SCYLLA OR SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? MACMILLAN' S TWO SHILLING LIBRARY. 1899 i. RHODA BROUGHTON. Cometh up as a Flower. Ready. 2. ,, ,, Good-bye, Sweetheart! M 3. JESSIE FOTHERGILL. Kith and Kin. f> 4- Probation. M 5. RHODA BROUGHTON. Joan. M 6- Not Wisely but Too Well. >t 7. JKSSIE FOTHERGILL. Borderland. 8- ,, Aldyth. i) 9. RHODA BROUGHTON. Red as a Rose is She. Jo- ,, Scylla or Charybdis? n ii. MRS. ALEXANDER. The Wooing o't. May idth. 12. ,, ,, Her Dearest Foe. M 13. RHODA BROUGHTON. Belinda. May 26t&. '4- ,, ,, Doctor Cupid. n 15. LE FANU. Uncle Silas. June i6t/i. 16. The House by the Churchyard n 17. RHODA BROUGHTON. Second Thoughts. June 2jt/t. >8 A Beginner. i 19. W. CLARK RUSSELL. Marooned. July -nth. 20. MRS. EDWARDES. Leah : A Woman of Fashion. 21. RHODA BROUGHTON. Alas! July 2 8M. 22. ,, Mrs. Bligh. M 23. MONTAGU WILLIAMS. Leaves of a Life. August is//:. 24. MARY LINSKILL. Between the Heather and ) the Northern Sea. f " MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON. SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? BY RHODA BROUGHTON AUTHOR OF COMETH UP AS A FLOWER,' ' RED AS A ROSE IS SHE,' 'DOCTOR CUPID, 'NANCY,' 'GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART!' ETC. Eontton MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1899 First appeared in the ' Temple Bar' Magazine, 1895; First Edition, in one -vol., crown 87/0., 6-r., September, 1895; Reprinted, 1897; Transferred to Macntlllan <5r Co., Ltd., August, 1898 ; Reprinted, vs., April, 1899. 9C Y SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? CHAPTER I. ' THIS must be the house, William ! This must be the house !' Until it had pulled up at her door, the occupant of a bow-window, projecting over the street, had not suspected that a landau, which has been making its way with horses kept to a walk and footman uncertainly consulting the faces of succeeding domiciles, had any visiting intention towards her- self. No sooner has she realised this fact and the other one, that a voice and a parasol are waving and shouting directions from inside, than she slips noiselessly off the cushioned window-seat running round the embrasure, into the interior of the summer- darkened room. Mrs. Clarence is a shy i 852 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? woman, and she has not recognised either the voice, the parasol, or the liveries. She is a shy woman a good deal retired from the world and she awaits with some slight trepidation the outcome of the incident. 4 It is probably the wrong house/ she says to herself. But this explanation is disproved by the fact that the footman's resounding rap is followed shortly by an undoubted admittance, by a strange step on the stairs, and by the parlourmaid's announcement of a splendid rustling, chatelaine-clattering * Lady Brams- hill.' To the modest mouse-colour-clad lady upon whom it is sprung, the title is as un- familiar as the rest of the vision. 4 Why do not you have your number on your door ?' asks the intruder in a loudish but not disagreeable voice. * How is one to find you out ?' 4 I am very sorry, but they are renumber- ing the street changing the numbers. I do not quite know why.' ' I asked which was No. 22 at the White Hart, and the secretary said she did not know, but the hall-porter would. I asked hall-porter, and he said he did not know, SCYLLA OR CHARYBD1S? but the policeman would. I asked the police- man, and he said he did not know, but that the milkman would. I asked the milkman or, at least, I made William, my footman, ask him and he said he did not know, but that the postman would. I asked the post- man and, enfin, I am here !' Mrs. Clarence has thought her visitor's opening speech as tiresome as her appear- ance at all is unaccounted for. 4 It is evident that I am not much known to fame in St. Gratian/ she replies, with a shy smile and an inward hope that her face does not betray her total ignorance of her visitor's identity. But that hope is not long left to her. * You have not the foggiest idea who I am/ says that visitor good-humouredly, but not even attempting to give her remark an interrogatory shape. * Well, I cannot return the left-handed compliment, for I certainly should have known you anywhere.' * Should you ?' with a distressed and timid glance at the portly and prosperous expanse before her, as if to evoke thereby some help- ful memory ; but none such comes, and she can only murmur : 'Lady Bramshill? SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? The other laughs. ' That will not help you. My name is as new as my gloves, which I put on to do you honour and much too small they are ! I cannot imagine why the shops have altered all the sizes ! It is not three months since my Judge was given a peerage.' My Judge ! The visitor is, then, the wife of a dignitary of the law. But Mrs. Clarence scans the horizon of her narrow acquaintance in vain. No Judge rises, beneficent and rescuing, upon it. ' I think he appeared on the scene after you had left Green Leigh.' At the mention of this name that of a place which she had quitted a quarter of a century ago, and where she had spent the five years of her wifehood a place even more infinitely remote in the spirit's calendar than in that of the body Mrs. Clarence gives a