iii 
 
 SiifPf; 
 
STORIES 
 
 FROM 
 
 "BLACK AND WHITE 
 
STORIES 
 
 FROM 
 
 u 
 
 BLACK AND WHITE' 
 
 w. E. NORRIS. 
 
 W. CLARKE RUSSELL. 
 THOMAS HARDY. 
 MRS. E. LYNN LTNTON. 
 JAMES PAYN. 
 J. M. BARRIE. 
 MRS. OLIPBANT. 
 GRANT ALLEN. 
 
 WITH TWENTY-SEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 LONDON : CHAPMAN & HALL, LD. 
 
 1893. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 TF. E. NORR1S 
 
 THE BOMANCE OF MADAME DE CH ANTE LOU P 1 
 
 W. CLARKE RUSSELL 
 
 A MEMORABLE SWIM 50 
 
 \/ THOMAS HARDY 
 
 TO PLEASE HIS WIFE ... ... ... 99 
 
 MRS. E. LYNN LINTON 
 
 THE GHOST OF THE PAST ... 146 
 
 JAMES PAYN 
 
 REBECCA'S REMORSE 193 
 
 y /. M. BARRIE 
 
 IS IT A MAN? 236 
 
 MRS. OLIPHANT 
 
 THE GOLDEN RULE ... ... 273 
 
 GRANT ALLEN 
 
 GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL 313 
 
 M528911 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 W. E. NORMS ... ... ... ... ... ... 1 
 
 " WELL," SAID SHE ; " AND OF COURSE YOU TOLD HIM ALL 
 
 THAT THERE WAS TO BE TOLD" ... ... ... 14 
 
 " I WAS STROLLING DOWN THE CHAMPS ELYSEES ONE AFTERNOON, 
 . . . WHEN A PAIR OF EQUESTRIANS CANTERED PAST ME, 
 IN WHOM I RECOGNIZED THE FAIR COUNTESS AND HER 
 IMPOSSIBLE ADORER"... ... ... ... ... 20 
 
 "ALL THE DOORS WERE OPEN; THE SERVANTS WERE IN HER 
 BEDROOM, SOBBING AND CHATTERING; I THINK THERE WAS 
 A POLICEMAN THERE TOO; I SAW HER LYING ON THE BED, 
 DEAD AND COLD" ... ... ... ... ... 43 
 
 W. CLARKE RUSSELL ... ... ... ... ... 50 
 
 '" I CALLED TO HIM TO STOP ROWING, THAT I MIGHT COME UP 
 TO HIM; BUT HE DID NOT STOP ROWING" ... ... 72 
 
 " AND, PUTTING THE BLADE OF HIS LEFT OAR UPON MY 
 
 BREAST, THRUST WITH IT WITH THE IDEA OF SUBMERGING 
 
 ME" 75 
 
 ' ; !N THAT INSTANT I BOUNDED UPON HIM"... ... ... 88 
 
 "HE LISTENED ATTENTIVELY, OCCASIONALLY GLANCING AT THE 
 CONSTABLE, WHO STOOD BY LISTENING WITH HIS MOUTH 
 SLIGHTLY OPEN" 94 
 
viii LIST OF ILL USTRA TIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THOMAS HARDY ... ... ... ... ... ... 99 
 
 "HE ADVANCED TO THEIR ELBOW, GENIALLY STOLE A GAZE 
 
 AT THEM, AND SAID, 'EMILY, YOU DON'T KNOW ME?'" ... 104: 
 " WHEN ON THE HILL BEHIND THE PORT, WHENCE A VIEW OP 
 THE CHANNEL COULD BE OBTAINED, SHE FELT SURE THAT A 
 LITTLE SPECK ON THE HORIZON WAS THE TRUCK OF THE 
 JOANNA'S MAINMAST" ... ... ... .... 139 
 
 MRS. E. LYNN LINTON ... ... ... ... ... 146 
 
 " AS SHE STOOPED HER HEAD . . . THE SUNLIGHT CAUGHT THE 
 
 FRINGE AT THE BACK OF HER NECK" ... ... ... 151 
 
 "A BOAT DRIFTED NOISELESSLY ROUND THE HEADLAND, AND 
 
 NAOMI AND GEOFFREY SPRANG ON SHORE" ... ... 186 
 
 JAMES PAYN 193 
 
 "WELL, KEBECCA, NOTHING GONE WRONG, I HOPE?" ... 202 
 
 "HAVE YOU NOT ONE WORD, EVEN OF FAREWELL, LUCY ? " ... 222 
 LUCY LESTER'S GRAVE ... ... ... ... ... 234 
 
 J. M. BARRIE 236 
 
 'HE SAT UP EXCITEDLY IN HIS SEAT, RUBBED HIS HANDS NER- 
 VOUSLY ON HIS TROUSERS, AND PEERED, NOT AT THE STAGE, 
 
 BUT AT THE WlNGS"... ... ... ... ... 238 
 
 " I USED TO BE IN THE PROFESSION MYSELF," HE SAID, SIGHING. 
 
 "I AM JOLLY LITTLE JIM!" ... ... ... ... 250 
 
 "On, PAPA! THE MOST WONDERFUL NEWS," EMILY SAID ... 281 
 
 "JACK" ... ... ... ... ... ... 310 
 
 GENERAL PASSAVANT ... ... ... ... ... 314 
 
 " MAUD SEATED HERSELF WITH GREAT DlGNITY IN THE EASY 
 CHAIR, FOLDED HER HANDS IN FRONT OF HER, AND STARED 
 
 AT ME FIXEDLY" ... ... ... ... ... 328 
 
 " 'THESE ARE CLEVER,' I SAID, LOOKING AT HIS SKETCHES" ... 338 
 
THE ROMANCE OF MADAME 
 DE CHANTELOUP. 
 
 BY W. E. NORRIS. 
 
 I. 
 
 WELL, after all, I don't 
 know that there was any- 
 | thing so very romantic 
 I about the poor woman's 
 story ; not much more, at 
 least, than there is in a 
 score of other stories 
 which have come to the 
 knowledge of an old 
 fellow who has lived, and still to some extent 
 lives, in the world, who has kept his eyes and 
 
 B 
 
 W. E. XOBRT8. 
 
THE ROMANCE OF 
 
 ears open, who is a bachelor, and who, for 
 some reason or other, has been honoured by 
 the confidence of numerous fortunate and 
 unfortunate persons. When I come to think 
 of it, I am constrained to admit, somewhat 
 unwillingly, that the ensuing narrative is 
 redeemed from being absolutely commonplace 
 chiefly, if not solely, by the circumstance that 
 Madame de Chanteloup's name so long as it 
 is remembered at all will be remembered in 
 connection with that of a reigning monarch. 
 It was not on that account that I personally 
 felt interested in her. In the course of a 
 wandering existence it has been my lot to 
 be brought into contact with many Royalties, 
 and it is a long time since their presence ceased 
 to inspire me with that thrill of awe and admi- 
 ration which they are able to convey to the 
 great majority of such among their fellow- beings 
 as do not hate them on principle. In the city 
 which for upwards of twenty years has been 
 
MADAME DE CHANTELOUP. 
 
 my home it is customary to affirm that Les rois 
 sen vont. I do not know whether this is true 
 or not ; but if it be the case that the form of 
 government which they represent is in a fair 
 way towards being discarded by civilized nations, 
 I really do believe that they will owe their 
 downfall not so much to any sins of their own, 
 or of those who act under them, as to their 
 striking lack of individuality. 
 
 Now, that is a defect which nobody could 
 think of imputing to Madame de Chanteloup. 
 Other shortcomings were, truly or falsely, laid 
 to her charge ; but after the affair of early 
 youth which brought her into notoriety, and to 
 which I shall have occasion to refer more par- 
 ticularly by-and-by, all who enjoyed the privi- 
 lege of her acquaintance were compelled to 
 admit that she was not la premiere venue. Her 
 hastily-arranged marriage with that broken- 
 down scamp the Comte de Chanteloup did not 
 prove a happy one considering what the cir- 
 
THE ROMANCE OF 
 
 cumstances and what his character and habits 
 were, it could not possibly have turned out other- 
 wise than as it did but she managed to make 
 herself respected, she managed to rise above reach 
 of the faintest breath of scandal (even Chante- 
 loup himself, when in a melting mood after 
 dinner, used to describe her, with tears in his 
 eyes, as an angel in the disguise of a beautiful 
 woman), and she accomplished a still more 
 difficult feat than that, inasmuch as she con- 
 trived to render her modest abode in the Fau- 
 bourg Saint-Germain one of the most exclusive 
 of Parisian houses. When her husband rid 
 society of a singularly useless and disreputable 
 member by breaking his neck over a fence at 
 \ r incennes, she preferred residirg all by herself 
 in the land of her adoption to returning to her 
 friends and relatives in England. Perhaps she 
 had not a large number of friends or relatives 
 left; perhaps, if she had, they did not solicit 
 her company as warmly as they might have 
 
MADAME DE CHANTELOUP. 
 
 done. Upon those points I cannot speak with 
 certainty ; but, having been honoured by ad- 
 mission into the small circle of her Parisian 
 intimates, I can say that we should have been 
 inconsolable had she thought fit to leave us. 
 
 After a decent period of mourning, she began 
 to entertain in a quiet way. Her dinners, 
 though unpretending, were irreproachably 
 served; the guests who gathered round her 
 table were almost always notable from one 
 cause or another, and it was seldom that there 
 was not amongst them at least one who wore 
 a scarlet, a violet, or a black cassock. She was 
 excessively and rigidly pious more so, perhaps, 
 in her actions than in her words ; although it 
 was very well understood that the free style of 
 conversation which has become so fashionable 
 in the last years of this century must not be 
 indulged in under her roof. To tell the truth, 
 I think we were all a little bit afraid of her. It 
 sounds rather absurd, no doubt, for a man of 
 
THE ROMANCE OF 
 
 my years to talk about being afraid of a woman 
 who might very well have been his grand- 
 daughter ; but many people must have good 
 reason to be aware that we do not, as a rule, 
 grow braver as we grow older, and Madame de 
 Chanteloup, with her tall figure, her clearly-cut 
 features, her blue eyes, and a certain air of 
 austerity which she knew very well how to 
 assume, really was not a person with whom it 
 would have been safe to take a liberty of any 
 sort or kind. The mere fact of her youth had 
 nothing to say to the matter. 
 
 Other juveniles, however, are considerably 
 less formidable, and I certainly felt that my 
 grey hairs gave me a right to say anything 
 that I might deem fitting to young Eyre Pome- 
 roy when he looked me up, one morning, at my 
 modest quarters in the Rue Trorichet just as I 
 was finishing my mid-day breakfast. 
 
 " Look here, Mr. Wortley," began this young 
 gentleman, whose well-proportioned frame, 
 
MADAME DE CHANTELOUP. 
 
 closely-cut black hair and grey eyes would have 
 entitled him to be called handsome even if he 
 had not possessed in other respects the tradi- 
 tional beauty of his race, " I want you to tell 
 me something. I want you to tell me what you 
 know of the Comtesse de Chanteloup's history." 
 
 " Oh, is that all?" said I, handing him a 
 cigarette. " Well, I know a good many things 
 about a good many ladies which I don't quite 
 see my way to imparting to an over-grown 
 school-boy like you. Why should I gratify your 
 curiosity with regard to bygone episodes, which 
 Madame de Chanteloup probably would not wish 
 me to allude to, in the presence of those who 
 happen to be ignorant of them ? " 
 
 " Only because I am going to marry her, I 
 hope, and because she referred me to you," 
 answered my young friend composedly. 
 
 "The deuce you are! and the deuce she 
 did ! " I exclaimed ; for I was not a little taken 
 aback by an announcement, which was scarcely 
 
THE ROMANCE OF 
 
 less astonishing to me than it would have been 
 to hear that Mr. Pomeroy was about to espouse 
 the Empress Dowager of China. " Mercy upon 
 us ! What can have persuaded either you or 
 her to behave in such an unnatural way ? I 
 thought you were barely acquainted with her." 
 
 He explained that he was better acquainted 
 with her than I imagined, that he had fallen in 
 love with her at first sight (which, if surprising, 
 was at all events not inconceivable), that he had 
 seen her pretty constantly during the few weeks 
 which he had spent in Paris, that he had ended 
 by making her an offer of his hand and heart, 
 and that she had not refused him. 
 
 " She did," he added, by way of an after- 
 thought, " make it a sine qua non that I should 
 join the Church of Rome feeling so strongly 
 as she does upon those subjects, one can't wonder 
 at her having insisted upon that but I told 
 her I had no objection." 
 
 4 '0h, indeed!" said I. " That, I suppose, 
 
MADAME DE CHANTELOUP. 
 
 was a concession too trifling to be worth dis- 
 puting about. And you live in Donegal, and 
 your father is a prominent Orangeman. After- 
 wards ? " 
 
 " Oh, well, if you come to that," returned 
 Mr. Pomeroy, " we're a branch of the Catholic 
 Church at least, I've always understood that 
 we claimed to be and, as she says, the whole 
 question narrows itself to one of acknowledging 
 the supreme authority of the Pope " 
 
 " Your father," I interrupted, " doubtless 
 joins once a year, with religious fervour, in 
 the Orange battle-cry of ' To Hell with the 
 Pope!"' 
 
 " I don't believe he does anything so dis- 
 graceful and uncharitable ; and I dare say the 
 Pope is all right why shouldn't he be ? Well, 
 then, afterwards ? Afterwards she told me 
 that there were events connected with her past 
 life which might make it impossible for her to 
 marry me, and that I had better go and ask you 
 
10 THE ROMANCE OF 
 
 what they were. She said you were the sort 
 of old chap who knew all about other people's 
 business." 
 
 Of course I was perfectly well aware that 
 Madame de Chanteloup was incapable of having 
 described me in such false and vulgar terms ; 
 still it did seem probable that she had wished 
 to cast upon me a task which she had found too 
 painful to undertake on her own account, and 
 the question was whether I was in any way 
 bound to oblige her. Was I to rake up the 
 cinders of a burnt-out scandal for the benefit 
 of this ridiculous youth, who had brought an 
 introduction to me from his father a few weeks 
 before, and who would most undoubtedly be 
 forbidden by his family to contract any such 
 alliance as that upon which he had set his 
 callow affections ? Was I to relate how in 
 years gone by there had been what shall I 
 call it? a rather pronounced flirtation between 
 Madame de Chanteloup, then a mere slip of 
 
MADAME DE CHANTELOUP. 
 
 a girl, and the heir-apparent to a certain 
 throne ; how there had been a tremendous row 
 about it ; how that unconscionable old mother 
 of hers, Mrs. Wilbraham, had threatened to 
 make revelations which could not possibly be 
 permitted ; and how, finally, the Comte de 
 Chanteloup had been induced to marry her 
 by the payment of his debts and a large sum 
 of ready money ? All things considered, I 
 really did not conceive it to be my duty to 
 do this, and I confined myself to vague refer- 
 ences to current rumours, which my young 
 gentleman indignantly scouted. 
 
 " What vile lies ! " he cried. " I'm glad you 
 don't state them as truths ; but if any man ever 
 dares to say they are true before me well, I'll 
 promise him a bad quarter of an hour. How 
 can she have supposed that I should ever waste 
 a second thought upon the calumnies of reptiles, 
 who most likely have never seen her in their 
 lives ? Why, no man with eyes in his head 
 
12 THE ROMANCE OF 
 
 could look at her and doubt that she was as 
 innocent as an infant." 
 
 I shrugged my shoulders and held my 
 tongue. I am old, and even when I was young 
 T had no taste for unnecessary quarrels. Be- 
 sides, what is the use of arguing with a man 
 who is in love ? It was as certain % as anything 
 could be that Pomeroy's father would never 
 permit him to marry a Papist with a dubious 
 record ; and, that being so, I naturally paid little 
 heed to the rhapsodies with which the boy 
 proceeded to favour me. I had heard that kind 
 of thing so many, many times before ! What 
 was really interesting and inexplicable was 
 Madame de Chanteloup's conduct in the 
 matter, and I will not deny that I went that 
 evening to a party at which I thought it likely 
 that she might be present for the express 
 purpose of observing her and giving her a 
 chance to enlighten me. 
 
 I can't say whether or not she attended that 
 
WELL," SAID SHE; "AND OF COURSE YOU TOLD HIM ALL THAT THERE 
 WAS TO BE TOLL." 
 
MADAME DE CHANTELOUP. 15 
 
 party for the express purpose of meeting the 
 reader's humble servant ; but she behaved very 
 much as though that had been her motive, for 
 no sooner had I shaken hands with my hostess 
 than she sailed straight across the room to- 
 wards me and beckoned me aside, with a certain 
 imperious air which was. habitual to her. She 
 was always pale ; but I fancied that she looked 
 rather whiter than usual that evening ; so I 
 opened the conversation by saying : " I am 
 afraid you have one of your neuralgic head- 
 aches." 
 
 " Yes," she answered ; " I am in great pain, 
 and I have been in great pain all day. That 
 is one reason why I could not see your friend 
 Mr. Pomeroy when he called. He was with 
 you this morning, I presume ? " 
 
 I answered that he had been with me, and 
 looked politely interrogative. 
 
 " Well," said she ; " and of course you told 
 him all that there was to Le told." 
 
1 6 THE ROMANCE OF 
 
 " I am not sure that it was in my power to 
 do that," replied I. " I told him of certain 
 rumours which, as you are aware, are le secret 
 de Polichinelle, and I should not have informed 
 him of them if I had not gathered that you 
 wished me to do so." 
 
 " Of course I wished you to do so. And 
 what did he say ? " 
 
 " Oh, he simply snapped his fingers at them. 
 He attached no more importance to calumny 
 than he did to such a trifle as changing his 
 religion at your behest." 
 
 A faint tinge of colour came into her cheeks 
 and the slightly severe expression of her face 
 relaxed for a moment. She resumed it, how- 
 ever, in order to remark : 
 
 " You are a sceptic " (this was quite untrue, 
 but no matter) ; " you believe a great deal 
 more in politics than you do in religion, and 
 I should never be able to persuade you that a 
 man who adopts the only true faith is not what 
 
MADAME DE CHANTELOUP. 17 
 
 you would call a turncoat. Perhaps it may 
 have been my good fortune to do Mr. Pomeroy 
 one very real service, although it may be im- 
 possible forme to grant him all he asks me for." 
 
 "Can you really be contemplating such an 
 unscrupulous trick as that ? " I exclaimed ; " and 
 can you imagine that it has the remotest chance 
 of success ? " 
 
 She did not deign to answer ; but indeed I 
 required no answer. Her face told me plainly 
 enough that she was actually in love with that 
 impetuous youth, and that she wished, if she 
 could, to accept him. I fancied also that she 
 was not less grateful to me than he had been 
 for merely mentioning as reports what I might 
 almost have ventured, but for my cautious dis- 
 position, to affirm as ascertained facts. She 
 dismissed me presently with a friendly little 
 motion of her head, and turned to speak to 
 one of the men who had been hovering near 
 her during our short colloquy. I don't mind 
 
 c 
 
i8 THE ROMANCE OF 
 
 acknowledging that I should have been glad 
 if she had been a little more communicative ; 
 still I was not altogether sorry that she had 
 refrained from honouring me by asking my 
 advice ; for, had she seen fit to do so, I 
 could not, in common honesty and charity, 
 have counselled her to do otherwise than 
 refuse a suitor whom it would have been wiser 
 to refuse in the first instance. She was one of 
 the best and one of the most charming women 
 in the world ; but well, the " buts " appeared 
 to me to be of overwhelming cogency. 
 
 Why had she not adopted that easy and 
 obvious plan? Nobody possessing the most 
 elementary acquaintance with her sex would 
 attempt to answer such a question ; but, as 
 regards this particular case, I have a theory, 
 which may or may not be correct. I think 
 Madame de Chanteloup was a curiously con- 
 scientious woman ; I think she would not, 
 under any circumstances, have consented to tell 
 

 ; I WAS STROLLING DOWN THE CHAMPS ELYSEES ONE AFTERNOON, . . . WHEN 
 A PAIR OF EQUESTRIANS CANTERED PAST ME, IN WHOM I RECOGNIZED THE 
 FAIR COUNTESS AND HER IMPOSSIBLE ADORER." 
 
MADAME DE CHANTELOUP. 21 
 
 a lie ; and I suspect that when young Pomeroy 
 asked her point-blank whether she loved him 
 or not, she felt unable to reply in the negative. 
 Being thus situated, she had (or, at least, so I 
 imagined) imposed a couple of trying tests 
 upon him, half hoping, half fearing that they 
 would prove a little too severe for him to face. 
 
 Be that as it may, I neither saw nor heard 
 any more of her or of him for a full week. At 
 the expiration of that time I was strolling 
 down the Champs Elysees one afternoon, on 
 my way back from the Bois de Boulogne, 
 where I had been breakfasting with a few 
 friends, when a pair of equestrians cantered 
 past me, in whom I recognized the fair 
 Countess and her impossible adorer. I was 
 sorry to see them together ; for, although I 
 knew that Madame de Chanteloup was in the 
 habit of riding every day, and that their meet- 
 ing might have been purely accidental, I could 
 not but be aware that she would never have 
 
22 THE ROMANCE OF 
 
 allowed tlie young fellow to join her if she 
 had not contemplated granting him greater 
 privileges than that; and really, for her own 
 sake, it would have been so very much better 
 to grant him no privileges at all. 
 
 That my forebodings were only too well 
 founded was proved to me long ere I reached 
 the Place de la Concorde. Young Pomeroy 
 came galloping back, jumped off his horse, and, 
 gripping me by the arm, said 
 
 " Congratulate me, Mr. Wortley ! I know 
 you're a true friend of hers, as well as of mine, 
 and I'm sure you'll be glad to hear that it's all 
 right." 
 
 " Do you mean/' I inquired, " that you 
 have obtained your father's consent to your 
 marriage ? " 
 
 " My father's consent ? good gracious me, 
 no ! As if I had had any excuse to ask him 
 for it ! But I have obtained hers, which is a 
 good deal more to the purpose. She says she's 
 
MADAME DE CHANTELOUP. 23 
 
 willing to trust me if I am willing to trust 
 her ; she says that if I will consent to be 
 received into her Church, and if I will never 
 allude again to that that infernal blasphemy 
 (for I really can't call it by any other name) 
 which you mentioned to me the other 
 day " 
 
 " And which, of course, you are prepared to 
 treat with the contempt that it deserves," I 
 interjected. 
 
 " My dear sir, am I a born fool ? " 
 
 I thought it extremely probable that he was ; 
 but I was too polite to say so, and he went on 
 
 " Is it likely that, knowing her as I do, I 
 should believe there was even the remotest 
 possibility of her ever having done anything of 
 which she ought to be ashamed ? Is it likely 
 that I should wish to insult her by prying into 
 bygones which she would rather not talk 
 about ? Do you suppose I should enjoy re- 
 lating to her the whole history of my own past 
 
24 THE ROMANCE OF 
 
 life ? And what business have I to refuse her 
 an indulgence which I claim for myself ? " 
 
 He proceeded to point out, at great length, 
 and in glowing language, how infinitely higher, 
 nobler, and purer Madame de Chanteloup must 
 needs be than himself. I was not concerned to 
 contradict him ; I do not assert, and never 
 have asserted, that the world's estimate of what 
 is pardonable in a man arid unpardonable in a 
 woman is intrinsically just ; only, as we live in 
 the world, we must take it as we find it ; and 
 I confess that I was a little disappointed in 
 Madame de Chanteloup, who, I thought, might 
 have spared this youthful enthusiast the in- 
 evitable shock which awaited him. 
 
 However, as I said before, nobody who 
 understands women, however imperfectly, at- 
 tempts to account for their conduct, and I own 
 that my heart became softened towards the 
 woman who is the subject of this sketch when 
 I met her, the next day, at the entrance of the 
 
MADAME DE CHANTELOUP. 
 
 church of St. Germain 1'Auxerrois, where, I 
 suppose, she had been saying her prayers. I 
 was tolerably well acquainted with her features, 
 for which, indeed, I had always had a very 
 sincere and profound admiration ; but at that 
 moment they wore an expression which was 
 wholly unfamiliar to me, and which somehow 
 made her look like what I imagined she must 
 have looked like as a child. The poor woman 
 was happy, in fact; Heaven knows that her 
 life had not hitherto been favoured with any 
 too large a share of happiness ! 
 
 I don't remember what I said to her some- 
 thing congratulatory and commonplace, no 
 doubt but it did not matter what I said, for 
 she evidently was not listening to me. Only, 
 as I was helping her into her brougham, she 
 grasped my hand with unusual warmth, and 
 exclaimed, " Ah, Mr. Wortley, the world is not 
 so bad as we try to make it out. There are 
 noble and generous hearts even among men." 
 
26 THE ROMANCE OF 
 
 I was not aware of having ever maintained 
 the contrary ; but I was sorely afraid that she 
 would be driven into doing so before long ; for 
 Eyre Pomeroy, however noble and generous he 
 might be, was dependent upon his father, and 
 it was hardly in the nature of things that his 
 father's nobility and generosity should display 
 themselves in the especial form of which she 
 appeared to be thinking. Still, if my fullest 
 sympathy and my best wishes could have done 
 her any good, they would have been as much 
 at her service as I myself was. Unhappily, 
 neither I nor my sympathy could obliterate an 
 episode of which every proof and detail was 
 easily procurable. 
 
 II. 
 
 I NEED scarcely say that the news of the 
 Comtesse de Chanteloup's betrothal to her 
 young compatriot, and of the latter's impend- 
 
MADAME DE CHANTELOUP. 27 
 
 ing admission into the bosom of the Holy 
 Eoman Church, was very soon bruited abroad ; 
 nor is it necessary for me to add that this 
 unexpected piece of intelligence set many 
 tongues in motion. I suppose Pomeroy told 
 everybody ; probably the Countess herself was 
 too proud to keep silence ; anyhow, all Paris 
 was placed in possession of the fact, and very 
 sorry I was that all Paris should thus be 
 entitled to make observations which, had they 
 been reported to the persons chiefly concerned, 
 could hardly have failed to cause them pain. 
 For my own part, I am not ashamed to ac- 
 knowledge that I hoped the boy would stand to 
 his guns, seeing that, if the worst came to the 
 worst, and his family cast him adrift, his wife's 
 fortune would suffice to keep him and her out 
 of want. He was only a boy, after all, and no 
 doubt, if I had been his father, I should have 
 done my utmost to restrain him from rashly 
 compromising his whole future career ; but I 
 
28 THE ROMANCE OF 
 
 was not his father ; I was both powerless and 
 irresponsible, and I could not for the life of me 
 help inwardly espousing the cause of poor 
 Madame de Chanteloup. 
 
 One afternoon an event for which I had 
 been fully prepared took place. My servant 
 brought me a card, which bore the name of Sir 
 Francis Pomeroy, and announced that the 
 gentleman was waiting to hear whether I 
 would receive him. Of course I had to send 
 out a request that he would do me the honour 
 to come in. I did not know much about him ; 
 I had met him perhaps half a dozen times in 
 years gone by. I was intimate with some of 
 his relations, and I had written a polite reply 
 to the letter of introduction which had been 
 delivered to me by his son. It seemed probable 
 that he had now come to upbraid me for having 
 led his son into a guet-apens. However, the 
 tall, spare, grey-headed gentleman who was 
 presently ushered into my presence proved as 
 
MADAME DE CHANTELOUP. 29 
 
 reasonable in behaviour as he was courteous in 
 manner. 
 
 "' I have taken the liberty of calling upon 
 you before letting Eyre know of my arrival, 
 Mr. Wortley," he began, " because it will make 
 an unpleasant task somewhat easier for me if I 
 can obtain beforehand from a disinterested 
 source some account of this unfortunate 
 entanglement of his. You will allow that it 
 is an unfortunate entanglement?" 
 
 " I don't know that I should describe it as an 
 entanglement," I replied. " I suppose I must 
 call it unfortunate by reason of certain rumours 
 which are tolerably notorious, and which may 
 even have reached your ears." 
 
 " They have not only reached my ears," said 
 Sir Francis, composedly, " but I have taken 
 pains to verify them. I have been at our 
 Embassy to-day, and also at the Lega- 
 tion " (for obvious reasons I suppress the 
 nationality of the Legation that he mentioned), 
 
30 THE ROMANCE OF 
 
 " and the result is that I have been allowed to 
 see documents which place the affair altogether 
 out of the category of rumours. There it all 
 is in black and white the private or semi- 
 private instructions of the Prince's Govern- 
 ment, the pressure brought to bear by our own 
 people, the Comte de Chanteloup's demands, 
 and his formal acknowledgment of the receipt 
 of a sum of money for a specific purpose. I 
 was not, it is true, allowed to take copies of 
 these papers, and I was warned that they 
 could never be made public ; but, of course, no- 
 thing of that kind is necessary for my purpose. 
 What I have seen amply justifies me in saying 
 that I cannot permit my son to marry a woman 
 with such a record as Madame de Chanteloup's. 
 I won't speak of his proposed change of religion. 
 It is a subject upon which I feel strongly ; but 
 the point really doesn't arise, and need not 
 be alluded to. My only wish is not to make 
 myself more disagreeable to Eyre than I can 
 
MADAME DE CHANTELOUP. 31 
 
 help ; so I should be glad if you wouldn't mind 
 telling me whether he is ignorant of the cir- 
 cumstances, and whether, in that event, you 
 had any good reason for keeping him in ignor- 
 ance of them." 
 
 This was a little awkward, but I made out as 
 good a case as I could for myself, and I tried 
 also though I knew it would be useless to 
 make out as good a case as I could for Madame 
 de Chanteloup. Sir Francis listened to me 
 with perfect politeness and good temper ; he 
 even expressed sympathy with the unfortunate 
 lady, who, he said, might very likely have been 
 more sinned against than sinning. 
 
 "Only, of course," he added, "it's out of 
 the question for my son to marry her." 
 
 " You mean," I could not help observing, 
 " that you will forbid him to marry her. Isn't 
 it possible, though, that he may insist upon 
 marrying her, notwithstanding your pro- 
 hibition ? " 
 
32 THE ROMANCE OF 
 
 " Such a thing is possible, but I cannot think 
 it at all likely. You see, Mr. Wortley, both 
 you and Madame de Chanteloup have well, I 
 won't say you have deceived him ; but at all 
 events you haven't enlightened him. It 
 devolves upon me to do that, and, painful 
 though the duty is, I should be inexcusable if 
 I evaded it." 
 
 I could not urge him to refrain from doing 
 what any father would have done in his place ; 
 but I did venture to remind him that he was 
 not quite entitled to speak of Madame de 
 Chanteloup as a woman of damaged reputation. 
 " When all is said," I remarked, " there remains 
 a doubt, and I think she might be allowed the 
 benefit of it." 
 
 " I have no wish to be uncharitable," 
 answered Sir Francis, getting up ; " but what 
 there cannot be the slightest doubt about is that 
 the Comte de Chanteloup was paid to marry 
 this lady, that the money was provided by the 
 
MADAME DE CHANTELOUP. 33 
 
 father of the present king, and that Mrs. Wilbra- 
 ham threatened to make damaging disclosures if 
 the required sum was not forthcoming. From 
 those undisputed facts most people would say 
 that only one conclusion could be drawn." 
 
 I was not under any illusion as to what most 
 people would say, and in fact did say, about 
 this melancholy business ; yet I felt pretty sure 
 that Eyre Pomeroy would prove less amenable 
 to reason than his father expected him to be. 
 It is perhaps a mistake to be generous and 
 unsuspicious, and I myself may be too old to be 
 either the one or the other ; still I admire those 
 qualities in my juniors, and although, as I have 
 said, I had been a little disappointed in Madame 
 de Chanteloup for accepting Eyre, I should 
 have been still more disappointed in him if the 
 revelation which he was about to hear had 
 induced him to break with her. At the same 
 time, it will be readily understood that I did 
 not see my way to lending countenance or 
 
 D 
 
34 THE ROMANCE OF 
 
 encouragement to filial rebellion ; so that when, 
 some hours later, my young friend was an- 
 nounced, I began at once by saying 
 
 " If you have come here to ask me to inter- 
 cede for you with your father, you have come 
 upon a vain errand. I warned you from the first, 
 remember, that you would have trouble with 
 him, and now you must fight your own battle." 
 
 " I haven't come upon any errand of that 
 kind, Mr. Wortley," answered the young man 
 gravely and sadly, " and there is no quarrel 
 between me and the governor, who, I must 
 say, has been as as considerate as it was 
 possible to be. More considerate, perhaps, 
 than some other people." 
 
 His tone was so absolutely the reverse of 
 what I had anticipated, that I was fairly taken 
 aback, and, to tell the truth, rather angered 
 into the bargain. 
 
 " Meaning me ? " I inquired. 
 
 " Well," answered the young man, seating 
 
MADAME DE CHANTELOUP. 35 
 
 himself and I noticed that there was a drawn 
 look about his face, while all the healthy colour 
 had deserted it " I think you might have been 
 more candid with me. I can't help saying that 
 I think I might have been more candidly dealt 
 with. If it had been a question of mere gossip, 
 I should have had nothing to complain of; 
 but I don't quite understand my having been 
 allowed to remain in ignorance as to matters 
 of fact." 
 
 " Why, God bless my soul, sir ! " I exclaimed 
 (for in the days of my youth I had a hasty 
 temper, of which some traces still linger 
 within me), " do you venture to rebuke me 
 because I didn't poke my nose into the byways 
 of diplomacy in order to blacken the fair fame 
 of the very best woman with whom I have 
 the honour to be acquainted ? Who are you, 
 pray, that I should stab a friend in the back 
 to save you from committing an act of folly 
 upon which you were bent ? You intend, I 
 
36 THE ROMANCE OF 
 
 take it, to break faith with Madame de Chan- 
 teloup. Very well ; only, if you are in any 
 degree a gentleman, you will account for your 
 abandonment of her by affirming what, I should 
 think, was perfectly true that your father's 
 stalwart Protestantism won't admit of a matri- 
 monial alliance between his heir and a 
 Romanist." 
 
 The young fellow did not respond to my out- 
 burst by any counter-demonstration. " There 
 is no use in using strong language, Mr. 
 Wortley," said he, in the same calm, despairing 
 voice. " I am as unhappy as you could possibly 
 wish me to be ; but I am not ashamed. If 
 what my father has told me is true and I 
 am afraid that is beyond question I can no 
 more think of marrying the woman whom I 
 love than I could think of disgracing myself 
 and my family in any other way. Surely that 
 must be obvious to you ! And I don't think 
 it would be honest on my part to give her any 
 
MADAME DE CHANTELOUP. 
 
 reason except the real one for what you call 
 my abandonment of her." 
 
 He was undeniably and exasperatingly in 
 the right. "As you please," I returned. "I 
 can only say to you, as I have said to your 
 father, that there is a doubt, and that, in my 
 opinion, Madame de Chanteloup ought to be 
 allowed ;the benefit of it. However, it really 
 doesn't signify ; because you don't mean to 
 marry her and, for the matter of that, I never 
 believed that you would. And now, as I have 
 an engagement to keep, and as I presume that 
 you have nothing more to say, I will ask you 
 to be so kind as to excuse me." 
 
 But it seemed that he had something more 
 to say ; it seemed to put things coarsely 
 that he was desirous of employing me as a 
 go-between, and that he thought I might spare 
 him some pain by taking a message from him 
 to Madame de Chanteloup. I need scarcely 
 add that I emphatically declined to be employed 
 in any such capacity. 
 
