing-table ; 
 flicked the bright beads on the toes of coquettish 
 small shoes and the steel clasps of a travelling 
 bag in the corner ; imparting a casual air of 
 comfort, such as the touch of certain dainty 
 women lends to a common room.
 
 ii6 KEYNOTES 
 
 A woman enters, a woman wondrously soft 
 and swift in all her movements. She seems to 
 reach a place without your seeing how, no 
 motion of elbow or knee betrays her. Her 
 fingers glide swiftly down the buttons of her 
 gown ; in a second she has freed herself from its 
 ensheathing, garment after garment falls from 
 her until she stands almost free. She gets into 
 night-dress and loose woollen dressing-gown, 
 and slips her naked feet into fur-lined slippers 
 with a movement that is somehow the expres- 
 sion of an intense nervous relief from a thrall. 
 Everything she does is done so swiftly that you 
 see the result rather than the working out of 
 each action. 
 
 She sinks into a chair before the fire, and, 
 clasping her hands behind her head, peers into 
 the glowing embers. The firelight, lower than 
 her face, touches it cruelly ; picks out and 
 accentuates as remorselessly as a rival woman 
 the autographs past emotions have traced on 
 its surface ; deepens the hollows of her delicate 
 thoughtful temples and the double furrow be- 
 tween her clever irregular eyebrows. Her face 
 is more characteristic than beautiful. Nine 
 men would pass it, the tenth sell his immortal
 
 AN EMPTY FRAME 117 
 
 soul for it. The chin is strong, the curve of 
 jaw determined ; there is a little full place 
 under the chin s sharp point. The eyes tell you 
 little ; they are keen and inquiring, and probe 
 others' thoughts rather than reveal their own. 
 The whole face is one of peculiar strength and 
 self-reliance. The mouth is its contradiction 
 the passionate curve of the upper lip with its 
 mobile corners, and the tender little under lip 
 that shelters timidly beneath it, are encouraging 
 promises against its strength. 
 
 The paleness of some strong feeling tinges 
 her face, a slight trembling runs through her 
 frame. Her inner soul-struggle is acting as a 
 
 o o d> 
 
 strong developing fluid upon a highly sensitised 
 plate ; anger, scorn, pity, contempt chase one 
 another like shadows across her face. Her eyes 
 rest upon the empty frame, and the plain 
 white space becomes alive to her. Her mind's 
 eye fills it with a picture it once held in its 
 dainty embrace. A rare head amongst the 
 rarest heads of men, with its crest of hair 
 tossed back from the great brow, its proud 
 poise and the impress of grand confident com- 
 pelling genius that reveals itself one scarce 
 knows how ; with the brute possibility of an
 
 ii8 KEYNOTES 
 
 untamed, natural man lurking about the mouth 
 and powerful throat. She feels the subduing 
 smile of eyes that never failed to make her 
 weak as a child under their gaze, and tame 
 as a hungry bird. She stretches out her hands 
 with a pitiful little movement, and then, 
 remembering, lets them drop and locks them 
 until the knuckles stand out whitely. She 
 shuts her eyes, and one tear after the other 
 starts from beneath her lids, trickles down 
 her cheeks, and drops with a splash into her 
 lap. She does not sob, only cries quietly, 
 and she sees, as if she held the letter in her 
 hand, the words that decided her fate 
 
 ' You love me ; I know it, you other half 
 of me. You want me to complete your life 
 as I you, you good, sweet woman. You slight, 
 weak thing, with your strong will and your 
 grand, great heart. You witch with a soul 
 of clean white fire. I kiss your hands (such 
 little hands ! I never saw the like), slim child- 
 hands, with a touch as cool and as soft as a 
 snow-flake ! You dear one, come to me, I 
 want you, now, always. Be with me, work 
 with me, share with me, live with me, my 
 equal as a creature ; above me as my queen
 
 AN EMPTY FRAME 119 
 
 of women ! I love you, I worship you, but 
 you know my views. I cannot, I will not bind 
 myself to you by any legal or religious tic. 
 I must be free and unfettered to follow that 
 which I believe right for me. If you come 
 to me in all trust, I can and will give myself 
 to you in all good faith, yours as much as you 
 will, for ever ! I will kneel to you. Why should 
 I always desire to kneel to you ? It is not that 
 I stand in awe of you, or that I ever feel a 
 need to kneel at all ; but always to you, and 
 to you alone. Come I will crouch at your 
 feet and swear myself to you,' and she had 
 replied ' No ! ' and in her loneliness of spirit 
 married him who seemed to need her most 
 out of those who admired her. . . . 
 
 The door opens and he comes in. He looks 
 inquiringly at her, touches her hair half hesitat- 
 ingly, and then stands with his hands thrust 
 in his pockets and gnaws his moustache. 
 ' Arc you angry, little woman ? ' 
 ' No ' (very quietly), ' why should I be ? ' 
 She closes her eyes again, and after five 
 minutes' silence he begins to undress. lie 
 does it very slowly, watching her perplexedly. 
 \Ylicn he has finished he stands with his
 
 120 KEYNOTES 
 
 back to the fire, an unlovely object in sleep- 
 ing suit. 
 
 ' Would you like to read her letter ? ' 
 
 She shakes her head. 
 
 ' I suppose I ought to have sent her back 
 her letters before, you know. She hadn't 
 heard I was married.' 
 
 ' Yes,' she interjects, ' it would have been 
 better to start with a clean bill ; but why 
 talk about it ? ' 
 
 He looks at her a while, then gets into bed 
 and watches her from behind the pages of 
 the Field. It seems unusually quiet. His 
 watch, that he has left in his waistcoat pocket, 
 thrown across the back of a chair, seems to 
 fill the whole room with a nervous tick. 
 
 He tosses the paper on to the floor. She 
 looks up as it falls, rises, turns oft" the gas-jet, 
 sinks back into her old position, and stares 
 into the fire. He gets up, goes over, and 
 kneels down next her. 
 
 ' I am awfully sorry you arc put out, old 
 girl. I saw you were when I answered you 
 like that, but I couldn't help feeling a bit cut 
 up, you know. She wrote such an awfully 
 nice letter, you know, wished '-
 
 AN EMPTY F R A M E 121 
 
 ' you all sorts of happiness (with a snap) 
 and hopes you'll meet in a better world?' 
 
 He rises to his feet and stares at her in 
 dumb amazement. How could she know ? 
 She smiles with a touch of malicious satisfac- 
 tion, as she sees the effect of her chance shot. 
 
 ' It 's a pity, isn't it, that you both have to 
 wait so long? ' 
 
 lie imagines he sees light, and blunders 
 ahead like an honest man. 
 
 ' I wouldn't have sent those things back now 
 if I had thought you cared. By Jove, it never 
 entered my head that you 'd be jealous ! ' 
 
 'Jealous? (she is on her feet like a red 
 white flash). I, jealous of her? (each word 
 is emphasised). I couldn't be jealous of her, 
 Nnr die Dminnen sind bcscJiciden ! Why, the 
 girl isn't fit to tie my shoe-strings ! ' 
 
 This is too much ; he feels he must protest. 
 
 ' You don't know her (feebly). She is an 
 awfully nice girl ! ' 
 
 ' Nice girl ! I don't doubt it, and she will 
 be an awfully nice woman, and under each 
 and ever}' circumstance of life she will behave 
 like an awfully nice person. Jealous ! Do you 
 think I cried because I was jealous ? Good
 
 122 KEYNOTES 
 
 God, no ! I cried because I was sorry, fear- 
 fully sorry for myself. She ' (with a fine thin 
 contempt) ' would have suited you better than 
 I. Jealous ! no, only sorry. Sorry because 
 any nice average girl of her type, who would 
 model her frocks out of the Lady's Pictorial, 
 gush over that dear Mr. Irving, paint milking- 
 stools, try poker work, or any other fashion- 
 able fad, would have done for you just as well. 
 And I ' (with a catch of voice) ' with a great man 
 might have made a great woman and now 
 those who know and understand me' (bitterly) 
 ' think of me as a great failure.' 
 
 She finishes wearily, the fire dies out of eyes 
 and voice. She adds half aloud as if to herself: 
 
 ' I don't think I quite realised this until I 
 saw how you took that letter. I was watching 
 your face as you read it, and the fact that you 
 could put her on the same level, that if it had 
 not been for a mistake, she would have suited 
 you as well, made me realise, don't you see? 
 that I should have done better for some one else!' 
 
 He is looking at her in utter bewilderment, 
 and she smiles as she notes his expression ; she 
 touches his cheek gently and leans her head 
 against his arm.
 
 AN EMPTY FRAME 123 
 
 ' There, it 's all right, boy ! Don't mind me, I 
 have a bit of a complex nature ; you couldn't 
 understand me if you tried to ; you'd better 
 not try ! ' 
 
 She has slipped, whilst speaking, her warm 
 bare foot out of her slipper, and is rubbing it 
 gently over his chilled ones. 
 
 ' You are cold, better go back to bed, I shall 
 go too ! ' 
 
 She stands a moment quietly as he turns to 
 obey, and then takes the frame, and kneeling 
 down puts it gently into the hollowed red heart 
 of the fire. It crackles crisply, and little 
 tongues of flame shoot up, and she gets into 
 bed by their light. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 When the fire has burnt out, and he is sleep- 
 ing like a child with his curly head on her 
 breast, she falls asleep too and dreams that she 
 is sitting on a fiery globe rolling away into space. 
 That her head is wedged in a huge frame, the 
 top of her head touches its top, the sides its 
 sides, and it keeps growing larger and larger 
 and her head with, it, until she seems to be 
 sitting inside her own head, and the inside is 
 one vast hollow.
 
 UNDER NORTHERN SKY 
 I 
 
 HOW MARIE LARSEN EXORCISED A DEMON 
 
 THERE has been a mighty storm, it has been 
 raging for two days. A storm in which the 
 demon of drink has reigned like a sinister god 
 in the big white house, and the frightened 
 women have cowered away, driven before the 
 hot blast of the breath upon which curses 
 danced, and the blaze of ire in the lurid eyes of 
 the master. Only the pale little mistress has 
 stood unmoved through the whirlwind of his 
 passion. Who knows ? Maybe that roused 
 him to higher, madder paroxysms of impotent 
 rage ; for he abuses her most when he loves 
 her most, a way man has, he being a creature 
 of higher understanding. 
 
 All yesterday the bells jangled, until one by 
 one a violent jerk snapped the connecting wire, 
 and hurled them with a last echoing crash on 
 the hall floor. The serving-men kept out of it
 
 UNDER NORTHERN SKY 125 
 
 as men do. The horses cowered to the sides of 
 their boxes and set their hind legs hard, and 
 pointed their cars when they heard his halting 
 step. The great hounds shrunk shiveringly 
 into their boxes, and refused to come forth to 
 his threatening call ; and when he lashed their 
 houses in his rage they winced at each blow, 
 and showed their fangs when he turned away. 
 