slight start. ' Life is a system of compensations/ con- tinues Lady Bramshill cheerfully ; ' he rose on my horizon as you disappeared over it. As soon as I was married I went to India. We did not come back, except to put the children to school, until last year. Have SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? you any glimmering of a notion as to who I am now ?' A pleased confidence in an immediate joyous recognition following upon these in- dications is legibly written across her features, and upon Mrs. Clarence's memory there rises the cloudy figure of a big-framed, thin young woman, the bustling eldest of the Vicarage brood at her gates a young woman of her own age, who, in that immeasurable distance, had served her as friend. But the outline is still so nebulous that her visitor has time for a look of disappointment, and a rather crest- fallen ' I know that I have expanded a good deal,' before the person to whom she seems to herself to have disclosed so unmistakably her personality proffers hesitatingly, in a faint and dubious key : ' Not Marion Baynes ?' 4 You make me doubt my own identity when you question it in that voice !' cries Lady Bramshill, with a touch of good- humoured mortification. ' Am I, then, so absolutely unrecognisable ? Why, I should have known you to be Lucy Clarence any- where.' 1 Ah, but you must remember what an SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? advantage you had over me !' replies the other in distressed apology. * You were ex- pecting to see me, while I No doubt if I had been prepared for our meeting, I, too, should ' But the fib dies on her lips. Under no circumstances of preparation could she have extracted from the plethoric and diamond- earringed area before her the scraggy form of the comrade of her early matronhood. ' I dare say you will find that my zVzside is not as much changed as my ort of thing always comes to pass if one does not bring a foot- man and we will ask Lucy to take us in and give us something to eat. The theatre always makes me ravenous ; does not it you, Euphemia ?' Miss Bramshill offers no resistance to the project, whatever her private opinion of its tactfulness may be, and Honor's protest is so softly uttered that it goes quite unheeded. Honor has been so much used all her life to acquiesce in actions and projects which she dislikes that she has become a past-mistress in the art of concealing her emotions. No SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 181 one who saw the serenity of her serious eyes and the sweet civility of her smile would guess the profound distaste and shrinking with which she is driven into sharing this injudicious forcing of the privacy of one whose first impression of her she would so fain have had a favourable one. And worse far worse than the suffering caused by this intrusion on his mother, is the wound from which her deep shy pride bleeds at thus brazenly going to seek one who had so plainly shunned her. At first it seems as if she were to escape the ordeal, through the fact of their being unable to gain admittance. The house stands black and silent among its black and silent neighbours, lifting its little smokeless chimney-stack to the starred canopy of the night. 1 They have gone to bed ! It is all shut up !' says Euphemia, surveying the frontage. 4 There is not even a light in the area!' 1 It is a little late, isn't it?' puts in Honor. ' I heard the church clock strike half-past twelve as we came by.' But no one who hears the calmness of the tiny protest would guess the ardour of prayer 182 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? for its success in turning the leader of the expedition from her insensate purpose with which it is uttered. It has the fate of many other prayers. ' Impossible !' cries Lady Bramshill, re- turning with fresh vigour to the bell-pull ; 1 Harry and little Miss What's-her-name must at all events be up. Why, they were not three minutes ahead of us ; and ' - her thoughts reverting fondly to the thought of refreshment ' they could not go to bed without something to eat. Ah, I thought so ! Here comes somebody at last !' The ' somebody ' is a distrustful maid- servant, who opens the door parsimoniously and on the chain, and looks doubtfully out. 1 It is all right!' cries the leader of the invaders jubilantly. * You may let us in. We are not burglars. We are only four hungry ladies come to ask for a sandwich. Your mistress is not gone to bed ? No ! I thought not. Ah !' turning a triumphant look over her shoulder at her followers as she crosses the threshold 'who was right now ?' To one of those followers who steps along reluctant and hindmost, they seem dreadfully numerous, voluminous, impertinent, as they SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 183 rustle along a narrow passage to the back- den on the ground-floor, for which, when her son spends an evening at home, Mrs. Clarence forsakes her own prettier and more cheerful domain. Terribly intrusive they seem as she catches sight of the little family tableau during the second before the three persons who com- pose it become aware of their presence. It is clear that the two theatre-goers are only this moment returned. Abigail is still in her opera-cloak, and Harry leaning over the back of his mother s chair, in which she lies all white and muslin-clad. Her garment is a dainty hybrid between the homeliness of a bedroom dressing-gown and the assumptions of a tea-gown. She is lifting a small face of listening adoration to him. At the noise of the entering party both naturally look towards the door, and the hindmost of the invaders has not her view so obstructed by those who precede her as to miss the change of expres- sion in both faces. The first emotion which the countenance of the woman whom she is so deeply desirous to propitiate exhibits when turned upon her is one of unmistakable dis- may and disgust. 