38 THE ROMANCE OF 
 
 " You have ridden at a fence which you are 
 afraid to take," said I ; " personally I don't 
 care a straw whether you shirk it or break 
 your neck over it. It is no business of mine 
 to find you in courage, or to see you through 
 difficulties." 
 
 " I must write to her, then," he replied, 
 meekly. " You may call me a coward if 
 you like ; but I daren't trust myself to see 
 her." 
 
 So he went his way ; and I confess that, 
 after he had departed, my conscience reproached 
 me a little for the severity with which I had 
 treated him. He was not really behaving so 
 very badly ; he really had been deceived, and 
 I suppose it was the case that he owed some 
 sacrifice of his personal inclinations to ex- 
 pediency and to the honour of the good old 
 family whose name he bore. Still I could not 
 forget my poor Countess's radiant face as I had 
 seen it when she emerged from St. Germain 
 
MADAME DE CHANTELOUP. 39 
 
 1'Auxerrois, and I could not for one instant 
 believe that she had ever been a bad woman, 
 though hard facts demonstrated that she had 
 been what, to all worldly intents and purposes, 
 is the same thing. 
 
 On the following afternoon I called at her 
 house. I can't exactly say what my object was 
 in so doing, nor had I any expectation that I 
 could be of the slightest use to her in her 
 distress ; but, having heard nothing of or from 
 young Pomeroy during the morning, and being 
 by no means sure that he would not leave 
 Paris without even bidding me good-bye, I 
 yielded to the feeling of restless uneasiness 
 which had oppressed me ever since the con- 
 clusion of my interview with him. If the 
 reader likes to assume that I was prompted by 
 mere vulgar curiosity, I make the reader 
 welcome to that assumption : it would not be 
 the first time that such a charge has been 
 brought against me. 
 
40 THE ROMANCE OF 
 
 Anyhow, my curiosity was not gratified, 
 for I failed to obtain admission into Madame 
 de Chanteloup's drawing-room. Madame 
 la Comtesse, the servant informed me, was 
 tres-souffrante ; she had had one of her bad 
 neuralgic headaches all day, and had now 
 gone to bed, giving orders that she was on 
 no account to be disturbed until the evening. 
 So I handed him my card, mentioned that I 
 would return to make inquiries on the morrow, 
 and went my way to the club, where I remained 
 until the clock warned me that it was time to 
 go home and dress for a dinner-party to which 
 I had been bidden. 
 
 A fiacre was turning away from my door 
 just as I reached it, and when I was about 
 half-way upstairs I overtook Eyre Pomeroy, 
 who was clinging to the banisters and who 
 seemed scarcely able to put one foot before 
 another. 
 
 " What is the matter ? " I exclaimed, taking 
 
MADAME DE CHANTELOUP. 41 
 
 him by the arm ;- " what has happened ? " for 
 I saw by his ghastly face that some catastrophe 
 must have occurred. 
 
 " What has happened ? " he repeated, in a 
 strange thick voice. " Haven't you heard ? 
 no, of course you haven't. She is dead, that's 
 all yes, dead ! I don't know whether you 
 can believe it or not ; / can't, though there 
 isn't a doubt about its being true." 
 
 To the best of my recollection, I did not 
 believe it. I thought the lad must have been 
 drinking, or that he was the victim of some 
 hallucination. He was, at all events, incapable 
 of expressing himself coherently. It was only 
 after I had got him into an arm-chair and had 
 made him swallow a couple of glasses of wine 
 that he recovered the use of his tongue ; and 
 even then he remained so painfully agitated 
 that I had difficulty in understanding what 
 he said. I gathered, however, that he had, on 
 the previous evening, written such a letter to 
 
42 THE ROMANCE OF 
 
 Madame de Chanteloup as he had intimated his 
 intention of writing. 
 
 11 1 received her answer," he said, " an hour 
 or perhaps it was two hours ago. Here 
 it is; read it, and you will see you will 
 
 His voice broke, and it was some seconds 
 before he could resume : c< Of course, I rushed 
 at once to her house. There was a great dis- 
 turbance there. I didn't understand what it 
 was about ; but they tried to keep ine back, 
 and I forced my way in. All the doors were 
 open ; the servants were in her bedroom, 
 sobbing and chattering ; I think there was a 
 policeman there too ; I saw her lying on the 
 bed, dead and cold. She had been ill and had 
 taken an over-dose of chloral, they said. I 
 think I had better kill myself too; for you 
 will see by her letter that she was innocent 
 and that I murdered her ! " 
 
 I quieted him as best I could ; but naturally 
 
" ALL THE DOORS WERE OPEN J THE SERVANTS WERE IN HER BEDROOM, SOBBING 
 AND CHATTERING ; I THINK THERE WAS A POLICEMAN THERE TOO ; I SAW 
 HER LTIKG ON THE BED, DEAD AND COLD." 
 
MADAME DE CHANTELOUP. 45 
 
 I myself was somewhat overcome, and even 
 if I had had all my wits about me I don't know 
 that I could have said very much to comfort 
 him. Presently he sank back in his chair and 
 motioned to me to read the letter which he had 
 placed in my hand. 
 
 I need not quote the whole of it ; indeed, 
 I am not sure that, had he been calmer, he 
 would have cared to let me see the opening 
 sentences, which conveyed an assurance of such 
 passionate love as I should scarcely have sup- 
 posed Madame de Chanteloup capable of pen- 
 ning, and which, even at that sad moment, 
 I could not help wondering at his having had 
 the power to arouse. But, notwithstanding 
 this or possibly on account of it the writer 
 acquiesced without a murmur in the sentence 
 which had been pronounced against her, ac- 
 knowledging that it was inevitable, and only 
 marvelling that she had ever imagined that 
 it might be averted. 
 
46 THE ROMANCE OF 
 
 " Still," she added, " now that all is over 
 between us, and since you cannot, I think, 
 suspect me of any wish to bring you back to 
 me, I should like you to know that the truth 
 is not quite so bad as you have been led to 
 believe. The Prince paid me great attentions, 
 and my vanity was flattered by them ; I liked 
 him very much, though I did not love him ; 
 I was scarcely more than a child ; I knew 
 nothing of the world, and when he used to 
 talk about a morganatic marriage I saw no 
 impossibility in such an arrangement. Indeed, 
 so far as I had any voice in the matter, I had 
 consented to this when, all of a sudden, I was 
 told that he had gone away, that I should 
 never see him again, that he had even been 
 placed under a sort of arrest, and that I was 
 to marry M. de Chanteloup. Of course I was 
 very unhappy ; but I had always been com- 
 pletely under the control of my mother, who 
 told me this was not a case for argument, that 
 
MADAME DE CHANTELOUP. 47 
 
 she had done the very best she could for ine, 
 and that I must bow to necessity. It was not 
 until after my marriage that I learnt from my 
 husband by what infamous means the trans- 
 action which handed me over to him had been 
 brought about. I don't speak of my mother's 
 share in it. She was ambitious ; in her eager- 
 ness to make what she considered a magnificent 
 alliance for me she probably committed herself 
 to false statements which may afterwards have 
 been used against her, and from which she 
 could find no honourable way of escape. At 
 any rate, my husband's revelation came far 
 too late to save or serve me. If I had pro- 
 claimed my true story from the house-tops, 
 not one person in a thousand would have 
 believed it. But you, I hope, will believe it, 
 and forgive the wrong I was so nearly doing 
 you, as I have forgiven those who have ruined 
 my life." 
 
 There was a good deal more ; but I could 
 
48 THE ROMANCE OF 
 
 only glance at the remainder of the letter ; 
 for young Pomeroy had started up from his 
 recumbent attitude, and his cold, trembling 
 fingers were laid upon my wrist. 
 
 "Well?" said he, impatiently. "Speak 
 out don't be afraid of hurting me. Do you 
 think she did it ? " 
 
 I was astonished at the question. " Why," 
 I exclaimed, " you yourself told me just now 
 that you were persuaded of her innocence, 
 and I must confess " 
 
 "No, no!" he interrupted, fretfully; "you 
 don't understand me. As if I would let you 
 dare to cast a doubt upon her innocence ! 
 What I mean is, do you do you think she 
 killed herself?" 
 
 I could only say, as I had said in a previous 
 instance, that I thought she should be allowed 
 the benefit of the doubt. That is all that I can 
 say or think now ; and although Eyre Pomeroy 
 would have been better pleased, I suppose, 
 
MADAME DE CHANTELOUP. 49 
 
 if I could have given him the more positive 
 assurance which he craved, he did not, pre- 
 sumably, consider that the circumstances would 
 justify him in fulfilling his own threat of 
 self-destruction. 
 
 Far from acting so foolishly and wickedly, 
 he has lately gratified his family by making 
 a highly satisfactory marriage, and I should 
 not imagine that he has revisited Pere Lachaise 
 since the dismal, rainy day when he followed 
 poor Madame de Chanteloup's remains to their 
 last resting-place in that dreariest of all burial 
 grounds. 
 
 B 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 
 
 BY W. CLARKE RUSSELL. 
 
 THE little sitting-room, at 
 whose open window I was 
 seated, was very hot; from 
 the lodgings on either hand 
 there broke into the quie- 
 tude of the night a horrid, 
 distracting noise of jingling 
 pianos, accompanied by a 
 squealing of female voices. The hour was about 
 eleven. I filled my pipe afresh, left the house, 
 and walked in the direction of the beach. 
 
 The moon rode high; I had never before 
 seen the orb so small and also so brilliantly 
 piercing ; she diffused a wide haze of greenish 
 
 W. CLABKK KUSSKLL. 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 
 
 silver round about her in the heavens, in the 
 skirts of which a few stars of magnitude shone 
 sparely, though, clear of the sphere of this 
 stearn-like radiance, the sky trembled with 
 brilliants, and went hovering to the sea-line, 
 rich with prisms and crystals. In the heart 
 of the silent ocean lay the fan- shaped wake 
 of the moon, and the splendour of its hither 
 extremity, so wide-reaching was it, seemed to 
 melt in the lines of summer surf, which formed 
 and dissolved upon the wet-darkened sand. 
 
 It wanted about a quarter of an hour to 
 the turn of the ebb. The sands were a broad, 
 firm platform, and stretched before and behind 
 me, whitened into the complexion of ivory by 
 the moonbeams. The cliffs rose tall and dark 
 on my left, a silent range of iron terraces, with 
 the black sky-line of them showing out against 
 the stars, and with nothing to break their 
 continuity save here and there a gap, as of 
 some ravine. The summer-night hush was 
 
52 A MEMORABLE SWIM. 
 
 exquisitely soo tiling. From afar came the thin, 
 faint notes of a band of music playing in the 
 town, past the huge shoulder of cliff, but the 
 distance was too great to suffer the strains to 
 vex the ear ; indeed, the silence was accen- 
 tuated rather than disturbed by that far-off 
 music. The creeping of the surf was like the 
 voice of innumerable fountains. There was 
 not a breath of air; the moon's reflections lay 
 tremorless; and in the liquid dusk on the 
 western edge of that motionless path of light 
 floated the phantom shape of a ship, her hull 
 as black as ink, and her sails stirlessly poised 
 over her, like ice in shadow. 
 
 I walked dreamily onwards, smoking my 
 pipe, and listening to the innumerable babble 
 of the waters upon the beach. I went perhaps 
 a mile. There was plenty of time ; no hurry 
 to go to bed on such a night, and there would 
 be abundance of room for the walk home, long 
 after the tide should have turned. 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 53 
 
 I came abreast of a mass of black rock, table- 
 shaped, and nearly awash ; that is to say, the 
 water stood almost at the level of it, so that 
 at flood it would be submerged and out of 
 sight. I spied what I thought to be a gleam 
 of light resting upon it ; but on looking again 
 I was sure that that strange shining could 
 not be moonlight, for the lustre was local, 
 and it was not light either, but white, and 
 its size was about that of a man's body ; and, 
 indeed, it looked so much like a naked man 
 that I drew close to examine it. There was 
 dry sand to the rock ; but the water brimmed 
 very nearly around it, and there was water 
 under where the white object lay. On drawing 
 near, I observed that what I had thought to 
 be a gleam of light was the body of a drowned 
 man. I stood staring long enough to satisfy 
 me that he was dead. It was a dismal and 
 a dreadful object to light upon. The very 
 silence of the night, the beauty of the stars, 
 
54 A MEMORABLE SWIM. 
 
 the high, peaceful, piercing moon somehow 
 increased the horror of the thing. On a dark, 
 stormy night, I do not know that such a 
 spectacle would have so shocked and unnerved 
 me as this now did. 
 
 I peered to right and left, but not the shadow 
 of mortal being stirred upon the white sweep 
 of the sands. Then, casting my eyes up at 
 the cliff, I recollected that a little distance 
 further on there was a gully, at the head of 
 which stood a coastguard's hut, and, knowing 
 that there would be a man stationed on the 
 look-out up there, I forthwith bent my steps 
 in the direction of the gully, and ascended it, 
 until I arrived at the hut. Here I found a 
 coastguard. He eyed me fixedly as I approached 
 him. 
 
 I said, " Good night, coastguard." 
 
 " Good night," he answered, attentively 
 surveying me by the light of the moon. 
 
 " I am somewhat breathless," said I ; " I have 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 55 
 
 walked fast, and that gully is hard to climb. 
 There is a dead body down on the beach." 
 
 " Whereabouts, sir ? " he exclaimed with the 
 instant promptitude of the seaman, and he 
 advanced to the edge of the cliff. 
 
 "It lies on that rock there," said I, pointing. 
 
 " I see it, sir," said he^ " D'ye mind coming 
 along with me ? My mate won't be here for 
 a bit." 
 
 Together we proceeded to the sands. The 
 coastguard got upon the rock and stood view- 
 ing the body. Then, catching hold of it by 
 the arms, he dragged it gently on to the sand. 
 
 " Ay," said he ; " I thought as much. This'll 
 be the gent as was drowned whilst bathing 
 out of a boat yesterday. Poor fellow ! he's 
 left a wife and two children. There's been 
 a reward of twenty pounds offered for his 
 body. That'll be yourn, sir." 
 
 "It will be yours," said I. "I do not stand 
 in need of money earned in this fashion." 
 
56 A MEMORABLE SWIM. 
 
 The body was that of a man of about thirty. 
 He had fair hair and a large moustache, and 
 in life had doubtless been a handsome young 
 fellow. 
 
 " 'Tain't often as they comes ashore so per- 
 fect," said the coastguard. " They're mostly 
 all ate up so as to be unrecognizable." 
 
 I recoiled, and said, " Why am I afraid of 
 this body ? It cannot hurt me. It is but a 
 dead man, and comely too. Why, as he lies 
 there, coastguard, he might be formed of ivory, 
 moulded by the fingers of the sea out of its 
 own foam, and cast up thus. And yet," said 
 I, looking round with a silly, chilly shiver 
 running through me, " I believe it would go 
 near to unsettling my wits were I forced to 
 stand watch by this body all through the night 
 here." 
 
 " I see he's got his rings on," said the 
 matter-of-fact coastguard, stooping to bring 
 his eyes close to the fingers of the body. 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 57 
 
 " What is now to be done ? " said I. 
 
 " Which way might you be going, sir ? " 
 
 " Home back to the town," I replied ; " I've 
 walked enough by the sea-shore to-night." 
 
 "Then," said the coastguard, "I'll ask you 
 to report this here discovery to the first bobby 
 ye meets with. Tell him that the body lies 
 almost abreast of Dowton Gap; and, if you 
 don't mind giving me a hand, sir, to carry 
 the corpse to the foot of the cliff, in case the 
 bobby the tide ye see " 
 
 " No," said I ; " you dragged it single- 
 handed from the rock. You are able to drag 
 it single-handed to the foot of the cliff. If 
 I touched the poor thing well, good night, 
 coastguard," and I walked off, leaving him 
 to handle the dead body single-handed, for 
 which I had no better excuse to make than 
 that I was possessed at the time by strong 
 feelings of horror, and perhaps fear, which 
 the presence of the coastguard in no degree 
 
58 A MEMORABLE SWIM. 
 
 mitigated, and which were induced, as I can 
 now believe, by the suddenness and violence 
 of the obtrusion of an object of terror upon 
 my mind at a moment when it had been 
 rendered in a peculiar sense unprepared for 
 any such experience by the enervating charm, 
 the sweet relaxing magic of the soft and 
 glorious night of moonshine and silence, and 
 waters seething with the stealthy hiss of 
 champagne. 
 
 I stepped out briskly, and as I walked I 
 seemed to behold many white bodies of drowned 
 men floating shore wards on the summer feather- 
 ing of the little breakers. When I arrived 
 at the town I met a policeman, to whom I 
 communicated the news, and I then returned 
 to my lodgings and sat in the open window 
 smoking a pipe, and as I lighted my pipe the 
 clocks in the town struck the hour of mid- 
 night. 
 
 As I sat smoking thus, I surrendered my 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 59 
 
 mind so wholly to contemplation of the dead 
 white body I had suddenly fallen in with, that 
 I might well have supposed the impression 
 which the encounter would leave must be life- 
 long. But next day I returned to London, 
 and within a week the memory of the little 
 incident had as good as perished from my 
 mind. For a month I was very busy. My 
 employment was exceedingly arduous, and 
 often obliged me to work late into the night. 
 Then, at the expiration of the month, feeling 
 uncommonly fagged, I resolved to spend a 
 week at the same seaside town where I had 
 discovered the body on the rock. 
 
 The name of this town I will not give. I 
 do not wish to excite the anger of its boatmen. 
 " Ho ! " they will say, should I name their 
 town. " Ho ! " they will cry when they have 
 arrived at the end of my story, " what a loy ! 
 This here piece is put into the newspapers 
 all along o' spite. The gent don't wish us 
 
60 A MEMORABLE SWIM. 
 
 well, and he's invented this here blooming 
 yarn to scare folks from employing of us. 
 He's agoing to start a pleasure yacht for taking 
 o' people out at a shilling a head, and don't 
 mean that us pore watermen shall get a living." 
 Thus would you declaim, oh, ye sons of the 
 heach ; and that you may in no wise suffer 
 from any statements of mine, I withhold the 
 name of your town, so that the reader may 
 take his choice of any port or harbour on the 
 coast of the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, 
 what I am about to relate is no " loy," but the 
 truth itself absolute, memorable, living. 
 
 I was again at the seaside. It was now the 
 month of August, and the hottest August that 
 I can remember. After the intolerable heat of 
 London, and the fatigue of my work there, 
 nothing, of course, could prove so beneficial, 
 so bracing, in all senses so restoring, as sea- 
 bathing. But for the bathing-machine sea-bath 
 I had the strongest aversion. First, there was 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 61 
 
 no depth of water for swimming. The necessary 
 depth for true enjoyment was to be gained only 
 when the limbs were well-nigh exhausted by 
 the labour of striking out for it. Then I 
 disliked to bathe in company. Again, I 
 objected to the crowds who stood watching the 
 bathers from the piers and sands. In fact, for 
 an expert swimmer, such as I, there is but one 
 method of bathing in the sea : he must take a 
 boat, row out a mile or two where the brine 
 sparkles foamless, where it is clear of the con- 
 tamination of the set of the inshore tide, where 
 the blue or green of it is darkly pure with depth. 
 On the morning following the day of my 
 arrival, somewhere about the hour of seven 
 o'clock, I threw some towels over my arm and 
 walked down to a part of the harbour where I 
 knew I should find a boatman. Even at this 
 early hour the bite of the sun was as fierce as 
 though he stood at his meridian. The atmo- 
 sphere was of a brilliant blue. There was a 
 
62 A MEMORABLE SWIM. 
 
 little air of wind that delicately rippled the sea. 
 I beheld not a cloud in the sky no, not so 
 much as a shred of vapour of the size of a man's 
 hand. In the harbour the red canvas of smacks 
 preparing to go to sea painted the water under 
 them. The soft wind brought many wholesome 
 odours of tar, of sea- weed, of sawn timber to the 
 nostrils. As I approached that part of the pier 
 off which most of the wherries belonging to the 
 town were congregated, a man who was leaning 
 with his back to me over a stone post, gazing 
 in the direction of the sands, turned his head, 
 and, guessing at my intention, by observing 
 the towels I carried, stood erect with alacrity, 
 and called out " Boat, sir ? The werry morning 
 for a swim, sir. A sheet calm, and the flood's 
 only now agoing to make." 
 
 Though I had from time to time visited the 
 town, I had never spent more than three days 
 at a time in it ; and the boatmen, therefore, 
 were strangers to rne. I said to this man : 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 63 
 
 " Yes, it is the very morning for a swim. 
 What sort of a boat is yours ? " 
 
 " The best boat in the harbour, sir," he an- 
 swered. " There she lies, sir a real beauty," 
 and he pointed eagerly at a wherry painted 
 blue, with raised tholepins, after the fashion of 
 the boats of the Thames watermen. 
 
 I looked at her and said, " Yes, she will do 
 very well to take a header from. Bring her 
 alongside.'' 
 
 It was not until I was seated in the stern- 
 sheets of the boat that I particularly noticed 
 this waterman, who, having flung his oars over, 
 was propelling his little craft through the water 
 with a velocity that was warrant of an extra- 
 ordinarily powerful arm. My eyes then resting 
 upon his face, I found myself struck by his 
 uncommon appearance. His skin was very dark, 
 his hair jet-black, and his eyes were of a glassy 
 brilliance, with pupils of jet. Coarse as his hair 
 was, it curled in ringlets. He wore a pair of 
 
64 A MEMORABLE SWIM. 
 
 immensely thick whiskers, every fibre of which 
 might have been plucked from a horse's tail. 
 His nose was heavy and large, and the curve of 
 the nostrils very deeply graven. In each ear 
 was a thick gold hoop, and the covering of his 
 head consisted of a cap fashioned out of a skin. 
 Otherwise he was habited in the familiar garb 
 of the British boatman in a blue jersey, large 
 loose trousers, of a yellow stuff called " fear- 
 naught;" top-boots under the trousers, which 
 were turned up to reveal a portion of the leather. 
 I observed that his gaze had an odd character 
 of staring ; it was fixed, stern, yet with a sug- 
 gestion of restlessness in it, as of temper. 
 
 " Are you a Jew ? " said I. 
 
 " No fear," he answered. 
 
 " Do not suppose that I ask the question out 
 of any disrespect to you. The Jews are a very 
 intelligent, interesting people. It would cause 
 me to wonder, however, to find a Jew a boat- 
 
 man." 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 65 
 
 " I ain't no Jew, sir," said he. 
 
 " Perhaps you are what is called a Romany 
 Chal?" 
 
 " What's that ? " he cried, gazing at me with 
 his staring eyes. 
 
 u A gipsy, isn't it ? " 
 
 He grinned, and answered, " Well, I believe 
 I has some pikey blood in me." 
 
 " What do you mean by pikey ? " 
 
 " Gipsy," said he. 
 
 " That must be a local term," said I, " pro- 
 bably derived from the word ' turnpike,' as con- 
 necting the gipsies with the road." 
 
 He strained at his oars in silence ; but my 
 questions appeared to have excited some 
 curiosity in him as to myself, for I observed 
 that he ran his eyes over me, dwelling with 
 attention upon every part of my apparel, more 
 especially, as it struck me, upon the rings upon 
 my fingers, and upon my watch chain. 
 
 I stood up to look around. We were clear of 
 
 p 
 
66 A MEMORABLE SWIM. 
 
 the harbour ; and the fine scene of the cliffs, 
 the houses on top, with their flashing windows, 
 the white lustrous line of sands, lay stretched 
 before my sight. We were the only small boat 
 upon the surface of the sea ; but near the pier 
 were a number of bathing-machines, and several 
 dark knots of heads like cocoanuts bobbed in 
 the snow-bright lines of the surf. The horizon 
 was broken by the outlines of a few vessels, and 
 one large steamer gliding stately and resplen- 
 dent, flashes of white fire, like exploding guns, 
 breaking from the double line of her glazed 
 portholes as her movements brought those 
 windows to the sun, gleams of ruddy flame 
 leaping from the polished brass furniture about 
 her bridge, and a long line of water glancing 
 astern of her, as though she towed from her 
 sternpost some league-long length of shimmer- 
 ing white satin. 
 
 " What might be the correct time, sir ? " 
 asked the boatman. 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 67 
 
 I drew out my watch, a handsome gold 
 repeater, and gave him the hour. He thanked 
 me, and said, "I suppose you're a good 
 swimmer, sir ? " 
 
 " I am a very good swimmer," I answered. 
 
 " Then the deeper the water, the better you'll 
 be pleased, sir. I've been told that arter six 
 fadom of water every furder fadom makes a 
 man feel so much more buoyant that it's like 
 strapping a fresh bladder on to him." 
 
 " No doubt," said I. " What depths have you 
 here?" 
 
 " Oh, here," cried he, contemptuously glanc- 
 ing over the side, " why, there ain't twelve foot 
 of water here. We're right on top of a bank. 
 Ye'll need to let me pull you about a mile and 
 a half out to get the soundings you want for 
 a first-class swim." 
 
 " Well," said I, " there is no hurry. You 
 know all about these waters, of course ? By 
 the way, when I was here a month ago I 
 
68 A MEMORABLE SWIM. 
 
 found a drowned body on the sands down 
 there." 
 
 " Oh, was you the gent, then, as fell in with 
 that body ? " said the man, regarding me with 
 his peculiar gipsy stare. " There was a matter 
 of twenty pound offered for that discovery. 
 Wish Td had the finding of the poor fellow. 
 Twenty pound. Only think. And it was all 
 paid over to a coastguard." 
 
 " That's right," said I. " I walked up that 
 break in the cliffs yonder to the coastguard's 
 hut there and gave notice. Who was the 
 drowned man, do you know ? " 
 
 " It came out in the cronner's 'quest, but I 
 forget the name." 
 
 " How was he drowned ? " 
 
 " Why, by awadirig out of his depth, I allow." 
 
 " The coastguard told me he was drowned 
 by bathing from a boat." 
 
 " He didn't know nothen about it," answered 
 the boatman. "There never yet was a man 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 69 
 
 drownded by bathing out of a boat in these 
 parts. Didn't ye see the account of the 'quest 
 in the newspapers ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Well," said the man, " it was supposed he 
 was took with cramp. There's too many 
 drownding jobs of that sort going on along 
 the coast. It don't do us watermen any good. 
 It creates a prejudice agin the places where 
 the accidents happen. What does a man want 
 to go out of his depth for if he ain't no 
 swimmer ? " 
 
 We fell silent, and he continued to row with 
 great energy, whilst I lay back in the stern- 
 sheets enjoying the sweet cool freshness of the 
 salt air breathing upon the face of the waters, 
 and greatly enjoying the noble and brilliant 
 spectacle of the sea shining under the sun, and 
 of the coast, whose many colours, and whose 
 many features of structure, of elbow, of cliff, 
 of green slope, of down on top, every stroke 
 
70 A MEMORABLE SWIM. 
 
 of the oar was now making more tender, more 
 delicate, more toy-like. 
 
 After rowing for about twenty minutes, the 
 gipsy- faced boatman rested upon his oars, and, 
 taking a look round, and then gazing over the 
 side into the water, he exclaimed, " This here'll 
 be the spot, sir." 
 
 I at once undressed, stood up in the stern- 
 sheets, put my hands together, and went over- 
 board into the cool, green, glass-clear profound. 
 I came to the surface, and, with a shake of the 
 head, cleared rny eyes, and perceived the boat- 
 man very leisurely pulling his wherry still 
 further out to sea. This was, perhaps, as it 
 should be. He might, indeed, have headed his 
 boat in for the land ; but, in any case, he was 
 right to keep her in motion as an invitation 
 to me to swim after her. I swam with great 
 enjoyment ; the embrace of the water pene- 
 trated to my inmost being, and every pulse 
 in me beat with a new vitality. I swam 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 71 
 
 directly in the wake of the boat, past the rim 
 of whose stern I could see the head of the boat- 
 man. He held me in view, and he 'watched 
 me intently, though from time to time he 
 would direct his gaze to that part of the land 
 where the town was situated, and sometimes 
 he would turn his head and look behind him 
 that is to say, over the bows of his boat, in the 
 manner of one who cannot satisfy himself that 
 something is not approaching. 
 
 Presently, I thought I would catch hold of 
 the boat by the gunwale to rest myself, and 
 I called to him to stop rowing, that I might 
 come up with him ; but he did not stop rowing. 
 When I called he turned his face from me, and 
 continued to ply his oars. I called to him 
 again, but he paid no attention to me. There 
 was the sullen air of murder in his averted 
 face, and in his whole manner of determination 
 not to hear me. My heart beat furiously, and 
 I felt faint, for now, with the velocity of 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 
 
 thought, I was linking the fate of the man 
 whose dead body I had lighted upon with the 
 gipsy ruffian ahead of me in the boat; and I 
 said to myself, he might have been drowned, 
 and perhaps by that very demon there, as I 
 
 TO HIM TO STOP ROWING, THAT I MIGHT COME LP TO 
 HIM; BUT HE DID NOT STOP ROWING." 
 
 am to be drowned ; left, as I am to be left, to 
 swim until he sank from exhaustion, as I am 
 to sink, that the boatman might possess him- 
 self of his watch and chain and money, as my 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 73 
 
 watch and chain and money are the objects for 
 which I am to be obliged to struggle here until 
 I perish. 
 
 These thoughts swept with the speed of a 
 dream through my head. I cried aloud in a 
 voice of bitter despair as acutely realizing 
 now the murderous villain's intention as though 
 I had spent an hour in digesting it " For 
 God's sake, do not leave me here to drown. 
 Take what you want ; take all that I have. 
 Have mercy upon me. Let me reach your 
 boat and rest ! " 
 
 He continued to row, with his face averted 
 from me, and I was near enough to him to 
 easily observe the villainous, diabolical ex- 
 pression that now sat upon his dark counte- 
 nance as he stared in silence towards the land. 
 I turned upon my back to rest myself, and all 
 the while my feverishly-beating heart seemed 
 to be saying, " What is to be done ? Must you 
 drown ? You are not two miles from the 
 
74 A MEMORABLE SWIM. 
 
 shore. Cannot you swim that distance ? Best 
 awhile on your back, and then strike out like 
 a man. You have no other chance for your 
 life. That demon yonder intends that you 
 shall drown. He will secrete the booty he 
 means to take out of your pockets, and will 
 row ashore and put on a face of consternation, 
 and report that when you were overboard you 
 were seized with cramp, and sank on a sudden 
 like a stone." 
 
 Whilst I thus lay upon my back, besieged by 
 the most dreadful thoughts, half mad with 
 wrath and with despair, the boatman sculled 
 back to me, and, putting the blade of his left 
 oar upon my breast, thrust with it with the 
 idea of submerging me. I grasped the oar, 
 and held it with the tenacity of a dying man. 
 He could not shake me off; his right oar slipped 
 from his hand and went overboard ; the boat 
 swayed dangerously. My desire, indeed, was 
 to capsize it, because I should have the ruffian 
 
" AND, PUTTING THE BLADE OF HIS LEFT OAR UPON MY BREAST, 
 
 THRUST WITH IT WITH THE IDEA OF SUBMERGING ME." 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 77 
 
 at an advantage if I could get him into the 
 water, heavily clad as he was, even though 
 he should be as expert a swimmer as I ; and 
 then there would be the boat to hold to, be- 
 cause, being light and without ballast, even if 
 she filled she would not sink ; furthermore, 
 there was the certainty of our situation being 
 witnessed from the coast, and of help being 
 despatched forthwith. 
 
 It might have been that he feared the boat 
 would capsize, and it might have been that he 
 guessed we should be presently observed 
 through some telescope levelled at us from 
 the pier or cliff. He suddenly cried with a 
 furious curse, " Get in, get in ! " and, letting 
 go his oar, he dragged me into the boat, 
 flinging me from him, so that I fell over an 
 after thwart, and lay for a few moments 
 breathless, and almost unconscious, in the 
 bottom of the boat. He then threw his oar 
 over and manoeuvred the wherry, so as to re- 
 
78 A MEMORABLE SWIM. 
 
 cover the other oar, which done, he adjusted 
 himself on his seat and fell to rowing on a 
 course parallel with the coast. 
 
 I rose, trembling in every limb ; the shock 
 had been terrible ; my rescue a miracle. I 
 seemed to feel the hand of death cold upon my 
 heart, even as I staggered on to my feet ; and 
 still I was in dire peril alone with a powerful, 
 muscular ruffian, who, having already attempted 
 my life, might again, in self-defence, to silence 
 my testimony against him, renew his murderous 
 effort in another direction. With an exhausted 
 hand I passed a towel over my body and then 
 clothed myself. Meanwhile, not a word was 
 uttered. The man eyed me with ferocity, and 
 his under-lip moved as though he were rehears- 
 ing some thoughts to himself in an impish 
 jargon. We still continued to be the only boat 
 upon the water. The great steamer had long 
 since passed out of sight, and upon the horizon 
 hung the few sails, scarcely impelled by the 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 79 
 
 languid breath of the air that was slowly 
 weakening as the sun gained in power. 
 
 At last I said to the man, " Where are you 
 going ? " 
 
 " That's my business," he answered. 
 
 " Where are you taking me to ? " I exclaimed. 
 
 He fastened his staring, gleaming eyes upon 
 me and answered, " I'm going to put ye 
 ashore." 
 
 "But you are not rowing the boat in the 
 direction of the town." 
 
 " I know I'm not," 
 
 " I want you to set me ashore at the place 
 where we started from." 
 
 u Ye may want," he replied, pausing upon 
 his oars to advance his head towards me as 
 he spoke, as though, in another moment, he 
 would leap upon me. 
 
 By this time I had rallied my wits somewhat. 
 The feeling of profound exhaustion was also 
 passing. I was dressed, and the mere being 
 
8o A MEMORABLE SWIM. 
 
 dressed was in its way a help towards the 
 composure of the mind. I was man to man 
 with the ruffian, but not his match no, I had 
 but to run my eye over his figure to understand 
 that. I sat contemplating his villainous face 
 and thinking. There was a boat-stretcher at 
 my feet; but the man's fierce, keen eye was 
 upon me; before I could grasp and employ 
 the stretcher, the fellow would have guessed 
 my intentions, and I must therefore either sit 
 still and wait until I could understand what 
 he meant to do, or fling myself upon him and 
 take the chance of being hurled overboard. 
 No purpose could be served by my capsizing 
 the boat. I was now clothed, and my move- 
 ments in the water would, therefore, be 
 seriously hampered ; and then, again, if I en- 
 gaged in a struggle, with the intention of 
 capsizing the boat, and succeeded in doing so, 
 it might be his fortune to regain her and to 
 keep me off from her, and, apparelled and 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 81 
 
 exhausted as I was, I should not long be able 
 to remain afloat. 
 
 He continued to row along a course that was 
 still parallel with the coast. He rowed with 
 a sort of sulky energy, and often directed a 
 furious look at me, whilst his leather nether 
 lip worked as though he were reciting some 
 charm to himself. Presently I said to him, 
 " Where are you taking me to ? Why will 
 you not put me ashore where we started from ? 
 You have tried to drown me, and your object 
 can be nothing but plunder, for I have not 
 offended you, I have done you no wrong, and, 
 therefore, your only reason for attempting to 
 drown me must be the jewellery upon me, and 
 such money as you may hope I have in my 
 pocket. Now, I will give you all that I possess 
 my watch and chain, this ring, and the two or 
 three pounds which I have in my pocket if 
 you will set me ashore where I came from." 
 