 Night brought little rest, for lamps and 
 candles were lit in every room ; champagne 
 replaced brandy, then brandy champagne, and 
 then both mingled in one glass. And in 
 measure as the liquid fire was tossed down the 
 poor parched throat, the brain grew clearer ; 
 the intellect, with its Rabelaisque fertility of 
 diseased imagining, keener ; the sting the 
 tongue carried more adder-like, and the in- 
 genuity of its blasphemies more devilish. The 
 tired women crept to bed at midnight, to start in 
 their sleep at the hoot of every night-owl, the 
 flitter of every bat, and the whistle of every 
 passing steamer ; all save the little mistress of 
 the great house, with its stores of linen and 
 silver ; its flower-filled garden ; its farmyard 
 with lowing sleek kine ; its meadows in prime 
 heart, heavy with the sweetness of red clover ;
 
 126 KEYNOTES 
 
 its line of brown nets pegged down to catch the 
 incoming eager salmon at the mouth of the 
 fjord ; and the wood with its peaceful nooks of 
 cool green, and its winding paths with their 
 brown carpet of last year's fir-needles and pine 
 cones. She sits wearily in her low chair with 
 her thin hands clasped on her sharp knees, and 
 her shawl drawn round her shoulders, for in 
 spite of the fire the first hour of the morning 
 sends its chill breath into the room. He is 
 lying on the sofa talking to himself, empha- 
 sising his words with his heavy stick. A 
 table with decanters and glasses stands next 
 him. 
 
 ' Women, ay, women, man's curse. At the 
 end of the race they beat us always. We get 
 one soft spot with our mother's milk and well 
 they know it, well they know it. What a man 
 I would have been ' (a rising growl) ' if it hadn't 
 been for women ! Do you hear, you white-faced 
 spawn ! Yes, I mean it. God ! when I look back. 
 But' (chuckling) ' I paid them out, the brutes!' 
 And curse follows curse, and worse than that ; 
 as from the lips of the step-daughter in the fairy 
 tale, the words that drop from his lips are the 
 toads and vipers of filth.
 
 UNDER NORTHERN SKY 127 
 
 ' If one could forget. There was one, one 
 long ago. I might have spared her, she pleaded 
 hard against me. Why do I think of her to- 
 night ? it is years, years ago. Ah, but I was 
 big and beautiful in those days ! She, she was 
 an innocent little thing. I fascinated her like 
 a snake, and I can sec her eyes. They were 
 blue with long lashes. I can see them noiv, curse 
 them ! She and the child, jibbering idiots 
 both ! oh ' (groan), ' curses on you for a devil 
 to plague me thus ! Keep away ! I say, keep 
 away ! I low the ghosts dance about the room ! 
 There is another one I had forgotten. Light 
 more candles, more !' (a shriek) 'more ! I say all 
 round the room make a damn wake of it.' 
 
 Mutter, mutter a sordine epic of Hades. 
 She closes her eyes. The stick whirls past her, 
 striking a vase off a table near her ; she gets up, 
 hands it to him without a word ; he hiccoughs 
 and laughs, and then he heaves one sob and 
 cries bitterly with the great tears gushing forth 
 in jets. She picks up his handkerchief and 
 puts it into his hand, and he looks at her with a 
 piteous softening of his wild eyes, and he says 
 quietly, hiccoughing all the while like a child 
 tired after a fit of passion for man in all his
 
 128 KEYNOTES 
 
 passions has a little of the inconsequent child, 
 it is only woman who sins with clear seeing. 
 
 ' I am a brute, I know it, but you don't know 
 what it is to see the ghosts of sins stirring in a 
 man's soul like maggots in a dead rat. And 
 the children, that is the worst of all. O God, 
 my poor little girls ! What will become of 
 them? Oh! Oh!' 
 
 ' But you settled for them ! ' soothing with 
 her weary voice. ' But you settled for them all 
 right ! ' 
 
 ' O yes, the money 's all right. O Lord, yes ! 
 I settled, I settled,' with the reiteration of 
 drunken gravity, ' I settled that. But the 
 mother was a brute, a heartless brute ; and she 
 was a lady too, ay, in her own right. And she 
 never asked a word about them, not one word. 
 It was I, I, poor disreputable brute, that put 
 them to nurse ; and I loathed her for it. Ah ! 
 if you \vomen knew what a hold simple good- 
 ness has on us ! I met her once, I had one at 
 each hand ; I used to go to see them. Oh, they 
 don't know, they don't know, God forbid ! And 
 she lay back in her victoria and looked at us, 
 curse her I She has children now, legitimate 
 ones, and my little girls don't know I 'm alive.
 
 UNDER NORTHERN SKY 129 
 
 Oh, my poor little girls ! They are so pretty. 
 Mind you bury that locket with me, don't open 
 it. Yes, yes, I know, don't think I don't trust 
 you, only woman I ever trusted in the world. 
 But I 'm afraid for them ; curse this water in my 
 eyes' (sob); 'don't you imagine I'm crying, I'm 
 not! It's whiskey, pure unadulterated' (hic- 
 cough) ' whiskey, but I can't help thinking of 
 them. The others, ay, Lord ! how many others? 
 I don't care about them, I settled for them, 
 they ivcrcnt ladies, they '11 get on well enough ; 
 but these, my pretty little ones. I 'm afraid for 
 them, afraid for them. I, who spared no man's 
 daughter, how can I tell if some brute won't 
 hurt mine? Oh God, oh God, how can they be 
 good with such a father and such a mother?' 
 
 He drinks as he speaks, and pours out in grief 
 and rage a wild torrent of prayers and curses. 
 
 'A}-, verily, it's reaping the whirlwind! 
 How the faces crowd round! they always 
 come with the grey morning light ! women's 
 faces, girls' faces, child-girls' faces, oh, damn 
 you, hide me from them ! Mold me tight and 
 keep them away, put your arms right round 
 me. You are clean a clean little thing, they 
 can't come through vou.'
 
 130 KEYNOTES 
 
 And she holds the throbbing head in her 
 arms, and hides the wild eyes in her breast, 
 and she feels as if there is a rustle of trailing 
 skirts about her, and waving hair, and a feel of 
 women. And then he tears himself out of her 
 clasp, and she falls bruising herself sorely, and 
 he throws over the table with a shatter of 
 falling glass, and bounds up the stairs, snatch- 
 ing a riding-whip out of the hall. He beats 
 its gold head into jagged shreds of glitter on 
 the maids' door, and shouts to them to rise and 
 come down. He '11 show them he is master in 
 his own house. He has eaten nothing all clay, 
 no, nor for many days ; down at once or he '11 
 know why, and cook cook his dinner and light 
 fires yes, fires everywhere. What docs he pay 
 them for, lazy sluts, what does he keep house 
 for? . . . And so, man, the master mind of crea- 
 tion, asserts his authority, and the maids troop 
 down, heavy-eyed and stupid with sleep ; and 
 bake, and roast, and giggle hysterical]}- under 
 their breath ; and tell stories of other masters 
 they have served, and goings on ; and grind fresh 
 coffee beans, and have white bread, and lump 
 sugar, and cold fowl, for there is no one to say 
 them nay, and the larders are full of good
 
 U X I ) K R N O R T 1 1 K R X S K Y 131 
 
 things ; and only the pale little mistress knows 
 how near the "'rand place is drawing to bank- 
 ruptcy. 
 
 Morning came, and the table was decked 
 and the dinner served, and taken out again 
 untasted ; and another storm simmered all 
 through the sunny forenoon to burst like a 
 hurricane over the house at noon. 
 
 The kitchen is empty and the fire has gone 
 out ; a wreck of crocket'}' shows where the 
 storm raged worst. The girls flew before the 
 thunder of voice and flash of whip ; the Swedish 
 gardener left his birthright of song untouched 
 and followed them ; he is skylarking with them 
 now up in the great loft ; they have pulled up 
 the ladder, and are pelting one another with 
 last year's hay. The cow-girl, a wench from 
 llittedal, lured the cattle and goats and long- 
 legged, heifer calves deeper into the woods 
 with her quaint Lokke song, calling: 
 
 Only the housemaid, who is consumptive, 
 and who stays for the little mistress' sake, her 
 own days in the land being numbered, has 
 taken her l>ible up to the look-out in the wood,
 
 132 KEYNOTES 
 
 and laid it open on the stone table. She is 
 crushing the Linnae as she kneels into a 
 fragrant incense ; rocking to and fro to the 
 sombre rhythm of the last book of Ecclesiastes. 
 
 And the master of them all is sitting ex- 
 hausted in his big chair, and Marie Larsen and 
 he are doing battle. She came on the scene 
 just as the grand retreat was sounded, and took 
 the enemy by stratagem. She lifted the little 
 mistress bodily up, and carried her up-stairs, 
 leaving him, as she puts it, to ramp like a bull 
 of Basan below. She lays her on her bed, 
 takes off her shoes, pulls down the blind, and 
 pours out some drops out of a little blue bottle 
 she carries in her pocket, talking as she might 
 to a child : ' There, Tulla, take naphtha drops, 
 very good drops, you go sleep, good sleep, 
 Marie mind him, Marie not afraid/ and with a 
 final pat she goes down. He is laughing be- 
 tween his oaths at the stampede of petticoats, 
 and he holds out his arms when she comes in. 
 
 She is a little square woman, between fifty 
 and sixty, with a ruby button of a nose and hair, 
 that oil and age has robbed of its brilliant red, 
 drawn smoothly back into a tight screw at the 
 back of her broad head. Her eves arc a fishy
 
 U N I) K R NOR T HERN SKY 133 
 
 green grey, the Icit eyelid droops ; when she 
 thinks you are not looking, a sly elusive gleam 
 brightens them, her pursed lips loosen, and if 
 you happen to see it, you think that there may 
 be something after all in the stories the gossips 
 whisper of Marie Larsen. Her dress is ex- 
 quisitely neat, her apron snowy. No one in 
 the district can make such a supreme of fish as 
 Marie ; no one beat her at roasting a capercailzie 
 and serving it with sour cream sauce ; or brew 
 such caudles and possets for a lying-in, or bake 
 such meats for a funeral-feast. And what if 
 there be an old-time tale of a brat accidentally 
 smothered ? And what if the Amtmanden 
 (superior magistrate), he who had the sickly 
 wife, did send Marie to Germany to learn 
 cooking? Well, he had money to spare and 
 was always freehanded. And if Nils Pettcrsen 
 did write home and say that he saw her in 
 Hamburg at a trade well, other than cooking 
 sure Nils 1'ettersen was a bit of a liar anyhow, 
 and good cooking covers a multitude of frailties. 
 And if her nose was red and her breath smelt 
 of cloves, who could say they ever saw her buy 
 a bottle of akavit, and that was more than could 
 be said ot all the other temperance leaguers.
 
 134 K E Y N OT E S 
 
 She had a nice cottage, with marigolds and 
 curly-mint and none-so-prettys nodding down 
 the garden paths, and if you went inside it was 
 very respectable ; and you could not fail to 
 notice the large brass-bound Bible on a crochet- 
 square on top of the mahogany chest of drawers, 
 with a sprig of palm marking the gospel of the 
 previous Sunday. And no one answered the 
 responses more loudly, or confessed more openly 
 at revival times, or quoted scripture more aptly 
 to the confusion of a neighbour than Jomfru 
 Marie Larsen. And then she had seen life too, 
 and told them round the oven in winter over a 
 cup of good coffee ' tales that were human,' just 
 to warn them what risks they might run if they 
 should be tempted to stray to the ungodly cities 
 of the wicked world outside. 
 She stands and smiles at him. 
 ' Arcades ambo ! Blackguards both ! ' quotes 
 he, pointing to a glass. She pours him out a 
 measure and blinks, and fills a wine-glass with 
 raw spirit for herself, and clinks glasses and 
 sips like a connoisseur. And then she takes 
 out her knitting and sets the needles flying. 
 So they sit a while ; his last grand charge has 
 taxed him, but the quiet maddens him.
 