184 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? Clarence had fully meant to have related to his mother the fact of Miss Lisle's presence in St. Gratian an intention the less meri- torious on his part since, if he had not done so, Abigail would certainly have saved him the trouble. Even if there were no Abigail, bubbling over with admiring curiosity, Mrs. Clarence could not fail to discover it for her- self in twenty-four hours. He has established himself behind her chair with that very view, choosing that to some degree concealed position in order to utter his piece of news with a more natural and cfegagJ air. And now that thing which, of all others, he would most dislike and deprecate has happened. Without being given any time to prepare her in any degree for the shock, he sees the introduction to his mother, which he would have prepared with so trembling a care, forced upon her at an untimely hour with unseemly brusqueness, and in the manner most of all certain to arouse her prejudices against the person so forced, or forcing her- self, upon her acquaintance ! How will his mother already, as he divines her, more than ready to disapprove conjecture the SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 185 profound annoyance in the girl's heart, the deep mortification which he guesses, under the mask of her small, self-contained face ? One thing he is spared : he does not suspect the extremely bitter drop which he himself contributes to his love's cup in that humiliating moment, and which flows from the look in his own face as she first catches sight of it above his mother's head a look of dismay at least as profound as his parent's. 'Here is a surprise for you!' cries Lady Bramshill, coming in with a. frou-frou of her ample skirts, and a total absence of mis- giving as to her welcomeness, as, indeed, nothing would have pleased her better than to have the same trick played upon herself. ' There's nothing like the impr&ni, is there ? The girls said that you would be in bed ; but I knew better. I remembered what a hopeless rake you always were ! Ha, ha !' Mrs. Clarence has risen, and is holding out a mechanical hand to the personified garrulity before her But her eyes have gone beyond her beyond Euphemia, be- yond the bugled widow and are resting on the small and motionless figure standing just within the door. i86 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? The two women who hold Clarence's life- strings are looking at each other, and, with a sharp pang of foreboding, he sees that on one side at least there is no prepossession in the glance. ' You do not mind our taking you by storm ?' asks Lady Bramshill, for even in her the hostess's manner is breeding a slight misgiving. ' Of course, it is most audacious of us ; but what is the use of having friends if one may not take liberties with them that one cannot with mere acquaintances ? And if you do not want us, make no scruple of sending us away. The carriage will be here in a minute.' This suggestion, indicating a lack of cor- diality in her manner, brings Mrs. Clarence round : ' Oh, pray sit down !' she says, with a civility whose formality rings ominously in her son's ears. ' I was a little startled at first. Will not these ladies sit down ?' ' I am forgetting my manners !' cries Lady Bramshill, not yet quite reassured as to the wisdom of her freak, and carrying it off, as her daughter feels, with a double portion of good-humour and bounce. ' I must present SCYLLA OR CHARYBDISP 187 you all to each other. * This ' indicating the elder lady 'is Mrs. Dynevor, with whom we lived and loved at Calcutta ; and this is Miss Lisle, who, I find, is an old acquaintance of Harry's. By-the-by, Harry, what did you mean by not coming to speak to us at the play ?' Then, feeling that her question has fallen mysteriously flat, she goes on : * What delicious - looking sandwiches ! When first we came home from India, people asked us what were the changes that struck us most in England. The Judge said the increase in the number of omnibuses ; and / said the improvement in sandwiches !' This rigmarole string of remarks arouses Mrs. Clarence to a sense of her duties, and she moves towards a table spread with slight cold foods, iced water, and a claret-jug. As she does so her pocket-handkerchief slips, unperceived by her, to the floor, and Honor, who has been drawn forward to be presented, stoops, and, picking it up, restores it to her. There seems to Harry a deprecating grace in the action a touching indication of reverence and apology that must soften the flintiest heart. No one can deny that there is also grace 1 88 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? since