 He stared fiercely at me, but made no response. 
 
 a 
 
82 A MEMORABLE SWIM. 
 
 " Do you fear I will charge you with the 
 crime you have attempted ? " said I. " If you 
 will set me ashore in safety I swear not to say 
 a word upon what has happened." 
 
 " I'm going to set ye ashore," he exclaimed. 
 
 " But where ? " 
 
 He flung his villainous head backwards to- 
 wards the sea over the bows of his boat an4 
 said, " You'll be finding out afore long." 
 
 " Ah," thought I, " if I had but a revolver in 
 my pocket, if I had but a knife, if I had but 
 any sort of weapon that I could furtively draw 
 forth and instantly employ ! " 
 
 The line of coast ran away down on the left- 
 hand side. The nearest town in the direction 
 the boatman was taking would be some miles 
 distant from the place in which I was staying. 
 The cliffs gradually rose to an altitude of hard 
 upon a hundred feet, with many indents and 
 little coves ; but the face of them, as we 
 advanced, grew more and yet more precipitous, 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 83 
 
 and in places the rocks stood abrupt and clean 
 as the side of a wall. When the harbour we 
 had quitted was out of sight, and the final 
 group of houses on our side was hidden by the 
 bend of the cliffs, the boatman took a swift look 
 over his shoulder, then slightly changed the 
 course of his boat, making her head in for the 
 coast to a sort of bight of it, as it seemed, 
 formed by an angular projection of the huge, 
 iron-faced sea-terrace, so that it looked as 
 if the land ended where that point of coast 
 stood, for the horizon went to it, and we were 
 not far enough out to see the sweep of land 
 beyond. 
 
 That the boatman designed some diabolical 
 act I did not doubt, but I could not imagine 
 what form it was to take. He meant to set me 
 ashore, he said. Did he intend to land and 
 then murder me ; to land me in some lonely 
 bight or cave, and there fall upon me, and slay 
 me ? No, I did not believe that. If he in- 
 
84 A MEMORABLE SWIM. 
 
 tended to make away with me for the sake of 
 my money and jewellery, it would be his busi- 
 ness to provide that I should appear to have 
 been drowned by accident. Otherwise, how 
 would he account for my disappearance ? Or, 
 if my body should be discovered, and marks of 
 a devilish outrage were visible upon it, what 
 answer would he be able to make to the charge 
 of having murdered me ? 
 
 But what then did he mean to do ? To set 
 me ashore ? In that case I should be able to 
 walk home and report what had happened. 
 Did he mean to return to the town that he 
 belonged to ? That could not signify, for let 
 him make for any port that he chose his capture 
 was ultimately certain. 
 
 He swept the boat in rapidly to the coast, 
 heading her for a curvature in the land that 
 might have passed for a miniature bay. The 
 sea remained a blank, save for those dim and 
 distant sails upon the horizon. The water 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 85 
 
 washed to the foot of the coast ; but in the 
 little bay, for which the villain was aiming, I 
 could perceive, as the boat rose on the slight 
 swell that was now running, the gleam of sand. 
 Nothing stirred on the heights ; we were now 
 within a quarter of a mile, but not a moving 
 object was visible. He continued to row until 
 the boat was in the embrace of the bay. The 
 dark cliffs soared like a colossal rampart to high 
 overhead, and at either extremity of the curve 
 of the bay, at the point of either horn of it, 
 there was a little play of surf. The man flung 
 in his oars and stood up. 
 
 " Give me that watch and chain of yourn ! " 
 he shouted. 
 
 I rose to my feet. 
 
 " Give me that watch and chain," he roared 
 again, and thrusting his great dark hand into 
 his breeches pocket he whipped out a big clasp 
 knife, which he opened. " No trouble," he 
 exclaimed, " or I'll cut your throat." 
 
86 A MEMORABLE SWIM. 
 
 I placed the watch and chain down upon a 
 thwart, and he pocketed them. 
 
 " Now pull out all the money you have." 
 
 This I did, and he took the coins and put 
 them in his pocket. 
 
 " Pull off that ring." 
 
 This I also did. He eyed me all over, still 
 grasping the knife. Then looking towards the 
 beach, he said, " That's where I'm going to 
 land ye. You're a good swimmer. Jump over- 
 board." 
 
 " If you land me there," said I, " I shall be 
 drowned. The water is rising, and those rocks 
 are not to be climbed." 
 
 " Jump overboard ! " said he, with a menacing 
 flourish of his knife. 
 
 " It is a bit of a swim as yet," said I. " I 
 am sick and without strength. For God's sake 
 put me a little closer to the beach that I may 
 have a chance ! " 
 
 He hesitated a moment, then stooped to pick 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 89 
 
 up an oar. In that instant I bounded upon 
 him. Impelled by the incommunicable agony 
 of mind I was in, by what I may truly call the 
 terrific impulse of the despair that was .upon 
 me, I leapt the thwart with the velocity of a 
 wolf at full cry, and ere he could lift his eyes 
 I had put my shoulder to his side, and hove 
 him into the water. Shipping an oar, I pulled 
 the boat's head round, shipped the other oar 
 betwixt . the thole-pins, and pulled out of the 
 bay with all my might. 
 
 Before the point of cliffs had shut out 
 the bay, I caught sight of his head. The 
 fellow was swimming, and swimming strongly, 
 towards the curve of the sand at the foot of 
 the cliff. I now understood the sort of fate he 
 had intended for me. Having gained the sand, 
 I should have been imprisoned by the water ; 
 but the tide was making fast, and, when the. 
 flood was at its fall, the sea-line stood some feet 
 above the level of the sand. There was not 
 
90 A MEMORABLE SWIM. 
 
 an accessible piece of jutting rock nothing for 
 the hand to grasp, nor for the foot to support 
 itself by, upon the face of the perpendicular 
 steep. Therefore I must inevitably have been 
 drowned. And what story would the ruffian 
 have invented to account for my disappearance ? 
 I conceived this : that he would have leisurely 
 rowed back to the harbour, moored his boat, 
 and lounged upon the pier, as his custom was, 
 without uttering a syllable about me, unless, 
 indeed, he had been observed to row me out 
 in his boat in the morning, and should be asked 
 what had become of me. Supposing this ques- 
 tion asked, he would answer that at my request 
 he had set me ashore some two or three miles 
 down the coast, as I desired to walk home by 
 way of the cliffs. Who could have disproved 
 this ? It must have been readily credited. It 
 was a thing that was again and again happen- 
 ing. And now imagine my body found upon 
 the sands of the little bay where he had com-. 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 91 
 
 pelled me to swim ashore ! There would have 
 been an inquest ; it would be ascertained that 
 I was the gentleman whom the gipsy boatman 
 had set ashore. What more probable, then, 
 than that I should have changed my mind, 
 have attempted to make my way home in my 
 ignorance of the neighbourhood, by way of the 
 beach, instead of by way of the cliffs, and so 
 have perished ? 
 
 These thoughts occupied my mind as I rowed 
 the wherry in the direction of the harbour. I 
 pulled at the oars with fury ; I was sensible of 
 a horrid distraction of fear, as though it were 
 in the power of the ruffian to pursue me, to 
 arrest the boat, to enter her and cut my throat 
 with the knife he had flourished. I entered 
 the harbour, sculled to a landing stage, secured 
 the painter of the boat to it, and stepped 
 ashore. There were many people about; the 
 air resounded with the cries of boatmen inviting 
 the passers-by to go out for a row or a sail. 
 
92 A MEMORABLE SWIM. 
 
 None of these men took any notice of me. 
 Probably none of them knew that I had started 
 in company with the gipsy boatman, arid they 
 would probably imagine that I had returned 
 from a solitary pull out to sea. I walked a little 
 way, and presently observed a harbour police- 
 man. I approached him, and said 
 
 " I want to inform against a ruffian who has 
 just attempted my life." 
 
 He looked me hard in the face, and was 
 clearly impressed by my agitation and ap- 
 pearance. 
 
 " What's wrong ? " said he. 
 
 " A boatman whom I went out with this 
 morning has attempted to drown me," said I. 
 
 " Step this way, sir," said the man ; and 
 with that he conducted me to a brick- built 
 house adjoining a row of warehouses, and in 
 the window of this brick-built house was a 
 large wire blind, on which was wrought in 
 golden letters the words, " Harbour Police 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 93 
 
 Office." The policeman lifted the latch of the 
 door and entered, and I followed him. An 
 immense man, with large, red whiskers, wear- 
 ing a sort of naval cap with letters interwreathed 
 over the peak of it, and a frock-coat, the breast 
 of which was braided, sat upon a tall, three- 
 legged stool reading a newspaper. He looked 
 at me over his spectacles as I entered. 
 
 " Here's a gent says that one of the boatmen's 
 been a-trying to drown him," said the police- 
 man ; and, addressing me, he added, " This is 
 the superintendent." 
 
 The superintendent put down his paper and 
 took off his glasses, and asked me to tell him 
 my business. I forthwith related my experi- 
 ences to him. He listened attentively, occa- 
 sionally glancing at the constable, who stood 
 by listening with his mouth slightly open. 
 
 " Describe the man, sir," said the superin- 
 tendent. 
 
 I did so. 
 
94 
 
 A MEMORABLE SWIM. 
 
 " It's Gipsy Bill," said the constable. 
 
 " Yes, it's Gipsy Bill," said the superin- 
 tendent " the same man as took out the party 
 that was drowned last month." 
 
 " And the same man," said the constable, 
 
 "HE LISTENED ATTENTIVELY, OCCASIONALLY GLANCING AT THE CON- 
 STABLE, WHO STOOD BY LISTENING WITH HIS MOUTH SLIGHTLY OPEN." 
 
 " as took out the party that was drowned a year 
 ago come next month." 
 
 The superintendent thumped his leg. " I've 
 been suspicious of that chap all through," said 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 95 
 
 he. " Freeman, call Jones and Woodward, 
 and take the boat and get the man. The flood'll 
 not be at its height yet, and the man himself 11 
 be as prettily nailed as though we had him in 
 the lock-up." 
 
 I heard him pronounce these words, then 
 a blood-red blaze of fire seemed to rush from 
 my brain out through my eyes. I fell, and 
 remember no more. 
 
 When I recovered my consciousness I was in 
 bed in my own lodgings. All necessary in- 
 formation about me had been found in my 
 pocket, in the shape of letters and cards. My 
 sister had been telegraphed for, and she was at 
 my bedside when I awoke, after three days of 
 utter insensibility. When I was strong enough 
 to listen and converse, I was told that the 
 police-boat had pulled down to the little bay, 
 found the man, and brought him to the town, 
 where he was lying, locked up, charged with 
 the attempt to murder me. Confirmatory proofs 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 
 
 of his guilt, outside the story I had related to 
 the superintendent, were found upon his person, 
 for the demon, probably forgetting in his time 
 of peril that he had pocketed my watch and 
 chain, my ring, and my money, had omitted 
 to conceal them or fling them away when the 
 police-boat showed herself round the corner. 
 
 But this was not all ; two visitors had lost 
 their lives within a year. The body of one 
 only was recovered, and this was the poor 
 fellow whose remains I had stumbled upon 
 during my lonely moonlight walk along the 
 sands. It was believed that both these men 
 had perished whilst bathing from a boat, and 
 the coroner, during the inquest held upon the 
 body that had been recovered, had commented 
 somewhat significantly upon the circumstance 
 of both these disasters having occurred from 
 the same boat, in charge of the same man. 
 
 And now, whilst I had lain unconscious, the 
 police had searched the little house, or room, 
 
A MEMORABLE SWIM. 97 
 
 occupied by the boatman named Gipsy Bill, and 
 there they had discovered a gold pencil-case and 
 a pair of gold pince-nez glasses and a watch- 
 chain, of which articles the two former were 
 claimed as belonging to the man who had been 
 drowned in the previous year, whilst the watch- 
 chain was sworn to by the widow of the gentle- 
 man whose body I had discovered, the poor 
 lady happening to be in the town whilst I lay 
 unconscious. The upshot of it was that Gripsy 
 Bill was sentenced to penal servitude for life. 
 That he was guilty of two murders was certain, 
 and therefore he ought to have been hanged. 
 Nevertheless, the circumstantial evidence did 
 not seem sufficiently strong to admit of the 
 death penalty, for it could not certainly be 
 proved that the fiend, when his victims had 
 plunged overboard, had quietly continued to 
 row, leaving the unhappy men to sink with 
 exhaustion in his wake. It could not certainly 
 be proved that the poor fellows had not been 
 
 H 
 
98 A MEMORABLE SWIM. 
 
 seized with cramp and suddenly sunk ; but, all 
 the same, no one who heard the story ever 
 doubted that this demon of a gipsy boatman 
 had left them to perish, or, as he had at- 
 tempted in my case, had hastened their end by 
 a blow with his oar. 
 
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 
 
 BY THOMAS HARDY. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE interior of St. James's 
 Church, in Haven pool Town, 
 was slowly darkening under 
 the close clouds of a winter 
 afternoon. It was Sunday : 
 service had just ended, the 
 face of the parson in the 
 pulpit was buried in his 
 hands, and the congregation, with a cheerful 
 sigh of release, were rising from their knees to 
 depart. 
 
 For the moment the stillness was so complete 
 
 THOMAS HAKDY. 
 
ioo TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 
 
 that the surging of the sea could be heard 
 outside the harbour-bar. Then it was broken 
 by the footsteps of the clerk going towards 
 the west door to open it in the usual manner 
 for the exit of the assembly. Before, however, 
 he had reached the doorway, the latch was 
 lifted from without, and the dark figure of 
 a man in a sailor's garb appeared against 
 the light. 
 
 The clerk stepped aside, the sailor closed 
 the door gently behind him, and advanced 
 up the nave till he stood at the chancel step. 
 The parson looked up from the private little 
 prayer which, after so many for the parish, 
 he quite fairly took for himself, rose to his 
 feet, and stared at the intruder. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, sir," said the sailor, 
 addressing the minister in a voice distinctly 
 audible to all the congregation. "I have 
 come here to offer thanks for my narrow 
 escape from shipwreck. I am given to 
 
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 101 
 
 understand that it is a proper thing to do, 
 if you have no objection ? " 
 
 The parson, after a moment's pause, said 
 hesitatingly, "I have no objection; certainly. 
 It is usual to mention any such wish before 
 service, so that the proper words may be 
 used in the General Thanksgiving. But, if 
 you wish, we can read from the form for 
 use after a storm at sea." 
 
 " Ay, sure ; I ain't particular," said the sailor. 
 
 The clerk thereupon directed the sailor to 
 the page in the Prayer-book where the collect 
 of thanksgiving would be found, and the 
 rector began reading it, the sailor kneeling 
 where he stood, and repeating it after him 
 word by word in a distinct voice. The people, 
 who had remained agape and motionless at 
 the proceeding, mechanically knelt down like- 
 wise ; but they continued to regard the isolated 
 form of the sailor who, in the precise middle 
 of the chancel step, remained fixed on his 
 
102 TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 
 
 knees, facing the east, his hat beside him, 
 his hands joined, and he quite unconscious of 
 his appearance in their regard. 
 
 When his thanksgiving had come to an 
 end, he arose ; the people arose also, and all 
 went out of church together. As soon as 
 the sailor emerged, so that the remaining 
 daylight fell upon his face, old inhabitants 
 began to recognize him as no other than 
 Shadrach Jolliffe, a young man who had not 
 been seen at Havenpool for several years. A 
 son of the town, his parents had died when 
 he was quite young, on which account he 
 had early gone to sea, in the Newfoundland 
 trade. 
 
 He talked with this and that townsman as 
 he walked, informing them that, since leaving 
 his native place years before, he had become 
 captain and owner of a small coasting-ketch, 
 which had providentially been saved from the 
 gale as well as himself. Presently he drew 
 
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 103 
 
 near to two girls who were going out of the 
 churchyard in front of him ; they had been 
 sitting in the nave at his entry, and had 
 watched his doings with deep interest, after- 
 wards discussing him as they moved out of 
 church together. One was a slight and 
 gentle creature, the other a tall, large-framed, 
 deliberative girl. Captain Jolliffe regarded the 
 loose curls of their hair, their backs and 
 shoulders, down to their heels, for some time. 
 
 " Who may those two maids be ? " he 
 whispered to his neighbour. 
 
 " The little one is Emily Hannirig ; the tall 
 one Joanna Phippard." 
 
 " Ah ! I recollect 'em now, to be sure." 
 
 He advanced to their elbow, and genially 
 stole a gaze at them. 
 
 " Emily, you don't know me ? " said the 
 sailor, turning his beaming brown eyes on her. 
 
 "I think I do, Mr. Jolliffe," said Emily, 
 shyly. 
 
104 
 
 TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 
 
 The other girl looked stra : ght at him with 
 her dark eyes. 
 
 " The face of Miss Joanna I don't call to 
 
 -.. 
 
 ^ v - .-,-;.. r^?/" --fv--' -v^' : ~ _ ' *" 
 
 " HE ADVANCED TO THEIR ELBOW, GENIALLY STOLE A GAZE AT THEM? 
 AND SAID, 'EMILY, YOU DON'T KNOW ME?'" 
 
 mind so well," he continued. " But I know 
 her beginnings and kindred." 
 
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 105 
 
 They walked and talked together, Jolliffe 
 narrating particulars of his late narrow escape, 
 till they reached the corner of Sloop Lane, in 
 which Emily Banning dwelt, when, with a 
 nod and smile, she left them. Soon the sailor 
 parted also from Joanna, and, having no especial 
 errand or appointment, turned back towards 
 Emily's house. She lived with her father, 
 who called himself an accountant, the daughter, 
 however, keeping a little stationery shop as 
 a supplemental provision for the gaps of 
 his somewhat uncertain business. On entering 
 Jolliffe found father and daughter about to 
 begin tea. 
 
 " Oh, I didn't know it was teatime," he said. 
 " Ay, III have a cup with much pleasure." 
 
 He remained to tea and long afterwards, 
 telling more tales of his seafaring life. Several 
 neighbours called to listen, and were asked 
 to come in. Somehow Emily Banning lost 
 her heart to the sailor that Sunday night, 
 
106 TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 
 
 and in the course of a week or two there was 
 a tender understanding between them. 
 
 One moonlight evening in the next month 
 Shadrach was ascending out of the town by 
 the long straight road eastward, to an elevated 
 suburb where the more fashionable houses 
 stood if anything near this ancient port could 
 be called fashionable when he saw a figure 
 before him whom, from her manner of glancing 
 back, he took to be Emily. But, on coming 
 up, he found she was Joanna Phippard. He 
 gave a gallant greeting, and walked beside her. 
 
 " Go along," she said, " or Emily will be 
 jealous ! " 
 
 He seemed not to like the suggestion, and 
 remained. 
 
 What was said and what was done on that 
 walk never could be clearly recollected by 
 Shadrach ; but in some way or other Joanna 
 contrived to wean him away from her gentler 
 and younger rival. From that week onwards, 
 
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 107 
 
 Jolliffe was seen more and more in the wake 
 of Joanna Phippard and less in the company 
 of Emily ; and it was soon rumoured about 
 the quay that old Jolliffe's son, who had come 
 home from sea, was going to be married to 
 the former young woman, to the great disap- 
 pointment of the latter. 
 
 Just after this report had gone about, Joanna 
 dressed herself for a walk one morning, and 
 started for Emily's house in the little cross 
 street. Intelligence of the deep sorrow of her 
 friend on account of the loss of Shadrach 
 had reached her ears also, and her conscience 
 reproached her for winning him away. 
 
 Joanna was not altogether satisfied with the 
 sailor. She liked his attentions, and she 
 coveted the dignity of matrimony ; but she 
 had never been deeply in love with Jolliffe. 
 For one thing, she was ambitious, and socially 
 his position was hardly so good as her own, 
 while there was always the chance of an 
 
io8 TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 
 
 attractive woman mating considerably above 
 her. It had long been in her mind that she 
 would not strongly object to give him back 
 again to Emily if her friend felt so very badly 
 about him. To this end she had penned a 
 letter of renunciation to Shadrach, which 
 letter she carried in her hand, intending to 
 post it if personal observation of Emily con- 
 vinced her that her friend was suffering. 
 
 Joanna entered Sloop Lane and stepped down 
 into the stationery shop, which was below 
 the pavement level. Emily's father was never 
 at home at this hour of the day, and it seemed 
 as though Emily was not at home either, for 
 the visitor could make nobody hear. Customers 
 came so seldom hither that a five minutes' 
 absence of the proprietor counted for little. 
 Joanna waited in the little shop, where Emily 
 had tastefully set out as women can articles 
 in themselves of slight value, so as to obscure 
 the meagreness of the stock-in-trade ; till she 
 
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 109 
 
 saw a figure pausing without the window 
 apparently absorbed in the contemplation of 
 the sixpenny books, packets of paper, and 
 prints hung on a string. It was Captain 
 Shadrach Jolliffe, peering in to ascertain if 
 Emily was there alone. Moved by an impulse 
 of reluctance to meet him in a spot which 
 breathed of Emily, she slipped through the 
 door that communicated with the parlour at 
 the back. Joanna had frequently done so 
 before, for in her friendship with Emily she 
 had the freedom of the house without cere- 
 mony. 
 
 Jolliffe entered the shop. Through the thin 
 blind which screened the glass partition she 
 could see that he was disappointed at not 
 finding Emily there. He was about to go out 
 again, when her form darkened the doorway, 
 hastening back from some errand. At sight 
 of Jolliffe she started back as if she would 
 have gone out again. 
 
no TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 
 
 " Don't run away, Emily ; don't ! " said he. 
 " What can make ye afraid ? " 
 
 "I'm not afraid, Captain Jolliffe. Only 
 only I saw you all of a sudden, and it made 
 me jump." Her voice showed that her heart 
 had jumped even more than the rest of her. 
 
 " I just called as I was passing," he said. 
 
 "For some paper?" She hastened behind 
 the counter. 
 
 " No, no, Emily. Why do ye get behind 
 there ? Why not stay by me ? You seem to 
 hate me." 
 
 " I don't hate you. How can I ? " 
 
 "Then come out, so that we can talk like 
 Christians." 
 
 Emily obeyed with a fitful laugh, till she 
 stood again beside him in the open part of the 
 shop. 
 
 " There's a dear," he said. 
 
 " You mustn't say that, Captain Jolliffe ; 
 because the words belong to somebody else." 
 
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. in 
 
 u Ah ! I know what you mean. But, Emily, 
 upon my life I didn't know till this morning 
 that you cared one bit about me, or I should 
 not have done as I have done. I have the best 
 of feelings for Joanna, but I know that from 
 the beginning she hasn't cared for me more 
 than in a friendly way ; and I see now the one 
 I ought to have asked to be my wife. You 
 know, Emily, when a man comes home from 
 sea after a long voyage he's as blind as a bat 
 he can't see who's who in women. They are 
 all alike to him, beautiful creatures, and he 
 takes the first that comes easy, without 
 thinking if she loves him, or if he might not 
 soon love another better than her. From the 
 first I inclined to you most, but you were so 
 backward and shy that I thought you didn't 
 want me to bother *ee, and so I went to 
 Joanna." 
 
 " Don't say any more, Mr. Jolliffe, don't ! " 
 said she, choking. " You are going to marry 
 
ii2 TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 
 
 Joanna next month, and it is wrong to 
 to " 
 
 " Oh, Ernily, my darling ! " he cried, and 
 clasped her little figure in his arms before she 
 was aware. 
 
 Joanna, behind the curtain, turned pale, 
 tried to withdraw her eyes, but could not. 
 
 " It is only you I love as a man ought to 
 love the woman he is going to marry ; and I 
 know this from what Joanna has said, that she 
 will willingly let me off. She wants to marry 
 higher, I know, and only said ' Yes ' to me out 
 of kindness. A fine, tall girl like her isn't the 
 sort for a plain sailor's wife ; you be the best 
 suited for that." 
 
 He kissed her and kissed her again, her 
 flexible form quivering in the agitation of his 
 embrace. 
 
 " I wonder are you sure Joanna is going 
 to break off with you ? Oh, are you sure ? 
 Because " 
 
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 113 
 
 " I know she would not wish to make us 
 miserable. She will release me." 
 
 "Oh, I hope I hope she will! Don't stay 
 any longer, Captain Jolliffe ! " 
 
 He lingered, however, till a customer came 
 for a penny stick of sealing-wax, and then he 
 withdrew. 
 
 Green envy had overspread Joanna at the 
 scene. She looked about for a way of escape. 
 To get out without Emily's knowledge of her 
 visit was indispensable. She crept from the 
 parlour into the passage, and thence to the 
 front door of the house, where she let herself 
 noiselessly into the street. 
 
 The sight of that caress had reversed all* her 
 resolutions. She could not let Shadrach go. 
 Reaching home, she burnt the letter, and told 
 her mother that if Captain Jolliffe called she 
 was too unwell to see him. 
 
 Shadrach, however, did not call. He sent 
 her a note expressing in simple language the 
 
 I 
 
U4 TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 
 
 state of his feelings, and asking to be allowed 
 to take advantage of the hints she had given 
 him that her affection, too, was little more than 
 friendly, by cancelling the engagement. 
 
 Looking out upon the harbour and the island 
 beyond he waited and waited in his lodgings 
 for an answer that did not come. The suspense 
 grew to be so intolerable that after dark he 
 went up the High Street. He could not resist 
 calling at Joanna's to learn his fate. 
 
 Her mother said her daughter was too unwell 
 to see him, and to his questioning admitted that 
 it was in consequence of a letter received from 
 himself, which had distressed her deeply. 
 
 " You know what it was about, perhaps, 
 Mrs. Phippard ? " he said. 
 
 Mrs. Phippard owned that she did, adding 
 that it put them in a very painful position. 
 Thereupon Shadrach, fearing that he had been 
 guilty of an enormity, explained that if his 
 letter had pained Joanna it must be owing to 
 
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 115 
 
 a misunderstanding, since he had thought it 
 would be a relief to her. If otherwise, he 
 would hold himself bound by his word, and 
 she was to think of the letter as never having 
 been written. 
 
 Next morning he received an oral message 
 from the young woman, asking him to fetch 
 her home from a meeting that evening. This 
 he did, and while walking from the Town Hall 
 to her door, with her hand in his arm, she 
 said 
 
 ." It is all the same as before between us, 
 isn't it, Shadrach ? Your letter was sent in 
 mistake ? " 
 
 " It is all the same as before," he answered, 
 " if you say it must be." 
 
 " I wish it to be," she murmured, with hard 
 lineaments, as she thought of Emily. 
 
 Shadrach was a religious and scrupulous man, 
 who respected his word as his life. Shortly 
 afterwards the wedding took place, Jolliffe 
 
1 1-6 TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 
 
 having onveyed to Emily as gently as possible 
 the error he had fallen into when estimating 
 Joanna's mood as one of indifference. 
 
 II. 
 
 A MONTH after the marriage Joanna's mother 
 died, and the couple were obliged to turn their 
 attention to very practical matters. Now that 
 she was left without a parent, Joanna could 
 not bear the notion of her husband going to 
 sea again, but the question was, What could 
 he do at home ? They finally decided to take 
 on a grocer's shop in High Street, the goodwill 
 and stock of which were waiting to be disposed 
 of at that time. Shadrach knew nothing of 
 shopkeeping, and Joanna very little, but they 
 hoped to learn. 
 
 To the management of this grocery business 
 they now devoted all their energies, and con- 
 tinued to conduct it for many succeeding years, 
 
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 117 
 
 without great success. Two sons were born 
 to them, whom their mother loved to idolatry, 
 although she had never passionately loved 
 her husband ; and she lavished upon them all 
 her forethought and care. But the shop did 
 not thrive, and the large dreams she had 
 entertained of her sons' education and career 
 became attenuated in the face of realities. 
 Their schooling was of the plainest, but, being 
 by the sea, they grew alert in all such nautical 
 arts and enterprises as were attractive to their 
 age. 
 
 The great interest of the Jolliffes' married 
 life, outside their own immediate household, 
 had lain in the marriage of Emily. By on*3 
 of those odd chances which lead those that lurk 
 in unexpected corners to be discovered while 
 the obvious are passed by, the gentle girl had 
 been seen and loved by a thriving merchant 
 of the town, a widower, some years older than 
 herself, though still in the prime of life. At 
 
ii8 TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 
 
 first Emily had declared that she never, never 
 could marry any one ; but Mr. Lester had 
 quietly persevered, and had at last won her 
 reluctant assent. Two children also were the 
 fruits of this union, and, as they grew and 
 prospered, Emily declared that she had never 
 supposed she could live to be so happy. 
 
 The worthy merchant's home, one of those 
 large, substantial brick mansions frequently 
 jammed up in old-fashioned towns, faced directly 
 on the High Street, nearly opposite to the 
 grocery shop of the Jolliffes, and it now became 
 the pain of Joanna to behold the woman, whose 
 place she had usurped out of pure covetousness, 
 looking down from her position of comparative 
 wealth upon the humble shop-window with its 
 dusty sugar-loaves, heaps of raisins, and 
 canisters of tea, over which it was her own lot 
 to preside. The business having so dwindled, 
 Joanna was obliged to serve in the shop herself, 
 and it galled and mortified her that Emily 
 
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 119 
 
 Lester, sitting in her large drawing-room 
 over the way, could witness her own dancings 
 up and down behind the counter at the beck 
 and call of wretched twopenny customers, 
 whose patronage she was driven to welcome 
 gladly : persons to whom she was compelled 
 to be civil in the street, while Emily was 
 bounding along with her children and her 
 governess, and conversing with the genteelest 
 people of the town and neighbourhood. This 
 was what she had gained by not letting Shad- 
 rach Jolliffe, whom she had so faintly loved, 
 carry his affection elsewhere. 
 
 Shadrach was a good and honest man, and 
 he had been faithful to her in heart and in 
 deed. Time had clipped the wings of his love 
 for Emily in his devotion to the mother of his 
 boys : he had quite lived down that impulsive 
 earlier fancy, and Emily had become in his 
 regard nothing more than a friend. It was 
 the same with Emily's feelings for him. 
 
120 TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 
 
 Possibly, had she found the least cause for 
 jealousy, Joanna would almost have been better 
 satisfied. It was in the absolute acquiescence 
 of Emily and Shadrach in the results she her- 
 self had contrived that her discontent found 
 nourishment. 
 
 Shadrach was not endowed with the narrow 
 shrewdness necessary for developing a retail 
 business in the face of many competitors. Did 
 a customer inquire if the grocer could really 
 recommend the wondrous substitute for eggs 
 which a persevering bagman had forced into 
 his stock, he would answer that " when you did 
 not put eggs into a pudding it was difficult 
 to taste them there ; " and when he was asked 
 if his " real Mocha coffee " was real Mocha, 
 he would say grimly, u as understood in small 
 shops." 
 
 One summer day, when the big brick house 
 opposite was reflecting the oppressive sun's 
 heat into the shop, and nobody was present 
 
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 121 
 
 but husband and wife, Joanna looked across 
 at Emily's door, where a carriage had drawn 
 up. Traces of patronage had been visible in 
 Emily's manner of late. 
 
 " Shadrach, the truth is, you are not a 
 business man," his wife sadly murmured. 
 " You were not brought up to shopkeeping, 
 and it is impossible for a man to make a 
 fortune at an occupation he has jumped into, 
 as you did into this." 
 
 Jolliffe agreed with her, in this as in every- 
 thing else. " Not that I care a rope's end about 
 making a fortune," he said cheerfully. " I am 
 happy enough, and we can rub on somehow." 
 
 She looked again at the great house through 
 the screen of bottled pickles. 
 
 " Rub on yes," she said bitterly. " But 
 see how well off Emmy Lester is, who used to 
 be so poor ! Her boys will go to college, no 
 doubt ; and think of yours obliged to go 
 to the National School ! " 
 
122 TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 
 
 Shadrach's thoughts had flown to Emily. 
 
 " Nobody," he said, good -hum ouredly, " ever 
 did Emily a better turn than you did, Joanna, 
 when you warned her off me and put an end 
 to that little simpering nonsense between us, 
 so as to leave it in her power to say : ' Aye ' 
 to Lester when he came along." 
 
 This almost maddened her. 
 
 " Don't speak of bygones ! " she implored, in 
 stern sadness. " But think, for the boys' and 
 my sake, if not for your own, what are we to 
 do to get richer ? " 
 
 " Well," he said, becoming serious, " to tell 
 the truth, I have always felt myself unfit for 
 this business, though I've never liked to say 
 so. I seem to want more room for sprawling ; 
 a more open space to strike out in than here 
 among friends and neighbours. I could get 
 rich as well as any man, if I tried my own 
 way." 
 
 " I wish you would ! What is your way ? " 
 
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 123 
 
 " To go to sea again." 
 
 She had been the very one to keep him at 
 home, hating the semi-widowed existence of 
 sailors' wives. But her ambition checked her 
 instincts now, and she said 
 
 "Do you think success really lies that 
 way ? " 
 
 " I am sure it lies in no other." 
 " Do you want to go, Shadrach ? " 
 " Not for the pleasure of it, I can tell 'ee. 
 There's no such pleasure at sea, Joanna, as I 
 can find in my back parlour here. To speak 
 honest, I have no love for the brine. I never 
 had much. But if it comes to a question of a 
 fortune for you and the lads, it is another 
 thing. That's the only way to it for one born 
 and bred a seafarer as I." 
 
 " Would it take long to earn ? " 
 "Well, that depends ; perhaps not." 
 The next morning Shadrach pulled from a 
 chest of drawers the nautical jacket he had 
 
124 TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 
 
 worn during the first months of his return, 
 brushed out the moths, donned it, and walked 
 down to the quay. The port still did a fair 
 business in the Newfoundland trade, though 
 not so much as formerly. 
 
 It was not long after this that he invested all 
 he possessed in purchasing a part-ownership in 
 a brig, of which he was appointed captain. 
 A few months were passed in coast-trading, 
 during which interval Shadrach wore off the 
 land-rust that had accumulated upon him in 
 his grocery phase; and in the spring the brig 
 sailed for Newfoundland. 
 
 Joanna lived on at home with her sons, who 
 were now growing up into strong lads, and 
 occupying themselves in various ways about 
 the harbour and quay. 
 
 " Never mind, let them work a little," their 
 fond mother said to herself. " Our necessities 
 compel it now, but when Shadrach comes home 
 they will be only seventeen and eighteen, and 
 
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 125 
 
 they shall be removed from the port, and their 
 education thoroughly taken in hand by a tutor; 
 and with the money they'll have they will per- 
 haps be as near to gentlemen as Emmy Lester's 
 precious two, with their algebra and their Latin." 
 
 The date for Shadrach's return drew near 
 and arrived, and he did not appear. Joanna 
 was assured that there was no cause for 
 anxiety, sailing-ships being so uncertain in 
 their coming ; which assurance proved to be 
 well-grounded, for late one wet evening, about 
 a month after the calculated time, the ship was 
 announced as at hand, and presently the slip- 
 slop step of Shadrach as the sailor sounded in 
 the passage, and he entered. The boys had 
 gone out and had missed him, and Joanna was 
 sitting alone. 
 