 U N D 1C R N O R T II 1C R X SKY 135 
 
 1 Where 's the Fruc ? ' he asks, ' the Frue ? ' 
 
 She lays her head sideways on her hand and 
 closes her eyes, saying in English : ' No can 
 have Frucn, she sick, no can have her, be good, 
 Marie tell you a tale.' 
 
 She gets up and shuts the doors ; he roars at 
 her and tries to rise, but his knees fail him ; he 
 sinks back into the chair and begins to swear. 
 She knits away and commences in Norwegian 
 a sing-song recitative like the drowsy buzz of a 
 fly on a pane. 
 
 ' Yesterday \vc had a bazaar, a bazaar in the 
 school-house, a bazaar for the poor black 
 heathens in Africa. For the poor black 
 heathens lost in the darkness of unbelief, and 
 ignorant of the saving of the Lamb oh, it was 
 a blessed work ! ' 
 
 A savage roar from him, but she crocs on 
 
 o o 
 
 unheeding with her narrative. 
 
 ' And there were tables with lots of things 
 to be sold, and there were tables with refresh- 
 ments, and there were wreaths and flags upon 
 the walls, and godly texts and paper roses, 
 yellow and red;' she draws out each word to 
 spin the yarn longer, and he curses her for a 
 Jexebel and foams with rage, and she sips her
 
 136 KEYNOTES 
 
 cognac with a deeper droop of eyelid and slower 
 click of needle and proceeds with her talc : 
 
 ' And we had hymns, and the kapelan (curate) 
 played the harmonium, and then he held a little 
 edifying discourse, and the school children 
 sang, and Marie had to hand round refresh- 
 ments, and oh, it was a rousing day ! And 
 there was Frue 1 Magistrate Holmsen, and Frue 
 Assessor Schwartz, and Frue Custom-house 
 Chiefs lady and her sister Froken Dase, she 
 of the long nose and pinched waist, and her 
 engaged, the Candidat. And there was Frue 
 Doctor Barthelsen, and Frue general dealer 
 Steen and daughter, with a high frill to hide the 
 evils in her neck, and Frue Insurance Agent. 
 . . .' She dodges a glass adroitly, and raises 
 her voice to drown his shriek of what the merry 
 devil she means. ( Insurance Agent Ilansen, 
 and the Kaptein of the Sea Gull. . . . S-s-s, 
 you be quiet, Marie tell you tale there was 
 Ma'm Sorensen and fat Ma'm Larscn ; she 's 
 going to have her twelfth, and Larson only 
 
 1 The title Frue is properly borne by the wives of officials, 
 but all the professional men's wives bear it. Madam is Used 
 by the small shopkeepers or lower burgher chas, but the dis- 
 tinction is dying out. A Frue's daughter is Froken, Madam's 
 Jomfrue.
 
 U X 1 ) !: R N O R T ! 1 1': R X S K Y i 37 
 
 third mate, and Ma'm Johnscn and all the 
 young gentlemen and ladies, and oh, it was a 
 glorious sight ! ' She starts a key higher, for 
 he is purple with fury and exertion, ' and, and 
 we had coffee two pence a cup, and chocolade,' 
 with a long-drawn stress on the Made' 'and 
 Brus-sclzers and lemonade and fruit juice and 
 temperance beer. . . . Xo, no, you be quiet, 
 Marie tell tale ! ' 
 
 lie is struggling till the veins stand in cords 
 to get out of his chair, but in vain ; he points to 
 his glass in desperation. She refills it and her 
 own . . . ' Yes, temperance beer, a penny a 
 glass, and we had white bread and brown 
 bread and currant buns and Berlin kringels 
 and ginger nuts and little cakes with hundreds 
 and thousands on top ! And oh, it was 
 grand ! . . . ' 
 
 She is yelling louder and louder, and he is 
 swearing deeper, and the battle shows no signs 
 oi ceasing. 
 
 ' And then we sold all sorts of things, and 
 drew numbers, and had a luck}- bag ; and Hans 
 Jacobsen played on the mclodcon, and mission- 
 ary llan.-.en told us about the poor blacks, 
 and all his blessed work, and how the Lord
 
 138 KEYNOTES 
 
 guided his footsteps through the sandy wastes, 
 and how he baptized a chief and all his wives 
 in the waters of faith. And Nils Pettersen says, 
 they took out more raw alcohol and spent gun- 
 powder and spoilt cotton goods than the fear 
 of God ; and that the Bird o' Faith cleared 100 
 per cent, on her freight. But Nils Pettersen 
 was always a liar ; and oh, it was a blessed 
 thing to do all that for the heathen blacks ! 
 And then the kapelan spoke again, a touching 
 discourse!' And she refills her glass, dodging 
 his stick and watching him out of the tail of her 
 eye as she turns the heel of her stocking, and 
 repeats the whole of the sermon. His vocabulary 
 is exhausted, and he is inventing the weirdest 
 oaths, hurling them forth, a deep accompani- 
 ment to her shriller sermon, with its sancti- 
 monious sing-song tune and unctuous phrasing ; 
 for she is, perhaps unwittingly, mimicking the 
 kapelan to the life. He is getting tired and 
 drowsy, the cognac is rising to her head, and 
 even a kapelan's sermon must draw to a close. 
 And as a mother will change her lullaby into a 
 quick hushoo, and pat mechanically with a 
 drowsy nod as the child drops to sleep, so 
 Alarie puts her knitting tidily into her apron
 
 ( : N 1) K R NORTH E R N SKY 1 30 
 
 pocket, and folding her withered old hands, 
 breaks into a hymn. He opens his eyes 
 languidly, and protests feebly with a last 
 damn, but Marie has exorcised the devil this 
 time. His ja\v drops, and muttering softly, he 
 falls into heavy sleep and she sings on till her 
 head too droops on her breast, and her quaver- 
 ing old woman's voice dies away in an abortive 
 hallelujah ! 
 
 And the motes dance in the golden bar of a 
 waning sun ray that pierces the room and 
 crosses the motionless figures and above 
 stairs the little mistress is wrapped in rare, 
 delicious, dreamless slumber. And I like to 
 think that the recording angel registered that 
 sleep to the credit of Jonifrue Marie Larsen !
 
 II. 
 
 A SHADOW'S SLANT. 
 
 IT is a sunny afternoon in mid-summer. A 
 phaeton drawn by a pair of sturdy grey 
 Stavanger horses, whose dainty heads and the 
 mark of St. Olaf's thumb on their throats tell 
 their race, is dashing along at a break-neck 
 
 ' O O 
 
 pace. The whip curls over them and the 
 vehicle sways a little to one side. Two great 
 hounds bound along on the right of it. 
 
 o o 
 
 A strip of blue fjord and a background of 
 dark mountains, with the cool ice-kisses of the 
 snow 7 queen still resting on their dusky heads, 
 can be seen at intervals through the fir and 
 pine trees. A squirrel scrambles up a rowan 
 tree, and a cattle bell tingles far in the woods. 
 Nature has ever a discordant note in its 
 symphony. A little brown bird is fluttering in 
 helpless terrified jerks ; it emits, as it rises and 
 falls, a sharp sound between a chirp and a 
 squeak a hawk is swooping over it a poise
 
 A S IT A D O W ' S S L A N T 141 
 
 a dip a few feathers float \vilh the brcc/.c, and 
 the hawk soars up with its prey in its claws. 
 
 The red-brown eyes that gleam out of the 
 small sallow face of the woman who sits on the 
 left side of the phaeton close for a second ; the 
 delicate nostrils quiver, the lips tighten over a 
 sigh then the lids rise again, the eyes are 
 darker, the pupils have a trick of dilating ; a 
 smile subtle in meaning, for much of mocking 
 pain and bitterness is expressed in its brief 
 passage, Hits across her face. 
 
 A savage jerk the horses stop. 
 
 ' Kiss me ! ' says the man who is driving, his 
 voice is harsh and the eyes that scan her face 
 have a lurid light in them, and as he speaks a 
 smell of spirit mingles with the smell of the 
 pine chips. Her lips tighten still more ; she 
 turns to obey. She has to rise up a little, he is 
 very tall. His nose is powerful like a hawk's 
 beak, and his beard is stirred by the breeze, 
 and his eyes peer out from under their fringe of 
 black lashes with a cruel passionate gleam. She 
 almost touches his face but falls back from a 
 rough shove 
 
 No, keep your kiss and be damned to you ! ' 
 
 A savage whoop, the whip curls out and the
 
 142 KEYNOTES 
 
 reins jerk, and the quivering horses that know 
 the voice too well dash on ; and the hounds 
 that have felt the whip-cord sting, as the 
 strike of a snake on their flanks, bay savagely 
 as they join in the race. 
 
 On the right of the narrow winding road a 
 great lake lies hundreds of feet below ; the 
 wheel is not half a foot from the edge, and the 
 vehicle jolts and leans that way, and the lash 
 coils round and it flicks her car, and leaves a 
 sorry sting, and she never winces at it. But her 
 small hands clench, and her lips part, and the 
 red light flashes in her eyes, and something akin 
 to exultant expectation steals over the thin 
 small face as they court death, each wheel- 
 turn in their mad career. 
 
 # v X -:;: * 
 
 The stable door opens and the horses turn 
 their heads. She, it is she, goes over and passes 
 her fingers gently over the swollen stripes that 
 make little ridges in the close-clipped hair. 
 Once she lays her cheek caressingly upon a 
 cruel furrow and whispers, ' Poor little Ola, if I 
 had only governed my face better, you would 
 not have been so punished ; ' and Ola turns 
 his satiny muzzle, softer than the daintiest
 
 A S II A D O \V ' S S L A \ T 143 
 
 lady's breast, and rubs it against her, to coax 
 for the apples that always follow. She goes 
 from one to the other and coos to them and 
 rubs her chin against their soft noses, and when 
 the stripes arc very bad her jaws set ; and one 
 can sec the mark of the teeth through her thin 
 
 cheeks. 
 
 * % * * 
 
 1 Come here ! I want some brandy ! . , . . 
 Now put the glass down and come back. 
 What 's that mark on your check ? ' 
 
 ' Only the whip touched me.' 
 
 1 And you were too damned proud to say so, 
 eh ? P>y the way, I saw some gipsies in the 
 park. Johann can do the translating, they are 
 coming here to play. One of them is a thunder- 
 ing fine girl, I'd like to .... what? what's 
 that you said ? ' 
 
 ' I did not make any remark ! ' a fine scorn 
 trembles about her pale lips, and her face is a 
 shade greyer. 
 
 A pause. 
 
 v Where are your rings ? ' 
 
 ' l"p-stairs ! ' 
 
 Go and fetch them ! Blast it ! I dun 't buy 
 you rings to leave them up-stairs.'
 
 144 KEYNOTES 
 
 She comes back with them on, and lie takes 
 up the slim fingers laden with jewelled bands, 
 spreads them out on his palm, then closes his 
 thumb and finger round her wrist, and laughs 
 a rasping laugh. 
 