she can do nothing ungracefully in Mrs. Clarence's mode of reception of the attention faultless politeness in her thanks and regrets at having given trouble. But if there is grace, there is too perceptible to her son's anxious eyes and ears frost, too. To Honor, since she sees his mother for the first time, the degree of chilliness or warmth of her ordinary manner must be unknown. But her senses have been rendered sharper than most people's by her out-door life, and by her long habit of looking and listening in field and wood for the small noises and light movements of the lesser peoples of earth and air. It may be the quick sense of that chill which sends her back to her first position near the door. All through the one-sided dialogue (a bull !) carried on between his mother and Lady Bramshill, Harry hears her few short, soft sentences dropped between the para- graphs of the widow's fluent comments on the night's entertainment and its heroine. * Did you see that huge diamond sun which she wore on her corsage ?' asks Mrs. Dynevor. ' You know who gave it her ? The Duke of - , and they say that the diamonds were SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 189 taken out of that historic couronne fermte of the Duchess's which belonged to Catherine of Russia.' ' Yes, I know that they say so.' ' They were replaced by paste, but as the Duchess does not know that, she no doubt wears her coronet quite as happily as before ; but if ever she finds out, I would not be he.' ' I should think that she despised him too much to care.' 'H'm! no doubt, no doubt! So dis- graceful in a man of his age, too ! But, still, diamonds are always diamonds !' ' When everything else worth having in one's life had gone, I think the diamonds might go, too.' She says it in a very low voice, and with an accent of concentrated scorn, yet low as her voice is, he knows that his mother has heard the words. To him, and surely also to her, they come stamped with the seal of the girl's high-minded purity. Yet he would have been glad that the first specimen of his love's never very abounding talk which comes to his parent's ears should have been on a less dubious theme. He has presently cause to deepen and enlarge this wish. 190 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 1 Well,' says the widow, with a lenient laugh dedicated to the ducal follies, ' he has more excuse for his weakness than men often have. Such coarse, ugly creatures befool them ! but she is certainly extremely pretty and ladylike, so like a Greuze.' 1 She is not at all pretty off the stage.' ' You have seen her off the stage ?' with greatly heightened interest. ' Yes.' ( And she is not really pretty ?' ' When she speaks she is not at all pretty/ ' Who is not at all pretty when she speaks?' asks Lady Bramshill, beginning to discern the extremely intermittent nature of the attention which Mrs. Clarence is giving to her own converse. ' Poppy de Vere,' replies the widow ; ' but ' incredulously ' I can scarcely believe it. Who told you so ?' ' I have spoken to her.' ' You have spoken to her ? spoken to Poppy de Vere ? ' She stayed at my father's house. Her husband is a racing friend of my father's.' The widow's jaw drops. She is not SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 191 acquainted with Honor's history, and the calmness with which she proclaims an ac- quaintance with the too-illustrious Poppy strikes her for an instant silent. But only for an instant. A fire of eager questions follows : ' Is she nice ? At least, not nice, really, of course at all refined, I mean ? or like a lady ? Would you ever guess ?' ' She is not at all nice. She sits with her feet on the chimneypiece. She swears a good deal. It would be impossible for any- one to be less nice.' ' But why on earth ' astonishment getting the upper hand of good manners in this searching query 'did you consent to meet her ? Why did not you go away ?' 1 I did not know that she was coming ; but if I had I should not have gone away. My father would have been displeased, and she did not do me any harm.' She says it with the quietude of complete conviction, and then there is a pause. The other dialogues, having for some minutes paid their tribute to the superior interest of this one by perceptible slackening, are now dropped into silence. It is broken only by i 9 2 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? an inaudible save to her son and the person addressed murmur from Mrs. Clarence to Abigail, which Harry knows to be a sugges- tion to his young cousin to go to bed. He knows, too, that the suggestion has been dictated by the feeling that the conversation of his heart's high pure lady is not fit for her to listen to. The conviction is an inex- pressibly bitter one. Abigail steals reluctantly away, and ten more heavy, flat minutes follow before the welcome sound of wheels on the pavement outside announces that deliverance has come. Deliverance ? Yes. But yet it is a salva- tion that, if the young man do not make some effort to prevent it, will involve his letting his love pass from under his churlish roof without one word of the reverent, glad welcome which, if Fate had not played him so scurvy a trick as to the manner of her coming, he would have offered her. Even if his mother perceive the manoeuvre by which his end is gained, he must make himself elbow and voice room for one little word to her. The opportunity he seeks comes quite naturally after all. For just two minutes they SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? 