 As soon as the first emotion of reunion 
 between the couple had passed, Jolliffe explained 
 the delay as owing to a small speculative 
 contract, which had produced good results. 
 
126 TO 'PLEASE HIS WIFE. 
 
 fi I was determined not to disappoint 'ee/' 
 lie said ; " and I think you'll own that I 
 haven't." 
 
 With this he pulled out an enormous canvas 
 bag, full and rotund as the money-bag of the 
 giant whom Jack slew, untied it, and shook the 
 contents out into her lap as she sat in her low 
 chair by the fire. A mass of guineas (there 
 were guineas on the earth in those days) fell 
 into her lap with a sudden thud, weighing 
 down her gown to the floor. 
 
 " There ! " said Shadrach, complacently. " I 
 told 'ee, dear, I'd do it ; and have I done it or 
 
 r> )5 
 
 no ? 
 
 Somehow her face, after the first excitement 
 of possession, did not retain its glory. 
 
 " It is a lot of gold, indeed," she said. 4< And 
 is this all?" 
 
 " All ? Why, dear Joanna, do you know you 
 can count to three hundred in that heap ? It is 
 a fortune ! " 
 
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 127 
 
 "Yes yes. A fortune judged by sea; but 
 judged by land " 
 
 However, she banished considerations of the 
 money for the nonce. Soon the boys came in, 
 and next Sunday Shadrach returned thanks 
 this time by the more ordinary channel of the 
 italics in the General Thanksgiving. But a 
 few days after, when the question of investing 
 the money arose, he remarked that she did not 
 seem so satisfied as he had hoped. 
 
 " Well, you see, Shadrach," she answered, 
 " we count by hundreds ; they count by 
 thousands " (nodding towards the other side of 
 the street). " They have set up a carriage and 
 pair since you left." 
 
 " Oh ! have they ? " 
 
 " My dear Shadrach, you don't know how the 
 world moves. However, we'll do the befat we 
 can with it. But they are rich, and we are 
 poor still." 
 
 The greater part of a year was desultorily 
 
128 TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 
 
 spent. She moved sadly about the house and 
 shop, and the boys were still occupying 
 themselves in and around the harbour. 
 
 " Joanna," he said, one day, " I see by your 
 movements that it is not enough." 
 
 " It is not enough," said she. *' My boys 
 will have to live by steering the ships that the 
 Lester s own, and I was once above her ! " 
 
 Jolliffe was not an argumentative man, and 
 he only murmured that he thought he would 
 take another voyage. He meditated for several 
 days, and coming home from the quay one 
 afternoon, said suddenly 
 
 " I could do it for 'ee, dear, in one more trip, 
 for certain, if if " 
 
 " Do what, Shadrach ? " 
 
 "Enable 'ee to count by thousands instead of 
 hundreds." 
 
 "If what?" 
 
 " If I might take the boys." 
 
 She turned pale. 
 
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 129 
 
 " Don't say that, Shadrach," she answered 
 hastily. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 44 1 don't like to hear it. There's danger at 
 sea. I want them to be something genteel, 
 and no danger to them. I couldn't let them 
 risk their lives at sea. Oh, I couldn't ever, 
 ever ! " 
 
 u Very well, dear, it shan't be done." 
 
 Next day, after "a silence, she asked a 
 question 
 
 " If they were to go with you it would make 
 a great deal of difference, I suppose, to the 
 profit ? " 
 
 " 'T would treble what I should get from the 
 venture single-handed. Under my eye they 
 would be as good as two more of myself." 
 
 Later on she said, " Tell me more about 
 this ? " 
 
 "Well, the boys are almost as clever as 
 master-mariners in handling a craft, upon my 
 
 E 
 
130 TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 
 
 life. There isn't a more cranky place in the 
 South Seas than about the sandbanks of this 
 harbour, and they've practised here from their 
 infancy. And they are so steady. I couldn't 
 get their steadiness and their trustworthiness 
 in half a dozen men twice their age." 
 
 " And is it very dangerous at sea ; now, too., 
 there are rumours of war ? " she asked un- 
 easily. 
 
 " Oh, well, there be risks. Still " 
 
 The idea grew and magnified, and the 
 mother's heart was crushed and stifled by it. 
 Emmy was growing too patronizing ; it could 
 not be borne. Shadrach's wife could not help 
 nagging him about their comparative poverty. 
 The young men, amiable as their father, when 
 spoken to on the subject of a voyage of enter- 
 prise, were quite willing to embark ; and though 
 they, like their father, had no great love for 
 the sea, they became quite enthusiastic when 
 the proposal was detailed. 
 
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 131 
 
 Everything now hung upon their mother's 
 assent. She withheld it long, but at last gave 
 the word : the young men might accompany 
 their father. Shadrach was unusually cheerful 
 about it : Heaven had preserved him hitherto, 
 and he had uttered his thanks. God would not 
 forsake those who were faithful to Him. 
 
 All that the JolliiFes possessed in the world 
 was put into the enterprise. The grocery stock 
 was pared down to the least that possibly could 
 afford a bare sustenance to Joanna during the 
 absence, which was to last through the usual 
 Newf'nland spell." How she would endure 
 the weary time she hardly knew, for the boys 
 had been with her formerly ; but she nerved 
 herself for the trial. 
 
 The ship was laden with boots and shoes, 
 ready-made clothing, fishing-tackle, butter, 
 cheese, cordage, sailcloth, and many other com- 
 modities ; and was to bring back oil, furs, 
 skins, fish, cranberries, and what else came to 
 
132 TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 
 
 hand. But much trading to other ports was to 
 be undertaken between the voyages out and 
 homeward, and thereby much money made. 
 
 III. 
 
 THE brig sailed on a Monday morning in 
 spring ; but Joanna did not witness its de- 
 parture. She could not bear the sight that she 
 had been the means of bringing about. Know- 
 ing this, her husband told her overnight that 
 they were to sail some time before noon next 
 day ; hence when, awakening at five the next 
 morning, she heard them bustling about down- 
 stairs, she did not hasten to descend, but lay try- 
 ing to nerve herself for the parting, imagining 
 they would leave about nine, as her husband 
 had done on his previous voyage. When 
 she did descend she beheld words chalked 
 upon the sloping face of the bureau ; but no 
 
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 133 
 
 husband or sons. In the hastily scrawled lines 
 Shadrach said they had gone off thus not to 
 pain her by a leave-taking ; and the sons had 
 chalked under, " Good-bye, mother." 
 
 She rushed to the quay, and looked down the 
 harbour towards the blue rim of the sea, but 
 she could only see the masts and bulging sails 
 of the Joanna ; no human figures. " 'Tis I 
 have sent them ! " she said wildly, and burst 
 into tears. In the house the chalked Good- 
 byes nearly broke her heart. But when she 
 had re-entered the front room, and looked 
 across at Emily's, a gleam of triumph lit her 
 thin face at her anticipated release from the 
 thraldom of subservience. 
 
 To do Emily Lester justice, her assumption 
 of superiority was mainly a figment of Joanna's 
 brain. That the circumstances of the mer- 
 chant's wife were more luxurious than Joanna's, 
 the former could not conceal ; though when- 
 ever the two met, which was not very often 
 
134 TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 
 
 now, Emily endeavoured to subdue the differ- 
 ence by every means in her power. 
 
 The first summer lapsed away ; and Joanna 
 meagrely maintained herself by the shop, which 
 now consisted of little more than a window 
 and a counter. Emily was, in truth, her only 
 large customer ; and Mrs. Lester's kindly readi- 
 ness to buy anything and everything without 
 questioning the quality had a sting of bitter- 
 ness in it, for it was the uncritical attitude of 
 a patron, and almost of a donor. The long 
 dreary winter moved on ; the face of the bureau 
 had been turned to the wall to protect the 
 chalked words of farewell, for she could never 
 bring herself to rub them out ; and she often 
 glanced at them with wet eyes. Emily's hand- 
 some boys came home for the Christmas holi- 
 days ; and still Joanna subsisted as it were with 
 held breath, like a person submerged. Only 
 one summer more, and the spell would end. 
 Towards the end of the time Emily called on 
 
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 135 
 
 her quondam friend. She had heard that 
 Joanna began to feel anxious ; she had received 
 no letter from husband or sons for some months. 
 Emily's silks rustled arrogantly when, in re- 
 sponse to Joanna's almost dumb invitation, she 
 squeezed through the opening of the counter 
 and into the parlour behind the shop. 
 
 " You are all success, and I am all the other 
 way ! " said Joanna. 
 
 "But why do you think so?" said Emily. 
 " They are to bring back a fortune, I hear." 
 
 " Ah, will they come ? The doubt is more 
 than a woman can bear. All three in one 
 ship think of that ! And I have not heard 
 of them for months ! " 
 
 "But the time is not up. You should not 
 meet misfortune half-way." 
 
 "Nothing will repay me for the grief of 
 their absence ! " 
 
 " Then why did you let them go ? You 
 were doing fairly well." 
 
136 TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 
 
 " I made them go 1 " she said, turning vehe- 
 mently upon Emily. " And I'll tell you why ! 
 I could not bear that we should be only 
 muddling on, and you so rich and thriving. 
 Now I have told you, and you may hate me 
 if you will ! " 
 
 " I shall never hate you, Joanna." 
 
 And she proved the truth of her words after- 
 wards. The end of the autumn came, and the 
 brig should have been in port; but nothing 
 like the Joanna appeared in the channel between 
 the sands. It was now really time to be uneasy. 
 Joanna Jolliffe sat by the fire, and every gust 
 of wind caused her a cold thrill. She had 
 always feared and detested the sea ; to her it 
 was a treacherous, restless, slimy creature, 
 glorying in the griefs of women. " Still," she 
 said, " they must come ! " 
 
 She recalled to her mind that Shadrach had 
 said before starting that if they returned safe 
 and sound, with success crowning their enter- 
 
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 13? 
 
 prise, he would go as he had gone after his 
 shipwreck, and kneel with his sons in the 
 church, and offer sincere thanks for their de- 
 liverance. She went to church regularly 
 morning and afternoon, and sat in the most 
 forward pew, nearest the chancel-step. Her 
 eyes were mostly fixed on that step, where 
 Shadrach had knelt in the bloom of his young 
 manhood : she knew to an inch the spot which 
 his knees had pressed twenty winters before ; 
 his outline as he had knelt, his hat on the 
 step beside him. God was good. Surely her 
 husband must kneel there again : a son on each 
 side as he had said ; George just here, Jim just 
 there. By long watching the spot as she 
 worshipped, it became as if she saw the three 
 returned ones there kneeling; the two slim 
 outlines of her boys, the more bulky form 
 between them ; their hands clasped, their heads 
 shaped against the eastern wall. The fancy 
 grew almost to an hallucination ; she could 
 
138 TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 
 
 never turn her worn eyes to the step without 
 seeing them there. 
 
 Nevertheless they did not come. Heaven 
 was merciful, but it was not yet pleased to 
 relieve her soul. This was her purgation for 
 the sin of making them the slaves of her 
 ambition. But it became more than purgation 
 soon, and her mood approached despair. Months 
 had passed since the brig had been due, but it 
 had not returned. 
 
 Joanna was always hearing or seeing evi- 
 dences of their arrival. When on the hill 
 behind the port, whence a view of the open 
 Channel could be obtained, she felt sure that a 
 little speck on the horizon, breaking the eter- 
 nally level waste of waters southward, was the 
 truck of the Joannas mainmast. Or when 
 indoors, a shout or excitement of any kind at 
 the corner of the Town Cellar, where the High 
 Street joined the Quay, caused her to spring 
 to her feet and cry : " 'Tis they ! " 
 
WHEN ON THE HILL BEHIND THE PORT, "WHENCE A VIEW OP THE CHANNEL 
 COULD BE OBTAINED, SHE TELT SURE THAT A LITTLE SPECK ON THE 
 HORIZON WAS THE TRUCK OF THE JOANNA'S MAINMAST." 
 
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 141 
 
 But it was not. The visionary forms knelt 
 every Sunday afternoon on the chancel step, 
 but not the real. Her shop had, as it were, 
 eaten itself hollow. In the apathy which had 
 resulted from her loneliness and grief she had 
 ceased to take in the smallest supplies, and thus 
 had sent away her last customer. 
 
 In this strait Emily Lester tried by every 
 means in her power to aid the afflicted woman ; 
 but she met with constant repulses. 
 
 " I don't like you ! I can't bear to see you ! " 
 Joanna would whisper hoarsely when Emily 
 came to her and made advances. 
 
 " But I want to help and soothe you, Joanna," 
 Emily would say. 
 
 " You are a lady, with a rich husband and 
 fine sons. What can you want with a bereaved 
 crone like me ? " 
 
 " Joanna, I want this : I want you to come 
 and live in my house, and not stay alone in 
 this dismal place any longer." 
 
142 TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 
 
 " And suppose they come and don't find me 
 at home ? You wish to separate me and mine ! 
 No, I'll stay here. I don't like you, and I 
 can't thank you, whatever kindness you do 
 
 me." 
 
 However, as time went on, Joanna could not 
 afford to pay the rent of the shop and house 
 without an income. She was assured that all 
 hope of the return of Shadrach and his sons 
 was vain, and she reluctantly consented to 
 accept the asylum of the Lesters' house. Here 
 she was allotted a room of her own on the 
 second floor, and went and came as she chose, 
 without contact with the family. Her hair 
 greyed and whitened, deep lines channelled her 
 forehead, and her form grew gaunt and stoop- 
 ing. But she still expected the lost ones, and 
 when she met Emily on the staircase she would 
 say morosely, " I know why you've got me 
 here ! They'll come, and be disappointed at not 
 finding me at home, and perhaps go away 
 
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 143 
 
 again; and then you'll be revenged for my 
 taking Shadrach away from 'ee." 
 
 Emily Lester bore these reproaches from the 
 grief-stricken soul. She was sure all the 
 people of Havenpool were sure that Shadrach 
 and his sons could not return. For years the 
 vessel had been given up as lost. Nevertheless, 
 when awakened at night by any noise, Joanna 
 would rise from bed and glance at the shop 
 opposite by the light from the flickering lamp, 
 to make sure it was not they. 
 
 It was a damp and dark December night, six 
 years after the departure of the brig Joanna. 
 The wind was from the sea, and brought up 
 a fishy mist which mopped the face like moist 
 flannel. Joanna had prayed her usual prayer 
 for the absent ones with more fervour and con- 
 fidence than she had felt for months, and had 
 fallen asleep about eleven. It must have been 
 between one and two when she suddenly started 
 up. She had certainly heard steps in the 
 
144 TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 
 
 street, and the voices of Shadrach and her sons 
 calling at the door of the grocery shop. She 
 sprang out of bed, and, hardly knowing what 
 clothing she dragged on herself, hastened down 
 Emily's large and carpeted staircase, put the 
 candle on the hall-table, unfastened the bolts 
 and chain, and stepped into the street. The 
 mist, blowing up the street from the Quay, 
 hindered her seeing the shop, although it was 
 so near ; but she had crossed to it in a moment. 
 How was it ? Nobody stood there. The 
 wretched woman walked wildly up and down 
 with her bare feet there was not a soul. She 
 returned and knocked with all her might at the 
 door which had once been her own they might 
 have been admitted for the night, unwilling to 
 disturb her till the morning. It was not till 
 several minutes had elapsed that the young 
 man who now kept the shop looked out of an 
 upper window, and saw the skeleton of some- 
 thing human standing below half dressed. 
 
TO PLEASE HIS WIFE. 145 
 
 " Has anybody arrived ? " asked the form. 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. Jolliffe, I didn't know it was 
 you," said the young man, kindly, for he was 
 aware how her baseless expectations moved her. 
 " No ; nobody has come." 
 
THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 
 
 BY MRS. E. LYNN LINTON. 
 
 WE all have our times of 
 suprernest bliss our days of 
 | intensest brilliancy. They 
 may be as short-lived as a 
 morning glory, or they may 
 last as long as a summer 
 garden, but there they are- 
 times when we are absolutely 
 content when we see no clouds on the horizon 
 and forget the storms that lie behind us days 
 when the flaming sword is sheathed and the 
 Gates of Eden stand open, and we walk 
 through the meadows of asphodel and ama- 
 
 MRS. E. LYNN LINTON. 
 
THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 14? 
 
 ranth, believing in their everlasting beauty, 
 peace, and fragrance. The glory of fulfilled 
 ambition makes this time for some, and Honour 
 clothes the sky with stars that dazzle as they 
 shine ; but Love, dear Love, is the sun itself 
 and gives us the sweetest and most exquisite of 
 all our joys. Love, dear Love ! what can equal 
 it for the soul's delight ! It combines in itself 
 all the lustrous hues of life ; it is the chord 
 wherein sound all its loveliest harmonies. It 
 transforms poverty to wealth ; and it builds 
 that divine City of Enchantment where the 
 queen is always fair and the prince is always 
 young. It is the gladdest minister, if also the 
 cruellest master of man. When we love and 
 are beloved, we sit with the gods on the hill 
 of Heaven ; when we love and are not beloved, 
 through change, satiety, or death, we are cast 
 down into hell with Lucifer and the fallen 
 angels. Meantime, while we are young while 
 the sun shines and the heart beats high and 
 
148 THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 
 
 kisses are still fresli to the lips while the 
 roses are in bud and before the silver streaks 
 the gold the gods are our friends and earth 
 is our Paradise. We love and are beloved ; 
 and there is no death nor sorrow in the world ! 
 
 Had his sensations been put into form 
 Hubert Gainsborough would have seen some- 
 thing like this written on the sands over which 
 the tide was swiftly flowing washing away 
 those intertwined initials which he had just 
 drawn on the level beach. He knew that this 
 was their golden hour, and that he and Naomi 
 would never be more blessed than they were 
 now, no, not even when the final sacrament 
 had separated them from the world and given 
 them to each other for that wonderful moon 
 which love makes of honey, and all that is not 
 love turns to gall. Everything was in their 
 favour, and their coming marriage was one in 
 which the most critical, the most censorious, 
 
THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 149 
 
 could find no flaw. It was as smooth as satin 
 and clear as crystal. Fortune, station, health, 
 ages not a crooked straw was on their path 
 not a leaf of nightshade presaged the coming 
 of the deadly witch of misfortune. Naomi had 
 had no other fancy by which to compare her 
 lover to his disadvantage, and Hubert had 
 buried out of sight all his. He had sown his 
 wild oats and the sack was now empty. And 
 yet the harvest ? Bitter enough at the time, 
 was it really all stacked and garnered ? Might 
 not some aftermath crop up again when least 
 expected? The passover is vitiated for the 
 pious Jew if but one measure of leaven remains. 
 What of the passover of the Fates who pursue, 
 of the Vengeance which strikes, if aught of 
 that bitter harvest of youthful folly remains ? 
 
 Why did the thought of her suddenly cross 
 his mind at this moment ? Why did Naomi's 
 bended neck make him slightly shiver as if a 
 cold wind had passed over him, gorgeous, 
 
ISO THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 
 
 burning summer time as it was ? As she 
 stooped her head, looking into the little pool 
 where the sea-flowers had spread out their 
 coloured rays, the sunlight caught the fringe 
 at the back of her neck, and the brown of her 
 hair was brightened into gold. 
 
 A sudden longing to kiss those feathery little 
 curls flushed him like a fever ; and then a 
 thought checked his impulse and made his 
 blood run cold as if a wandering ghost had 
 touched him as it passed. The last time he 
 kissed a woman's neck, there at the back, he 
 had been sitting, as now, on the sands of the 
 seashore. But it had been in France at that 
 glaring, garish Trouville not in a leafy little 
 home-bay in Devonshire ; and, instead of 
 Naomi Ponsonby, pledged to be his wife before 
 the year was out, his companion had been the 
 beautiful American, Mariquita Delrnare, with 
 whom there had never been a question of 
 marriage. For was not that burly, black- 
 
AS SHE STOOPED HER HEAD . . . THE SUNLIGHT CAUGHT THE FRINGE AT THIS 
 BACK OP HER NECK." 
 
THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 153 
 
 bearded, crop-haired man who, once a week, 
 came down to see her, and of whom she was 
 evidently so much afraid, Auguste Delmare 
 and her husband? All the same, wife as 
 she was or seemed to be Hubert had loved 
 this woman with the intensity of a young 
 man's first serious passion. And when his 
 enlightenment came, nothing but the anger of 
 contempt had saved him from the heartbreak 
 of despair. 
 
 But why should he think of her now ? As 
 things had shaped themselves in his life it was 
 a kind of sacrilege to remember her at all. 
 To be actively reminded of her by Naomi was 
 blasphemous. 
 
 Naomi saw the change in her lover's face 
 it was as if a cloud had come over the sun. 
 Not being a woman of obtrusive sympathy nor 
 of inquisitive affection, instead of speaking or 
 asking why, she laid her hand on his with a 
 caressing touch that told all she wished to say. 
 
154 THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 
 
 It was such a gentle, tender little touch ! so 
 womanly in its sympathy, but yet so almost 
 childish in its ignorance of the reason why ! 
 It was to Hubert what the harp of David was 
 to Saul. The cloud passed the wandering 
 ghost vanished. Mariquita Delmare faded into 
 the void of nothingness; and all that Hubert 
 saw was Naomi Ponsonby sitting there in the 
 sunlight beside him the angel whom the gods 
 had given to bless and beautify his life the 
 divine maiden so soon to become his dear wife ! 
 
 He took her hand and kissed it. What 
 a beautiful hand it was ! Those long taper 
 fingers and that generous palm expressed her 
 character in its mixture of idealistic morality 
 and human tenderness. By the one she held 
 a lofty standard and would be an inflexible 
 judge ; by the other she opened her arms to 
 the suffering, and banished from her heart no 
 one whom that heart could succour. 
 
 "The loveliest hand in the whole world!" 
 
THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 155 
 
 said Hubert, tracing the veins and outlining 
 the fingers after he had kissed it as a saint 
 might kiss a relic; but also as a lover kisses 
 the hand of the beloved. 
 
 " Said by the most unblushing flatterer in 
 the whole world ! " laughed Naomi. 
 
 " Love cannot flatter," he answered, looking 
 at her with eyes as full of admiration as those 
 roses at her throat were full of colour and 
 perfume. 
 
 " I think it does nothing else," she returned, 
 still laughing. 
 
 She was so happy that everything made her 
 laugh. Like a child, the whole earth seemed 
 to be one great throb of joy. 
 
 " Then all you say to me is flattery, hey ? " 
 said Hubert. " Ah, sweet, my sweet, you have 
 put yourself into a cleft stick ! How will you 
 get out of it ? " 
 
 " But I never do flatter you as you flatter 
 me," she said. " When did I tell you that this 
 
156 THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 
 
 thing about you was so beautiful, and that so 
 charming ? Never ! " 
 
 " If you have not in so many words, you 
 have twenty times by those great grey eyes of 
 yours ! " he answered with mock self-com- 
 placency. " I know you admire me immensely, 
 and think me no end of a fine fellow ; so we are 
 quits after all only I am the most candid." 
 
 " I do not agree to that not the least in the 
 world," she cried with commendable energy. 
 
 Again Hubert's face changed. Why was he 
 so sensitive to-day ? The fun passed out of it 
 for pain to take its place. 
 
 "What! you do not love me as much as 
 I love you ? " he said in a disturbed voice. 
 " You tell me that seriously, Naomi ? " 
 
 She turned to him with a mocking little 
 mouth and mischievous arched brows, meaning 
 to carry on the play. Lovers find nothing too 
 silly as the medium of verbal caressing ; and 
 silly as was this little interlude, it served its 
 
THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 157 
 
 purpose. But her mocking smile arid saucy 
 answer died on her lips. There was something 
 in her lover's face not to be met by a joke. 
 
 " Love you, Hubert ? as much as you love 
 me ? " she repeated. " Do you need to ask ? " 
 Then with a sudden blush and the sweetest, 
 loveliest air of self-surrender, she added both 
 her hands now on one of his : " Yes, I do love 
 you as much as you love me. If love could be 
 weighed, as we weighed the honeycomb yester- 
 day, perhaps mine would be the most ! " 
 
 " That is impossible, Naomi," he answered 
 gravely. " You might as well say you could 
 add to infinity or lengthen eternity ! " He 
 put his disengaged arm round her and drew 
 her to him. " My darling, my own darling," 
 he said, all his heart in his voice ; " I love you 
 as I never loved living woman before." 
 
 Naomi caught at the words. That black 
 drop which we all have in our hearts under 
 different names and shapes was in hers a 
 
158 THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 
 
 certain form of jealousy, the jealousy, the 
 exactingness, of a pure and inexperienced 
 woman demanding as much as she gave. 
 
 " Then you have loved before ? " she said 
 a little coldly, instinctively taking away her 
 hands. 
 
 " Not as I love you," he answered, trying to 
 cover his mistake by extra fervour. " I love 
 you as no man ever loved since the world 
 began ! You do not know what I feel for you, 
 Naomi. You are like God and heaven to me ! 
 You are my good angel : and God gave you to 
 me ! I love you, darling, almost more than a 
 man should more than is well for my peace." 
 
 His passion gained her. What woman could 
 have resisted ? 
 
 " Give me your peace, I will take care of it," 
 she said with infinite tenderness. " If we love 
 each other, Hubert, no harm can come to us. 
 Nothing but death can separate us, and even 
 that will not divide us." 
 
THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 159 
 
 "Nothing but death? You swear that?" 
 he said. " Only death will separate us, Naomi, 
 and even that will not divide us ?" 
 
 " Yes," she answered solemnly ; " I swear 
 it." 
 
 " Without reservation ? " 
 
 "What reservation should I have?" she 
 returned, with an incredulous little smile. 
 " The only reservation would be if you had 
 loved any one else as you love me, or had done 
 anything wrong ; and that is too absurd to 
 imagine ! " 
 
 She looked at him with her soft grey eyes 
 as full of womanly love as his had been of the 
 man's stronger passion. He was right. Those 
 eyes expressed her admiration of him as plainly 
 as if her lips had uttered all that was in her 
 heart of praise and hymn to his honour. To 
 her he was the perfect man flawless, faultless 
 and she was not ashamed to show what she 
 would not have dared to say. 
 
160 THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 
 
 The remembrance of that past sin flowed like 
 the salt waters of tears over his head. Like 
 a spectre Mariquita Delmare again seemed to 
 float before him, filling the whole air with her 
 baleful beauty ; but for his best exorcism he 
 looked again into Naomi's upturned face, and 
 soothed himself with that futile anodyne : " She 
 will never know ! " 
 
 The tie between these two young people had 
 in it something more than love, for Hubert, 
 at the risk of his own life, had saved that of 
 Geoffrey Ponsonby, Naomi's only brother ; and 
 thus the acquaintance which then began was 
 founded on the deepest feelings of our human 
 nature. To the Ponsonbys Hubert was an 
 incarnation of divine power to whom they 
 owed anew that beloved life so nearly lost ; 
 while to him they had the claim which con- 
 ferring a benefit establishes on him who confers 
 it. They gave him the devotion of gratitude, 
 but he gave them the even stronger feeling of 
 
THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 161 
 
 responsibility. The life he had saved he felt 
 in some measure belonged to him to care 
 for; and as he was eight years older than 
 Geoffrey thirty to the younger man's two 
 and twenty he took his obligation seriously, 
 and was like the boy's elder brother, even 
 before his engagement with Naomi gave him 
 the additional right of future relationship. 
 
 All things come to an end, and this lovely 
 idyl had to end with the rest. The westering 
 sun brought with its slanting rays the prosaic 
 claims of dinner and domestic life generally ; 
 and the young people had nothing for it but 
 to go back to Ivy Lodge, and do the best they 
 could with the verandah and the moonlight, 
 against the background of the lighted room 
 where gentle Mrs. Ponsonby played Patience 
 by herself, and thought of the time when she 
 too had sat out in the summer moonlight with 
 her beloved, as happy as Naomi was now. 
 
 As they came to the house they were met at 
 
 M 
 
i62 THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 
 
 the door by Mrs. Ponsonby in a state of 
 unusual excitement. 
 
 " What is it, mother ? " asked Naomi, who 
 had that double sense which is given by keen 
 perceptions. 
 
 " I have had a letter from Geoff," said Mrs. 
 Ponsonby, a little breathlessly. 
 
 " Well ? what ? what does he say ? " asked 
 Hubert. 
 
 " Such a foolish boy ! so foolish and so 
 wrong! He has engaged himself to a lady 
 whom he confesses to be older than himself, 
 and a widow too. It is madness ! " 
 
 " Who is she ? " again asked Hubert. 
 
 " An American," was the answer. 
 
 " What American ? " he asked quickly. He 
 shivered slightly, as once before to-day on the 
 sands. 
 
 " A Mrs. Marillier," was the answer. 
 
 Hubert drew a deep breath, and the blood 
 came back into his face. 
 
THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 163 
 
 " Geoffrey says she is wonderfully beautiful," 
 the mother went on to say ; " and as good as 
 she is lovely. She is very well connected 
 belongs to an old Virginian family and has 
 money of her own, so that, as he says, she does 
 not take him for his. At all events there it is ; 
 and now what am I to do ? I cannot allow it 
 to go on," she added, woman-like answering 
 her own question ; " but what am I to do ? " 
 
 " Opposition to a thing of this kind does not 
 do much good," said Hubert. " Men have to 
 wear through their own experiences." 
 
 " But he is not a man he is only a boy ! " 
 cried Mrs. Ponsonby. " He has had no ex- 
 perience of life, beyond that to be had at 
 Cambridge, which cannot be much. He is not 
 accustomed yet to the management of the 
 estate and the idea of an engagement at his 
 age, and with a widow older than himself, is 
 preposterous! It cannot be allowed. I will 
 not allow it ! " 
 
164 THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 
 
 " If he loves her, my dear, he will not break 
 with her, even though a mother disapproves," 
 said Hubert. " Why should he ? That is the 
 first thing he will say to himself. If he has 
 committed himself and gained her affections he 
 is so far bound to her by honour ; and if she 
 has money and all that, and is of known rank 
 and parentage, and there is nothing against 
 her, why should he break with her because he 
 is only twenty-two ? That is a fault which 
 cures itself every day ! You see we must look 
 at it from' his point of view, not only our own. 
 To you and to us all it may be foolish and 
 premature ; but to him it is the sublimes t 
 wisdom and an honourable engagement." 
 
 " Then do you advise me to countenance 
 such criminal absurdity ? " said Mrs. Ponsonby, 
 hotly. 
 
 " For the present, in a fashion, sprinkling a 
 little cold water judiciously, and not going in 
 for a shower bath," he answered. " A boy of 
 
THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 
 
 Geoff's age wants more careful guidance than 
 a man. He has to be led very gently very 
 tenderly and the thread must be of silk and 
 invisible ! " 
 
 " That is so true ! " said Naomi, to whom 
 Hubert was incarnate wisdom. 
 
 She would have said the same, however, had 
 he advocated strenuous opposition and parental 
 coercion ; so that her opinion was not of much 
 value. 
 
 But Mrs. Ponsonby still fumed, and the only 
 ray of comfort that she could find in the present 
 distressful moment was when Hubert promised 
 to write very seriously to her boy, and to begin 
 that process of judicious sprinkling which he 
 advised her to adopt. But, above all, he was 
 to find out everything there was to know 
 about this Mrs. Marillier this beautiful 
 American with money this widow, a little 
 older than the unmatured and well-endowed 
 young man she had condescended to accept as 
 
166 THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 
 
 her future husband. "With which promise the 
 poor woman was forced to be content ; though, 
 indeed, there was not much content for any 
 one for after this question of Geoffrey and his 
 fascinating widow had been so far arranged, 
 and Hubert had time to look at his own letters, 
 he found one from his lawyer which cut short 
 his stay at Ivy Lodge, and sent him back at 
 once to Cumberland, where his place was. It 
 was a letter which admitted of no denial, and 
 of business which admitted of no delay. He 
 must pack up to-night and be off by the first 
 train to-morrow morning those sweet idyls on 
 the sands rudely and roughly interrupted, and 
 his beloved left to the cold keeping of resig- 
 nation. 
 
 All lovers' partings are sad, and their melan- 
 choly forebodings are as universal as the tears 
 which express, and the kisses which seem 
 rather to confirm than to banish them. It was 
 to Naomi, and to Hubert too, as if their sun 
 
THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 167 
 
 had set for ever. There was no more daylight 
 for them, and no more summer. The chill of 
 death had fallen on their happiness ; for at the 
 best their letters would be only a kind of 
 twilight only the autumn flush for the summer 
 glory. But it had to be done, and he must go. 
 The time of probation would soon be over now. 
 This was August, and they would be married 
 in October. Two months an eternity to the 
 separated and impatient young, but to the more 
 accurate reckoners of time a mere nothing. So 
 they tried to comfort each other as with trem- 
 bling voices and pale lips they bade each other 
 farewell and said : 
 
 " It will not be for long ! " 
 
 Geoffrey's answer to the coldly cautious 
 letter of his mother was characteristic of his 
 boyish love. To her diplomacy he opposed the 
 impetuosity of a first passion and the blindness 
 of unlimited trust. His eyes were filled with 
 
i68 THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 
 
 but the one light ; and like a newly-converted 
 zealot he was anxious that she should share in 
 the grace he had gained. Without giving time 
 for denial, he announced his arrival with his 
 future bride that very evening. To see her 
 was to love her, he said ; and the best excuse 
 he could offer for what might seem his rash- 
 ness in engaging himself at his age was 
 herself. Wherefore his mother and Naomi 
 must expect them that evening ; and he knew 
 that in this visit, hurried and unceremonious as 
 it was, he had done the best thing for them 
 and for her, and that they would congratulate 
 him on his good fortune in securing the most 
 beautiful and the noblest woman on the face of 
 the earth. 
 
 No answer could be given to this letter ; and 
 to telegraph a refusal that should meet them 
 midway and turn them back on their journey 
 was not quite like gentle Mrs. Ponsonby, whose 
 worst moods were merely fretfulness, never 
 
THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 169 
 
 rising into anger nor deepening into sullenness. 
 Thus mother and sister had nothing for it but 
 to make the best of things as they were, and to 
 hope that this new woman was really the 
 phoenix Geoffrey's love had painted her. 
 
 So far he had calculated rightly. When 
 Mrs. Ponsonby and Naomi came face to face 
 with this fair marvel, they no longer wondered 
 at the boyish infatuation which had staked so 
 heavily on love and trust. She was so beauti- 
 ful ! She was so graceful in all her move- 
 ments, so sweet and tender in her manner, and 
 yet so bright in speech and intelligence ! She 
 had the loveliest little ways that ever woman 
 had ; she said the most charming things ; and 
 she had the daintiest accent half French, half 
 American that gave her voice, which was 
 naturally harsh and grating, a kind of caressing 
 intonation by which its native hardness was 
 made as lovely as soft music. Her dress was a 
 dream of art ; her face a poem of beauty. She 
 
THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 
 
 had bright golden hair very bright gold 
 with dark eyebrows and dark lashes, and the 
 loveliest complexion of milk and roses. Her 
 eyes were like stars, quick, glancing, and of 
 varying expression. Sometimes they were as 
 holy as a saint's, and sometimes they were 
 veiled as if with a substance, letting not a 
 thought, not a feeling show through. But 
 varied as their expression was, they were 
 watchful eyes always watchful ; eyes that 
 seemed to listen as well as see, like those of 
 men accustomed to danger and dependent for 
 salvation on their own quickness of apprehen- 
 sion and clearness of prevision. And the 
 lashes cast the most curious little rim of black- 
 ness round the lids ; and the red of her lips 
 was of the clearest and most sharply defined 
 outline imaginable. No blurring here ; no 
 mingling of red and white through the dis- 
 figuring medium of tears, nor even through the 
 blush-rose bruise of kisses ! Altogether she 
 
THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 171 
 
 was delightful splendidly delightful ; and the 
 mother and daughter were fascinated, as 
 Geoffrey knew they would be as, years ago, 
 Christabel was fascinated by the Lady Geraldine. 
 