 ' Did any mortal man ever see such a hand ? 
 You witch ! with eyes that probe into a fellow's 
 soul and shame him and fear nothing ! ' and he 
 tightens his grip and she winces at his rough- 
 ness. ' There ' (with a softening of voice), ' did I 
 hurt you ? you poor little thing, you queer little 
 womany ! Come closer ' (with fierce, impatient 
 tenderness) ; ' put down your little old head, a 
 head like a snipe, on my breast. There, great 
 God, I 'm very fond of you ! ' a tremor runs 
 through his voice. 'You queer little thing. 
 You arc no beauty, but you creep in, and F, 
 I love every inch of you. I 'd kiss the ground 
 under your feet. I know every turn of your little 
 body, the slope of your shoulders, I that always 
 liked women to have square shoulders the 
 swing of your hips when you walk. I lips! ha, 
 ha ! you haven 't got any, you scrap ! and yet, 
 by the Lord, I 'd lick you like a dog' (slower, 
 with emphasis), 'and yon don't care for me. 
 You obey me, no matter what I ask.' ....
 
 A SHADOW'S SLANT 145 
 
 He is holding her face against his breast, and 
 stroking her head with clumsy touch. ' You 
 wait on me, ay, no slave better, and yet I 
 can't get at you, near you ; that little soul of 
 yours is as free as if I hadn't bought you, as 
 if I didn't own you, as if you were not my 
 chattel, my thing to do what I please with ; do 
 you hear' (with fury) 'to degrade, to to treat 
 as I pleased No, you are not afraid, you little 
 white-faced thing, you obey because you are 
 strong enough to endure, not because you fear 
 me. And 1 know it, don't you think I don't 
 see it. You pity me, great God ! pity me me 
 that could whistle any woman to heel yes, you 
 pity me with all that great heart of yours 
 because I am just a great, weak, helpless, 
 drunken beast, a poor wreck ! ' and the tears 
 jump out of his eyes, eyes that are limpid and 
 blue and unspoiled; and he sobs out: 'Kiss 
 me, take my head in your arms, I am a brute, 
 an infernal brute, but I 'm awfully fond of you, 
 you queer little gipsy with your big heart and 
 your damnable will. I! I! I who hated women 
 like poison, who always treated them as such 
 I could cry when I look at you, like a great 
 puling boy. because your spirit is out of my
 
 146 KEYNOTES 
 
 grasp. Smooth my head ; no other little hand 
 in the world has such a touch as yours. I 'd 
 know it amongst a thousand- my poor little 
 thing ! Don't ever leave me, promise even 
 if I go mad, promise you '11 stay. Get a man 
 to mind me, but stay, won't you ? Stay ! ' 
 
 ' I '11 stay.' 
 
 ' Did any Christian man ever have such an 
 atom for a wife ? I believe you are a gipsy ; 
 your hair curls at the ends like a live thing, 
 and there are red lights in its black, and your 
 eyes have a flash in them at times and a look 
 as if you were off in other lands ! Oh, oh ! 
 Get me a little brandy, quick, quick ! ' 
 
 * v * -*- ;:- * 
 
 Merrily twang the guitars, and the tambour- 
 ines rattle as they are swung aloft by slender 
 curving wrists. The wild cries of a Zingari 
 
 o o 
 
 dance ring out. Black eyes gleam, and brown 
 skins shine under orange and scarlet kerchiefs. 
 The grace of panthers and the charm of wild 
 untamed natural things is revealed in every 
 movement. Colour, vivacity, dirt, and rhythm. 
 Wild the music, wilder the dance, and he sits 
 in his chair on the veranda, the clean, clear air 
 and the fresh breeze blowing in from the sea,
 
 A S II A D O W ' S S L A NT 147 
 
 stirring the white hairs in the curls at his 
 temples, and listens and looks with no eye or 
 ear for aught of its beauty only a ribald jest 
 as their pettieoats rise, or their bosoms quiver 
 in the fling of the dance .... and she with a 
 crimson shawl drawn round her spare shoulders, 
 and a splash of colour in her thin cheeks holds 
 one hand tightly pressed over her breast to still 
 what ? What doe:; the music rouse inside that 
 frail frame, what parts her lips and causes her 
 eyes to glisten and the thin nostrils to quiver ? 
 Is there aught in common between that slight 
 figure with its jewelled hands and its too heavy 
 silken gown, and those tattered healthy Zingari 
 vagabonds ? . . . . who knows ? 
 
 The whole tribe arc gathered round him, 
 begging and screaming with one voice, and he 
 throws silver lavishly to them and thrusts his 
 hand with a coarse jest into the open bodice of 
 the girl nearest him. A brown hand goes to the 
 knife of a swarthy youth with gold rings in his 
 ears; but at a few strange words from the oldest 
 woman in the group the girl steps back, and 
 with the quickness of lightning the hag takes 
 her place and answers his jest in his own tongue. 
 The girl looks curiously, pityingly, respectfully
 
 I 4 8 KEYNOTES 
 
 at the other girl, she is a little more than a girl 
 as she stands dumbly by during all this scene. 
 Eye seeks eye sympathy meets sympathy 
 what affinity is between these two creatures ? 
 
 ' Kan de rokra Romany ? ' she asks with a 
 smile that visits her face as the ghost of a 
 vanished beauty ; and her voice is sweetly soft 
 as she asks it. A flash of eye, a hurried back- 
 ward word thrown to the old woman who joins 
 them on hearing it. She stands between with 
 a smile at their wonder, and she holds out her 
 hand, and one slim ivory-tinted hand rests 
 palm upwards in a no less slim but browner 
 one. The old woman peers into the lines and 
 crosses, and as she scans them a look of wonder 
 creeps up to her usually inscrutable face. She 
 exchanges words in an undertone with the 
 gipsy girl at her side. 
 
 ' I speak Romany too. Deya ! An evil fate, 
 isn't it, mother ? ' 
 
 ' A mole on your check, and a free Roman) 7 
 heart in your breast, your spirit fights to be 
 free as the Romany chai. Seven suns rise and 
 seven moons, and the flag is half-mast, and the 
 cage opens and the bird . . . . ' an impatient 
 curse cuts short her words, and thev turn to him.
 
 A S II A 1) O W'S S L A N T 149 
 
 ' 1 1 ere, you old Jc/.cbcl ! Send these vaga- 
 bonds of yours down there, there 's plenty to 
 eat.' 
 
 The servants are bearing beer and food to 
 the lawn. 
 
 ' Shall I go blind ? I daresay you know as 
 much as those infernal doctors, eh ? ' 
 
 ' Xo, your eyes, and pretty eyes they are, and 
 many a soul they Vc lost, they '11 last your time, 
 my lord ! I sec a journey to England, it lies 
 before you, and no return. Seven times the 
 moon will rise, and the Romanies go to the 
 South, but the bird. . . . ' 
 
 ' Get to blazes out of this ! Help me in, 
 ducky, oh damn it, be quick. Get me some 
 brand}', quick, quick, not all brandy, a little 
 milk in it ! ' 
 
 The moon is high in the hcavjns, and the sea 
 is running into the creek with a silver sheen on 
 its back ; the blinds arc drawn up in the four 
 windows of the bedroom, and the northern 
 night is like unto day disguised in a domino of 
 silver-grey crape. 
 
 lie is sleeping. She is standing motionless 
 at the window. The red of her dressing-gown
 
 150 KEYNOTES 
 
 and the moonlight make her face look more 
 ghostlike as she leans her head wearily against 
 the window-frame. She is gazing seawards ; a 
 steamer has just passed, and the beacon in the 
 lighthouse on Jomfru-land gleams like a great 
 bright eye. In how many dreary vigils has it 
 not greeted her and seemed to say : 'Courage, I 
 too am watching, you are not alone.' 
 
 At the end of the wood two tents are pitched, 
 and she can see two figures outlined against the 
 white palings. The Romany girl and the youth 
 with the gold ear-rings. He is holding her in 
 his arms. The dog-chains rattle now and then ; 
 something brown and stealthy creeps about the 
 duck-house ; the white mists in the marshy bit 
 of meadow lying next the creek dance like 
 spirits, and beckon to her with shadowy arms, 
 and a faint yellow streak appears in the East. 
 How many more nights must she stand alone 
 and watch the morning herald a new day of 
 bondage ? She moves noiseless!}- away, and 
 goes into the dressing-room, and walks over to 
 the mirror. She shakes her dusky elf locks 
 round her face, and catching up a yellow scarf 
 lying on a chair, winds it round her head, and 
 then peers at herself in the glass. ... A cleft
 
 A SHADOW'S SLANT 151 
 
 twist turns down the white frills of her night- 
 gown, she has a gold chain round her neck, and 
 she laughs a childish noiseless laugh at her own 
 image. ' How strangely my eyes gleam, and 
 what a gipsy I look ! Xo one would know, no 
 one would dream of it. I would soon get 
 brown !' and she looks wistfully out towards the 
 camp again. In an hour they will go ... a 
 heap of fern to lie on, scant fare, and weary 
 feet ; but the freedom, ah, the freedom ! The 
 woods with their wealth of shy, wild things, and 
 the mountains that make one yearn to soar up 
 over their heights to the worlds above. Free 
 to follow the beck of one's spirit, a-ah to dream 
 of it, and the red light glows in her eyes again ; 
 they have an inward look ; what visions do 
 they see ? The small thin face is transformed, 
 the lips are softer, one quick emotion chases the 
 other across it, the eyes glisten and darken 
 deeply, and the copper threads shine in her 
 swart hair. What is she going to do, what 
 resolve is she making ? A muttered groan, a 
 stir in the bed rouses her, and throwing aside 
 the scarf, she glides swiftly to his side. She 
 stands and looks down. What a magnificent 
 head it is, and how repellent ! The tossed black
 
 152 KEYNOTES 
 
 locks with their silver streaks lie scattered on 
 the pillow. The ear suggests vigorous animal- 
 ism, the nose is powerful, the broad forehead 
 shines whitely, and the long lashes curl upward 
 as those of a child. The sensual-lipped mouth 
 with its cruel lines shows more cruel as the 
 head is thrown back. She looks at it steadily, 
 no line escapes her ; looks from it to the hands, 
 nerveless, white. The long thin thumbs have a 
 hateful expression, and the backs are short with 
 an ugly joining to the wrists. He stirs, and a 
 lewd word escapes his lips. . . . She shudders. 
 Again her eyes wander out with an appealing 
 look (to whom do they appeal, to part of her- 
 self, to some God of convention ?) towards the 
 camp. They are stirring, she can see the Finn 
 dog run to and fro. She steps away . . . ir- 
 resolution is expressed in her face, her head is 
 thrust forward, her fingers spread out uncon- 
 sciously. . . . She glances across the floor, 
 some shelves are to be nailed up, one of them 
 is leant against the wardrobe door. As she 
 hesitates she notices that the shadow of it and 
 the half-closed door throws a long cross almost 
 to her feet. She folds her hands involuntarily 
 a whimper from the bed, a frightened call
 
 A S 1 1 A D O W ' S SLANT 153 
 
 ' Conic to me ! Where are you ? Don't 
 leave me a second, oh God, don't leave me ! 
 What 's that there ? Give me a drop of brandy, 
 quick, oh quick ! . . . Kneel down, dearie, close, 
 close to me, lay your little old check against 
 mine, and say a little prayer, no psalm business, 
 just one out of your own little head' (sob) 'to 
 suit a poor devil like me ! ' 
 
 The sun is saying good-morning to the 
 moon. She is wan from watching. The birds 
 arc awake, but the man still sleeps ; and the 
 little red-gowned figure crouched at the bed- 
 side, her left hand with its heavy gold band 
 clasped lightly in his, is sleeping too. A half- 
 dried tear is held in the dark hollow under 
 the closed eyes. The nose looks pinched in the 
 morning light, and a grey-green shadow stains 
 mouth and chin, but a smile plays round the 
 dry lips. 
 