193 stand on the doorstep together and alone. But with the come opportunity, the power goes. What can he say in the meagre space that will be his, good enough, respectful enough, tender enough, to remove the cold and bitter impression which she must be taking away with her from his home ? While he hesitates, a minute and a half of the two minutes go by. And she does not help him. She has suffered far more than he : suffered in her maidenly dignity, in her self-respect ; and though her face keeps its trained grave sweetness, without any trace of resentment, yet she cannot quite compass speech. And she is never a great talker. Lady Bramshill's heavy foot she had gone back for one of those last words, of which, unlike Honor, she has always such a copious stock is heard in the little hall close behind them. There is only half a moment left. And yet into half a minute many a pregnant sen- tence that has altered the whole lie of a life has been packed ere now. His tardy utter- ance, when it comes, can hardly have that effect. 1 What a very fine night !' 13 194 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? ' Yes ; but the farmers are crying out for rain.' And she is gone. He returns to the smoking-room profoundly dissatisfied, but with a heart that, under its disgusted ache, has yet a leap in it. He finds his mother standing, with her back turned towards him, leaning against the lintel of the French window, which, so suave is the breath of the lovely summer night, still stands wide open. Her head is propped against the wall, and there is dejection in the very hang of her diaphanous draperies. He possesses him- self softly of one of her limply pendent hands. ' You will catch cold.' ' 1 do not think so.' A little pause. He had rather that she should be the one to begin the subject ; but since she will not, the power of self-control being suddenly withdrawn from him, he must himself rush into it. He does it by the monosyllable, ' Well ?' Only a monosyllable, yet so full of passionate expectation that her heart stands still. She knows that one of the opportunities of her life has come one of those opportunities that, if we once let SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 195 slip, we can never so swiftly do they run- overtake. ' Well, dear ' the vague returning of his own word upon him is, as she knows, only a putting off the evil day. 1 Do you do you see the likeness that I told you of?' Perhaps if he had worded his bid for admiration differently, she might have been better able to rise to it. But against his demand thus made her whole being rises in unconquerable revolt. It is herself, then, who is to be made the instrument of her murder. ' Miss Lisle and I are both little pale black women,' she answers in a very, very small voice. ' I do not think that I see any other likeness/ There is a pause. He has dropped her hand and turned away, and she knows that she has let her priceless opportunity go, and that at one of the most crucial points of her life's road she has taken the wrong turning. She knows it better still next morning, when, soon after breakfast, she sees him set off in riding-breeches, and with his whip under his arm, towards the stables where he 196 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? keeps his horse. He had come down late to breakfast, when Abigail and she had all but finished that repast, which, in Mrs. Clarence's case, on this occasion, is a mere form, and he had begged them not to wait for him, so that she has scarcely exchanged words with him. She had meant to have taken some step- even a whole sleepless night had not sug- gested to her its exact nature towards re- O pairing her false move, and now it is too late. He has gone unpropitiated, full of resentment and wounded feeling, to have balm poured on his hurts by that hand which, had she been wise, she would have controlled herself into taking into her own. 1 How early he is going out riding to-day !' cries Abigail from her window post. ' What a nice flat back he has ! and how well his legs look in those gaiters ! Quite a poem !' laughing 'as that Miss Lisle said about Poppy de Vere's.' ' Miss Lisle said so ?' in an extremely shocked voice. ' I do not think that it was Miss Lisle : it was the other lady the jet-ty one.' But, despite this almost confident rehabili- SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 197 tation of poor Honor, Mrs. Clarence keeps a silent inward conviction that the silly and objectionable remark made had issued from Miss Lisle's lips. What an abyss it opens between herself and the girl who could be supposed capable of uttering it ! She lapses into a silence, whose distress is heightened by this tiny incident, which, so little do we gauge the force of our own light words, passes so entirely from Abigail's mind that her next remark is a wish that the Vaughans would let in their dog, as 'he has been waiting at the door for ages,' coupled with the observation that ' the footman and he are evidently great friends, but that he is