 The small round table at the side was full of 
 photographs. Side by side with Naomi 
 Naomi following the mother and Geoffrey- 
 was the portrait of Hubert Gainsborough. 
 Mrs. Marillier looking over the room as 
 strangers do, came in due time to this table 
 and the four photographs in one line. She 
 caught her breath as one suddenly surprised, 
 and the blood gathered round her heart 
 though it did not leave her cheek nor lips 
 paler than before ; but she had the undaunted 
 spirit of one playing for high stakes, with the 
 full consciousness of what she risked and what 
 she might win, and it was a principle with her 
 to face her dangers on the instant. 
 
 " Is that another brother ?" she asked quite 
 naturally, taking the photographs in her hand 
 
172 THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 
 
 as if to examine them critically. " How good 
 they all are ! but I did not know you had an 
 elder brother, Geoffrey. You never told me 
 that. I do not see much likeness, however," 
 she added smilingly to Mrs. Ponsonby. " He 
 is not like you nor Naomi nor my boy." 
 
 "I forgot to tell you a.bout him," said 
 Geoffrey. " I have forgotten everything of 
 late ! No, that is not a brother yet ; though 
 he is almost more than one. He is the dearest 
 old fellow in the world Hubert Gainsborough 
 and he is going to marry Naomi." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Mrs. Marillier, with a soft smile, 
 turning to her future sister-in-law. " How 
 happy you must be ! If he is as lovely a mari 
 as mine, and you are as content as I am, you 
 have nothing to complain of ! " 
 
 "He is very nice, and I am quite happy," 
 said Naomi. 
 
 Then they all laughed ; and the rest of the 
 evening passed as such evenings do, on velvet, 
 
THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 173 
 
 where the hours are wreathed with flowers and 
 Time is shod in gold. 
 
 But upstairs in her own room the woman 
 who called herself Mariquita Marillier had to 
 face a very different state of things. The 
 ghost of her bad past had risen up before her 
 when least expected and most unwelcome ; and 
 she had to reason out her position, and calcu- 
 late her chances of escape from the dangers 
 threatening her like wild beasts prowling 
 round an open arbour. 
 
 " Can I dare it ? " she thought ; " or shall I 
 give it all up ? Will he have the cruelty, the 
 dishonour, to betray me ? No, he dare not ! 
 His interests are as much at stake as mine. 
 We are both in the same boat. If I am ship- 
 wrecked he will be swamped too; for such 
 ignorant innocents as these will see no differ- 
 ence between us. I can tell my own story, and 
 it will go hard with me if I do not cut the 
 ground from under his feet if he is brutal 
 
174 THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 
 
 enough to put a spoke in my wheel. I will 
 brave it, and I will defy him. He used to be 
 fond of me ; and men who have once loved a 
 woman as he loved me have always a soft spot 
 left. They are not like us, the fools and I 
 will take my chance ! " 
 
 " She is perfectly lovely, and fascinating to 
 an extraordinary degree," Naomi wrote to her 
 lover ; " but both mother and I like her so 
 much better when we are with her than when 
 we do not see her. I cannot explain why, nor 
 can mother, but we feel when she is away from 
 us that she is not quite so nice, and we both 
 have to be conquered again. She always does 
 conquer us ; that I must confess. It is very 
 odd, but do you not understand what I mean ? 
 But she is so clever, and she must be so good ! 
 She talks a great deal about God and the Noble 
 Life, and how people have to live for others 
 not themselves, and to walk by the law of the 
 spirit not of the mere intellect. She is, so she 
 
THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 175 
 
 says of herself, a mystic : and I, who am stupid, 
 do not always understand her. But she is so 
 sharp and clever ! She knows everything all 
 we think, and sometimes what we had not 
 made clear to ourselves till she, as it were, 
 interpreted our own thoughts. I think she 
 sees that odd change of feeling in us, for she 
 said yesterday to mother and me, when we 
 were walking in the garden : ' The impression 
 people make and the impression they leave are 
 sometimes so different ! I have often felt that 
 living charm of a personality, and then a 
 certain coldness in absence. But I have always 
 put the defect down to myself. I think it is 
 my own failing in sympathy some note want- 
 ing in my own chord of harmony not any 
 want or failing in the person. When I am 
 with these people whom I love in presence and 
 fall off from in absence, their magnetism sup- 
 plies my own deficiency and the full chord is 
 sounded the notes wanting to me are given 
 
176 THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 
 
 by them.' So perhaps it is mother's and my 
 own fault, as she seemed to hint ; and she is 
 very charming. She says she is one year 
 older than Geoff twenty-three ; and she does 
 not look more, excepting at the end of the 
 evening, when she gets tired. Then she looks 
 thirty and more; and her face quite changes. 
 If she were not such a pure-hearted noble 
 creature both mother and I would think she 
 painted; but we do not like to even imagine 
 it, because women who paint cannot possibly 
 be nice and she is more than nice ! Her 
 husband was a stockbroker in San Francisco ; 
 and she has a pretty Spanish name Mariquita 
 and I believe, but I am not quite sure, that 
 her maiden name was Delmare." 
 
 So now Hubert understood it all. What he 
 had dimly feared was true, and the woman 
 whom he knew to be unfit for the companion- 
 ship of even the ordinarily frail was the 
 affianced wife of Geoffrey Ponsonby the boy 
 
THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 17? 
 
 for whose life he had made himself in a manner 
 responsible the brother of his own future 
 wife. Mariquita Marillier, the sister-in-law of 
 Naomi Mariquita, the woman whom he had 
 known as the wife of Auguste Delmare ! The 
 ghost of the past had risen up against him 
 the after crop was sprouting and the mills of 
 God were grinding, not slowly now ! This 
 marriage must be prevented if it broke 
 Geoffrey's heart and his own. He knew 
 Naomi's high standard of morality ; he knew, 
 too, the strain of jealousy which lifted up her 
 love from what else might have been something 
 like the abjectness of devotion and gave it the 
 dignity of self-respect. She was utterly 
 ignorant of life as it is ; and she was of the 
 school which makes no distinction between 
 men and women. The little that she knew of 
 vice all in the clouds as it was made the 
 dereliction of the one as shameful as the 
 abandonment of the other ; and it had not been 
 
 N 
 
178 THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 
 
 Hubert's duty to enlighten her. He therefore 
 knew how she would feel and where he should 
 stand. It would be the overthrowing evidence, 
 and perhaps her love would go with her ideal. 
 She had often said that her love for him was 
 so great because of her respect. Her perfect 
 man as he was what would it be when she 
 found out how imperfect he had been ? jealous 
 as well as pure ; when she learned that he had 
 loved so passionately and sinned so deeply, 
 what would she do ? And if even she forgave 
 him but she would not would not the bloom 
 of her nature, of her very love, be gone ? 
 Would it not be like the violation of her soul, 
 and the acceptance of his sin because she had 
 lost her virginal horror of evil ? 
 
 Still it had to be done, come what would. 
 He must be so far faithful to that higher law 
 which sacrifices ease and happiness and love 
 itself to duty and the right. 
 
 It was impossible to go to Ivy Lodge for the 
 
THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 179 
 
 next day or two, but Hubert wrote to Geoffrey 
 asking him what he knew of the fascinating 
 widow, other than by her own report ? where 
 he had met her ? who had vouched for her ? 
 what he knew of her past history, her family, 
 her money itself ? Had he had any corrobora- 
 tion of her own story, or had he taken every- 
 thing on trust ? The world was full of these 
 desultory women, these quasi adventuresses 
 who thought to efface in a foreign country the 
 tainted record of their own. He must be quite 
 sure who it was he was trusting, and who it 
 was he proposed to give as a daughter to his 
 mother and a sister to Naomi. 
 
 The boy wrote back a fiery letter, as was to 
 be expected. To have saved his life from 
 drowning did not entitle Hubert to doubt his 
 beloved one of the noblest, purest, most saintly 
 women that ever lived. If he heard her talk 
 as she did last night, he would know then what 
 a priceless treasure he (Geoffrey) had found, 
 
i8o THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 
 
 and would blush for his base suspicions. 
 Besides, he (Geoffrey) was satisfied, and he was 
 the person most nearly concerned. His 
 marriage was to take place now at once. 
 There was nothing to wait for ; and his mother 
 had consented. She saw the exquisite loveli- 
 ness, the rare nobility of Mariquita's nature ; 
 and Naomi too loved her. Yet, sweet good 
 girl as Naomi was, she was not equal to 
 Mariquita in sublimity of thought. Hubert 
 would love her too. He must come now at 
 once to Ivy Lodge and join the circle of wor- 
 shippers. He could not resist ; no one could. 
 
 The lad blew off the steam as he wrote, and 
 by the time he ended had got through his 
 anger, and was once more the old, joyous, 
 irresponsible boy-lover who saw no dangers 
 and no difficulties anywhere. He was so 
 happy that he could afford to be magnanimous 
 and to forgive the insult of the doubt. 
 
 How well Hubert knew it all ! The false 
 
THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 181 
 
 modesties, the artificial refinement, the high 
 poetic moralities said beneath the moon the 
 lies, deceptions, devilries practised in the face 
 of clay ; the cleverness which made infamy 
 look like purity overcome by love, and gave 
 to the putrescent shimmer of corruption the 
 glory of God's own sun ! He knew it all, and 
 understood the net in which she had taken 
 those dear ones in their quiet Devonshire 
 home ; for had he not himself once been held 
 fast even as the boy was held now as Naomi 
 and her mother were held ? 
 
 They met alone on the sands, where he had 
 sat with Naomi on that blessed day of summer 
 only so short a time ago by the passage of the 
 days, but so long long as eternity by the 
 dating of events. 
 
 " I give you your choice," he said. " Leave 
 the house as you like, secretly or openly take 
 your own way of rupture but break the 
 
1 82 THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 
 
 engagement and set the boy free at any cost, 
 or I will break it by telling all I know. In 
 the former way you keep your fair fame here ; 
 in the latter you lose it. This marriage has 
 to be cancelled in either case." 
 
 "By the first Mr. Hubert Gainsborough 
 escapes scot-free ; by the second he suffers with 
 me," said Mariquita, quietly. 
 
 " That I know and am prepared for," was 
 Hubert's answer. 
 
 " And companionship in misfortune is plea- 
 sant," she returned. " If you are really set on 
 this absurd bit of Quixotism you shall smart 
 for it, mon cher. I am not disposed to be made 
 the scapegoat, and sent into the wilderness 
 carrying your sins as well as my own. We 
 will go together, Hubert." 
 
 " I am ready," said Hubert, sternly. 
 
 " To give up Naomi ? " 
 
 " To give up Naomi that I may save 
 Geoffrey." 
 
THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 183 
 
 She laughed in a mocking kind of way. 
 
 " You were not such a tepid lover to me," 
 she said. " I do not think you would have 
 given up me for any such high-falutin morality ! 
 At least I know that Mr. Delmare my husband 
 then and the seventh commandment did not 
 terrify you ! " 
 
 " I did not give you up till I knew you," 
 said Hubert. " While I believed in you I 
 would have gone down into hell for you. To 
 have died for you would have been easy." 
 
 " And I for you," she said, suddenly changing 
 her tone ; u for I loved you, Hubert loved you 
 faithfully loved you as I never loved before 
 nor have since. I had to deceive you. Bad 
 as I was how could I tell my sad story to a 
 man so young as you were then, with all your 
 illusions unbroken ? It would have killed you. 
 I loved you, my darling, and you loved me. 
 Will not the memory of that love soften you? 
 I want only the opportunity to be good. I am 
 
1 84 THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 
 
 not bad at heart I never was. I have been 
 the victim of a cruel fate and the sport of 
 circumstances, but I was never really vicious. 
 Help me to redeem myself and to make 
 Geoffrey's life blessed, as I can and will make 
 it. He will never know. I will be so good to 
 him ! Help me, Hubert, for old times' sake I " 
 
 She spoke with inconceivable passion. Her 
 words flowed like a stream of fiery lava; and 
 as she uttered her last appeal she knelt on the 
 sands at his feet and took his hand in both of 
 hers, carrying it to her lips. 
 
 Lovely in her passion, graceful in her self- 
 abandonmerit, with the eloquence of despair in 
 her voice and manner, with the wonderful 
 magnetism of her nature shining in her eyes 
 and drawing out the very heart of her hearer, 
 she was at this moment as dangerous to Hubert's 
 resolve as she had formerly been to his soul. 
 Her appeal was one which touches every true 
 man. To help her to be good ! to help her to 
 
>J > ' 
 
 I 
 
THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 187 
 
 redeem herself! to lift her from the mire 
 where, as she said, a cruel fate had cast her, 
 and where he himself had helped to fling her, 
 and set her cleansed among the shining ranks 
 of the redeemed ! If he would not ! If for 
 the shadowy idealism of exclusiveness he failed 
 to do the real good laid before him to do ! 
 
 Genuine tears came into her eyes ; her 
 painted lips quivered with a genuine emotion. 
 Hubert put his hand over his eyes. He was 
 trembling like a leaf, for the task was very 
 hard. 
 
 " It cannot be ! " he said with a sob. " For 
 her sake and his, I must not ! " 
 
 A boat drifted noiselessly round the head- 
 land, and Naomi and Geoffrey sprang on shore. 
 
 " God in Heaven, what does this mean ? ' 
 cried Geoffrey, dashing up the beach, to seize 
 Hubert by the throat. 
 
 Naomi stood where she was, paralyzed and 
 as if in a dream. 
 
i83 THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 
 
 Mariquita started to her feet. She read her 
 doom in Hubert's face, now stern and stiffened 
 as if carved in stone, and she knew that the 
 game was lost. 
 
 " I was rehearsing an old play with my 
 former lover, Hubert Gainsborough," she said 
 in her hard, harsh, strident voice ; " the man 
 who seduced me when I was Auguste Delmare's 
 wife." 
 
 Years had passed since this bolt fell from 
 the blue and shattered the lives of all con- 
 cerned. How often the summer had faded 
 into the autumn, and the autumn had died 
 into winter since then, and what tragedies had 
 wrought out their course to the end ; Geoffrey's 
 lifeless body cast up by the tide, how drowned, 
 whether by accident or design, no one ever 
 knew ; the beautiful woman by whom had 
 been wrought all this woe, dead of misery and 
 want, stranded like so much drift wood on 
 
THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 189 
 
 the shores of time and disease ; Naomi and 
 her mother, like dim spectres of their former 
 selves, wandering restlessly, aimlessly, joylessly 
 through the world; Hubert banished like another 
 Adam from the paradise where he had lived 
 with Love and walked with Grod ; all the roses 
 dead, all the sunlight gone ; what a term of 
 isolation ! what a blank life was to the three 
 remaining ! The two who had found their rest 
 in the grave were happier than those who still 
 lived beneath the sky. Sorrow, shame, futile 
 despair and as futile repentance what an after- 
 crop of that bitter harvest of youthful folly ! 
 
 u Ought I to have pardoned him ? " said 
 Naomi, often to herself; but Hubert never 
 asked his heart : " Ought I to have concealed 
 it ? " Cost all it had, it was better than a life 
 of deception, the white-washing of infamy, and 
 the association of Naomi and Geoffrey with 
 the wife of Auguste Delmare the widow of 
 Marillier, the stockbroker of San Francisco. 
 
190 THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 
 
 Long parted, they met again one winter 
 moonlight night in the Coliseum at Rome. 
 This place of death and ruin, filled with the 
 memories of love, joy, glory, and martyrdom, 
 all buried deep in the past, it was the fitting 
 place for them to meet. And it was the fitting 
 time night for day; winter for summer; the 
 pale moon, which threw black fantastic shadows 
 on a ruin, for the glorious sun which had 
 touched all living nature with gold and colour. 
 When they met it was almost as if they too 
 were ghosts with the rest ; but that momentary 
 hesitation of each passed like a cloud, and their 
 hands clasped, one the other, too frankly for 
 even the shadow of doubt. 
 
 " Shall we never bury our dead, Naomi ? " 
 he asked. "Will you never forgive me? 
 never reinstate me ? " 
 
 " Not while she lives. She stands between 
 us," said Naomi ; but she spoke faintly, and as 
 if with reluctance. 
 
THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 191 
 
 "She is dead," he answered; "only the 
 ghost of the past divides us. Is that asjstrong 
 as the living present ? " 
 
 " Can I ever trust or believe you again ? " 
 she asked sadly. 
 
 " If the anguish of all these years gives 
 assurance, yes," he returned. " Oh, Naomi, 
 did you not swear to be always true to me ? 
 always, always, and through everything ? " 
 
 " I have been true/' she said. " I have 
 never loved any one else, not for a moment." 
 "But if you love me?" 
 
 She turned away her head. She did not 
 wish the moonlight to shine on the tears that 
 came into her eyes. 
 
 He took her hands and drew them up to his 
 breast, and she did not resist. 
 
 " But if you love me ? " he said again, very 
 gently. 
 
 She hesitated ; her heart beating fast, her 
 bosom palpitating. Then suddenly, with the 
 
192 THE GHOST OF THE PAST. 
 
 old sweet action of self-surrender, she turned 
 to him looking at liim with the same eyes of 
 love as used to look at him in the summer-time 
 so long ago. 
 
 " I have always loved you, Hubert," she 
 said softly ; " and T have never ceased to pray 
 for yon. Perhaps God has heard me and has 
 given us back to each other as an answer to 
 my prayers for pardon pardon for myself as 
 well as for you. Perhaps I was too hard will 
 you accept my repentance ? " 
 
REBECCA'S REMORSE. 
 
 BY JAMES PAYN. 
 
 IT is not unusual with young 
 men of philanthropical or re- 
 ligious instincts to seek their 
 work, on taking orders, in 
 the East End of London, and 
 to turn their backs upon 
 fashionable congregations and 
 gift slippers ; and yet those 
 "angels of fiction," as they have been termed, 
 the doctors, are never credited with the same 
 self-sacrificing motives. No medical man is 
 ever described as preferring a poor neighbour- 
 hood to a rich one ; he goes to Bays water if he 
 
 o 
 
 JAMES PAYN. 
 
194 REBECCAS REMORSE. 
 
 cannot get to Belgravia, and to Bloornsbury if 
 he cannot get to Bayswater, but further east 
 than Bloomsbury he is not to be found in 
 fiction. This is not in accordance with his 
 angelic character ; with his sending in his little 
 account receipted to his poor patient ; with his 
 giving him the money for a seaside holiday 
 instead of a prescription ; or with the furnishing 
 of every comfort for mind and body which that 
 marvellous diagnosis of his has discerned to be 
 necessary at the first glance. This is hard, as 
 there really are doctors in the East End of 
 London, and I once had a practice there myself. 
 It was not a good one in point of remunera- 
 tion, and there were plenty of patients ; the 
 sort of " practice " that makes one " perfect " 
 from a professional point of view ; and at the 
 same time absolves one from the income tax. 
 I confess, however, that I did not make this 
 choice of my own free will. " Not grace, nor 
 zeal," but a quarrel with my respected uncle, on 
 
REBECCAS REMORSE. 195 
 
 whom I was entirely dependent, had been the 
 cause of it. I had, I allow, considerably ex- 
 ceeded my allowance at college, and iny hos- 
 pital career in London had been expensive ; 
 but his conduct in buying a practice for me in 
 the east instead of the west, as a punishment 
 for, what he did not hesitate to term, my 
 reckless extravagance, was, I think it will be 
 admitted, vindictive. He made me, however, 
 an allowance, which, though one would have 
 called it moderate in a more fashionable 
 locality, was ample enough for such a neigh- 
 bourhood. Pleasures were very cheap there, 
 and not very attractive. Its concerts were not, 
 at the time of which I am speaking, classical ; 
 though of late years music of quite a high class 
 has emigrated thither, and Bethnal Green itself 
 has become an art centre. The dances one was 
 invited to (by advertisement) were of a public 
 nature, and were too much of a maritime 
 character to suit the landsman. There was 
 
196 REBECCAS REMORSE. 
 
 no shop where you could spend money to any 
 extent save that wonderful emporium where 
 not only lions and tigers are as plentiful as 
 chickens in Leadenhall Market, but much finer 
 "curios" are to be found than can be picked 
 up in Piccadilly. But lions were not in my 
 way (though I had kept a " tiger " at the 
 University), and I was much too young to care 
 for curios, a taste for which does not usually 
 develop till the mind has given way a little. 
 
 This enforced economy had, however, one 
 very pleasant side to it ; I generally found my- 
 self with money in my pocket, a most unusual 
 experience with an East End doctor. There is 
 nothing more distressing to him if he is a 
 good fellow, or even if he has a human heart 
 in his breast than the knowledge that half 
 the patients who come under his care are not 
 so much in need of medicine, as of the neces- 
 saries of life, with which he is unable to supply 
 them. No one knows what poverty is, who 
 
REBECCAS REMORSE. 197 
 
 has not seen the East End during a bad time ; 
 for my part it was a revelation to me, and 
 when one saw how far, not a shilling, but even 
 a penny was made to go, it gave one a nasty 
 jar to remember the hundreds one had squan- 
 dered for spending's sake. At first, indeed, 
 brought face to face with such urgent want, 
 one's heart made one lose one's head, and I 
 found myself, not from philanthropy, but from 
 fastidious disgust at squalor and wretchedness, 
 supporting some of the idlest and most worth- 
 less scoundrels in the parish ; but after a while 
 one grew wiser or less emotional, and learnt 
 discretion, which is the better part of charity. 
 It was a good school for me, in many ways, 
 though I did not like being sent to it. 
 
 People talk of " genteel poverty " as being 
 the worst sort of it, but at the risk of being 
 thought material and commonplace, I venture 
 to remark that abject poverty the halfpenny- 
 worth of bread, and the sack instead of a bed 
 
198 REBECCAS REMORSE. 
 
 on the floor is much more hard to bear. 
 There are degrees even in that, or rather the 
 same wretchedness seems greater or less, ac- 
 cording to the habits of those who endure it. 
 It is possible, though by no means easy, to be 
 cleanly under the most sordid conditions ; the 
 house or rather the one room may be swept, 
 though it cannot be garnished ; the broken 
 tea-cup may be washed ; the ragged blanket 
 mended, but when squalor is added to want, 
 pity is lost in disgust, and the attempt to cling 
 to the decencies of life is the most touching of 
 all the attributes of the very poor. It is not, 
 God help them, often made ; when everything 
 else has gone by the board, it seems useless to 
 look after the hen-coop. 
 
 Star Court, a locality where some of my most 
 wretched clients dwelt, made very little effort 
 in this direction, though, as a rule, they were 
 decent people who dwelt there. We have all 
 a tendency to live among those of our own 
 
REBECCAS REMORSE. 199 
 
 calling how else (since they are far from 
 loving one another) can the congregation of 
 doctors in Wimpole Street, or lawyers in 
 Bedford Row, be accounted for ? and when we 
 have no calling, among those of our own taste 
 and habits, and so Star Court had become 
 known in time as a quiet street. New-comers, 
 impecunious as the rest of my colony, but averse 
 to rows and ruffianism, gravitated thither sooner 
 or later ; I used to fancy there were more 
 people who had seen better days there than 
 elsewhere ; but, at all events, they could hardly 
 have seen worse. It was a miserable spot ; but 
 it was not necessary to ask the policeman to 
 keep his eye on you, when you went into Star 
 Court, which was but a reasonable precaution 
 in some other localities. 
 
 M.y first introduction to it was owed to 
 Rebecca Bent, who called upon me one very 
 warm evening in late August to ask for medi- 
 cal advice. I had seen her before, for she had 
 
200 REBECCA'S REMORSE. 
 
 been charwoman for a few weeks at the little 
 house I occupied, when one of my two domes- 
 tics was away. I remembered her, because she 
 had worked so hard (" like a horse," my cook 
 had said) during that temporary engagement, 
 and given much greater satisfaction than 
 charwomen usually do. Otherwise there was 
 nothing about her to enlist the memory. She 
 was not young five and forty, one would say, 
 at least, and she had not even the remains of 
 good looks. A tall, big-boiied masculine 
 woman, her only claim on the sentimental 
 emotions that look of hopeless discontent worn 
 by so many of her cla'ss and age, she was cer- 
 tainly not an attractive person. She was 
 strong enough, however, and to all appearance 
 healthy, and the last person I should have 
 expected to need my professional services. 
 Still, strange as it may seem in the case of 
 those who have so many genuine troubles, it 
 is not more unusual for the very poor to imagine 
 
REBECCAS REMORSE. 203 
 
 themselves ill, when there is little the matter 
 with them, than for a fine lady ; if they cut 
 their finger, they think they are like to die. 
 And the woman had rung the surgery bell, 
 which (though scarcely in the City sense) 
 meant business. 
 
 "Well, Rebecca, nothing gone wrong, I 
 hope?" I said cheerfully. "You look all 
 right." 
 
 " Appearances are deceitful, sir, Heavens 
 knows," she answered, with what seemed, for so 
 trite a proverb, a most unnecessary significance. 
 u It's weakness so that one cannot lift one's 
 hand to one's head, and thirst so that one wants 
 a bucketful, and a cough that seems to tear 
 one's inside out, and besides that there's fever." 
 
 " So bad as that, is it ? " 
 
 I made the usual examination. Her pulse 
 was all right, her tongue quite a pleasure to 
 look at, as compared with most of those organs 
 submitted to my inspection (especially that 
 
204 REBECCA'S REMORSE. 
 
 most common variety, the drunken tongue), 
 she had not coughed at all throughout the 
 ordeal, and there was not a trace of fever. 
 
 " You're nervous about yourself, my good 
 woman," I said, " which in your case surprises 
 me ; you're too hard a worker to have such 
 fancies." 
 
 "Still, them are the symptoms," she answered, 
 doggedly, " and I want a prescription." And 
 she held out her hand, with eighteenpence in 
 it. Such is not the fee in Wimpole Street, but 
 in the East End we are less exacting ; and we 
 have the same excuse for taking less as the 
 barrister gave for taking half a crown instead 
 of a guinea ; it is often all our clients have in 
 the world. 
 
 "I don't want your money, Eebecca, any 
 more than you want my prescription," I said. 
 
 " For mercy's sake give it me," she cried, 
 imploringly. " It's not for me, sir ; it's for 
 my sister." 
 
REBECCAS REMORSE. 205 
 
 " For your sister ? I did not know you had 
 a sister. How is it possible for me to prescribe 
 for a patient I have never seen ? " 
 
 " She is ill, sir, deadly ill," she pleaded. 
 " The more reason I should see her." 
 " But she will not see you, sir ; she made me 
 promise that I would not bring you. She has 
 seen no one but me for years. She's an 
 invalid." 
 
 " Well, of course, and has an invalid's fancies, 
 no doubt. Come, take me to her." And I took 
 up my hat- 
 Then, to my amazement, the big, strong 
 woman burst into tears. " Oh, sir, you don't 
 understand me," she sobbed. " She is not ac- 
 customed to be seen like this; you will break 
 her heart." 
 
 " Pooh, pooh ! " I said ; " on the contrary, it 
 is my business to mend it." 
 
 Not that I had the least belief in what she 
 said ; for, indeed, I began to think that her 
 
206 REBECCA'S REMORSE. 
 
 sister might be a lusus naturae, of which I had 
 seen more than one in my East End practice. 
 Poor creatures that were not good enough, or 
 bad enough, for a show ; two-headed nightin- 
 gales who had just missed their chance, as it 
 
 were, by half a head; elephant-men with im- 
 
 < 
 
 perfectly developed trunks. When poverty 
 goes hand-in-hand with disfigurement, it can- 
 not close door and window, or hide in secluded 
 grounds ; but, still, it will shrink from obser- 
 vation all it can, like some shy creature on the 
 seashore whose shell is too small for it. 
 
 Seeing it was useless to argue with me, 
 Rebecca led the way to Star Court. Dry, 
 dusty, airless, but without sunshine because 
 the tall black houses are huddled too close 
 together it was, indeed, a cheerless spot for 
 the sound, far more for the sick to dwell in. 
 A few ragged children were dancing in the 
 centre of it round a barrel-organ, to the super- 
 ficial eye an example of how happiness is found 
 
REBECCAS REMORSE. 207 
 
 in every spot. But well I knew that in more 
 than one of these abodes lay women and 
 children down with fever, to each of whom 
 every note of the instrument was torture. But 
 there was no liveried footman there to warn 
 the unwelcome musician, or policeman to bid 
 him " move on " the police in that neighbour- 
 hood had their hands full of more serious 
 matters. Up three flights of stairs we went, 
 steep enough to suggest the aid of the ban- 
 isters had they been less grimy and slimy, 
 and at last into an attic with a sloping roof. 
 
 At the first glance, I thought a sunbeam had 
 found its way there; but it was only a head 
 of golden hair upon a coarse pillow. The face 
 was turned to the wall, and Rebecca held her 
 finger up stained with toil and rough with 
 work to warn me that the invalid was sleeping. 
 
 Why I noted the finger was because of the 
 contrast it exhibited to the thin, white, delicate 
 hand that lay outside the blanket, for counter- 
 
2o8 REBECCAS REMORSE. 
 
 pane there was none. There was a marriage- 
 ring on the hand, and it was the only article 
 in the room which would have fetched a shil- 
 ling at the pawnbroker's. There was a chair, 
 but it had no back, and a deal table, one leg 
 of which, much shorter than the others, was 
 supplemented by a brick. Upon it. stood a 
 mug with wallflowers in it, the only decoration 
 the apartment could boast. Yet all was scru- 
 pulously clean down to the bare boards, unre- 
 lieved by a shred of carpet. I had seen 
 hundreds of homes before shorn of every com- 
 fort, but never one so cared for in its last 
 extremity by hand and eye. Even the brick 
 on which the table stood was washed, and 
 resembled one from a child's toy-box. 
 
 " That is a good sign, her sleeping, is it not, 
 sir ? " whispered Eebecca, eagerly. We had 
 entered very softly, and doubtless the ear of 
 the invalid had only caught the footstep she 
 expected ; but when her sister spoke, she 
 answered, in faint, reproachful tones 
 
REBECCAS REMORSE. 209 
 
 " I am not asleep ; and you have broken your 
 word, Rebecca." 
 
 "It was not my fault, my darling, indeed it 
 wasn't. Oh ! did I not tell you, doctor, how it 
 would be?" And the great gaunt woman 
 wrung her hands distressfully. 
 
 <fc It was not your sister's fault that I am 
 here," I interposed gently. " She would have 
 had me believe she had come to consult me on 
 her own account, but I saw through her. It 
 was my duty to come, and it will be a pleasure 
 to me if I can do you any good." 
 
 I had caught sight for a moment of the face 
 of an angel, or rather, as it seemed to me, of 
 one who was about to join the heavenly choir ; 
 but even while I was speaking she had put up 
 both her hands before it. It was a poor pro- 
 tection, for they were so thin and fragile that 
 one could almost see through them, but the 
 gesture was eloquent enough. 
 
 " You need not be afraid of the doctor, my 
 
 P 
 
210 REBECCA'S REMORSE. 
 
 dear ; he is not like any one else," said Rebecca, 
 soothingly. A compliment evidently addressed 
 to my profession, and not to myself. " She'll 
 come round after a bit, sir," she whispered 
 encouragingly ; " but she has not seen a 
 stranger not to speak to for years, and your 
 coming is a terrible trial to her." 
 
 I nodded indifferently, as though such shy- 
 ness was a common trait ; for it is a point of 
 honour with us doctors never to be surprised, 
 but to say, ''just so," and incline the head at 
 the angle of assent, when a case is introduced 
 to us, whether it be mumps or the leprosy. 
 Moreover, I could have waited patiently for 
 some time to get a glimpse of that face again. 
 It was the face of a girl rather than of a young 
 woman, though, paradoxical as this may seem, 
 there was little of youth in it. The continu- 
 ance of some distressing emotion, or possibly 
 of physical pain, had, as it will do, driven 
 youth away from it, and instead of " the ver- 
 
REBECCAS REMORSE. 
 
 meil hue of health," had given it an unnatural 
 flush, as if autumn had laid its fiery finger on 
 a leaf of springtime ; but the features were 
 perfect, and the large blue eyes the most 
 beautiful I had ever beheld. They had only 
 expressed shrinking and affright at my pre- 
 sence, but it was easier to imagine them as the 
 natural homes of love and tenderness. Around 
 this picture, the beauty of which had something 
 unearthly about it, or rather, as it struck my 
 professional eye, was only to be for a short 
 time on earth, that gleaming hair made a 
 golden frame. 
 
 A greater contrast to her sister it was not 
 possible for one woman to be to another. 
 Presently she seemed to recover herself a little, 
 and I ventured to put to her a few questions 
 founded upon what Rebecca had told me. She 
 answered them very gently, but in so different 
 a tone that they might well, as in her case, 
 have had no personal application. This was 
 
212 REBECCA'S REMORSE. 
 
 a bad sign ; for her disease was consumption, 
 where, if the patient is not, as usual, sanguine, 
 or has little interest in the result, the outlook 
 is gloomy indeed. After recommending several 
 things, which I simply said should be sent in, 
 I took my leave. Rebecca followed me out of 
 the room. 
 
 " She does not understand," she whispered 
 piteously. " You must not think her ungrate- 
 ful, sir. Her mind " she hesitated. 
 
 " Is fixed on other things than food and 
 physic," I said, smiling. " It is a common case 
 with one so ill as she is." 
 
 " She is not dying, doctor ? " 
 
 The woman's swarthy face grew pale, and 
 her eyes distended with sheer terror. I had 
 seen relatives anxious about the fate of their 
 dear ones, upon grounds the most momentous 
 spiritual considerations but never one so 
 moved as this one ; and yet she did not strike 
 rne as being a religious woman. As a rule the 
 
REBECCAS REMORSE. 213 
 
 very poor take these matters with philosophy, 
 as well they may. If there is another world 
 (which they do not always believe) to which 
 their invalid is going, it naturally strikes them 
 that it needs must be an improvement on the 
 one he is leaving ; and at all events there will 
 be one less to feed and clothe. But in the case 
 of Eebecca, her emotion was infinitely deeper 
 than mere anxiety or regret; it seemed to 
 shake the very roots of her being. 
 
 " I do not say your sister is dying, my good 
 woman," I replied. " My examination of her, as 
 you know, has been very slight ; but I confess 
 that her condition impresses me unfavourably. 
 She seems t to be in very low spirits about 
 herself." 
 
 " Heaven help her, well she may be," groaned 
 Rebecca. 
 
 " And yet she does not seem alarmed as 
 some do." 
 
 " Alarmed ? What has she to be afraid of? 
 
214 REBECCAS REMORSE. 
 
 It is others, like me, who have to be afraid. 
 She has done no wrong ; if there is a heaven 
 above, she must needs go there." 
 
 " Well, that, after all, is the great thing, and 
 should give you comfort, for you will meet 
 again." 
 