 The caravan is winding slowly round the 
 curve of the road, and three plump geese are 
 stowed inside. The Romany lass is humming 
 a song, a song about love, and dance, and song; 
 and the soul of the sleeping girl tloats along at 
 her side in a dream of freedom. She of the
 
 154 KEYNOTES 
 
 song looks up : ' Six moons will rise, then you 
 will be free ! ' she mutters to herself as she passes 
 on ; and the sun mounts higher, and the shadow 
 of the cross is lightening with the coming dawn 
 who knows ?
 
 III. 
 
 AX EBB TIDE 
 
 On right and left with flight of light, 
 
 //('.-;. whirled the hills, the trees, the borers ! 
 II ~ith light-tike flight, on left and right, 
 
 //,;(' spun the hamlets. /<>r.v;.v, and toiuers I 
 Pest .;.'<(!// i The ;//<v is/nit- to see ; 
 
 Hurrah .' the Dead ride recklessly .' 
 Beloved! Dost dread the shrouded dead 
 
 Ah let the dead re/<osc. ! she said.' 
 
 James Clarence Mangan'.s Anthology. 
 
 IT is a sunshine Sabbath morning. The sea 
 quivers under an armour of silver scales and 
 laps, laps with a laugh as it runs into the creek. 
 The sails of the ships glisten whiter than any 
 snow. The sun distils the scent from the clove 
 carnations and the swcctbricr leaves ; and 
 coaxes the pungent resin through the cracks in 
 the bark, until the air is heavy with a smell that 
 would cease to be perfume, were it not filtered 
 through the salt ooze of the incoming sea-brcc/e 
 that flutters the flags on the tall white poles, and 
 tempers the ardour of the young year's sun. 
 The kariul bearing the specialist whose skill
 
 156 KEYNOTES 
 
 is of no avail in the face of a pressing call from 
 the great God Death, has just wound round the 
 pine wood in a whirl of dust. The dogs, un- 
 bound, lie on the back veranda with their black 
 snouts resting on their fore paws, and they 
 watch him depart without a growl. They have 
 not barked for days past, nor chased the plucky 
 badger, nor yapped impatiently as the cheeky 
 squirrels flirted through the branches. Even 
 beggars have come and gone without a snarling 
 protest. But all last night they howled and 
 bayed and cowered together as if they could 
 see the passage of invisible guests. A peculiar 
 stillness seems to brood over the great place. 
 The maids are sitting in their gowns of Sunday 
 black, with open psalm-books on their laps ; 
 they arc listening and whispering with the dis- 
 turbance of expectancy. 
 
 The housekeeper is talking to the leech 
 woman, quaint survival of older days, whose 
 business in life is to keep the slimy suckers 
 lively and apply them. She looks as if she fed 
 them between-times on herself, so bony and 
 colourless a creature is she. They arc nego- 
 tiating the last ghastly offices that may soon 
 be needed speculating as to the changes and
 
 A N K B B T I D K 157 
 
 their effect on the village. The vicar, she tells, is 
 about to make the departing life the text of his 
 sermon. Every one in the district is coming to 
 hear it. Why not? A sermon of warning, 
 with a smack of the Pharisee in it, a ' Lord, I 
 thank Thee I am not like unto this man ' note, 
 especially if you know the publican in question, 
 cannot fail to be attractive; it has an up-to-date 
 interest that the parable of the far-away-time 
 sinner necessarily lacks. 
 
 Up-stairs the cow-girl is crouching like a 
 faithful dog outside his bedroom door ; she is 
 listening to the murmured Latin service of the 
 mass that comes from inside. The windows of 
 the room are wide open, and the sea stretches 
 away and melts into the horizon in an infinity 
 of blue and silver. He is lying still on the ebb 
 of his last tide, and when his eyes open they 
 wander from the little priest before the ex- 
 temporised altar, to the bowed head of the 
 woman kneeling beside him. 
 
 ' Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum ! ' intones 
 the priest. 
 
 ' Et cum spiritu tuo ! ' she utters in response, 
 in dead, dull tones, and when she chimes the 
 little silver bell she does it in a mechanical way.
 
 158 KEYNOTES 
 
 And all the time he holds her one hand to his 
 breast. When the mass is read and the 
 extreme unction administered, the little priest 
 reads the prayers for the dying. He listens 
 attentively, and she listens too, with eyes dry 
 as horn, and tightened lips. She scarcely hears 
 what he reads. 
 
 ' My feet have gone astray in the paths of 
 vanity and sin, now let me walk in the way of 
 Thy commandments. . . . Forgive me, O Lord, 
 all the sins which I have committed by my 
 disordered steps. . . .' ' Steps ! ' that means feet, 
 ' eyes seen vanities,' that means sight. . . . 
 ' Tongue hath in many ways offended,' speech ; 
 why he is going through all the seven senses, or 
 is it seven ? or five ? She must give him the 
 envelope with the cheque in it before he leaves. 
 . . . She hasn't a black frock, not one ; he liked 
 her in colours, light girlish colours with a silken 
 waist-band to match. Must she wire for a 
 coffin ? What a beast she is to think like this ? 
 But how can she help it ? Her tear-bags what 
 is their right name ? lachrymal glands ? are 
 exhausted, even her lashes have thinned, yet 
 she never shed a tear, at least only inwardly, 
 with a choke.
 
 A N E B B T I D K 1 59 
 
 He sobs and she looks up; the tears are 
 trickling clown his cheeks, she puts up her free 
 hand and wipes them off gently. 
 
 ' To Thee I resign my heart ! Into Thy 
 hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit ! ' reads 
 the priest in broken English, and when the, 
 from its point of view, beautiful prayer has 
 drawn to a solemn close, the man sobs out in 
 genuine heartfelt conviction with a force of 
 epithet that is habit, not irreverence. 
 
 ' That is a damn nice prayer ! I was always 
 afraid of death, always (with a .sob) a coward, 
 but when it comes to the point that vanishes 
 too!' 
 
 And the boyish priest purses his cheque, 
 and takes it with him, and leaves his blessing 
 instead, and follows in the wake of the town 
 doctor. 
 
 ' Send Johann to me, dearums, let me get 
 dressed, I '11 have a try to die in the sunshine. 
 Get your own little bed carried down to the 
 veranda, and your own little white pillow ; 
 mind, the one you put your head on last ; and 
 lend them to me for this turn.' 
 
 And so the maids take it down, and she 
 stands at the head oi the stairs as they carry
 
 i6o KEYNOTES 
 
 it, two at the head, and two at the foot. 
 As she hears their cautious backward steps 
 and the rest at the turn, she fancies it sounds 
 like the bearing out of a coffin. And then he 
 follows slowly out, leaning on his big stick, 
 and his beard divides into patches and shows 
 the purplish skin, and his breathing is laboured, 
 but he steps more firmly than he has done 
 for a long time past. He leans on her frail 
 shoulders, and when they reach the dining- 
 room he calls in the maids and the men who 
 serve him, and bids them charge their glasses ; 
 and he thanks them, and says he is sorry for 
 all the trouble he has given them, and shakes 
 hands with each one ; and they courtesy and 
 say Skaal ! (a salutation when drinking) and 
 troop out crying. They arc mostly women, 
 and women forgive easily and forget every- 
 thing to a man ! Only the cow-girl stops 
 behind crouched near the door crying: 'O-ah, 
 o-ah ! ' He fills his own glass with cham- 
 pagne and sips it, but nature sets a limit to 
 the alcohol a man may absorb, and he has 
 passed it. He cannot get it down, so he lays 
 his hand on her head and smooths it gently, 
 and says
 
 A M EBB TIDE 161 
 
 ' Your luck, little one, your very good luck ! 
 Oh, my poor little one, I am afraid for you ! 
 I ought to have . . . well, it 's no good regret- 
 ting . . . and with a last flame of the old fierce 
 fire he cries 
 
 ' I have had my last drink, and no man 
 shall drink after me ; ' and he shivers the glass 
 against the wall, and purple shadows, the 
 ' skrcigh ' of another dawn, chase one another 
 over his swollen face, and he leans heavily 
 on her and says faintly 
 
 ' Lay me down, I am tired ! ' 
 
 When they reach the veranda, the leaves 
 of the virgin-vine are strewn in dancing shadow 
 leaves and fluttering tendrils at their feet. He 
 looks at them and mutters : ' Shadows only 
 shadows ! ' 
 
 Suddenly he searches her face intently and 
 asks 
 
 ' Is there no hope, little one? none? ' 
 
 He reads the answer in her wistful eyes. 
 
 'When? Don't you be afraid to tell me, 
 when did he say ? ' 
 
 ' Inside twenty-four hours- 
 There is a I'.'tig silence, and the shadow leaves 
 dance, and the bees whirl buz/ing past, and 
 l,
 
 1 62 KEYNOTES 
 
 the strong young life of midsummer mocks 
 dissolution in a subtle arrogant way. 
 
 ' One good clean year, one clean year, one 
 year's home for a finish. Just as I learnt to 
 know what it meant to leave it all ! It 's hard 
 to look on a day like this ' (sob) ' and know that 
 to-morrow I rot. A long life as lives go, and 
 nothing to show for it. Well, I always wanted 
 to die in the sunshine with the birds singing, 
 and, since I knew you, with you near me oh, 
 my dear, my poor dear little one ! ' 
 
 He reels, and she clutches him, but he 
 steadies himself by a supreme effort, and says 
 through his ground teeth 
 
 o o 
 
 ' Now I am going to say good-bye to the 
 world, and, by God, I '11 say it standing. I 
 have had good days in it, wild, glad days, 
 drunk with the lust of love and wine, but I 
 never saw good or beauty in it till you showed 
 me how. Oh, oh, oh ! Let no man write my 
 epitaph ! ' 
 
 He stands leaning on her shoulders looking 
 seawards, drinking his fill of sun and sea, sea 
 that was a rapture to him, that he loved as 
 the greatest, and strongest, and cruellest 
 thing he knew ; the only thing that responded
 
 A N E B B T I D E 163 
 
 to the wild moods in his soul, and struck a 
 rushing strain of song in his stormy heart, 
 that made him rejoice with a fierce delight. 
 The tears fall and splash on her hands, and 
 then she helps him to lie down, and she feels 
 iiis feet, and they bring hot bottles, for they are 
 getting cold, and he lies with his eyes closed ; 
 the village doctor comes and goes, but nothing 
 can be done, the sands are running out fast. 'If 
 the Lord be merciful ' (the sermon is working in 
 him) ' He will take him before morning, other- 
 wise he will suffer much.,' he whispers to her. 
 She docs not answer, only kneels silently at 
 his side, and he holds her hand. There is a 
 strange smell that has a chill uncleanness in 
 its breath about them. The people pass by 
 on the road above and peer down through 
 the palings. The maids give audience to in- 
 quisitive or interested callers at the back. 
 The housekeeper is busy at the linen press, 
 sorting out sheets and things that ma}- be 
 needed, and as she moves about with noise- 
 less tread, and folds and lays aside, she 
 mentally remodels her wardrobe. If she take 
 out the flower in her black summer hat 
 and put in some curled tips, it will serve
 
 1 64 KEYNOTES 
 
 nicely. Mistress will surely bring her a dress 
 from England, and the merino they hang 
 the rooms with, she will get it cut the proper 
 lengths, will do for the maids. Uf ! that nasty 
 wine gave her a headache ! she will get some 
 fresh beans roasted, and have a good cup 
 with fresh cream ; that will do her good. 
 How Gudrun (the cow-girl) takes on ! He 
 was a devil to serve, but there were advan- 
 tages, ay, many pickings that would not fall 
 to one's share in better -regulated Christian 
 households, not to speak of the distinct comfort 
 of having a mistress whose time is taken up 
 elsewhere. Poor thing! Well, it's best for 
 her, she has money, she '11 marry again. But 
 that Gudrun ! it is odd. Why should she 
 carry on so ? Or could there be a reason ? 
 He always took great notice of Gudrun ; she 
 used to laugh and grin and go on, when he 
 went out in the yard, and never was afraid. 
 And then there was that anonymous letter the 
 mistress got. Uf! Men folk, God save us! 
 Even with a leg in the grave it's hard to 
 trust them! There's no smoke without fire, 
 that's sure. There, that's all ready. 'Well! 
 what is it ? '
 
 A N EBB T I D K 165 
 
 This to the second housemaid. She is a fat 
 girl, with a restless twitch about her mouth and 
 half-closed eye-lids, that curl upwards at the 
 outer corners. One gets the impression some- 
 how that her solid physique is but a mask to 
 cover an emotional soul with a dangerous sense 
 of humour. 
 