afraid of the housemaid.' L 198 j CHAPTER X. MEANWHILE, trotting along the green grass margin of the white highroad, cutting across pasture -lands, and skirting hay -meadows, Clarence is making but a brief thing of the interval between the dowdy, semi-animate little town and the newly - painted and smartened-up and generally alive and teem- ing country-house which is his goal. He reaches it only just in time, for as he comes in sight of the hall-door he sees three just- mounted people in the act, or hovering on the verge of the act, of setting forth on a ride. The lateness of the young brother who is to escort the two girls, which Clarence learns from the hangdog air of the culprit under a rather needlessly austere rebuke from his sister, is the only reason why he has not missed the party altogether, since they SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 199 would have taken a road different from that by which he had approached. Although he has lacked Miss Lisle's society for all but one week of his life without any very per- ceptible consequent diminution of flesh and appetite, yet to have lost this one more morning seems to him, now that he has just escaped doing so, a calamity greater than he could have borne. Her face is at first almost hidden from him, stooping towards a large white terrier, whom he recognises as Adolphus's Nipper, and who is standing up on his hind-legs against the leg of the horse, evidently re- questing to be taken up. That such a request should be complied with would, under the circumstances, have never occurred to the young man, and it is with stupefaction that he now sees him lifted by a groom and placed under Miss Lisle's arm. ' Why do you carry him ?' he asks, going quickly round to her ; and this natural question solves the difficulty of how to open a conversation in which the contretemps of last night must be fresh in both minds. ' Why do you carry him ? He is perfectly well able to run.' SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? ' I know that he is ; he likes running with horses or a carriage.' * Then why do you carry him ?' 4 He is rather an eccentric character,' she answers, breaking into one of her slight grave smiles, ' and he declines to come at all unless he is carried for the first hundred yards. And one would not ' with an affectionate pressure of her elbow against his side 'lose the pleasure of his company for such a trifle.' * I have tried to persuade Miss Lisle,' says Euphemia, putting her horse in motion, 'to let me at least take turns in carrying him. No one can imagine how disagreeable it is until they have tried it ; and he moults so much that he covers one with white hairs.' 4 It is all the more reason why he should not cover two' replies Honor quietly. The young man involuntarily turns his head over his shoulder as she speaks. He has had no invitation to join the party, but as he has on several previous occasions ridden with members of the Bramshill family, it seems taken for granted that he should do so now. ' We have been rather alarmed of late SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 201 by signs of a new development of Nipper's tyranny,' says Euphemia 'an inclination to refuse to set off even on a walk without being carried for his usual hundred yards.' * I should resist that/ replies Clarence. 4 He is young and strong, and has no excuse of age or delicacy.' But he is 'not thinking of what he is saying. He is thinking of the 'neat excellence' with which that backward glance had shown him that the feat of carrying a large dog under her bridle-arm by a young lady on a horse inclined to be fidgety may be performed. He is thinking, too, of how an alteration in the order of their going may be effected without a too perceptible manoeuvre on his part. A kindly gate with an obstructive fastening gives him the opportunity he desires ; for Miss Lisle, growing tired of the long fumbling, puts her horse at the low fence which skirts the field into which they are seeking entrance, and Harry thinks himself justified in follow- ing her. Euphemia, who, like many large and domineering personalities, is a timid horse- woman, declines to follow suit ; so the other two Honor having happily rid herself of 202 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? her incumbrance before her jump ride slowly on. Clarence has secured the tdte-a-tdte he has coveted, but for the first few moments he seems incapable of making any use of it. They have crossed a little pasture, and entered a wood, before he is delivered of the not very pregnant remark : ' There is quite as much variety in the character of dogs as in that of people.' 