 I was a young man at the time, with such 
 platitudes at the tip of my tongue. That they 
 are all well meant is the best that can be said 
 of them. When a child is going to school for 
 the first time, we say " the months will soon 
 pass ; " when a friend is emigrating for his 
 health, " in a few years we shall see you again 
 strong and well," and since, under these cir- 
 cumstances, this " vacant chaff well-meant for 
 grain" is found to be inefficacious, how can it 
 be otherwise when the separation is complete, 
 the bourne whither our dear one is bound one 
 from which there is no return, and our re- 
 joining him without date, and doubtful ? A 
 clergyman may say these things ; from his 
 
REBECCA'S REMORSE. 215 
 
 mouth they may have their effect ; but though 
 "Never" is a hard word, we have most of us 
 to bear it. From the doctor, at all events, a 
 glance of the eye, and a touch of the hand in 
 token of human sympathy, are, it is my expe- 
 rience, more welcome to the mother that is 
 about to be childless, to the wife that is about 
 to be a widow, than this vague consolation. 
 
 " ' Comfort,' and ' meet again,' " she echoed, 
 with a sort of contemptuous despair, and 
 shaking her head, like one with the palsy, 
 re-entered the sick-room. 
 
 The whole situation amazed and perplexed 
 me. On all other topics the woman was what' 
 one would have expected her to be. Save for a 
 somewhat exceptional honesty, cleanliness, and 
 diligence, Eebecca Bent was like other char- 
 women ; but in all that pertained to her sister, 
 she was tender and emotional to an extra- 
 ordinary degree. I made inquiries about them 
 without eliciting much information. They had 
 
216 REBECCAS REMORSE. 
 
 lived in Star Court for nearly three years, but 
 Rebecca'alone was known to their fellow-lodgers. 
 Her sister had been always a recluse, if not an 
 invalid ; she had never left the room ; it was 
 understood that she took in needlework, when 
 she could obtain employment, which was not 
 often ; but Rebecca was the bread-winner. She 
 toiled early and late, but no one had heard a 
 word of complaint from her. As a general 
 rule it is not the hard workers that complain. 
 It is not that they are resigned to their harsh 
 fate, whatever cant may have to say about it ; 
 it is not in human nature to be that ; but there 
 is often a certain grim reticence about them ; a 
 not unjustifiable resentment. 
 
 This was not the case with Rebecca, however. 
 She had her reasons (as I afterwards dis- 
 covered) for liking work for its own sake. 
 Work preserves us from thinking. She was 
 quiet in her ways, and kept herself to herself ; 
 but she had a temper of her own. A neigh- 
 
REBECCAS REMORSE. 217 
 
 hour once condoled with her on having a sick 
 sister to keep. " She didn't seem to help much ; 
 couldn't she put her own shoulder to the wheel 
 a little more ? There didn't seem so very much 
 the matter with her," and so on. Then 
 Rebecca broke out, and exhibited quite an 
 unexpected command of language. She im- 
 pressed upon that neighbour the desirability of 
 minding her own business in such convincing 
 terms that nobody ever ventured to sympathize 
 with her upon the labour question again. But 
 she had not been popular before, and this 
 ebullition set society against her. She was for 
 the future very severely let alone. 
 
 Gaunt and grim though she was, for my 
 part, strange to say, Rebecca interested me, at 
 least as much as my patient, notwithstanding 
 her many advantages. Her beauty was of the 
 kind that is heightened rather than otherwise 
 by delicacy of constitution ; even disease only 
 rendered it more exquisite. It reminded me 
 
2i8 REBECCA'S REMORSE. 
 
 of the lily of the vale, " whom youth makes so 
 fair, and passion so frail, that the light of its 
 tremulous bells is seen through their pavilions 
 of tender green," so transparent was its 
 splendour. That she was dying I had now no 
 doubt, nor could the end be far distant. The 
 spectacle was very touching, even to a pro- 
 fessional eye ; but what, I confess, lessened my 
 sympathy for her was her conduct towards 
 Eebecca. She seemed to take everything she 
 did for her as a matter of course. It was quite 
 true that she gave one the impression of be- 
 longing to quite another and a higher sphere of 
 being ; but to see her so self-conscious of it was 
 deplorable. If she had been a princess she 
 could hardly have been served, not only with 
 more devotion, but with more respectful 
 reverence. I noticed in particular that, though 
 Rebecca lavished every term of endearment 
 upon her sister, she never addressed her by her 
 Christian name, and I only discovered it to be 
 Lucy by direct inquiry. 
 
REBECCAS REMORSE. 219 
 
 With the selfish egotism of the habitual 
 invalid every doctor is familiar ; but with Lucy 
 Bent it was carried beyond all bounds. I had 
 supplied her with various little luxuries, and 
 made arrangements by which, during her illness, 
 her sister should not be under the necessity of 
 leaving her ; and for this she expressed her- 
 self though, I have reason to believe, only at 
 Rebecca's prompting in a few sufficiently 
 suitable words ; if she had not uttered them 
 I should have thought little of it. There was 
 not much graciousness in Star Court, though, 
 in this case, where the casket was so fair, one 
 naturally looked for the jewel ; but the ignoring 
 of her sister's claim to gratitude, and the cold- 
 ness as it seemed to me, the studied coldness 
 of her manner towards her was painful to 
 witness. She never exchanged a word with 
 her that was not absolutely necessary. Her 
 state was such that it was impossible to re- 
 monstrate with her upon that or any other 
 
220 REBECCA'S REMORSE. 
 
 subject ; indeed and, so far, this was an excuse 
 for her she was so wrapt in her own wretched- 
 ness, so given over to, I know not what of 
 regretful and despairing memories, that she 
 seemed to pay no attention even to her own 
 condition, to "the body that did her such 
 grievous wrong," or to the soul that was about 
 to quit it. 
 
 Eebecca, on her side, was equally siient ; 
 dumb as the dog who, treated with indifference 
 by some morose master, still waits on and 
 watches him with patient devotion, but it was 
 easy to see how she longed for a kind word, or 
 even a loving glance ; and longed in vain. At 
 last, when the end was very near, I could for- 
 bear no longer ; it was a clergyman'^ business, 
 perhaps, more than mine, but my patient had 
 declined and with no little vehemence for one 
 so weak to see a clergyman ; and I took my 
 courage (for, strange as it may seem, it needed 
 courage) in both hands, and spoke to her. 
 
REBECCAS REMORSE. 223 
 
 " Have you not one word, even of farewell, 
 Lucy, for the sister who has nursed you so 
 tenderly ? " 
 
 There was a struggle within the panting 
 bosom, added to the fight for breath, but the 
 lips moved, and what they formed was the 
 monosyllable " No ; " in the faint sound I 
 recognized a distant touch of bitterness. 
 
 " I know not what you have suffered," I went 
 on, " and it may be " (this struck me for the 
 first time) " even at her hands ; but I know 
 what she has suffered, and is suffering now for 
 your sake. Forgive her, if she has done you 
 wrong, as you yourself hope to be forgiven. 
 Look at her, it may be for the last time, and 
 bid her kiss you." 
 
 Into the dying eyes, as she turned them on 
 her sister, there came a look of ineffable 
 sweetness ; and she feebly stretched her arms 
 towards her in invitation of an embrace. 
 
 Rebecca fell on her knees beside the wretched 
 
224 REBECCAS REMORSE. 
 
 bed with a cry in which, for the moment, sorrow 
 seemed to have been swallowed up in joy. To 
 have been the witness of what followed would 
 have been a sacrilege, and I left them together. 
 
 It may have been their first and last, caress, 
 for when I entered the room the next morning 
 it had but one living tenant. The dead girl 
 lay on the bed with her hands crossed a as if 
 praying dumbly over her breast." The words 
 of the poet occurred to me as I looked at her, 
 but it was that line alone which had any 
 application to her case. That she had not 
 fallen, whatever sin she had committed (though 
 she looked an angel), as Hood's unfortunate had 
 done, I felt certain. Her story was no common 
 one of the street and the river. Everything 
 that loving hands could do had been done for 
 her, to the very last service. 
 
 Rebecca was wonderfully calm and resigned, 
 and after a few words of sympathy which, 
 perhaps, had better not have been said, for I 
 
REBECCAS REMORSE. 225 
 
 could see they tried her firmness, I spoke of 
 what was necessary. Of course I took upon 
 myself all the arrangements of the funeral, but 
 I had to ask her one question about the death - 
 certificate. 
 
 " I do not know your sister's married name," 
 I said. 
 
 " She was never married," was the un- 
 expected reply. 
 
 My eye wandered interrogatively to the wed- 
 ding-ring upon that delicate finger on which 
 the needle had left no trace. It had, indeed, 
 done little work of any kind, but Eebecca only 
 shook her head. 
 
 u Then I will give your sister's maiden name 
 Bent." 
 
 " She was not my sister, sir ; she was no 
 relative at all. Put Lester." 
 
 " No relative ? Then, indeed, Rebecca, you 
 may say you have done your duty to your 
 neighbour." 
 
 Q 
 
226 REBECCAS REMORSE. 
 
 " My duty ! " she answered with bitter scorn ; 
 and throwing up her great hands. " It was I 
 who murdered her." 
 
 It was not till some days afterwards, when 
 Lucy had been laid to rest in the cemetery, that 
 I heard from Rebecca what she believed to be 
 the story of her crime. It was exaggerated, 
 emotional, and, I am very sure, represented the 
 case only as it appeared to a mind full of 
 remorse and self-reproach. 
 
 I prefer, for truth's sake as well as hers, to 
 give the facts as they would have struck an 
 unprejudiced observer. 
 
 Lucy Lester was the daughter of a trades- 
 man, well to do, and who had made his money 
 honestly enough ; but he was a puritan, and of 
 the strictest sect of the Pharisees. His wife had 
 died when Lucy was still a child, and she was 
 brought up in an atmosphere of gloom and 
 dulness, very unsuited to her character, which 
 was at once frivolous and egotistic. Her beauty, 
 
REBECCAS REMORSE. 227 
 
 of which she was only too conscious, was pro- 
 nounced by the formal society with which she 
 mixed, to be a snare (as indeed it proved to be), 
 and every amusement to which she was natur- 
 ally inclined was sternly forbidden to her. 
 Rebecca, who had been her nurse, and when 
 she grew up become her maid, sympathized 
 with her young mistress, to whom she was also 
 genuinely attached, and made common cause 
 with her against her persecutors, as she called 
 them, though those included her parent himself. 
 He was very thrifty, and kept Lucy "short" as 
 to pin-money, arid Rebecca, who, as she told me 
 (for she spared herself in nothing), " was very 
 greedy of gain," on a very low scale of wages. 
 It was a sad and rather sordid story of severity 
 and repression met by duplicity and intrigue 
 What redeemed it was the disinterested though 
 exaggerated fealty of Rebecca, which would 
 have borne comparison with that of feudal 
 times. Except for her singular beauty there 
 
228 REBECCAS REMORSE. 
 
 was nothing admirable in Lucy, who indeed 
 was proud, selfish, and exacting, but in Rebecca's 
 eyes she was perfection, and a martyr ; fit for a 
 prince, but with no choice of suitors, save of a 
 commonplace and unworthy kind, who never 
 having seen a stage play had no notion of the 
 desirability of making a friend of the maid of 
 their mistress. 
 
 Presently, however, a lover appeared of quite 
 another stamp, but unhappily a clandestine lover. 
 Mr. Power was one of her father's customers, a 
 gentleman, as was understood, of good position, 
 who at all events gave large orders which were 
 punctually paid for, and while calling on Mr. 
 Lester on business he chanced to catch sight of 
 Lucy, and became at once enamoured of her 
 beauty. Without the simplicity which is the 
 safeguard of her sex, she was absolutely ignor- 
 ant of that world with which she panted to 
 mingle ; the man's air of fashion made as much 
 way, with her as his protestations ; and unfor- 
 
REBECCAS REMORSE. 229 
 
 tunately the lavishness which a man of his 
 stamp displays, when bent on such a design, 
 was taken by Rebecca as a sign of a generous 
 nature ; without knowing them (as I think) to 
 be exactly bribes, she took his bribes. 
 
 With one word to her master she could pro- 
 bably have saved his daughter, but she did not 
 feel she was in danger. Even a word of warn- 
 ing to Lucy herself might not have been thrown 
 away, but she did not give it. On the con- 
 trary, urged by many considerations, dislike of 
 her master and his surroundings, willingness to 
 please her darling, and confidence in Power's 
 professions, she assisted him to elope with her. 
 I am afraid there was even a time when Lucy 
 shrank from the audacity of that design, and 
 but for Rebecca would have abandoned it ; but 
 it was because she was herself deceived. In- 
 deed, at the last, when Lucy had lost her head 
 as well as her heart, and would have risked all 
 for love, Rebecca stepped in, and insisted upon 
 
230 REBECCAS REMORSE. 
 
 being present at the marriage ceremony. It- 
 was a barren precaution though poor Lucy 
 might afterwards have used it as a weapon of 
 revenge, if she had had the heart for revenge 
 for in a few weeks she discovered that he whom 
 she had believed to be her husband was a 
 married man. In that brief space she had lost 
 all ; fortune, friends, and home ; for her father 
 closed his doors against her ; and the unhappy 
 girl found herself thrown on her own resources, 
 which consisted only of a scanty wardrobe and 
 a few jewels. Then, like a wounded tigress, 
 she turned upon Rebecca, with " It is you who 
 have been my ruin." 
 
 The fury that might reasonably have been 
 poured on her deceiver seemed quenched in the 
 very catastrophe he had caused, as flame deserts 
 the blackened ruin ; so far as he was concerned 
 the crime of which she had been the victim was 
 so overwhelming that in place of indignation 
 she felt only wretchedness and despair ; too 
 
REBECCAS REMORSE. 231 
 
 weak to seek relief in self-destruction, she yet 
 desired to hide herself from her fellow-creatures, 
 and especially to be seen no more of men. 
 
 What remained to her of vitality took the 
 form of passionate reproach of .her late ally and 
 assistant, and not a word did Rebecca say in 
 her own defence. 
 
 Instead of leaving her young mistress to a 
 fate only too easy to be foreseen, she devoted 
 herself with penitence and remorse to smooth 
 the rough road she must needs travel for the 
 future. 
 
 Effort of her own Lucy never made, and 
 accepted the other's services not only as her 
 due, but as but a small instalment of the 
 obligation she had incurred in having given her 
 such bad advice. That she had not forgiven 
 her she made very plain, even (as has been 
 shown) up to the last moment of her life ; but 
 Rebecca never thought herself hardly used. 
 
 " There was nothing I could do, as you may 
 
232 REBECCA'S REMORSE. 
 
 believe," she said, " that deserved thanks. It 
 was owing to me that my poor dear mistress, 
 so young, so beautiful, so tender, had fallen 
 into the hands of a villain, and unfit as she was 
 to bear hardships, was compelled to live upon a 
 crust. Was it to my credit that these hands 
 which had taken his bribes, provided the 
 crust ? " 
 
 If Miss Lucy had complained, she said she 
 could have better borne the consciousness of her 
 crime ; but, after that first outbreak, she kept 
 silence, a cold reproachful silence that for years 
 had chilled the other's very heart. All she 
 stipulated for was to be alone, not to be spoken 
 to, not to be seen, and, even when her illness 
 had become severe, it was only on Rebecca's 
 promise to obtain professional advice without 
 the doctor's presence that the sick girl had 
 permitted her to apply to me. 
 
 This was the story of Rebecca's remorse. 
 
 I did what I could to reason with the poor 
 
REBECCAS REMORSE. 235 
 
 woman, by pointing out how penance atones 
 for wrong ; but if I had not been so fortunate 
 as to obtain for her Lucy's death-bed forgive- 
 ness, she would certainly never have forgiven 
 herself. As it was, she was in some degree 
 comforted. I got her a situation in the country 
 with some friends of mine, where she was 
 greatly esteemed, and remained for years. She 
 always took a day or two's holiday in the 
 summer. No one knew where she spent it, 
 for she had no friends ; but at the same time, 
 who ever visited a certain East End cemetery 
 would have found, on Lucy Lester's grave, fresh 
 flowers. 
 
IS IT A MAN? 
 
 BY J. M. BARRIE. 
 
 I. 
 
 I CAME upon his grave 
 accidentally a few weeks 
 ago while taking a short 
 cut through the ceme- 
 tery of an unlovely pro- 
 vincial town. His name 
 I had forgotten the night 
 I heard it years ago ; 
 had flung it away, so to speak, with the hand- 
 bills he gave me at the same time, but the 
 wording on the tombstone recalled his story to 
 me as vividly as if it was a long lost friend 
 
 J. M. BARUIE. 
 
IS IT A MAN? 239 
 
 whom I had suddenly struck against. I laughed 
 at the story when he told it to me, but when 
 I read it in brief on the tombstone I wondered 
 why I had laughed. 
 
 We only met once, and it was in London 
 at the theatre. His stall adjoined mine. 
 When his lips were at rest he was a melancholy 
 looking little man, but frequently he spoke to 
 himself, and then all character went out of his 
 face. For a time he paid no attention to the 
 acting, but by-and-by he sat up excitedly in 
 his seat, rubbed his hands nervously on his 
 trousers, and leaning in my direction, peered, 
 not at the stage, but at the wings. I heard 
 him mutter, " Her cue in a moment, and I 
 don't see her ! " He looked around the house 
 as if to signal to everybody that something was 
 about to happen, and then I noticed his feet 
 begin to beat the floor instinctively, and his 
 one palm run to the other. Next moment the 
 heavy father whispered to the old, and there- 
 
240 IS IT A MAN? 
 
 fore comic spinster, " But not a word of this 
 to nay daughter ; here she comes." 
 
 The heroine of the piece sailed on to the 
 stage, with tears for her father and smiles for 
 the audience, and, as I thought, one quick 
 glance for my neighbour. His feet pattered 
 softly on the floor, as a sign to the audience 
 to cheer, but they were reluctant, and after she 
 had given them an imploring glance, she 
 began to speak slowly, as one saying to herself 
 between her spoken words, " I am still quite 
 willing to stop if you will applaud me." And 
 she was applauded, for my neighbour's feet at 
 last set others a-going, and then she curtseyed 
 and waited for more, and then we all became 
 energetic. The little man had been breathing 
 quick in his excitement, but now he heaved 
 a great sigh of relief, and whispered to me 
 in exultation, " What a reception the O'Reilly 
 has got, sir, and quite spontaneous. The 
 same thing occurs every night, every night, 
 
fS IT A MAN? 241 
 
 every night ! Hush ! you will see acting 
 
 now." 
 
 He had silenced me when I was about to ask 
 him if he was here every night. I judged him 
 an ardent admirer of Miss O'Reilly, and had 
 further evidence during the first act that one 
 man may lead the applause as a conductor 
 leads the orchestra. When Miss Helmsley 
 entered, and some pittites began to cheer, my 
 neighbour cried " Sh-sh " so fiercely that the 
 demonstration stopped abruptly, and Miss 
 Helmsley withdrew her curtsey. When the 
 heavy father stopped in the middle of his 
 long speech for a " hand " to help him on his 
 way, he would have got it but for the " Sh-sh " 
 of the little man. When the comedian nudged 
 the elderly spinster in the ribs, which is how 
 elderly spinsters are made love to on the stage, 
 some ladies giggled, but my neighbour looked 
 at them with a face that said, " There is nothing 
 funny in that," and they restrained their mirth. 
 
242 JS IT A MAN? 
 
 But when Miss O'Reilly snatched the smoking- 
 cap from Leonard and put it on her own flaxen 
 head, he chuckled till the whole audience 
 admitted the fun of it, and when Miss O'Reilly 
 told Lord John to stand back and let her pass, 
 my neighbour brought down the house; and 
 when she made her reluctant exit he brought 
 down the house again ; and when the curtain 
 fell on the first act he shouted " O'Reilly " until 
 we were all infected. Not until he had her 
 before the curtain would he retire, and then it 
 was to speak about her to me. The exchange 
 of a vesta introduced us to each other. 
 
 " You have seen the piece before ? " I asked, 
 with the good-nature that is born of a cigarette. 
 I had already sufficient interest in him to 
 wonder who he was. 
 
 " The piece ? " he echoed indifferently. " Oh 
 yes ; I have seen the greater part of it 
 frequently." 
 
 4 'How does it end?" 
 
IS IT A MAN? 243 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " I don't know," he answered contemptuously. 
 " I always walk out of the house just before 
 the last tableau." 
 
 " Is Miss O'Reilly not on the stage in that 
 tableau ? " I asked. 
 
 " She is not," he replied, rapping out an 
 oath or two, and trembling with rage. " Did 
 you ever hear of anything so monstrous ? She 
 is leading lady, the idol of the town, and yet 
 she is not on at the end. Excuse me, sir. I 
 am always taken in this way when I think of it." 
 
 He bit his cigarette in two and asked for 
 another vesta. Then he explained. 
 
 " She dies, you know, in the middle of the 
 act." 
 
 " Ah, that accounts for it," I said. 
 
 " Not at all," he retorted ; " she ought not 
 to die until the tableau. And if she had to 
 die then, that should have been the tableau. 
 What do people come to the theatre to see ? " 
 
244 /-S 1 IT A MAN? 
 
 " The play," I suggested. 
 
 " Pooh, the play ! " he sneered. u There are 
 twenty plays to be seen nightly at West End 
 theatres, but only one O'Reilly. They come 
 to see the O'Reilly, sir, and it is defrauding the 
 public to let her die a moment before the end." 
 
 " Still," I said, " the author " 
 
 " Pshaw ! " he broke in, " who thinks of the 
 author ? He could easily have brought down 
 the curtain on the O'Reilly's death, and I am 
 confident he meant to do it. But Helmsley 
 is the management's niece, and insisted on 
 being the only lady in the tableau. You 
 noticed that Helmsley was a complete frost ? 
 I distinctly heard some one hissing her." 
 
 " So did I," I said, smiling, for the some 
 one had been himself. 
 
 "You heard it too," he cried audaciously. 
 " Thank you, sir," he said, and shook me 
 warmly by the hand. 
 
 " The O'Reilly herself," he added, " had no 
 
75 IT A MAN? 245 
 
 wish to be in the tableau, but she knew the 
 public would expect it. She is a woman, that, 
 
 sir." 
 
 " She is," I agreed. 
 
 " Ha ! " he exclaimed. " You, too, were 
 struck by it ? But she impresses every one in 
 the same way. The management pay her a 
 princely salary ; but she is worth it. Did you 
 hear how that man in the pit laughed over her 
 lines about bread and cheese and kisses ? I 
 wonder who he is ? " 
 
 " What salary does she get ? " I asked, with 
 the curiosity of a theatre-goer. 
 
 "They say," he replied, looking at me 
 sharply, " that she gets eighty pounds a week." 
 
 " Hem ! " I said. 
 
 He coughed. " What a carriage she has ! " 
 he exclaimed ; and then waited for me to agree. 
 
 " Wonderful ! " I said, for I never contradict 
 a man who is in love. 
 
 " You think she has a wonderful carriage ? " 
 
246 IS IT A MAN? 
 
 he asked, as if I had put the idea into his head. 
 " Yes, you are quite right. I will tell her 
 you remarked on it." 
 
 " You know her personally ? " 
 
 " I have that honour," he replied with 
 dignity. " Candidly now, is not her education 
 superb ? " 
 
 " It is," I said. 
 
 " I agree with you," he answered, " and you 
 have used the one word that properly describes 
 it. Superb ! Yes, that is the very word. I 
 will tell her you said superb. I see you know 
 acting, sir, when you see it. Not that I would 
 call it acting. Would you call it acting ? " 
 
 " Certainly not," I answered recklessly, but 
 hoping he would not ask me to give it a name. 
 
 " No," he said, " it is not acting. It is 
 simply genius." 
 
 " Genius," I said from memory, " is all the 
 talents in a nutshell." 
 
 " Ha ! " he cried, " that is how you would 
 
IS IT A MAN? 247 
 
 describe her? All the talents in a nutshell! 
 What a capital line for the advertisements. 
 All the talents in a nutshell ! I will tell her 
 you said that about her." 
 
 He lowered his voice. " Press ? " he asked 
 with some awe. I shook my head. 
 
 " Got friends on the press ? " he next 
 inquired. 
 
 " Yes," I said, remembering that a pressman 
 owed me five pounds. 
 
 "Critics?" 
 
 " I shouldn't wonder." 
 
 " Then," he said eagerly, " put them up to 
 that line, ' all the talents in a nutshell/ Or 
 stop ; would you mind giving me their private 
 address ? " 
 
 " Unfortunately, I cannot." 
 
 " That is a pity, because if you could see 
 your way to a ' par,' I think I might be able 
 to introduce you to the O'Reilly. But she is 
 very particular." 
 
248 IS IT A MAN? 
 
 " You are an enthusiast about her," I re- 
 marked. 
 
 " Who could help it ? " he answered. " I 
 have watched her career since she was on my 
 soul, sir, since she was nobody in particular. 
 There was a time when that woman was no 
 more famous than you are. You were speaking 
 of her genius a minute ago, but, would you 
 believe it, she rose from the ranks, positively 
 from the ranks." 
 
 If I had swooned at this, his hands would 
 have been ready to catch me ; but I kept my 
 senses. 
 
 "Your interest in her," I ventured to say, 
 " was very natural, but it must have taken up 
 a good deal of your time." 
 
 " All my time," he said. 
 
 " Except during business hours, of course." 
 
 " From the time I rise until midnight." 
 
 " Then you have no profession ? " 
 
 " That is my profession." 
 
"I USED TO BE IN THE PROFESSION MYSELF," HE SAID, SIGHING. "l AM JOLLY 
 
 LITTLE JIM ! " 
 
IS IT A MAN ? 251 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " The interest I take in her." 
 
 " And did you never do anything else ? " I 
 asked, beginning to envy the little man his 
 father. 
 
 At once the melancholy look, of which I 
 have spoken, came back to his face. 
 
 "I used to be in the profession myself," he 
 said, sighing. " I am Jolly Little Jim." 
 
 He did not look it at that moment. 
 
 u You have forgotten me, I see," he said, 
 dolefully. "Think a moment. Jolly Little 
 Jim was the name." 
 
 "I am afraid I never heard it," I had to 
 admit. 
 
 " Nonsense ! " he answered testily. " Every- 
 body knew that name * once. I got no other, 
 though my real name is James Thorpe. Why, 
 I advertised as Jolly Little Jim. You must 
 have heard it." 
 
 " Perhaps I have," I replied, pitying his 
 distress. 
 
252 IS IT A MAN? 
 
 ___^ 
 
 " If you would care to read my press notices," 
 he began putting his hand into his pocket, 
 "lean " 
 
 " Not to-night," I interposed hurriedly. 
 
 u I can repeat most of them," he said brightly. 
 
 " Bather tell me why you gave up a pro- 
 fession," I said, " which you doubtless adorned." 
 
 "Thank you," he answered, again pressing 
 my hand. " Well, sir, the O'Reilly has the 
 responsibility for that." 
 
 " You gave up acting because it interfered 
 with your interest in her ? " 
 
 "You may put it in that way. I gave up 
 everything for her. If that woman, sir, had 
 asked me to choose between her and my press 
 notices, I believe I would have burned them." 
 
 " How has she rewarded you ? " I asked, 
 seeing that he was of a communicative nature. 
 
 " She married me," he answered, drawing 
 himself up to his full height. " Yes, I am her 
 husband!" 
 
76* IT A MAN? 253 
 
 It was I who shook his hand this time. I 
 could think of nothing else to do. He was 
 beginning his story, when the bell tinkled, 
 warning us to return to our seats. 
 
 " She is on immediately," he said, " so we 
 must go back and give her a hand. I'll meet 
 you here again after the second act." 
 
 II. 
 
 DURING the second act Mr. Thorpe behaved as 
 previously, drinking in Miss O'Reilly's every 
 word, cheering her comings and goings, and 
 yawning, and even reading a newspaper, when 
 he should have been listening to Miss Helmsley. 
 Once I saw him make a note on his programme, 
 and felt sure it was, " All the talents in a nut- 
 shell." I started him on his story as soon as 
 he joined me in the smoking-room. (He had 
 remained in his seat to shout " O'Reilly.") 
 " The first time I ever set eyes on her," he 
 
254 f-S IT A MAN ? 
 
 began, " was at Dublin, where we had both 
 been engaged for pantomime. Yes, that woman 
 once played in pantomime ; and, what is more, 
 she was only second girl. That is a strange 
 thing to think of. I was the first villain, 
 Deepdyeo, and the Shamrock said of my creation, 
 ' Another part admirably rendered is the Deep- 
 dyeo of Mr. James Thorpe, better known to 
 fame as Jolly Little Jim. Mr. Thorpe, who 
 was received with an ovation 
 
 " But you were to tell me of Miss O'Reilly," 
 I reminded him. 
 
 " Ah," he said, " I shall never forget that 
 first meeting. It took place at rehearsal, and 
 when I left the theatre that afternoon I was a 
 changed man." 
 
 " You fell in love with her at first sight ? " 
 
 " Not absolutely at first sight. You see, I 
 was introduced to her before the rehearsal 
 began, and there was no opportunity of falling 
 in love with her then." 
 
JS IT A MAN? 255 
 
 " Still, she had impressed you ? " 
 
 "How could she impress me before I had 
 seen her do anything ? What is it in a woman 
 that one falls in love with ? " 
 
 "Who can tell?" I said. 
 
 " Anybody can tell," he answered, putting 
 me down for a bachelor. "It is the genius in 
 her, or rather what we consider genius, for 
 many men make a mistake about that." 
 
 " So you loved her for her genius ? " 
 
 u What first struck me was her exit. I 
 suppose I may say that I fell in love with it 
 at once. Then she sang ; only a verse, but it 
 was enough. Later she danced, and that, sir, 
 was a revelation. I knew the woman was a 
 genius. By the time the pantomime was in 
 full swing, she was the one woman in the 
 world for me." 
 
 "And she had fallen in love with your 
 genius, too ? " 
 
 " I could not be certain. You see, we 
 
256 IS IT A MAN? 
 
 were not on speaking terms ; she was so 
 jealous." 
 
 " But that," I said, " is recognized as a sign 
 of love. No doubt, she wanted you entirely 
 to herself. Who was the lady ? " 
 
 " What lady ? " he asked, in surprise. 
 
 " The lady Miss O'Reilly was jealous of," I 
 said. 
 
 " I never said she was jealous of a lady ; 
 though, of course, she would be jealous of the 
 principal girl. I spoke of myself." 
 
 " But how," I questioned, " could she be 
 jealous unless she thought you were paying 
 attention to some other woman ? " 
 
 " Oh ! " he said, with slow enlightenment, 
 " I see what you mean, but you don't see what 
 I mean. It was of me that she was jealous, or 
 rather of my song. You may not be aware 
 that in pantomime we are allowed to choose 
 our own songs. Well, it so happened that she 
 and I both wanted to sing the same song. It 
 
IS IT A MAN? 257 
 
 was an exquisite thing, called, * Do you think 
 when you wink?' and as I had applied for 
 permission to sing it first she was told to select 
 something else. That was why we did not 
 
 " But if you loved her," I said, speaking, it 
 is true, on a subject of which I knew little, 
 " you would surely have consented to waive 
 your rights to the song. Love, it is said, 
 delights in self-sacrifice." 
 
 u No doubt," he admitted, " but you know 
 the lines, < I could not love you, dear, so much, 
 loved I not honour more.' Well, my honour 
 was at stake, for I had promised my admirers 
 in Dublin and they were legion (see the 
 Shamrock for January 12, 1883) to sing that 
 song. And my fame was at stake as well as 
 my honour, for I created quite a furore with 
 ' Do you think when you wink ? ' 
 
 " Still," I insisted, " love is all powerful." 
 
 " I admit it," he answered, " and, what is 
 
 s 
 
258 IS IT A MAN? 
 
 more, I proved it, for after I had sung the 
 song a week, I transferred it to her." 
 
 " Did she sing it as well as you had done ? " 
 
 There was a mighty struggle within him 
 before he could reply, but when he did speak 
 he was magnificent. 
 
 "She sang it far better than I," he said 
 firmly, and then winced. 
 
 "Ic was a great sacrifice you made," I said 
 gently, " but doubtless it had its reward. Did 
 she give you her hand in exchange for the 
 song ? " 
 
 " No," he answered, " we were not married 
 until a year after that. She was grateful to 
 me, but soon we quarrelled again. The fact 
 is that I took a ' call ' which she insisted was 
 meant for her. She felt that disappointment 
 terribly ; indeed, she has not got over it yet. 
 She cannot speak about it without crying." 
 
 " You mean," I said, " that you years ago 
 deprived her of the privilege of curtseying to 
 
7S IT A MAN? 259 
 
 an audience ? Surely she would not let that 
 prey on her mind ? " 
 
 "You don't understand," he replied, "that 
 fame is food and drink to an artist. It was 
 months before she forgave me that, though she 
 is naturally the most tender-hearted creature. 
 Our baggage man stole fifty pounds from her, 
 and she would not prosecute him because she 
 knew his sister. But you see it was not money 
 that I deprived her of it was fame." 
 
 " And did you win your way back into her 
 favour ? " I asked, " by letting her take a ' call ' 
 that was meant for you ? " 
 
 " No/' he said ; " several times I determined 
 to do so, but when the moment came I could 
 not make the sacrifice. I spent about half my 
 salary in presents to her ; but, although she took 
 them, she refused to listen to any proposal of 
 marriage. By this time I had confessed my 
 love for her. Well, we parted, and soon 
 afterwards I got an engagement as chief 
 
260 IS IT A MAN? 
 
 comedian in the ' Powder Monkey ' Company, 
 which was then on tour. She was playing 
 chambermaid in it. Fancy that woman fling- 
 ing herself away on chambermaids ! I made 
 a big hit in my part. The Lincoln Observer 
 said, 4 Mr. James Thorpe, the celebrated Jolly 
 Little Jim, created a ' " 
 
 " But about Miss O'Reilly," I asked. 
 
 " We got on swimmingly at first," he said. 
 
 " She had decided to forgive you ? " 
 
 "No, she was stiff the first day, but I put 
 her up to a bit of business, that used to be 
 encored nightly, and then she accepted my 
 offer of marriage. But a week after I had 
 given her the engagement-ring she returned it 
 to me. I don't blame her." 
 
 " You admit that she had just cause of 
 complaint against you ? " 
 
 " Yes ; no woman who was an artist could 
 have stood it. The fact is, that one night I 
 took the ' up ' side of her in our comic love 
 
IS IT A MAN? 261 
 
 scene. That is to say, I had my face to the 
 audience, and so she was forced to turn her 
 back to them. I had no right to do it, but a 
 sort of madness came over me, and I yielded 
 to the impulse. As soon as we had made our 
 exits she flung the ring in my ah, she gave 
 me back the ring, and, for the remainder of the 
 tour, she was not civil to me. The tour ended 
 abruptly ; indeed, the manager decamped, 
 owing us all a fortnight's salary, and we were 
 stranded in Bootle without money to pay for 
 our lodgings, not to speak of our tickets back to 
 London. I pawned my watch and sold my fur 
 coat, and shared what I got for them with her." 
 " And so the engagement was resumed ? " 
 " No, no ; that was merely a friendly act, 
 and it was accepted as such. The engagement 
 was not resumed until I got a ' par ' about her 
 into a Sunday paper. But that is the bell 
 again. I'll tell you the rest after her death 
 
 scene." 
 