 ' The Bible reader, Morten Ring, wants to 
 know if he may read for a while, now that the 
 Popish priest has gone and left the dying sinner 
 without any one to direct his thoughts heaven- 
 wards.' 
 
 There is an imitative note in her voice, and a 
 mocking gleam shoots from her eyes. 
 
 ' Uf! is he here again? That's the third 
 time. Mistress told him no before, and strong 
 enough too ; I should think that ought to have 
 been more than enough for him.' 
 
 ' Yes, but he says the whole village thinks it 
 shocking and he is like sent up, and that you 
 might put it to her ! ' 
 
 1 Indeed, then I won't. \Yhcn I did last time 
 she told me to tell him to go down to the 
 weighing place on the wharf, and ring a bell, 
 and call the population together and read out 
 to them all the places in the Bible that refer to
 
 166 KEYNOTES 
 
 hypocrisy, lying, and scandal ; the sins of 
 adultery, fornication, and the begetting of 
 bastards. That she 'd be willing to pay him 
 treble his fee for the charity of it ; they need it 
 so much. It might teach them to begin at 
 home and let other folks alone.' 
 ' Shall I tell him that ? ' (eagerly.) 
 ' Are you mad ? No, tell him Mistress is 
 reading herself, and ask him to stay and have a 
 good cup of coffee and sweet rusks. I want to 
 get the truth out of him about the magistrate's 
 girl's illness ; he was up there, and I don't be- 
 lieve a sniff in her sprained foot. . . .' 
 
 And down below the rosebuds opened into 
 roses, and nodded with the effrontery of assured 
 beauty to the Sun God ; and the birds hushed 
 them for their noon siesta ; and he lay with 
 shut eyes and held her hand tightly ; and some- 
 times he spoke to her and sometimes he 
 muttered to himself (she caught the words) a 
 line of his favourite Mangan : 
 
 ' Sleep ! no more the dupe of hopes and schemes, 
 Soon them sleepest where the thistles blow ; 
 Curious anticlimax to thy dreams, 
 Twenty golden years ago ! ' 
 
 The odd unpleasant smell seems to hang about
 
 AN EBBTIDE 167 
 
 them as if too heavy to diffuse itself in the 
 thin clear air ; the smell of cow-sheds that 
 clings to the cow-girl's clothes, is perfume to it. 
 It attracted the flies and they gathered like 
 swarming bees on the window panes and door 
 posts ; and buzzed and hummed and stung like 
 Bushmen, carousing over a find of dead meat ; 
 and they crept over the bed and stuck in his 
 hair, and she tried to keep them off his face, 
 and when one of them crawled up her own 
 with tickling, clinging feet, she paled and 
 shuddered. The cow-girl stepped out of her 
 clogs and went into the drawing-room and 
 brought out a gaily-painted palm-leaf fan and 
 stationing herself at the head of the bed, set it in 
 motion. His breathing is getting laboured, and 
 
 o o o 
 
 at times an ugly flush crosses his face. Once 
 when it is deeper than usual, the girl cries : ' O 
 Lord God, Lord God ! ' He hears her and looks 
 up. 
 
 Ah, Gudrun, is that you ? good girl, good 
 girl !' 
 
 She sinlcs on to her knees and moans and 
 rucks herself, and then she look's at his closed 
 eyes and says to her 
 
 ' Mistress, mav I ? It can't harm von ! '
 
 1 68 KEYNOTES 
 
 She nods her head wearily ; she is fanning 
 awkwardly with her left hand, and she says with 
 her tired tender voice 
 
 ' Gudrun wants to say good-bye, dear!' 
 
 He opens his eyes, and for a moment the 
 charm of his rare smile returns. The girl stoops 
 and leaves a kiss upon his forehead, and then 
 rushes away and flings herself down on the 
 long lush grass, that is never cut, under a big 
 chestnut tree. He looks at her and lifts her 
 hand to his lips 
 
 ' Always a big heart, always a great little 
 woman ! ' (with a groan) ' and now I am to lose 
 you, and it is the best thing could happen to 
 you. Ay, there 's the sting ; leave you to some 
 brute ; that is my punishment. O little one, 
 don't you think too hardly of me (he talks 
 with effort), I meant to be better than I was to 
 you. You '11 never find another man love you 
 as I did ; remember that and forget all the rest 
 if you can. You have forgotten all, I might 
 have known you would . . . where am I drift- 
 ing to ? no man ever came back to say. Do 
 you believe in hell ' (eagerly), ' do you believe 
 in it?' 
 
 She looks at him pityingly, with a flash of past
 
 A X E B B T I D E 169 
 
 energy in the lift of her head and a curl of scorn 
 on her pale lips. 
 
 ' The hell of the priests or parson ? No, I do 
 not. Is that worrying you? Don't you let 
 it, old man, don't you let it. Wherever you 
 arc going, whatever after-existence your poor 
 troubled soul is fighting its way to, it is not to 
 tlicir hell' The girl has come back and taken 
 up her former position, and fans steadily, for the 
 flies are gathering in greater numbers every 
 hour. The veranda seems airless and close, 
 and uncanny with unseen things ; the doctor 
 comes and goes ; the servants peep out ; and the 
 hours seem to hold many hours in their 
 embrace. She seems to live all her life over 
 again. Things she has forgotten completely 
 come vividly back to her. An old Maori man, 
 who used to sell sweet potatoes, and quaint 
 ring shells for napkin rings to the I'akeha lady 
 in Tauranga Bay. floats before her inward 
 vision as tangible as if he were next her. And 
 a soldier servant; she can hear his voice; he 
 used to sing as he pipe-clayed
 
 1 70 KEYNOTES 
 
 Why did the stupid chorus come back to her 
 now, what chink of brain did it lie in all these 
 years ? Oh what a brute she is and how callous ! 
 She ought to read prayers, or say things ; in a 
 few hours it will be too late to ever say a word 
 more. She finds herself beating time with her 
 foot to a jig tune, a bizarre accompaniment 
 to the words ' too late.' She would give all she 
 possesses to cry, yet she cannot ; and so the 
 day wears on. 
 
 Later on she bends her head to him and 
 asks : 
 
 ' Are you dozing or arc you thinking? What 
 are you thinking of? ' 
 
 He smiles. ' Of zoo, dearums, of zoo ! ' 
 
 ' Have you said your prayers ; shall I read 
 you any ? ' 
 
 ' Finished them long ago ! I am just waiting, 
 lying thinking of you, dearie, thinking of you. 
 Happier than ever I was since I left off " taw 
 in the lay" and pegging tops.' 
 
 Her question was a concession to a past 
 religious conscience ; she feels as she puts it 
 that as for herself if she should die as she sits 
 there, she would not trouble to pray it would 
 be well to drift out. There is another weary
 
 AN EBB TIDE 171 
 
 hour's silence, then he looks up at her and 
 shivers slightly, and tightens his clasp of her 
 hand. 
 
 ' Kiss me, duckums, kiss me! Now lay your 
 little old phi/, on the pillow close to mine, you 
 clearest and best in the world ! Close, close to 
 mine.' 
 
 The wind is changing, and the sun hides his 
 face decently behind a great white cloud ; there 
 is a hoarse rattle in his throat, and his breath- 
 ing is difficult. The doctor comes and stands 
 quietly behind her ; the crowd at the gate above 
 gets denser; the servants huddle together in the 
 dining-room and cry. The Swedish gardener 
 pats them all in turn, but most gently the fat 
 housemaid. A sudden blast of wind blows a 
 strand of her hair loose and it touches his lips, 
 and he mutters, ' My little one !' She lifts her 
 face and looks at him, a strange purple colour 
 vibration is waving over his face, and she calls 
 affrightcdly 
 
 ' Dear, oh dear man, look at me! ("an you 
 sec me, dn you know me?' 
 
 lie litts his heavy lids and look's at her 
 steadily with half-dead eyes, and says with stiff, 
 bare!\- articulate speech
 
 172 KEYNOTES 
 
 ' Of course I do, my dearie, I 'm all rig . . . ! ' 
 She feels his fingers close more tightly over 
 hers once twice, then relax. His chin falls, 
 and the doctor passes his hand over his eyelids 
 and puts a handkerchief to his lips. The cow- 
 girl drops with a cry to the ground and throws 
 her apron over her head. At the gate above a 
 child calls ' mammy ' in frightened tones. The 
 lad who has been sitting up on the slope at 
 the foot of the flag-staff, slides the Union Jack 
 half-mast, and the big white house is without a 
 
 master. 
 
 ****** 
 
 She is sitting in an old garden, a retired place 
 in the village, right on the fjord. They have 
 driven her down there away from the house 
 that seems haunted by his spirit ; infected with 
 the loathsome odour of rapid dissolution that 
 nothing can overcome, that seems to ooze out 
 and taint the very flowers. And then the 
 myriad flics that crawl and creep, as if sick or 
 drunk, over everything ; and make one loathe 
 and turn from the very sight of food and drink, 
 for dread of where they have been ; make one 
 long to scream hysterically to drown their hate- 
 ful buzzing ; and rush away and plunge into the
 
 A N E B B T I D E 173 
 
 sea were it not that it too seems to whisper 
 in undertones of dead men and lost sweethearts, 
 drowned mariners with swollen grey-green faces 
 and tangled locks floating like sea sedge behind 
 them, as they toss on the swift undercurrents 
 beneath its treacherous smiling surface. 
 