'Quite.' There is nothing abrupt or intentionally shutting up in the monosyllable, but it does not lead to anything. * Is there or is it his guilty fancy ? a slight shade of reticent dignity in his companion's manner which differentiates it from her Eastshire one, quiet as that was ? An allusion to last night will perhaps clear up the self-put question. ' You got home all right last night ? A sprightlier-minded person than Miss Lisle might well have inquired whether, had she not got home all right, she would be likely to be now riding by his side through the wood's green light. But Honor is not sprightly. She merely replies : ' Quite right, thank you ;' and again SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 203 there seems a brick wall at the end of the sentence. But if there is, it is, to his surprise, she who overclimbs it. ' After having seen us together, do you still think I am like Mrs. Clarence?' She does not look at him as she puts the question, which might, indeed, seem to chal- lenge an examination of her features, and she hesitates before the last two words, as if in doubt whether to say ' your mother ' or ' Mrs. Clarence.' That she ends by choosing the more formal title proves to the young man that she is aware of her own overnight failure to recom- mend herself to his parent. 4 1 think it even more startling ' em- phatically. She is so little in the habit of showing emotion, that he dares hardly believe that he detects, by a deepened dimple in the only cheek that he can speculate upon, that his answer gives her pleasure. 1 And did she herself see it ? Have you ever suggested it to her ?' An almost imperceptible sinking of the voice alone reveals that the answer to this 204 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? question is of any import to the speaker. He knows that she sees the lame unreadi- ness of his response. ' People don't you think ? very seldom know what they themselves are like. She sees it to a certain extent, but not to the degree that I do.' He has no indication as to whether the reply disappoints her, since at the moment she is now warding off from her quite averted face with her whip-handle an arching briar- branch, rough with swelling rosebuds, which is threatening to sweep across her. When she does speak, it is in a tone of composed but evidently heartfelt admira- tion. ' She is a very beautiful lady !' The deep respect and profound apprecia- tion evidenced by both the phrase and the tone that carries it make flash back on his memory by contrast the slightingness of his mother's words : * Miss Lisle and I are both little pale black women. I do not think I see much other likeness ' words in which the depreciation is not the less thorough because she has coupled herself with the person ddnigrte. We have all in our day SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 205 practised this subtle mode of aspersion. For the first time in his life he compares his mother in his mind z/wfavourably with another woman. Even if that mother's verdict upon Honor had been as flattering as the girl's upon her, the reverential courtesy towards all women in which he has been from infancy bred, and which comes doubly easy to him in the case of the woman he loves, would prevent his telling her so to her face. Yet to his vicariously guilty conscience guilty, that is, of another's offence it seems that the silence which follows her remark must appear to her an ominous one. He can only answer it by a grateful look, whose quality she very pro- bably does not recognise. They pass on in silence through the sun- shot green tangle, where the ride is here and there so overflung, overgrown by encroach- ing undergrowth, that they have to pass along in single file. He has come up with her again, after one such short separation, to find by the serenity of her bright face how entirely any little mortification, if it ever existed, has been shone and sung out of her. He remembers 206 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS P her having once told him that she never could be very unhappy out of doors. Her chin is a little lifted, and her lips apart to drink in the filtered radiance, and her pretty ears are cocked to disentangle the talk of the birds to him, as to most of us, a pleasing but unintelligible babel ; to her the con- versation of intimate and well-understood friends. ' Do you hear the wood-wren ?' she asks. * I have no doubt that I do ' laughing ; ' but I could not put a name to it.' 'Oh yes, you could. It says "Please! please /" as if begging you to go away.' ' Does it ?' 4 It has two notes. The first is a tick, tick, tick, with a long p-r-r-r-h at the end. There ! do not you hear him ? You cannot mistake him.' ' Cannot I ?' 'There is a torn-tit imitating a chiff-chaff.' He pulls up his horse and strains his ears, but is quite unable to pick out of the melodious jumble about and above him the tiny mimicry alluded to. ' It is so odd that you cannot hear it!' she says, with a smile of unaffected surprise ; SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 207 then, afraid of having been discourteous, hastens to acid : ' I always think your hear- ing so very acute. But it is all a matter of habit ; and the way in which birds imitate one another is very puzzling. It was a long time before I found out that thrushes imitate owls.' 1 Do they ?' ' Yes ; not accurately, of course, but still cleverly. I always wonder if they recog- nise their own language when it is so garbled.' 1 They probably feel like a Frenchman when an Englishman addresses him in dog- French.' ' It was so odd at first to see parrots flying about in India. We spent Christmas Day among the ruins of Old Delhi. There is a wonderful ancient tower there but no doubt you know that which they call the Koo- tub, and which Mrs. Bevis wanted to see ; and we took our luncheon, and ate it among those miles of ruins; and the green parrots flew overhead, and the little squirrels rustled and played.' She pauses, with a look of recollected enjoyment. It is an unusually long speech 208 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? for her ; and her hearer takes her communi- cativeness thankfully, as a sign of renewed or reviving intimacy. 