262 IS IT A MAN? 
 
 III. 
 
 Miss O'REILLY died as slowly as the manage- 
 ment would allow her, and, when she had 
 gasped her last gasp with her hair down, Jolly 
 Little Jim that was led the tears and the 
 cheers, cried out, " Superb, by Jove ! that 
 woman has all the talents in a nut-shell," and 
 strutted from the stalls in a manner that in- 
 vited the rest of the audience to follow. But 
 everybody, save Mr. Thorpe and myself, re- 
 mained to see the comic man produce the 
 missing will, and so my little friend and I got 
 the smoking-room to ourselves. 
 
 " The next time we were on tour together," 
 he continued, after I had given the death scene 
 a testimonial, " was in * Letters of Fire,' with 
 a real steam-engine. I was Bill Body, the 
 returned convict, and the Rochester Age said, 
 ' Mr. Thorpe, who, as Jolly Little Jim, made 
 such a '" 
 
IS IT A MAN? 263 
 
 " The engagement was resumed by this 
 time ? " I asked. 
 
 " I told you the * par ' had done that. How- 
 ever, we had another tiff during rehearsals, 
 because I got the epilogue to speak. I dare 
 say that would have led to a rupture had 
 not " 
 
 " Had not she loved you so deeply," I sug- 
 gested. 
 
 " She loved me fondly/' he replied, " but she 
 loved fame more. Every true genius does. 
 No, the reason she did not break with me then 
 was that I was * on ' in her great scene in the 
 fourth act. You see, as chief comedian I had 
 a right to a little comic by-play in that scene, 
 and if I had exercised that right I should have 
 drawn away attention from herself. Thus I 
 had the whip hand of her. I am inclined to 
 think that had I pressed the point I could have 
 married her during the run of that piece." 
 
 "By threatening, if she delayed the wedding, 
 
264 f$ IT A MAN? 
 
 to introduce comic business into her great 
 scene ? " 
 
 " Yes ; but I did not, and you are no doubt 
 wondering why. The fact is, I thought my 
 self-denial would soften her heart and so bring 
 about the results I was pining for. Perhaps 
 it would have done so, but unfortunately, 
 ' Letters of Fire ' did not draw (though a great 
 success artistically), and we had to put ' London 
 Slums ' on in its place. In that piece the 
 leading juvenile played up to her so well 
 that she began to neglect me. I was in despair, 
 and so not quite accountable for my actions. 
 Nevertheless, you will think the revenge I 
 took as cold-blooded as it seemed to her. You 
 must understand that, though our pieces were 
 splendidly billed, the O'Reilly had fifty chromos 
 of herself, done at her own expense, and all 
 framed. These she got our agent in advance 
 to exhibit in the best places in the best shops, 
 and undoubtedly they added to her fame. They 
 
IS IT A MAN? 265 
 
 preceded us by a week, and so she was always 
 well known before we opened anywhere. Well, 
 sir, 1 got fifty chromos of myself framed, and 
 ten days before we were due at Sheffield I had 
 them put into fifty barbers' shops there." 
 
 " Why barbers' shops ? " I interposed. 
 
 " Because they are most seen and discussed 
 there," he explained. " It comes natural to a 
 man when he is being shaved to talk about 
 what is on at the theatres, I can't say why 
 that is so, but so it is. Perhaps one reason 
 is that barbers are nearly always enthusiasts on 
 matters of art. Well, if there is a good chromo 
 in the shop, of course it comes in for its share 
 of discussion, and the barber tells what parts 
 you have played before, and so on. It is a 
 great help. However, the O'Eeilly no sooner 
 heard what I had done than she told me all 
 was over between us." 
 
 " Still," I said, " the barbers would have had 
 room for her pictures as well as for yours." 
 
266 IS IT A MAN? 
 
 " I got the best places," he answered ; " and 
 there is this, too, to consider. The more 
 chromos there are to look at, the less attention 
 does any particular one get ; and she held that 
 if I loved her truly I would not have stepped 
 in, as it were, between her and the public. 
 She did not get a reception that opening night 
 at Sheffield, and, of course, she gave me the 
 blame. It seriously affected her health." 
 " But you made that quarrel up ? " 
 "Not for three weeks. Then she gave in. 
 Instead of my going to her, she came to me 
 and offered to renew the engagement if I would 
 withdraw my chromos." 
 
 " Which you did gladly, of course ? " 
 " I took a night to think of it. You who are 
 not an artist cannot conceive how I loved my 
 chromos. Did I tell you that I had printed 
 beneath them, ' Yours very sincerely, Jolly 
 Little Jim ' ? However, I did yield to her 
 wishes, and we were to be married at Newcastle, 
 
IT A MAN? 267 
 
 when a terrible thing happened. We have now 
 come to the turning-point of my life. At New- 
 castle, sir, I made my last appearance on . the 
 stage." 
 
 Mr. Thorpe turned his face from me until he 
 recovered command of it. Then he resumed. 
 
 " Two days before the marriage was to take 
 place a Newcastle paper slated her and praised 
 me. It said, ' Miss O'Reilly ought to take a 
 page out of Mr. Thorpe's book. She should 
 learn from him that the action should suit the 
 word, not precede it. She should note his 
 facial expression, which is comedy in picture, 
 and control her own tendency to let her face 
 look after itself. She should take note of his 
 clear pronunciation and model her somewhat 
 snappy delivery on it.' Sir, I read that notice 
 with mixed feelings. As an artist I could not 
 but delight in its complimentary references to 
 myself, but as a lover I dreaded its effect on the 
 O'Reilly. After breakfast I went to call on 
 
268 IS IT A MAN? 
 
 her at her lodgings, and happening to pass a 
 number of news-shops on the way, I could not 
 resist the temptation to buy at each a paper 
 with the notice. I concealed the papers about 
 my person, and as I approached her door I 
 tried to look downcast. But I fear my step 
 was springy. Perhaps she saw me from her 
 window. At all events, her landlady informed 
 me that Miss O'Reilly declined to see me. 
 6 Here is something I was told to give you,' 
 said the woman, handing me a pill-box. It 
 contained the ring! I compelled the O'Reilly 
 to listen to me that night at the theatre, and 
 she allowed that I was not to blame for the 
 notice. But she pointed out that there could 
 be no chance of happiness for a husband and 
 wife whose interests were opposed, and I saw 
 that it was true. I walked about the streets of 
 Newcastle all that night, such was my misery, 
 such the struggle in my breast between love 
 and fame. Well, sir, love conquered, as it 
 
IS IT A MAN? 269 
 
 never could have conquered her, for she was a 
 great artist, and I only a small one, though the 
 Basingstoke Magpie said of me, ' The irre- 
 sistibly droll Mr. Thorpe, better known as 
 
 " The play will end in a minute," I said. 
 " How did you win her ? " 
 
 "I offered," he replied, with emotion, "to 
 give up my profession and devote myself to 
 furthering her fame." 
 
 " And to live on her ? " I said aghast. 
 
 " You who do not understand art may put it 
 in that way," he replied ; " but she realized the 
 sacrifice I was making for her sake, and doubted 
 my love no longer. Was it nothing, sir, to 
 give up my fame, to give up the name I was 
 known by all over England (as the Torquay 
 Chat said), and sink to the level of those who 
 have never been mentioned in the papers? 
 Why, you yourself had forgotten the famous 
 Jolly Little Jim." 
 
 His voice was inexpressibly mournful, arid 
 
270 IS IT A MAN? 
 
 I felt that I really had been listening to a love 
 romance. The last three hours, too, had shown 
 me that Mr. Thorpe was responsible for some 
 of the fame of his wife. 
 
 " The management," he went on bravely, 
 " allowed me to retire without the usual fort- 
 night's notice, and so the marriage took place 
 on the day we had previously arranged it 
 for." 
 
 " Had you a pleasant honeymoon ? " I 
 asked. 
 
 " In one sense," he replied, " we had no 
 honeymoon, for she played that night as usual; 
 but in another sense it has been a honeymoon 
 ever since, for we have the same interests, the 
 same joys, the same sorrows." 
 
 "That is to say, you have both only her fame 
 
 to think of now ? May I ask, did she, for 
 
 whom you made such a sacrifice, make any 
 
 sacrifice for you ? " 
 
 -" She did indeed," he answered. " For four 
 
IS IT A MAN? 271 
 
 weeks she let her name be printed in the bills 
 thus : ' Miss O'Reilly (Mrs. James Thorpe)/ 
 though to have it known by the public that she 
 is married is against an actress." 
 
 " And you are happy in your new occupa- 
 tion ? " 
 
 "Very happy," he answered cheerfully, " and 
 very proud." Then with a heavy sigh he 
 added, " But I wish people would remember 
 Jolly Little Jim." 
 
 There was really something pathetic about 
 the man ; but before I could tell a lie and 
 say that I now remembered Jolly Little Jim 
 perfectly, the audience began to applaud, and 
 Mr. Thorpe, thrusting some bills into my 
 hands, hurried back to the stalls to shout 
 " O'Reilly." 
 
 As I have said, I never met him again, nor 
 thought of him, until I found myself at his 
 grave. This is the inscription on the tomb- 
 stone : 
 
272 IS IT A MAN? 
 
 ERECTED TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 JAMES THORPE, 
 
 AGED 38, 
 BY HIS SORROWING WIFE, 
 
 THE FAMOUS MAY O'REILLY 
 
 (Of the principal theatres). 
 
 Poor Mr. Thorpe ! There was something 
 lovable about him. The O'Reilly might have 
 put on the tombstone : " Better known as Jolly 
 Little Jim." It would have gratified him. 
 
THE GOLDEN RULE. 
 
 BY MRS. OLIPHANT. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE breakfast-room in the vicarage at 
 Leighton-Furness was one of the most cheerful 
 rooms you can imagine, especially at the hour 
 and the meal to which it was devoted. It got 
 all the morning sun, and on a warm morning 
 in May, when the lilacs with which the lawn 
 was surrounded were in full bloom, and the 
 pretty breakfast-table was adorned as all 
 tables are nowadays with the flowers of the 
 season, wallflowers golden and brown, with 
 the dew still on them freshly gathered, making 
 a glow of colour among the white china, and 
 filling the room with fragrance, you could not 
 
 T 
 
274 THE GOLDEN RULE. 
 
 have seen a pleasanter place. And the family 
 gathered round the table was in every way 
 suited to the place. First, the vicar, sixty, 
 hale and hearty, with white hair, which was 
 exceedingly becoming to him, and a fine 
 country colour speaking of fresh air and much 
 exercise. Second, his wife, Mrs. Wynyard, 
 ten years younger, very well preserved, who 
 had been a handsome woman in her day ; and 
 third, Emily, not, perhaps, to be described in 
 these words, but yet a young woman whose 
 looks were not to be despised, and who would 
 have been an important member of any house- 
 hold in which she had found herself. It was a 
 special providence, Mrs. "Wynyard believed, all 
 things considered, that up to this moment her 
 father's house had pleased her more than any 
 other, and that no suitor had carried her away. 
 For it need scarcely be said that in this 
 pleasant house everything was not pleasant. 
 Had all been well with them the historian 
 
THE GOLDEN RULE. 275 
 
 would have had nothing to tell ; from whence, 
 no doubt, comes the saying, whether appro- 
 priated to countries or to wives, that those are 
 the happiest of whom there is nothing to be 
 said. The post had come in just before the 
 moment at which this episode in their lives 
 opens, and the ladies, as was natural, had 
 thrown themselves upon their letters. The 
 vicar, for his part, had opened his newspaper, 
 which is the natural division I do not say 
 of labour in the circumstances. For at sixty 
 a man, and especially a clergyman, gets a little 
 indifferent about his correspondence, which is 
 generally more a trouble than a pleasure ; 
 whereas a woman's interest in her letters, even 
 when they are about nothing in particular, 
 never fails. 
 
 This morning, however, there was some 
 special interest which made even the vicar's 
 absorption in his newspaper a little fictitious. 
 When Mrs. Wynyard and her daughter took 
 
276 THE GOLDEN RULE. 
 
 up the letters, they both in one breath exclaimed 
 " Jack ! " throwing aside the other items of 
 their correspondence as if they mattered less 
 than nothing. When he heard that exclama- 
 tion the vicar looked up from his paper and 
 said, " Well ? " sharply, looking from one to 
 another ; but receiving no reply after a 
 moment's interval returned, or seemed to 
 return, to his reading. He knew by long 
 experience that Jack's letters generally meant 
 some scrape or other, and he was relieved when 
 he got no answer ; but still, I think, his news- 
 paper for the moment was more or less a 
 pretence. 
 
 Jack was not a son appropriate to a vicarage : 
 he was not of the kind of those who are their 
 father's favourite and their mother's joy. How 
 it is that this comes to pass, who can tell ? 
 With everything to lead him to do well, every 
 tradition and habit of life in his favour, he had 
 not done well. He should have been ready to 
 
THE GOLDEN RULE. 277 
 
 step into the vicarage in his father's place, for 
 it was a sort of family living, securing many 
 good things to the fortunate inheritor. But 
 it was soon found that this was out of the 
 question ; not in the way which is most respect- 
 able and even superior nowadays, entitling a 
 young man to the interest and admiration of 
 everybody that of religious doubts and 
 scruples but in a more vulgar way, which 
 secures nobody's interest. He had not managed 
 even to take his degree ; he had done nothing 
 that he ought to have done : and, instead of 
 being in orders or at the bar, or a fellow of his 
 college, all which would have been things 
 reasonable and to be expected, he was in a 
 merchant's office in London, sadly against his 
 will, and against all the prepossessions of his 
 family. But what was he, then, to do ? Jack 
 had nothing to suggest : what he would have 
 liked would have been to do nothing at all, but, 
 failing that, he did not mind what it was. It 
 
THE GOLDEN RULE. 
 
 was considered a great piece of luck when his 
 father's old friend, Mr. Bullock, took him into 
 his office at an age when young men are not 
 generally taken into offices, and for a time it 
 was supposed that Jack was going to do very 
 well. But in an evil hour Mr. Bullock sent 
 him on a commercial mission to America, in 
 which Jack was not successful perhaps because 
 he thought a voyage like that was chiefly a 
 frolic ; perhaps for other causes. He had not 
 been successful, but yet, when he returned 
 home (considerably after the time at which he 
 ought to have returned home) he was not 
 dismissed because of his employer's affection 
 for his father. Mr. Bullock, however, took an 
 opportunity of telling the vicar privately that 
 Jack would not do anything in business. 
 
 " He may make his own living as a poor 
 clerk," the merchant said, "which is a dreary 
 thing to look forward to. I gave him a chance, 
 but he hasn't taken it. I felt it my duty to tell 
 
THE GOLDEN RULE. 279 
 
 you, Wynyard : if you can find anything else 
 for him where he may do better, don't hesitate 
 to take him away." 
 
 The vicar knew very well this meant that 
 his commercial friend would be glad to get rid 
 of Jack, but he did not take the hint. 
 
 "It is always something that he should be 
 making his living," he said, and Mr. Bullock 
 was too great a friend of the Wynyards to send 
 their boy away. 
 
 But Jack got on worse than ever after that 
 unsuccessful attempt. As for making his 
 living, his mother knew how many little things 
 there were to be made up. It was a knowledge 
 which the ladies of the family kept as far as 
 they could from his father. But when he got 
 into any bad scrape this was not possible, so 
 that all the members of the family were a little 
 afraid, as well as eager, to see what was in 
 Jack's letters when they came. They did not 
 come very often, and two in one day was a 
 
280 THE GOLDEN RULE. 
 
 thing which probably had never happened 
 before : the scrape must be graver than usual 
 to warrant such an effort on his part, they all 
 thought. Each of the recipients gave a little 
 gasp on opening her special communication, but 
 neither said anything, which at first was an 
 ease to the vicar's mind. But the letters were 
 long (another wonder), and after a while he 
 became impatient. When Emily had reached 
 the fourth page of hers, which her father saw, 
 in some miraculous way, through the Times, 
 he put down his paper altogether and again 
 said, " Well ? " in a still sharper tone. 
 
 "Oh, papa ! the most wonderful news," 
 Emily said. 
 
 "Well?" cried Mrs. Wynyard, not to be 
 behind, "I can't tell you if it is well or not, 
 but it is something, at least, that I never 
 thought I should live to see." 
 
 " It may be the making of him, mother," 
 cried Emily. 
 
THE GOLDEN RULE. 283 
 
 " Or his ruin," Mrs. Wynyard said. 
 
 " What is it," cried the vicar, bringing down 
 his fist on the table, " in the name of ? " 
 
 It was only to be expected from a vicar that 
 he should never use any bad words : and 
 neither did he make a free use of those that are 
 too good for common use, and which sound 
 profane, even when authorized, as some people 
 think, by his cloth. But he had a habit of going 
 very near the edge, as if he were about to say 
 them, which had often an impressive effect. 
 
 " Papa I don't know how to tell you Jack 
 has got engaged." 
 
 " Oh, stop, Charles, stop ! wait till you hear. 
 Don't say anything rash. To a lady whom he 
 met in America (I knew there was some reason 
 for his staying so long in America) a lady 
 who is rolling in money, Charles ! " 
 
 The vicar had his mouth opened to make 
 a remark when he was stopped by his wife ; 
 indeed, he had more than half made it before 
 
284 THE GOLDEN RULE. 
 
 he could stop himself. " The confounded 
 foo ! " Being arrested, he brought himself 
 up with a run and a gasp. 
 
 " Wait till you hear it rightly ! " cried his 
 wife. " He met her in some out-of-the-way 
 place ; don't you remember he did say some- 
 thing about an out-of-the-way place, Emily? 
 and fell in love with her. But poor boy, he 
 was too honourable to speak. How could he, 
 knowing he had nothing ? It is that that has 
 made him so unsettled. Didn't I always say 
 there was something, Emily, something we 
 didn't know ? " 
 
 "As for that," said the vicar, getting his 
 breath, " there are probably hundreds of things 
 we don't know." 
 
 " Oh, Charles, don't be so harsh ; when now 
 
 there is every appearance Her father has 
 
 come over with her, and has called at the 
 office. They've taken a house in the country, 
 and they've asked Jack to stay with them." 
 
THE GOLDEN RULE. 285 
 
 " But more, more, far more ! " cried Emily, 
 crimson with excitement, " he has proposed 
 and has been accepted, papa." 
 
 " Are you sure you are not dreaming all 
 this ? " the vicar said. " Look again ; there 
 must be some mistake." 
 
 "There is no mistake at all; read it your- 
 self," said Mrs. Wynyard, thrusting the letter 
 into his hands. " Of course it is for you as 
 much as me. He says a pretty creature, with 
 those wonderful complexions American girls 
 are said to have, and with Heaven only knows 
 how much money ; oh, I don't wonder your 
 father is flurried ; I cannot get my breath 
 myself." 
 
 " It may be the making of him, mother ! " 
 
 " If it isn't the other thing," Mrs. Wynyard 
 said. 
 
 " How could it be the other thing ? when we 
 have always said between ourselves that a wife, 
 a nice wife, who had sense , if it were ever 
 
286 THE GOLDEN RULE. 
 
 possible that he could be able to marry, would 
 be the saving of Jack ! " 
 
 " Ah, yes," said Mrs. Wynyard, " if he could 
 have had an income to marry on an income of 
 his own ; but if the money is all on the woman's 
 side, and a father to look after her, to tie it up. 
 Oh, it isn't that I am for money, though I see 
 the great, great advantage. But would she 
 take all the trouble with him if it was like 
 that?" 
 
 " She would love to take the trouble," said 
 Emily. " Could she be happy if he were not 
 happy and right?" she added in an under- 
 tone. 
 
 The vicar glanced over the letter while this 
 conversation was going on. He did not read 
 it line by line, but jumped at the meaning, 
 having had it already explained to him. And 
 for a moment his heart rose lightly in his 
 breast. To have Jack provided for, suddenly 
 made independent, no longer a trouble and 
 
THE GOLDEN RULE. 287 
 
 anxiety to everybody belonging to him, but 
 with a home, an income, a keeper (so to speak) 
 of his own ! The vicar's heart gave a leap of 
 relief and delight. No more responsibility. 
 It would be his wife's business to look after 
 him, and nobody could do that as well as a 
 wife. And then the money. Even without 
 the money, if there had been any chance that 
 Jack could ever have enough to live upon, they 
 had all been agreed that a wife might be the 
 making of him. That meant, I fear, that she 
 (poor soul ! the problematical wife) would take 
 the anxiety off the shoulders of his parents, 
 that she would put herself between Jack and 
 harm, and perhaps cure him, and bring him 
 right a thing which it is known women have 
 undertaken to do, and have done tant lien que 
 mal, and made life possible, before now. This 
 was an aspiration they had all breathed, never 
 expecting, however, that it would come to pass 
 and to see it suddenly realized, and with 
 
288 THE GOLDEN RULE. 
 
 money added, that would make it all the more 
 sure ! A beautiful vision rose before the vicar's 
 mind of a time when there would be no 
 anxiety about Jack, no remittances to send 
 him, no dreadful news of dismissal to be looked 
 for, or any other anxiety of that kind ; no call 
 upon every available penny to make up for 
 some misadventure : but peace and happiness, 
 and some one to watch over him wherever he 
 went. The money, indeed, was a great thing, 
 but the guardian, the companion, the some 
 one to watch over him, that was the thing 
 of all. 
 
 But then the vicar put down the letter, 
 and those heartstrings, which had so relaxed 
 and been sensible of the happiest loosening and 
 ease, tightened all at once again. He put his 
 elbows on the table, and his face in his hands. 
 The ladies were silent, thinking that he was 
 thanking God. But, when he looked up 
 after that pause, his face was not the face 
 
THE GOLDEN RULE. 289 
 
 / 
 
 of a man glorified by thanksgiving. The old 
 lines were all drawn again round his anxious 
 eyes. 
 
 " Jane," he said, " and you, Emily, listen to 
 me. We talk every day, don't we, about doing 
 to our neighbours as we would that our neigh- 
 bours should do to us ? " 
 
 " Surely," said Mrs. Wynyard, a little dis- 
 mayed, though she scarcely knew why : for to 
 have her assent required to such a proposition, 
 at such a moment, was the strangest thing in 
 the world. 
 
 The vicar's ruddy countenance had grown 
 quite pale. 
 
 " If a man should come asking to marry 
 Emily, and his people concealed necessary 
 facts from us hoping she would be the saving 
 of him " 
 
 Then there passed a dreadful moment of 
 silence in that glowing room, so bright with 
 sunshine. The three looked in each other's 
 
 u 
 
290 THE GOLDEN RULE. 
 
 faces they were as if the y had been struck 
 dumb. 
 
 " Oh, Charles, Charles ! " said Mrs. Wynyard, 
 and began to cry ; " Oh, papa ! " 
 
 It was a name she still sometimes called him, 
 in kindness, for the children's sakes. 
 
 "Father," said Emily, faltering, "in such 
 cases people judge for themselves. They hate 
 any one who interferes " 
 
 " As you would that men should do unto 
 you, do you also unto them/' the vicar replied. 
 
 "If it was my case," she cried, colouring 
 high, " I should not believe a word ! " 
 
 " Oh, papa," repeated his wife, "papa! you 
 will not say anything ! Your own son, and 
 perhaps the only hope." 
 
 " Father, if he was responsible for a woman's* 
 happiness he has never had any responsibility : 
 and if he loses her as he says " 
 
 " And he always had the kindest heart ! " 
 cried Mrs. Wynyard, among her tears. 
 
THE GOLDEN RULE. 291 
 
 u Get me the time-table," said the vicar ; " at 
 least they must judge for themselves. I am 
 going to town by the next train." 
 
 II. 
 
 THE vicar was asked into a handsome room in 
 a hotel somewhere in Mayfair. He had got 
 the address from Jack, who gave it with sus- 
 picion and reluctance, not knowing what his 
 father could mean, or what he wanted dashing 
 up to town like this. 
 
 " Do you mean to tell me you're engaged to 
 Miss Boldero ? " the vicar said. 
 
 " Why, yes ; of course we are engaged. 
 Should I have written to the mater about it, do 
 you think, if it hadn't been true ? But you 
 never believe a word I say," Jack answered, 
 with a certain defiance. 
 
 "I believe this, Jack, since you say it to 
 
29 ^ THE GOLDEN RULE. 
 
 rny face. Does this girl know anything about 
 you ? " 
 
 " This girl ! You might be more civil to my 
 betrothed. Of course she knows everything she 
 
 has any call to know about me " 
 
 " And she has a father ? " 
 " She has a father," said Jack, beginning to 
 feel there was trouble in the air. 
 
 "It is right that he and I should talk the 
 matter over," said the vicar. 
 
 " If it's about money," said Jack, more and 
 more alarmed, " they know I've got no money ; 
 there is no use entering upon that." 
 
 " There is use in entering upon a great 
 many things," the vicar said. 
 
 " Father, what do you mean ? You are not 
 going to you don't mean to spoil my chance ! " 
 cried the young man, " the only chance I ever 
 may have in my life ! " 
 
 The vicar said nothing. He gave his boy 
 a look that silenced Jack. When had his 
 
THE GOLDEN RULE. 293 
 
 father spoiled a chance, or taken a hope away 
 from him ? But there was nothing more to be 
 said to him now. 
 
 It was a handsome room for a room in a 
 hotel, being the best ; and in the corner near 
 the great window which commanded a glimpse 
 of Piccadilly, there was seated a young lady 
 alone a tall girl, with fair hair frizzed upon 
 her forehead, an unexceptionable toilette, and a 
 clear-cut imperious face. There is something 
 a little faulty, something peculiar, in the 
 American mouth. Heaven knows all our 
 mouths are faulty in all nations it is the 
 peccant feature everywhere. In France they 
 say it of the English, whose long teeth are a 
 frequent subject of mockery : but the American 
 mouth has a character specially its own. It is a 
 little harsh, the merest trifle in the world under- 
 hanging nay, too slight for any such decided 
 expression ; let us say with the under lip the 
 least in the world protruding beyond its fellow 
 
294 THE GOLDEN RULE. 
 
 " Her lips were thin, 
 Except the one was next the chin." 
 
 But, on the other hand, that is too compli- 
 mentary, for the underlip was as thin as the 
 other, only put forward a hair's breadth. It is 
 the result, I suppose, in the young feminine 
 subject of having things too much her own 
 way. She was looking at the vicar's card, 
 which he had sent up, when he entered the 
 room, and she said, with a little start, but 
 without rising 
 
 " Mr. Wynyard, Leighton-Furness Vicarage. 
 Goodness ! You are Jack's papa ! " 
 
 " Yes, I am Jack's papa," said the vicar, half 
 astonished, half confused half, nay, not half, 
 for three halves cannot be but the very least 
 bit amused. He took the hand she held out to 
 him and held it for a moment. She looked a 
 creature who might do this thing imperious, 
 not hesitating or counting the cost, whatever 
 she might take into her head. 
 
THE GOLDEN RULE. 295 
 
 ' And you also have a papa," said the viear. 
 
 " .Yes ; I suppose Jack has told you all about 
 us how we met him, and how we did this bold 
 thing and came after him here ? " 
 
 " He did not say you had come after him. I 
 should have been very angry if he had." 
 
 " Why ? it is quite true. I liked him I 
 don't feel the least ashamed better than any 
 man I have seen ; and I thought, perhaps, it 
 was the money kept him back. You are so 
 ridiculously poor in this country. Why are 
 you so poor ? So we came after him, papa and 
 I " 
 
 " Was papa aware of of what I may call the 
 object of the journey ? " said the vicar, not 
 knowing whether to laugh out, which, perhaps, 
 she would not have liked, or what to do. 
 
 " Oh," said this young lady, " I never hide 
 anything from papa." 
 
 " He is not in, I fear," said the vicar. 
 
 " Yes, he is in ; do you want him ? Tell me 
 
2Q6 THE GOLDEN RULE. 
 
 first before I let you see him what are you 
 going to tell him about Jack ? " 
 
 " My dear young lady, the two fathers must 
 certainly be permitted to talk such a matter 
 
 over." 
 
 " No," said the girl, " unless you tell me first 
 what you are going to tell him about Jack." 
 
 " I am going to speak to him very seriously," 
 said the vicar. " It is a very serious thing to 
 confide the happiness of a girl like you to a 
 young man you scarcely know." 
 
 " Oh ! " she said, " that's taking it the wrong 
 way about confiding his happiness to me, you 
 mean. Oh, I am not at all afraid ; I'll make 
 him happy. You need not make yourself 
 miserable about that." 
 
 The vicar pressed his hat a hat which had 
 a rosette, as somebody has said, a sort of daisy 
 in it, for he was a rural dean, whatever that 
 may be between his hands. The girl's eyes 
 were fixed upon that little symbol of ecclesi- 
 
THE GOLDEN RULE. 297 
 
 astical rank. She interrupted him before he 
 could say any more. 
 
 " What is that for ? that thing in your hat ? 
 You are perfectly delightful for a papa-in-law. 
 You make me more and more satisfied that I 
 
 came." 
 
 " My dear," said the vicar, feeling that his 
 virtue was stealing away from him under these 
 blandishments, " I must see your father." 
 
 4 'Why?" she said. "I am sure I will do 
 better. It is I that am to marry Jack, and not 
 father. I'll hear what you have got to say." 
 
 " I called on Mr. Boldero," he said, more and 
 more anxiously ; " permit me to ring and ask 
 if he is in the hotel." 
 
 " Oh, he is in the next room," she said, " but 
 he would not come in, of course, when he heard 
 I was talking to somebody. Father I " she 
 said, raising her voice. 
 
 A door opened, and a tall man put in his 
 head. " Do you want me, Childie ? " he said. 
 
298 THE GOLDEN RULE. 
 
 " I don't want you ; but here is a gentleman 
 who wants you. It is Mr. Wynyard, papa; 
 Jack's father." 
 
 " I am happy to make your acquaintance, 
 sir," said Mr. Boldero. 
 
 Both father and daughter spoke with an 
 accent which was extremely piquant to the 
 vicar. He had scarcely ever encountered any 
 of their country-folk before, and he was ex- 
 tremely curious about them, and would, had 
 his mind been less deeply engaged, have been 
 greatly amused and delighted with their 
 unaccustomed ways. Mr. Boldero was clad 
 very solemnly in black, and doubtless had 
 other peculiarities besides his accent ; but 
 the vicar was not at sufficient ease to remark 
 them. 
 
 " I heard only this morning," he said, " of 
 the engagement if it is an engagement 
 between your daughter and my son Jack : and 
 I came up to town instantly to see you." 
 
THE GOLDEN RULE. 299 
 
 " If it is an engagement ! " said Miss Boldero 
 with indignation. 
 
 " Well, sir, and have you any objection ? " 
 said the other father. 
 
 "Will you grant me an interview, Mr. 
 Boldero ? " 
 
 " With pleasure ; isn't this an interview ? 
 Fire away," said Miss Boldero's papa. 
 
 The vicar did not know what to say. He 
 sat still for a moment with the spirit gone out 
 of him. Then he murmured almost with a 
 supplicating tone, " I meant a private interview, 
 Mr. Boldero." 
 
 " Oh," said the American, " I have no secrets 
 from my Childie here. She's full of sense, and 
 always gives me her advice. Besides, if it is 
 anything about Jack, it is she that has tne test 
 right to hear." 
 
 The poor vicar stared blankly in the face of 
 this man, who, being a man and his own con- 
 temporary, ought surely to have understood 
 
300 THE GOLDEN RULE. 
 
 him. He had thought that no man could have 
 been more surprised than he had been this 
 morning by the news of Jack's engagement. 
 But he was more surprised now. 
 
 " My dear sir," he said, " it is impossible that 
 I can say what I have to say in the presence 
 of Miss Boldero " 
 
 " Oh, never mind me," said the young lady. 
 " He has come to tell you something against 
 Jack, papa. I ought to be here " 
 
 " It will be more fair," said Mr. Boldero. 
 
 " It is just simply indispensable," said his 
 daughter. 
 
 The vicar felt the obstinacy of despair come 
 into his being. He said 
 
 " This is a very serious matter ; I must talk 
 to you alone. For Heaven's sake grant me ten 
 minutes when your child's happiness is at stake. 
 It is not all such easy work, such plain sailing 
 as you seem to think." 
 
 " Father," said Miss Boldero, " if he tells you 
 
THE GOLDEN RULE. 301 
 
 Jack has another wife living or anything of 
 that sort, promise me you'll not believe him." 
 
 She raised herself slowly from her seat. 
 
 " No, I'll not believe him without proof." 
 
 " I shan't, with volumes of proof. But I'll 
 go away, though I consider it very uncivil and 
 just like an Englishman to treat a woman in 
 this contemptuous way. You said ten minutes, 
 Mr. Wynyard. I'll come back in ten minutes 
 to hear what all this fuss is about." 
 
 The young lady retired accordingly. She 
 had a fine, graceful figure, and moved languidly, 
 swinging a little to one side and another as 
 some tall people do ; and she went no further 
 than to the next room, where it would not have 
 been difficult to hear all that passed. But one 
 could not see that young person and suspect 
 her of listening at a door. 
 
 " Well," said Mr. Boldero, " out with it now. 
 Is there another wife living ? I'll have to see 
 all the papers before I'll believe that of Jack." 
 
3Q2 THE GOLDEN RULE. 
 
 " Another wife ! " cried the vicar. " God 
 bless my soul, what can you be thinking of? 
 Jack is not a villain ! " 
 
 "Then there is not another wife? Well, 
 that's a relief. What was a man to think ? 
 You're so dreadfully in earnest. If it ain't 
 that, it's all right." 
 
 " But it is not all right," said the vicar. 
 " Mr. Boldero, do you know my son has not a 
 penny? that is, there will be a mere trifle 
 when we are both dead, his mother and I ; but 
 she's young yet, thank God. Stop a moment ! 
 And he is only a clerk in my friend Bullock's 
 office, earning little, and, it breaks my heart to 
 say, deserving little." 
 
 " An idle young dog ; more fond of pleasure 
 than of work. One can see as much as that, 
 having, as you may say, the pleasure of his 
 acquaintance, with half an eye." 
 
 " And there is more behind," said the vicar, 
 very pale. " Don't make me blame my own 
 
THE GOLDEN RULE. 303 
 
 boy more than I can help. God knows what 
 it costs me to speak, but I can't let the happi- 
 ness of another young creature be thrown 
 away." 
 
 " Meaning Childie," said Mr. Boldero. 
 " She's pretty well able to look after that 
 herself. Hullo! you're not feeling faint, are 
 you ? Stop a moment ; I've got something 
 handy here." 
 
 " Never mind," said the vicar, waving him 
 away. " Never mind ; I'm all right. Mr. 
 Boldero, do you understand what I say ? Can 
 I say anything stronger to make you under- 
 stand ? I dare not let you trust your daughter's 
 happiness to Jack without telling you " 
 
 " Here, old man, take this, and sit down and 
 keep quiet till you come to yourself." 
 
 And to tell the truth a mist was coming over 
 the vicar's eyes. He laid his head back, and 
 the room seemed to be gyrating round him. 
 His heart was beating loud in his ears, and the 
 
304 THE GOLDEN RULE. 
 
 tall figure standing before him with a glass in 
 its hand seemed some kind of solemn demon 
 tempting him to an unknown fate. He swal- 
 lowed what was given to him, however, and 
 slowly came to himself the walls sinking 
 into the perpendicular, and the tall American 
 in his black coat becoming recognizable once 
 more. 
 