 It is with her, sitting there, as it is with 
 most of us when numbed in mind and heart by 
 some great trouble ; her senses are more alive 
 to outward sounds and scenes. It is as if when 
 one's inner self is working with some emotion, 
 wrestling with some potential moral enemy, 
 crying out under the crucifixion of some soul- 
 passion eyes and cars and above all sense of 
 smell are busy receiving impressions, and stor- 
 ing them up as a phonograph records a sound, 
 to reproduce them with absolute fidelity if any 
 of the senses be touched in the same way by 
 the subtle connection between perfume and 
 memory. She will, in all time to come, never 
 forget that old garden. She is rocking uncon- 
 sciously to and fro. Her thoughts, and the 
 emotions belonging to them, cross one another 
 rapid!}-; flash past as the landscape seen from 
 a mail train, so that she cannot fasten any of 
 them. The weary vigils of many months, the
 
 174 KEYNOTES 
 
 details of days and hours arc ticked off as the 
 events on a tape. The look in his eyes, press 
 of his fingers, the quiet face with the awful look 
 of peace the rapid changes to a thing to be 
 hidden away as swiftly as hands can coffin it ; 
 the clasped fingers never to be lifted in tender 
 caress or angry gesture ; the future to face 
 without even the rough protection of his 
 passionate wayward affection all these con- 
 flicting images and reasonings dash through 
 her brain and yet not a detail of her surround- 
 ings escapes her. The strips of blue fjord with 
 the pilot boats with their numbered sails in the 
 immediate foreground ; and the prams, turned 
 bottom up on the miniature wharf for a fresh 
 coat of paint. The dip of the white sail of a 
 pleasure-boat in the distance, and the gleam of 
 the scarlet cap of a girl steering. Bright flecks 
 on the black-green shadows of the trees in the 
 near background, that stand out distinctly from 
 the misty blue of the distant mountains ; misty 
 with the purple light that only clothes the 
 northern heights. Xot a detail of the quaint 
 garden escapes her. It is a garden of surprises. 
 Fruit-trees from strange lands, dwarf shrubs of 
 foreign birth, curious shells gathered on the
 
 A N E B B T I D E 175 
 
 beach of far-away islands flourish promiscuously 
 with indigenous plants. A painted lady (the 
 figure-head of some effete sailing craft), who has 
 cloven the storms through many seas with her 
 might}" breasts, and commanded the rising 
 waves with her upraised hand, and faced the 
 storm with a smile ghastly in its wooden fixity, 
 has come here to rest. She leans next to an 
 old sun-dial in the shade of an ancient lilac 
 bush. The sense of beauty, and the bump of 
 utility of successive owners is manifested at 
 ever}- turn. The even drills of potatoes are 
 disturbed by the tombstone of a favourite dog. 
 A plaster Mercury, and a shrub, cut in the form 
 of a bulgy tea-pot, spoil the symmetry of a bed 
 of carrots. Strawberries carrying their ripe red 
 fruit right bravely fill the background of one 
 bed. A tangled profusion of pinks, pansies, 
 and gillyflowers, forget-me-nots, and fragrant 
 lavender spikes have a long straight line of 
 leeks running amidst their sweet irregularity as 
 a pungent line in a dainty sheaf of verse. She 
 is conscious ot a vague pleasure as she notes 
 these things, and a sort of wondering pity at 
 the pathos of her own quiet figure. She fingers 
 her black cashmere c/own and the heavv silk
 
 1 76 KEYNOTES 
 
 fringe of her shawl. She never wore a shawl 
 before, but they had nothing else black. Her 
 mother used to wear a shawl, a white Indian 
 silk with raised flowers. Her shoulders sloped 
 too, like Eugenie's. Funny to wear a shawl like 
 an old lady ! She has a bag with money, papers, 
 certificate of death for the customs. What a 
 nuisance all these formalities are ! Lum turn, te 
 turn, te turn . . . ! The dead march in Saul ! No, 
 she mustn't hum that. She remembers once in 
 the long ago, before the flood, her flood, she had 
 a sweetheart, a boy officer. She wonders did he 
 get fat ; they always chaffed and said he would. 
 Once she was humming it and he stopped 
 her, saying : ' Oh don't ! when any one hums 
 that, a poor soldier dies somewhere.' Supersti- 
 tion of course, but she won't hum it all the 
 same, just for the old sake's sake. Why should 
 she kill a soldier? She used to like all soldiers, 
 turn turn ! ... Is she going mad ? How does 
 one go mad ? . . . She turns her head in relief 
 at an approaching step. The little doctor stands 
 bowing, hat in hand. She notices that he is 
 wearing his dress suit, and adds mentally, 'they 
 wear dress clothes on solemn occasions ; chris- 
 tenings, weddings, funerals.' Why, of course
 
 AN EBB TIDE 177 
 
 it's the funeral! She even smiles at the con- 
 junction of a swallow-tail with elastic side 
 leather boots with high heels. His trousers 
 too must have been made before he grew stout ; 
 they ruck up at the knees, and show the end line 
 of his under-drawers quite plainly. She feels 
 inclined to laugh. She hasn't really laughed 
 for a long time ; well, why shouldn't she laugh? 
 ' Will Frucn come now ? ' he queries. There 
 is a subtle blending of the soothing professional 
 tone he uses to lady patients, and the gravity 
 befitting a solemn occasion. She takes up her 
 bag, gathers her shawl mechanically into grace- 
 ful folds over her arms and follows him. They 
 go up through the wood past the poorhousc to 
 a side entrance. She notices as she looks down 
 over the town that the flags are all half-way 
 down the staffs, and that the village is crowded 
 with folk ; and that outside the house there are 
 groups of black-coated men ; like ants crawling 
 about a white stone, she thinks. The little 
 housekeeper meets her at the door ; the other 
 girls are crying : she bows to people without 
 recognising them. Then there is a tramping 
 of feet, and some one leads her out ; the bell is 
 tolling up from the church, and she sees tha 
 M
 
 i;8 KEYNOTES 
 
 they have covered the grey cobs with black 
 palls, and attached a black canopy to the cart, 
 and outlined the spokes of the wheels with fir 
 needles, and smothered the rest of it with 
 branches and flowers, wreaths and crosses, and 
 harps and lyres ; he hated music too. The 
 coffin what an ugly black thing, with an ex- 
 aggerated stomach and garish silver ornaments! 
 is resting upon the Union Jack. A crowd of 
 faces that she does not know meets her. She 
 places herself behind the cart, and the maids 
 follow her, and all the dogs gather round her 
 but never growl once as they move on, and the 
 crowd follows. She can see the green road ; 
 they have covered it according to custom with 
 branches of fir and pine, a green river, a grass- 
 green river winding to the left. And the sea, 
 the sea he loved ! it seems to her that there is a 
 cadence of pity in the eternal note of its quiet 
 sadness. How tired her feet are ; it 's quite half 
 a mile yet ; she has no ankles ; how funny ! 
 Just stilts made of her will. She trips. The cow- 
 girl pushes past the housekeeper, and watches 
 her steps. ' Lord God, how stony- faced she is!' 
 whispers the doctor's wife, ' and she never cried 
 once/ It is a long way, she keeps thinking.
 
 AN EBB TIDE 179 
 
 Where arc they going anyway ? Oh yes, to the 
 tug, the tug that is to bear them away on a 
 glorious lonely death-ride, out of the sunny 
 fjord to the glistening sea, away to where the 
 rainbow ends. At the end of the rainbow 
 you '11 find a pot of gold. But first they must 
 pass through the wide wooden gate ; it is open. 
 What is that they say about a wide wooden 
 gate ? No, it 's about a road, it 's the wide road 
 that leads to destruction. They have decked 
 the gate with green too. The gate through 
 which the children used to peer with inquisitive 
 frightened child-eyes, up to the house where 
 the wicked man dwelt. How they used to 
 scamper away with half-real, half-acted terror 
 at a cry of, ' the man is coming ! ' the man 
 who was a bogie-man to them, a name with 
 which to threaten them when naughty ; about 
 whom their elders told dreadful talcs in sub- 
 dued voices. She remembers this, and smiles 
 half sadly to see as they reach the narrow street 
 how the children swarm to meet his coming. 
 There is no school to-day, and they get under 
 the horses' hoofs, anil crowd round the car, and 
 point with dirt}' chubby fore-fingers, and clasp 
 hands and cluster together in groups of twos
 
 i8o KEYNOTES 
 
 and threes, and gaze with awe-struck eyes, and 
 whisper, and follow. And one whispers to his 
 comrades how he once got a drive and a silver 
 piece from ' the man,' and another how he gave 
 little Tulla a piece of cake. And she thinks of 
 the train that danced in the wake of the pied 
 piper, and of his own little ones who know him 
 not. Perhaps they are dancing and laughing to- 
 day. To-day, when the father who gave them no 
 name is being borne along to the tuneful patter 
 of little feet that are not of his kith nor his kin. 
 She seems to feel that that thing in the coffin 
 is not he. He is walking next her, laughing 
 with the rare humour of his best moments ; 
 chuckling at the grand funeral they are giving 
 him ; him the bad man, of whom they had naught 
 but evil to say. How hard it is to go down 
 hill slowly ! She tells herself that later on in 
 the ages to come, when the little ones here have 
 gone to their last homes as withered elders, 
 the tales of the bogie-man of their child days 
 may have grown into a saga of a wild Angle- 
 man with great wealth, who landed and made 
 himself a home on their coast, and drank and 
 caroused and bought the strangest things ; who 
 took mad sails in a boat riirht into the teeth of
 
 AN EBB T I D E 181 
 
 coming gales that the pilots feared to brave, 
 when the \vhitc-crcstcd horses leaped high over 
 the rocks, and the sea dragons roared below, 
 and the grey mews shrieked shrill warnings to 
 the fishers to hasten them home. Who turned 
 the night into day and took wild hag-rides with 
 his baying and galloping horses at midnight, 
 and how he used to crack his whip and urge 
 them on with exultant oaths ; and never let his 
 little wife out of his sight, but called for her if he 
 missed her till the woods rang with her name. 
 
 They reach the wharf, the tug Bully-boy^ with 
 black funnel and hissing steam is lying taut to 
 
 o / o 
 
 the pier. Her head is really spinning. How 
 stupid those eight men are ! they haven't 
 backed the horses enough. Mats off! They 
 lay him on the deck, they have put the old flag 
 under him and piled the posies on top. She 
 pats the dogs and bids them stay, and lets the 
 women kiss her, and walks up the plank ; one 
 plank, surely there should be four 
 
 Th.U tl 
 
 May uvcr re 
 Henceforward
 
 182 KEYNOTES 
 
 No, that 's not the verse, she can't get it. 
 ' I heard four planks fall down with a sad- 
 dening echo ? . . . with a hollow echo ? ' She 
 stands by the side of the coffin and gazes 
 quietly at the crowd. Looks at the men with 
 their uplifted hats, at the black-draped horses 
 Puck is biting Olla in the neck at the children, 
 and the group of dogs. And all the staring 
 eyes seem to melt into one monster multi- 
 coloured eye, that pierces her through and 
 through; can't they see she is hollow ? the fools ! 
 They loosen the hawser and cry all right ; 
 and Bully-boy swings round, and they steam 
 seaward and she sits and dreams ; and the tug 
 dances, and splutters, and fusses through the 
 sunlit sea, past fjord mouths and hamlets, 
 and boats with singing children and yapping 
 dogs, and she never thinks of the future, nor of 
 the steamer she is to meet at the city, nor 
 makes any plan ; simply sits and lets her fancies 
 run riot through her tired brain. Sits under a 
 canopy of clear air and listens to the strange 
 conceits that arise in her thinking self. She is a 
 Viking's bond-maid of olden days ; she hid on 
 his bark whilst they built up his funeral pyre 
 and laid the old warrior down. She watched
 
 AN EBB TIDE 183 
 
 them touch the flaming pine knot to his fiery 
 mausoleum, and set him adrift to the strain of 
 a fierce exultant chant of victory, to sail out on 
 his last voyage for a handigrips with the grim 
 foe Death. Ay, he too was a primitive man, 
 with the primaeval passions of untamed nature, 
 surging up and eating their way to his soul's 
 core, as restless breakers hollow a place on the 
 coast. And now he is going to rest. 
 
 The sun sinks in a superb, audacious blending 
 of hues orange and scarlet, pink and blue, and 
 lemon-yellow streaks, with splotches of intensest 
 purple, are hurled from a palette of fire in a 
 frenzy of colour. The fishers pause and look 
 curiously at the silent little figure keeping vigil 
 next the flower-decked coffin as she passes them 
 in the pearl-mists of the summer night. Pearl- 
 mists that wrap her in a chilly shroud ; and she 
 fancies that spirit hands spread the canopy of 
 starred blue over them as they glide on ; and 
 the moon peers down and nods to her ; and 
 another moon runs seawards on a shining silver 
 river. And the foam in their wake ripples 
 together like frothing diamond chisps, and the 
 dew falls on the withering flowers, and bathes 
 her pale face, and moistens her dry lips. And the
 
 1 84 KEYNOTES 
 
 night breeze sings sadly to the thrumming of un- 
 seen harps, and soothes her troubled spirit with 
 tender whisperings that only the stricken in soul 
 can catch in snatches from the spirit of nature. 
 The boy takes the wheel, and the captain 
 brews her some coffee. They have forgotten 
 at the house, in their care for the funeral, to 
 provide her with food or rugs. She is too 
 deliciously weary (there is no new effort either 
 to make unless she chooses) to care. When he 
 brings it to her she swallows it gratefully, and 
 follows him to the stuffy little cabin, and lies 
 down as he suggests, with her head on a pilot 
 coat, and he covers her tenderly with another ; 
 she is so small and frail it takes but little. 
 Somehow, it smells ' homey ' with its mingled 
 odour of tobacco, and brine, and man, and 
 touches her chilled lone soul like the honest 
 clasp of a warm human hand with a promise of 
 rest and shelter to come ; and under its homely 
 spell she falls asleep. And so these two poor 
 human souls, tossed together for good or ill for 
 a brief space, sleep their last together through 
 the summer night. He, to no mortal awaken- 
 ing ; she, perchance to a brighter dawn.
 
 List of Books 
 
 in 
 
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 Stations in, \ 
 
 PMsrtXKtfc 
 
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 ' A WORD must be said for the manner in which the publishers 
 tx. have produced the volume (i.e. "The Earth Fiend"), a 
 sumptuous folio, printed by CONSTABLE, the etchings on Japanese 
 paper by MR. GouLDiNG. The volume should add not only to 
 MR. STRANG'S fame but to that of MESSRS. ELKIN MATHEWS AND 
 JOHN LANE, who are rapidly gaining distinction for their beautiful 
 editions of belles-lettres.' Dally Chronicle, Sept. 24, 1892. 
 
 Referring to MR. LE GALLIENNE'S 'English Poems' and 
 ' Silhouettes ' by MR. ARTHUR SYMONS : ' We only refer to them 
 now to note a fact which they illustrate, and which we have been 
 observing of late, namely, the recovery to a certain extent of good 
 taste in the matter of printing and binding books. These two 
 books, which are turned out by MESSRS. ELKIN MATHEWS AND 
 JOHN LANE, are models of artistic publishing, and yet they are 
 simplicity itself. The books with their excellent printing and their 
 very simplicity make a harmony which is satisfying to the artistic 
 sense.' Sunday Sun, Oct. 2, 1892. 
 
 ' MR. LE GALLIENNE is a fortunate young gentleman. I don't 
 know by what legerdemain he and his publishers work, but here, 
 in an age as stony to poetry as the ages of ChaUerton and Richard 
 Savage, we find the full edition of nis book sold before publication. 
 How is it done, MESSRS. ELKIN MATHEWS AND JOHN LANE? 
 for, without depreciating MR. LE GALLIKNNE'S sweetness and 
 charm, I doubt that the marvel would have been wrought under 
 another publisher. These publishers, indeed, produce books so de- 
 lightfully that it must give an added pleasure to the hoarding of first 
 editions.' KATHARINE TYNAN in The Irish Daily Independent. 
 
 'To MESSRS. ELKIN MATHEWS AND JOHN LANE almost more 
 than to any other, we take it, are the thanks of the grateful singer 
 especially due ; for it is they who have managed, by means of 
 limited editions and charming workmanship, to impress book- 
 Imyers with the belief that a volume may have an aesthetic and 
 commercial value. They have made it possible to speculate in the 
 latest discoveied poet, as in a new company with the difference 
 that an operation in the former can be done with three half-crowns.' 
 
 Si James's ('.azetle.
 
 September 1893. 
 
 List of Books 
 
 IN 
 
 BELLES LETT RES 
 
 {Including some Transfers} 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 Elkin Mathews and John Lane 
 
 VIGO STREET, LONDON, W. 
 
 A 71 . /?. The A utfiors and Publishers reserve I lie right of reprinting 
 iiny *<,v/t /// this list if a second edition is called for, except in cases 
 "c/ii'i'f a stipulation h is been made to the contrary, and of printing 
 a separate edition of any of t lie books for America irrespective of the 
 numbers to n'fiic/t the I-'.ii^Ush editions are limited. The numbers 
 men!' -i:cd do not include the copies sent for review or to the public 
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 TOMSON (GRAHAM R.). 
 
 AFTER SUNSET. A Volume of Poems. With Title-page and 
 
 Cover Design by R. ANNING BELL. I2mo. 55. net. 
 
 Also a limited large paper edition. 125. 6d. net. [In preparation. 
 
 TREE (H. BEERBOIIM). 
 
 THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY : A Lecture delivered at the 
 Royal Institution. With portrait of Mr. TREE from 
 an unpublished drawing by the Marchioness of Granby. 
 Fcap. Svo, boards. 2s. 6d. net. 
 
 TYNAN HINKSON (KATHARINE). 
 
 CUCKOO SONGS. With Title-page and Cover Design by 
 LAURENCE HOUSMAN. 500 copies. 53. net. 
 
 [In preparation. 
 
 VAN DYKE (HENRY). 
 
 THE POETRY OF TENNYSON. Third Edition, enlarged. 
 
 Crown Svo. 55. 6d. net. 
 
 The late Laureate himself gave valuable aid in correcting 
 -carious details. 
 
 WATSON (WILLIAM). 
 
 THE ELOPING ANGELS : A Caprice. Second Edition. 
 Square l6mo, buckram. 33. 6d. net. 
 
 WATSON (WILLIAM). 
 
 EXCURSIONS IN CRITICISM : being some Prose Recrea- 
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 WATSON (WILLIAM). 
 
 THE PRINCE'S QUEST, AND OTHER POEMS. With a 
 Bibliographical Note added. Second Edition. I2mo. 
 43. 6d. net. 
 
 WEDMORE (FREDERICK). 
 
 PASTORALS OF FRANCE RENUNCIATIONS. A volume of 
 Stories. Title-page by JOHN FULLF.YLOVE, R.I. 
 Crown Svo. 53. net. 
 Af^-j.' of the large paper copies of Renunciations (First Edition)
 
 F.I. KIN MATHEWS &> JOHN LAM. 13 
 
 WICKSTEED (P. II.). 
 
 DANTK. Six Sermons. Third Edition. Crown Svo. 
 2s. net. 
 
 WILDE (OSCAR). 
 
 THE SPHINX. A poem decorated throughout in line and 
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 WILDE (OSCAR). 
 
 The incomparable and ingenious history of Mr. W. II., 
 being the true secret of Shakespear's sonnets now for 
 the first time here fully set forth, with initial letters 
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 DRAMATIC WORKS, now printed for the first time with a 
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 net per vol. 
 
 Al^o 50 copies kirje [ aper. 155. net pur vol. 
 
 Vol. I. LADY WINDKRMEKE'S FAN : A Comedy in 
 
 Four Acts. 
 Vol. ir. A WOMAN OF No IMPORTANCE: A Comedy 
 
 in Four Acts. 
 
 Vol. in. THK DUCHESS OF PADUA : A Blank Verse 
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 SALOME : A Tragedy in one Act, done into English. 
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 WHISPER. A Volume of Verse. With a Memoir by 
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 i 4 PUBLICATIONS OF ELKIN MATHEWS <V JOHN LANE 
 
 The Hobby Horse 
 
 A new series of this illustrated magazine will be published 
 quarterly by subscription, under the Editorship of Herbert 
 P. Home. Subscription i per annum, pest free, for the 
 four numbers. Quarto, printed on hand-made paper, and 
 issued in a limited edition to subscribers only. The 
 Magazine will contain articles upon Literature, Music, 
 Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, and the Decorative Arts ; 
 Poems ; Essays ; Fiction; original Designs; with reproduc- 
 tions of pictures and drawings by the old masters and 
 contemporary artists. There will be a new title- 
 page and ornaments designed by the Editor. 
 Among the contributors to the 
 Hobby Horse are : 
 
 The late MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 LAWRENCE BINYON. 
 WILFKID BLUNT. 
 FORD MADOX BROWN. 
 The late ARTHUR BURGESS. 
 E. BURNE-JONES, A.R.A. 
 AUSTIN DOHSON. 
 RICHAKD OARNKTT, LL.D. 
 A. J. 1 hi'KiNs, F.S.A. 
 SELWVN IMAGK. 
 LIONEL JOHNSON. 
 RICHARD LE GALLIENNE. 
 SIR F. LEIGHTOX, Bart., P.R.A. 
 
 T. HOPE JMcLACHLAN. 
 
 MAY MORRIS. 
 
 C. HUHEKT H. PARRY, Mus. Doc. 
 
 A. W. POLLARD. 
 
 F. YORK POWELL. 
 CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI. 
 W. M. ROSSETTI. 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, D.C.L., LL.D. 
 FREDERICK SANDYS. 
 The late \V. BELL SCOTT. 
 FREDERICK J. SHIELDS. 
 J. II. SHORTHOUSE. 
 JAMES SMETHAM. 
 SIMEON SOLOMON. 
 A. SOMERVELL. 
 
 The late J. AnDINGTON SVMONDS. 
 
 KATHARINE TYNAN. 
 
 G. F. WATTS, R.A. 
 FREDERICK WEDMORE. 
 OSCAR WILDE. 
 
 ETC. ETC. 
 
 THE BODLEY HEAD, VIGO STREET, LONDON, W.
 
 'Nearly every book pi.; out by Messrs. Elkin Mathews & 
 John Lane, at the Sign of the Boclley Head, is a satisfaction to 
 the special senses of the modern bookman for bindings, shapes, 
 types, and papers. They have surpassed themselves, and 
 registered a real achievement in English bookmaking by the 
 volume of" Poems, Dramatic and Lyrical," of Lord DeTabley. ' 
 
 Newcastle Daily Chronicle. 
 
 ' A ray of hopefulness is stealing again into English poetry 
 after the twilight greys of Clough and Arnold and Tennyson. 
 Even unbelief wears braver colours. Despite the jeremiads, 
 which are the dirges of the elder gods, England is still a nest 
 of singing-birds (tesd; the Catalogue of Elkin Mathews and John 
 Lane}.' Mr. ZANGWII.L in Pal! Mai! Magazine.
 
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