 " You want to know, now, I suppose," said 
 the other father, " how the young folks are to 
 live ? I'm pretty comfortably off, and she's all 
 I have in the world." 
 
 " Are you sure you understand me ? Do 
 you know what I mean ? " said the vicar in 
 despair. 
 
 " I know what you say fast enough ; but 
 what you mean is beyond me : unless it be to 
 put a spoke in your son's wheel : which is more 
 than I can understand, I'll allow." 
 
 The vicar did not say a word. They would 
 think it at home, too, that he had tried to put a 
 
THE GOLDEN RULE. 305 
 
 spoke in his son's wheel ; and Jack would 
 think it with more reason. But he felt that 
 he had not another word to say. 
 
 " Have you got anything more to tell me in 
 this hole-and-corner way ? " the other father 
 asked. 
 
 The vicar shook his head. " What does it 
 matter what I have to say, when you won't 
 believe me ? " he said. 
 
 " Then I reckon I may as well have her 
 back. Here, Childie," said Mr. Boldero. 
 
 And the door opened widely, and the young 
 lady sailed in. " Well, papa," she said. 
 
 " Well, Childie. This old gentleman wants 
 us to understand that his son is a bad lot. earns 
 no money to speak of, and deserves less ; is just 
 good for nothing as far as I can make him out, 
 not fit to be trusted with your happiness, he 
 
 " Father," said Miss Boldero, " who is talking 
 of trusting Jack with my happiness ? Is it the 
 
 x 
 
306 THE GOLDEN RULE. 
 
 woman that asks the man to make her happy, 
 or the man that asks the woman ? " 
 
 " As a matter of fact it's the man ; but I 
 don't know that it always holds good. I must 
 allow there is a doubt on that." 
 
 " There is no doubt in my mind," said the 
 young lady. " Jack's happiness is going to be 
 trusted to me, and I'll take care of it. If Mr. 
 Wynyard has any objection to me he has got a 
 right to say it." 
 
 " I ain't quite so clear of that," said Mr. 
 Boldero. " Jack's of age ; he's a man, and he 
 has a right to choose for himself. The old 
 gentleman has no call to have any voice in it." 
 
 Now, the vicar had gone on for a long time 
 hearing himself called the " old gentleman," 
 and had borne it ; though at sixty, when a man 
 is well and strong, it is an appellation which he 
 feels to be half ludicrous and half injurious. 
 But at last the moment had come when he 
 could bear no more. 
 
THE GOLDEN RULE. 307 
 
 " The old gentleman," he said, " as you call 
 me, has no desire to have a veto on his son's 
 choice. You are a very pretty young lady, and 
 charming, I am sure. But I don't know what 
 are your other qualities, Miss Boldero. You 
 must excuse me if I go now, for I have said 
 everything I have to say." 
 
 " Go ! " cried the girl, " without even having 
 your luncheon ! you, who are going to be my 
 papa-in-law ? " 
 
 " Or a drink," said her father. " Yes, I had 
 to give him a drink, or he would have fainted 
 on my hands. Sir if I must not call you an 
 old gentleman I'm a great one for knowing 
 motives. What was your meaning in coming 
 here to-day ? " 
 
 " His meaning, of course, was to make ac- 
 quaintance with me, papa, and see what sort of 
 girl I was." 
 
 " Childie, let alone with your talk for one 
 short moment, and let him speak." 
 
THE GOLDEN RULE. 
 
 The vicar stood up, and would have gone 
 away if he could ; but the tall, black figure 
 opposite barred the way, and demanded an 
 answer. And, indeed, the answer was hard to 
 give ; for a man somehow finds it very hard to 
 say that he has done anything, whatever it 
 may be, simply from the highest motive of all. 
 The vicar felt this deeply, though he was an 
 old gentleman, and though to be religious was, 
 as you may say, his profession. He was often 
 not at all abashed to avow a mean motive ; but 
 when you think of it, it requires a great deal 
 of courage to claim to be carrying out the 
 charge of the Gospel. When he spoke his 
 voice faltered, and his ruddy old face was like 
 a rose. " Sir," he replied, adopting, without 
 knowing it, the style of his questioner, " I 
 have been preaching all my life what my 
 Master said, ' Whatsoever you would that men 
 should do unto you, do ye also unto them.' ' 
 
 There was a little pause in the room, and 
 
THE GOLDEN RULE. 309 
 
 though the rattle of the carriages in the streets, 
 and the sound of the men with the flowers 
 calling, " All a-blowing and a-growing," came 
 in very distinctly, yet the effect was as if you 
 could have heard a pin fall. The boldest held 
 his breath for a time that is to say, even Miss 
 Boldero, though she was not quite clear what 
 it was all about, did not say a word. At last 
 
 "That gentleman's Jack's father, Childie," 
 said Mr. Boldero slowly. "I'm not in the 
 running with the likes of him. If you don't 
 train that fellow up to do his father credit, I'll 
 never believe in you again." 
 
 " I will, papa," said the girl, as if she were 
 making a vow. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Jack Wynyard strolled in in the afternoon, 
 very carefully dressed, with a flower in his 
 coat, but with much trouble in his mind. Why 
 did his father come up to town so suddenly ? 
 What was it he was so anxious to say ? The 
 
3 io 
 
 THE GOLDEN RULE. 
 
 young man's conscience told him pretty clearly 
 what it was, and he went to the hotel to fulfil 
 
 "JACK." 
 
 his engagement with his betrothed, expecting 
 little but to be met by her father, and sent 
 
THE GOLDEN RULE. 
 
 about his business, as the result of what his 
 own father had said. 
 
 But no such reception awaited him. He 
 found Miss Boldero in her prettiest toilette 
 waiting for him. " And oh, Jack," said that 
 young lady, " there -has been the sweetest old 
 gentleman here with a button in his hat, saying 
 all sorts of things about you. He said you 
 were not fit to be trusted with my happiness, 
 and I said no ; but I was to be trusted with 
 yours. And we are going down to the vicarage 
 to stay; do you hear, to stay, and make 
 acquaintance with everything. And papa has 
 fallen fathoms deep in love with him. And 
 you are to behave, sir, like a saint or an angel, 
 or I will lose all my credit with everybody 
 from this day." 
 
 The vicar went home, I need not say, with a 
 load lifted from his heart. He had delivered 
 his soul, and yet he had not injured Jack. 
 But that was because the people whom he had 
 
312 THE GOLDEN RULE. 
 
 warned, in the discharge of his boundeh duty, 
 were such people as never were. 
 
 " They know everything at least," he said 
 to his wife and Emily, who met him with much 
 anxiety at the gate, both of them looking ten 
 years older. " I have not concealed anything 
 from them. But how it will all end Grod 
 knows." 
 
GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL 
 
 BY GRANT ALLEN. 
 
 I. 
 
 WE three girls had always been brought up to 
 expect we would come into Grandpapa Passa- 
 vant's money. But there ! poor dear grand- 
 papa, though he was the very sweetest old man 
 that ever lived, was stuck as full of prejudices 
 all over as a porcupine is stuck full of quills. 
 He literally bristled with them. He was always 
 flaring up at some unexpected point. And 
 what was worse, his family had, almost every 
 one of them, managed to annoy him by running 
 counter to his pet hobbies, for no better reason 
 on earth than just because they wanted to 
 
GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 
 
 marry the men or women they loved them- 
 selves, instead of marrying the people poor 
 
 GENERAL PASSAVANT. 
 
 grandpapa in his wisdom would have chosen to 
 select for them. It was really a most unfor- 
 
GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 3*5 
 
 tunate affair all round: one would say a 
 Passavant couldn't manage to fall in love with 
 anybody anywhere without treading on one 
 of poor dear grandpapa's very tenderest 
 corns. 
 
 There was Aunt Emily for example she 
 married an Austrian hussar ; a very nice man 
 to be sure, and a Graf or something, at that ; 
 but, somehow, dear grandpapa never could 
 abide him. He was military to the core, was 
 grandpapa, with a fine old crusted British dis- 
 like of "Frenchmen" which was his brief 
 description for foreigners in general : a pretty 
 thing, he used to say, this marrying of people 
 in an enemy's service ! Why, any day a 
 European war might happen to break out, 
 in which case we might be compelled to 
 take sides against Austria (though it doesn't 
 look likely, I must confess) ; and then, where 
 would Ernily be ? Why, we should all be- 
 fighting against our own brothers-in-law and 
 
3*6 GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 
 
 sons-in-law! Preposterous! Absurd! ''De- 
 pend upon it, Ethel, my dear," he used to 
 say to me, stroking my front hair with his 
 gentle old hand for he was a dear old man, 
 mind you, in spite of his prejudices " depend 
 upon it, Ethel, an Englishwoman's business is 
 to marry an Englishman a fine, strapping 
 young fellow and make him happy. What 
 husband can you see among all those out- 
 landish, jabbering, undersized foreigners to 
 equal a British soldier an officer and a gentle- 
 man?" For poor grandpapa's ideas never 
 travelled one inch outside the Army List. That 
 any girl of his could care to marry a curate, for 
 example, or a barrister, or an artist, or a doctor, 
 was a notion that never even so much as 
 occurred to his dear old military head as for 
 one moment possible. 
 
 Then there was Aunt Charlotte : she married 
 a Scotchman. That was a harder blow still to 
 poor grandpapa ; for he hated the Scotch, and 
 
GENERAL PASSAVANT^S WILL. 317 
 
 he hated the Welsh, and he hated lawyers, and 
 he hated Presbyterians ; and Aunt Charlotte's 
 husband was a member of the General 
 Assembly, and a Writer to the Signet. Grand- 
 papa never quite grasped what the Signet was, 
 or why any one should write to it, but he always 
 alluded to Mr. Greig's profession with bitter 
 contempt. There are no such things as Writers 
 to the Signet in England, I believe; and 
 grandpapa considered everything un-English 
 as too barbarous and low for his mind to dwell 
 upon. 
 
 But poor dear Aunt Louisa had the worst 
 luck of all. She married a Portuguese Jew, 
 who was a member of the Stock Exchange. 
 That cut poor grandpapa to the very quick ; 
 for Mr. Da Costa wasn't undersized at all : he 
 was six feet two, and as handsome as a 
 sculptor's model. Grandpapa never could bear 
 even to mention Aunt Louisa's name to us ; 
 though he was very kind and good to her, and 
 
3i8 GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 
 
 to Mr. Da Costa, too ; and, when he died, he 
 left her ten thousand pounds the same sum he 
 left to his other daughters " as a slight token," 
 he said in his will, " of Christian forgiveness." 
 'Twas a very hard wrench, but poor grandpapa 
 bore it with manful resignation. He was 
 accustomed to wrenches, he said, for one arm 
 was amputated. 
 
 My father, however, who was a Colonel of 
 Engineers, rejoiced the General's heart by 
 marrying, as he ought, an Englishwoman, and 
 a member of the Church of England. And 
 though dear grandpapa never quite forgave us 
 for being girls instead of boys, he was very 
 proud and fond of us, and loved to contrast us 
 (very much to our advantage) with those flat- 
 faced little Germans, and that raw-boned young 
 Malcolm Greig for he never so much as 
 deigned to allude in any way to poor little 
 curly-headed Montague Da Costa. 
 
 So when, in course of time, dear grandpapa 
 
GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 319 
 
 died, and his will was opened, we were not at all 
 surprised to find he left a comparatively small 
 sum to papa, and twenty thousand pounds 
 apiece to his beloved grand-daughters, Linda, 
 Maud, and Ethel. 
 
 But there was a condition attached a condi- 
 tion so awfully like dear grandpapa ! " Pro- 
 vided always," the will went on in each case, 
 " my said grand-daughter abstains from marry- 
 ing any of the three persons following to wit, 
 firstly, an alien, whether naturalized or other- 
 wise ; that is to say, any man who is not a 
 natural-born subject of Her Majesty Queen 
 Victoria : secondly, a Presbyterian ; that is to 
 say, a member of the Established Church of 
 Scotland: or, thirdly, a sworn broker of the 
 City of London. And in case my said grand- 
 daughter Linda," for example, " should break 
 . 
 
 this stipulation, and marry any of the persons 
 so excepted, then and in that case I will and 
 devise that she shall forfeit all claim to the 
 
320 GENERAL PASSAVANT^S WILL. 
 
 said sum of twenty thousand pounds, Consoli- 
 dated Three per Cent. Annuities, standing in 
 the name of my said trustees, which sum shall 
 thereafter be divided into two equal moieties 
 of ten thousand pounds each, whereof my 
 executors shall pay over one moiety to my 
 grand-daughter Maud, and the other moiety to 
 my grand-daughter Ethel, for their own sole 
 use and benefit." 
 
 II. 
 
 PAPA read the will over to us a few days after 
 poor grandpapa's funeral, and explained what 
 it meant in plain English, for of course we girls 
 couldn't understand just at first all the legal 
 technicalities. However, we kn,ew, at any 
 rate, we were now heiresses in a small way ; 
 and papa put it clearly to us that, as we had no 
 mother (I forgot to say she died when I was 
 five years old), we must be very careful, on our 
 
GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 321 
 
 own account, not to let ourselves get entangled 
 in foolish engagements with interested fortune- 
 hunters. We must avoid young men who 
 made themselves agreeable to us. But above 
 all, he insisted since poor grandpapa had 
 willed it so we must take particular notice 
 not to fall in love, whatever might happen, 
 with foreigners, Presbyterians, or members of 
 the Stock Exchange. 
 
 That was easy enough to promise, I thought, 
 for (being grandpapa's grand-daughter, you 
 see) I hate Germans, I detest the Scotch, and 
 I simply and solely abominate City men. So I 
 made up my mind that, whatever the others 
 did, I at least would keep a good hold over my 
 own twenty thousand, letting Linda and Maud, 
 in their various romantic ways, behave as they 
 might with their separate portions. 
 
 Half an hour after papa had finished explain- 
 ing the position to us, however, I was sitting 
 in my own room, making day-dreams after my 
 
 Y 
 
322 GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 
 
 fashion, when suddenly there came a nervous 
 little knock at the door, and, to my great 
 surprise, enter Linda, excited. I could see at 
 a glance the poor girl was very much flurried 
 about something, for her face was pale, and her 
 eyes were red ; besides which, she instantly 
 turned the key in the door in a most resolute 
 way, and flung herself upon the bed as if her 
 heart was breaking. Though Linda was four 
 years older than me, she always came to me in 
 all her troubles. 
 
 "Oh! Ethel," she cried, between her sobs, 
 "this is too, too dreadful. I've been leading 
 him to suppose for months that . . . well, that, 
 if anything was ever to happen to poor dear 
 grandpapa, he and I could be married; and 
 now this hateful, hateful will ! I can't bear 
 it. I can't endure it. How can I ever tell 
 him ? " 
 
 I was utterly taken by surprise. I didn't 
 know who she meant. I could hardly believe 
 
GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 323 
 
 my ears. Linda engaged to somebody for 
 months before, and me never to have observed 
 it ! Never even to have suspected who 011 
 earth she was speaking of! This was almost 
 incredible. 
 
 " Him ! " I exclaimed, bewildered. " Why, 
 who's he, Linda ? I haven't the remotest notion 
 who it is you're talking about." 
 
 Linda raised her head, open-mouthed, and 
 gazed across at me, half-incredulous. " You 
 don't mean to say, dear," she cried, with a sort 
 of spasm of surprise, "you've never even 
 noticed it ! " 
 
 " Never, dearest," I answered sincerely, 
 holding her hand and smoothing it. " Who is 
 it ? Mr. Mackinnon ? " For he was really the 
 only Scotchman of our acquaintance I could 
 remember at the moment as at all a likely 
 person for Linda to fall in love with. 
 
 " Mr. Mackinnon ! " Linda repeated, half- 
 angrily. "Mr. Mackinnon indeed! Well, 
 
324 GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 
 
 really, Ethel, I do think you might give me 
 credit for better taste than that ! No, it isn't 
 Mr. Mackinnon. I wouldn't for worlds say a 
 word about it to Maud she'd be so unkind and 
 unfeeling : she never cared for him ; but I can 
 trust you, dear, I'm sure : you're always so 
 sympathetic, and I just must tell somebody. 
 Well, for eight months past I wonder you 
 never guessed it I've been engaged quite 
 quietly to Charlie Yanrenen. Only, on poor 
 grandpapa's account, both Charlie and I thought 
 it was better for the present to say nothing 
 about it." 
 
 Before I could answer there came a knock 
 at the door again, and I heard Maud's voice 
 saying, in a very cold, despairing way, " Ethel, 
 let me in, please : I want to speak at once with 
 you ! " 
 
 Linda started up with a perfectly tragic air. 
 " Oh, send her away, dear ! " she cried, in a 
 low, tremulous tone. " If she were to find out 
 
GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 325 
 
 what I was saying, I could never, never, never 
 marry poor Charlie ! " 
 
 " You can't come in just now, Maud," I 
 answered, going over to the door ; and, speak- 
 ing through the keyhole, " I'm I'm writing 
 letters." But that was a fib I hope and trust 
 a harmless one. " Come back again in half 
 an hour, there's a dear, and I'll accept your 
 confidences." 
 
 And I went over to the bed once more and 
 tried my best to soothe down Linda. " Why, 
 what's the matter," I asked, leaning over her 
 and wiping her eyes, " with poor Mr. Yan- 
 renen? He isn't a German, and he isn't a 
 Dutchman ; he isn't a Presbyterian, and he 
 isn't a stockbroker. Why on earth should poor 
 grandpapa's will interfere with you in any 
 way ? I understood Mr. Vanrenen was some 
 sort of a writing person a journalist, don't 
 they call it ? And poor grandpapa, though 
 his prejudices were sufficiently comprehensive, 
 
326 GENERAL PASSAVANT^S WILL. 
 
 never made any express stipulation against the 
 literature of our country." 
 
 But Linda began to cry again, even more 
 bitterly than before. " Yes, Charlie's a news- 
 paper man," she said, through her tears ; " he's 
 on the European edition of the New York 
 Tribune : and he's been brought up in England ; 
 and he's as English in every way as you or I 
 are ; and he only earns about three hundred a 
 year, and he couldn't marry on that. But," 
 Ethel, the dreadful thing of it all is this he's 
 an American citizen, and he's never been 
 naturalized ! " 
 
 I pursed my lips. It was clear at once this 
 was a hopeless case. There was nothing for it 
 but to comfort her and condole with her. And 
 I comforted her with all the consolation in my 
 power. As far as I was concerned, I said, my 
 
 share in her twenty thousand pounds But 
 
 at that poor Linda grew absolutely hysterical. 
 It was with difficulty I quieted her down by 
 
GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 3'9 
 
 degrees, and got her off at last to her own 
 room to write a ten-page letter on the subject 
 to Charlie." 
 
 III. 
 
 THE moment she was gone, Maud, who had 
 evidently been listening at her own door to 
 hear mine open and let Linda out, came sweep- 
 ing in, like a duchess in distress, pale and calm, 
 but profoundly miserable. She seated herself 
 with great dignity in the easy-chair, folded her 
 hands in front of her like a marble statue, and 
 stared at me fixedly for several minutes in 
 solemn silence. 
 
 " Well, this is a dreadful thing," she said 
 at last, with an evident effort, " about poor 
 grandpapa's will ! I'm sure I don't know 
 how on earth, after this crushing blow, I shall 
 ever have the courage to face him and tell 
 him!" 
 
330 GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 
 
 " Tell who ? Tell him what ? " I exclaimed, 
 bewildered once more; for I certainly never 
 suspected such a cold creature as Maud of being 
 in love with anybody. 
 
 Maud gazed back at me with the tranquillity 
 of utter despair. " Don't pretend you don't 
 know, Ethel," she cried, in a very frigid voice. 
 " It isn't any use. You must have noticed 
 it." 
 
 " Not Mr. Vanrenen ! " I cried, perhaps just 
 a trifle mischievously. 
 
 The curl of Maud's lip would have been a 
 study for Sarah Bernhardt. " Well, really, 
 Ethel," she said, bridling up, " at a moment 
 like this you might at least spare me from posi- 
 tive insult ! Mr. Vanrenen, indeed ! That 
 affected idiot! I should be very hard up for 
 a lover, I'm sure, if I allowed Mr. Vanrenen 
 to presume upon proposing to me. . . . But 
 you surely must know! You can't possibly 
 have overlooked it ! There's only one man on 
 
GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 33* 
 
 earth I'd ever dream of accepting. ... I 
 wouldn't tell Linda for worlds Linda's so 
 sympathetic. But you're always kind. I don't 
 mind confessing it in this crisis to you for it 
 is a crisis. . . . I've been engaged for six weeks 
 past to Malcolm Mackinnon." 
 
 " But he can join the Church of England," I 
 said, coolly ; for I'm afraid I must confess, 
 being a worldly creature, 1 didn't think the 
 difference worth losing a wife for. 
 
 " No, no, my dear, he can't," Maud answered, 
 with an air of resignation. " That's just the 
 worst of it. His father's something or other 
 in the high legal way to the General Assembly 
 Assessor, or what-not and Malcolm's agent 
 for the legal business in London. If he were 
 to give up the Kirk, he'd lose his place, and 
 his father might too, for it would be quite a 
 scandal in Edinburgh. And he's only a junior 
 partner, and he's too poor to marry. But I'll 
 wait for him for ever, Ethel, grandpapa or no 
 
332 GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 
 
 grandpapa ; and I'll marry him when I choose. 
 And I'll give up everything on earth for him ; 
 and you and Linda are welcome to your money, 
 I'm sure ; for I mean to marry Malcolm if he 
 hasn't a ha'penny ! " 
 
 I couldn't have believed it of Maud. But I 
 rushed up to her and kissed her. 
 
 She sat there for half an hour, as cold as ice, 
 and then went off in turn to write the news to 
 " Malcolm." And as soon as she was gone I 
 sat down and cried a little by myself for both 
 of them. But, I must confess, I reflected with 
 pride that the whole episode did the family 
 credit. I was glad the two girls should have 
 made up their mind to marry poor men, when 
 they might have gone in, if they wished, for 
 position or money ; and I made up my mind at 
 the same time that I, at least, would avoid the 
 very first approach of aliens, Presbyterians, 
 and members of the Stock Exchange. It's so 
 very much easier not to fall in love at first 
 
GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 333 
 
 than, having fallen in love once, to fall out 
 again comfortably. 
 
 IV. 
 
 FOR the next few weeks life was a burden to 
 me. I lived in a perpetual state of receiving 
 alternate confidences from Linda and Maud, and 
 endeavouring to conceal from each the other's 
 position. This was distinctly hard, but I 
 pulled it through somehow. And I applauded 
 each in turn in her firm resolution that, come 
 what might, she would never give up her 
 Charlie or her Malcolm. 
 
 Fortunately, I myself was not engaged. 
 Forewarned was forearmed. I was in a 
 position, I thought, to give a wide berth now 
 to all classes of men expressly included in poor 
 grandpapa's interdict. 
 
 However, it was only about six weeks later 
 
334 GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 
 
 that I met at the Markwells' a most charming 
 young man, who really paid me a great deal 
 of attention. I liked him from the very first, 
 though I pretended I didn't. His name was 
 Kirkwood, and he was a struggling artist. 
 Now, artists had always for me a certain 
 romantic interest ; and, do you know, it may 
 be silly of me, but somehow I never could bear 
 to marry a man unless he were struggling. I 
 can't say why ; but well-to-do men always did 
 repel me they put my back up. I hate their 
 smug, self-satisfied air, and I love the actuality, 
 so to speak, of the struggling classes. Men 
 who work for their living are always more real 
 to me. Besides, Mr. Kirkwood was so retiring 
 and unassuming ; and I knew why. He liked 
 me very much I could see plainly from 
 the very first ; but he'd heard that I was an 
 heiress, and he didn't want to marry me, 
 because I had money. That's the only kind 
 of man I should ever care myself to marry ; 
 
GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 335 
 
 and I won't deny to you in confidence I 
 thought a great deal, for the next ten days 
 or so, in the solitude of my own room, about 
 that delightful Mr. Kirk wood. 
 
 A stockbroker, indeed ! With five thousand 
 a year ! Fancy marrying a stockbroker, in a 
 world where there are men who can paint such 
 beautiful things as he did and live on next to 
 nothing ! It would be simply ridiculous. 
 
 Still, I wasn't going to be taken by surprise. 
 I wouldn't allow myself, even, to begin falling 
 in love the tiniest little bit in the world with 
 that charming painter at least, I thought not 
 before I'd satisfied myself thoroughly that 
 he was a natural-born subject of her Majesty 
 the Queen, and a member of the Church of 
 England as by law established. Both those 
 points I satisfactorily got out of him in the 
 course of conversation ; and then I made up 
 my mind that, come what would, papa or no 
 papa, if Mr. Kirkwood asked me why, I 
 
336 GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 
 
 wouldn't think it necessary to say " No " 
 outright to him. 
 
 One afternoon, some weeks later, to my great 
 delight, Mr. Kirkwood asked us all three to go 
 round to his studio, with Mrs. Markwell and 
 Bella to do the proprieties for us. Well, Linda 
 refused ; but Maud and I went, and he showed 
 us his pictures oh, such lovely pictures ! though 
 I'm sorry to say he hardly ever sold them. 
 And Mrs. Markwell was so kind ; she stopped 
 behind in one room with the other two girls, 
 while he took me into another behind it, to 
 show me the piece he was then at work 
 upon. 
 
 I don't remember much about that piece, I 
 admit, though it was really lovely, for he 
 talked to me a great deal about other subjects 
 mostly our two selves, I fancy yet not at 
 all as if he were making love to me. He spoke 
 rather regretfully, as if he liked me very much, 
 but could never ask me. And I knew very 
 
THESE ABE CLEVER,' I SAID, LOOKING AT HIS SKETCHES." 
 
GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 339 
 
 well why. I saw it in his face. It was that 
 horrid money that stood between us. 
 
 How I wished I was penniless if Mr. 
 Kirk wood preferred it so ! 
 
 At last he took down a portfolio of sketches 
 from a cabinet in the corner, and showed them 
 to me by the window. They were earlier 
 sketches than any I had yet seen of his done 
 evidently before he had taken to art as a 
 regular profession. " These are clever," I 
 said, looking at them with my head on one 
 side, and pretending to be critical ; "but 
 they haven't such a sense of technique, I fancy, 
 as the ones in the studio." I thought- " sense 
 of technique" was decidedly good, and, like a 
 girl that I was, I wanted to impress him with 
 my knowledge of things artistic. 
 
 u Well, no," he said, smiling, and looking 
 hard into my eyes ; " those are early attempts. 
 They were done, don't you know, when I was 
 still on the Stock Exchange." 
 
340 GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 
 
 I gave a sudden start. " On the Stock 
 Exchange ! " I cried, puzzled, and just a wee 
 bit tremulous. " You don't mean to tell me, 
 Mr. Kirkwood, you were ever on the Stock 
 Exchange ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, I was," he answered, in the most 
 matter-of-fact tone on earth. " But I did no 
 good at it, you know ; I'm not cut out for 
 business. I was always daubing or making 
 thumb-nail sketches when I ought to have 
 been watching the rise and fall of stocks. So 
 I left it at last as a bad job, and took to painting 
 instead, which is my natural metier ; though, of 
 course, I'm still theoretically and legally a 
 sworn broker of the City of London." 
 
 I turned so pale at those words that he 
 looked at me in surprise. " That's very 
 awkward ! " I cried, taken aback, and trembling 
 violently. Then I grew fiery red, for I saw 
 in a moment I'd put my foot in it. 
 
 " Why awkward ? " he asked, coming closer 
 
GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 341 
 
 and looking hard in my face. " You're faint, 
 Miss Passavant ! You're trembling ! Let me 
 run and get you a glass of water." 
 
 "Not for worlds," I cried, stammering and 
 trying to recover myself. " I only meant ' 
 
 He seized my hand, and held it tight. He 
 guessed the truth, I think. At any rate, he 
 quivered. " You must tell me ! " he cried. 
 " Oh ! Miss Passavant, what is it ? " 
 
 " By my grandfather's will," I began ; then 
 I stopped and faltered. 
 
 He let my hand drop short. " Oh yes, 
 I forgot," he said, in a disappointed tone ; 
 " I should have remembered that before ; 1 
 shouldn't have dared to approach you." 
 
 I saw what he meant in a second, and I felt 
 I really must tell him now. " But by my 
 grandfather's will," I gasped out, in an agony 
 of shame, remorse, and terror for I felt it was 
 horribly unwomanly of me to have let him see 
 like that into my very heart " we were to 
 
342 GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 
 
 forfeit it all if we oh ! Mr. Kirkwood, I can't 
 say it if we any of us married an alien, a 
 Presbyterian or a sworn broker." 
 
 Before I knew where I was, something 
 strange had happened. He was holding me 
 in his arms, and pressing me tight to his breast. 
 He was covering me with kisses. " Ethel my 
 Ethel ! " he cried ; " then it's all right, after all ! 
 You'll have no money ! And you'll never 
 mind ! I know you'll be mine ! What's money 
 to you and me? With you to help me, I'm 
 sure I can earn enough for both of us. It was 
 only that horrid, horrid shadow that stood 
 between us ! " 
 
 I knew he was right, so I stood still and 
 allowed him. 
 
 Two minutes later Mrs. Markwell came in 
 upon us. I suppose I looked horribly flushed 
 and flurried ; but I understood I was engaged 
 to Arthur Kirkwood. 
 
GENERAL PASSAVANT^S WILL. 343 
 
 Y. 
 
 NEXT day I made a clean breast of it all to 
 Maud. She listened in silence, in that calm, 
 cold way of hers ; then she took my hand in 
 hers, and, to my immense surprise, kissed me 
 most affectionately. " Ethel," she said, with 
 a burst, " I always knew you were a brick ! I 
 knew you'd follow the guidance of your own 
 heart. But Linda's so different. Shell never 
 fall in love, you may be sure, with any one on 
 earth who could possibly come under poor 
 grandpapa's prohibitions. She's absolutely 
 mercenary ! " 
 
 In the astonishment of the moment I blurted 
 out the whole truth. " Why, Maud," I ex- 
 claimed, " you're awfully unjust to her ! She's 
 in love already and with an American, too 
 an alien a foreigner well, there, Mr. Van- 
 renen." 
 
344 GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 
 
 It was a shocking breach of confidence. I 
 admit ; and the moment I'd let the words pass 
 my lips I regretted it bitterly. But Maud 
 drew back like one stung ; then she jumped up 
 with a sudden air of resolve. " If that's so," 
 she said quickly, in quite a hopeful tone, " I 
 must see Malcolm immediately. Malcolm will 
 tell us ; he's so clever, Malcolm is. I see a way 
 out, I think. But you're quite sure of this 
 thing about Linda, are you, Ethel ? " 
 
 " As certain as I am about you and Mr. 
 Mackinnon, Maud," I replied, all bewildered. 
 " Though I don't see what difference that can 
 possibly make to you and me, dear." 
 
 Instead of answering, Maud looked at me hard 
 once more, in her calmly contemptuous way 
 Maud had always a very low opinion of my 
 humble intellect. Then she rose at once, and 
 swept out of the room, with her train behind 
 her, leaving me in utter wonder as to what on 
 earth she could be driving at. 
 
GENERAL PASSAVANT^S WILL. 345 
 
 That very afternoon, as soon as lunch was 
 finished, Maud asked Linda and myself to go 
 out for a stroll in Kensington Gardens. From 
 the way she asked it, we saw at once she had 
 something definite in view ; and, though Linda 
 was the eldest, when Maud asked us in her 
 grand manner to go anywhere, or do anything, 
 we other two girls would as soon have dreamt 
 of refusing to obey her as of refusing to obey 
 a judge in ermine. So we followed her blindly 
 through Palace Gardens, and past the Round 
 Pond, and along the path to the seat under the 
 trees by the Speke Memorial. 
 
 As we reached the seat, somebody got up 
 and raised his hat to greet us. He was ex- 
 pecting us, clearly. I saw at a glance it was 
 Mr. Mackinnon. 
 
 Maud took his hand in hers without a gleam 
 of recognition, yet I could see he held it a little 
 bit longer than was absolutely necessary. " You 
 got my note, then ? " she said, in her com- 
 
346 GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 
 
 manding voice. " And you've looked this 
 matter up for us, Malcolm ? " 
 
 " Yes, Maud," Mr. Mackinnon answered, just 
 a trifle confused, and glancing askance from 
 her to me and Linda. 
 
 " Oh, never mind the girls," Maud said, 
 quietly, with a little wave of her hand. 
 " They're all in the same box, you see. They 
 won't turn back upon us. Tell us quite plainly 
 what the law is in the matter." 
 
 " Well, I've consulted the will," Mr. Mac- 
 kinnon replied, drawing an envelope from his 
 pocket ; " and I've consulted the authorities, 
 and the result is, I find, that if your sister 
 Linda marries Mr. Vanrenen " 
 
 " Oh, Ethel, how could you ! " Linda cried, 
 turning towards me one red flush, and drawing 
 back several paces in a tragic attitude. 
 
 But Mr. Mackinnon took no notice of her. 
 " And if your sister Ethel marries Mr. Kirk- 
 wood," he went on ; " and if, finally, you 
 
GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 347 
 
 marry me, why, then, according to your grand- 
 father's will, which the Courts would certainly 
 uphold in every particular, your sister Linda's 
 share must be divided equally between you and 
 Ethel ; your sister Ethel's share must be divided 
 equally between you and Linda; and your 
 share must be divided equally between the 
 other two. So, you see, it cancels out. Each 
 of you'll get just the same in the end, and all 
 will come square, as if there were no restric- 
 tion." 
 
 " Malcolm," Maud said, emphatically, moving 
 back a step and surveying him from head to 
 foot with supreme satisfaction, " I call you a 
 Daniel come to judgment yea, a Daniel ! This 
 is just delightful." 
 
 "And what's more," Mr. Mackinnon went 
 on, looking from one of us to the other, " the 
 arrangement would in every way be a most 
 satisfactory one : for the original bequests are 
 left under trust, and subject to many most 
 
348 GENERAL PASSAVANT^S WILL. 
 
 vexatious restrictions ; while the reversions, by 
 a singular oversight, are absolute, and for your 
 own sole use and benefit." 
 
 " Girls," Maud said, triumphantly, " you hear 
 him. This is capital. Do you agree to marry 
 and make this redistribution ? " 
 
 " Certainly," I answered, without an instant's 
 hesitation. " And so will you, Linda, as soon 
 as you've had time to make out what it's all 
 driving at." 
 
 I never saw a man more astonished in rny 
 life than poor dear papa when we explained to 
 him the decision at which we'd all arrived. 
 And I never saw a man more baffled either 
 than Arthur Kirkwood when he found out that 
 he'd have to take rne after all, burdened with 
 a fortune of twenty thousand pounds, which 
 he'd never expected. It lost him such a chance 
 of romantic poverty with the girl he loved 
 that I really believe, if he hadn't been very 
 much in love with me indeed, he'd have thrown 
 
GENERAL PASSAVANT'S WILL. 349 
 
 me overboard at once, and started afresh in 
 quest of a penniless damsel. But he managed 
 to put up with it for my sake, he said, and 
 you can see me as his Rosalind in this year's 
 Academy. 
 
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