1 You liked your India, didn't you ?' Ye-es.' ' That sounds a little doubtful.' ' I liked the jungle I liked all the out- door part. You know, I always hate temples and sights and ruins.' He feels a momentary jar. Memory shows him in a flash a contrasting picture of his mother as a travelling companion her acute and cultivated interest in all that foreign travel can show. A few minutes ago a mental comparison had set her at a disadvantage, now the balance is redressed. * I felt my ignorance rather oppressively all the time that I was there.' He draws a long breath, disarmed and reconciled to the barbarism of her first utter- ance by the (as he feels) regretful humility of her second. 1 More than you do in England ?' in a tone of delicate sympathy, not attempting to deny the fact, which, indeed, seeing his acquaintance with the furniture of his com- panion's mind, would be flattery too patent, SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 209 but trying to convey a soothing implication that the evil is not an irremediable one. ' I do not feel it at all in England/ replies she composedly ; ' at least ' with a tiny grain of malice ' I did not until you took such pains to rub it well into me last year in East- shire.' Again he feels a slight sense of disappoint- ment. He had hoped at their last meeting that he had raised a piquant curiosity in her slumbering intelligence slumbering only for books, so awake and alert in other direc- tions. ' I suppose it was the contrast with Mrs. Bevis that did it/ pursues she reflectively. ' I cannot think how she can have borne my company. She had taken lessons in Hindu- stanee, and read three lives of Buddha and two histories of India. She had everything about every conqueror of India, from Bacchus had not he something to say to India, or have I got the wrong end of the stick there, too? to Lord Clive, at her fingers'- ends.' ' She is a very intelligent woman/ Before it is quite uttered he knows that there is something at once trite and snubbing 210 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? in the shape of the sentence, and yet enough vexation lingers in his system to prevent his arresting its utterance. But the shaft glances harmless from Honor's armour. ' Yes isn't she ?' replies she warmly. ' I was always being struck afresh with it. She knew all about every single place we visited. And it did not give me the impression that she had crammed, either ; it all came so naturally/ He does not know what possesses him, but the preaching instinct still seems to drive him. ' And it gave you an impulse to go and do likewise ?' He speaks with a smile, but he himself knows it to be of a governessy quality. She looks meditatively in front of her, straight between her horse's ears. ' 1 do not think it did, in the least.' There is a pause, his delight in her he seems to himself to have forgotten of how acute a quality it was again slightly rubbed. ' Are you aware that you are contradicting yourself?' he asks half playfully, and yet with a sublying seriousness. ' Five minutes SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 211 ago you told me that you had been oppressed by the sense of your own ignorance.' She shows no sign of discomfiture at this confrontation with her own utterance. 4 One may be oppressed by a thing with- out feeling the slightest impulse to change it, because one knows it would be perfectly hopeless. I was never any hand at book- learning when I was a child, and I do not think I am likely to begin now.' Against so resolved a profession of ignor- ance he feels that his weapons would be vain, and he receives it in silence. Composed as she looks, his muteness may fidget her, for she presently resumes : ' I think that there must be other people like me ; but if not, I cannot help it 1 am made like that.' ' Yes ?' * I like, I always have liked, and I always shall like, the things that one can admire and love without any education at all that one has not to pump up one's appreciation for out of histories and catalogues and biographies. I like all the outside things. You must remember' with a slight beam of triumph at this clinching argument ' it 212 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? was God who made them, and He did not make the others.' 'No?' 1 Now, what education ' the victorious beam growing brighter ' does it require to enjoy that ?' She has pulled up her horse as she speaks, and is pointing with her hunting-crop down a glade in the wood whose mouth they have reached with the end of her sentence. It is a long narrow vista, at the present moment lilac-flushed on either side by rhododendrons in full bloom. On their various -shaded flower-masses the flecking sunshine is play- ing through the young oak-trees above them. ' And yet it is only an educated eye that would much care for it.' But he says it slackly, his tutoring impulse swallowed up and dissolved in pleasure. She is apparently no stickler for having the last word, as she makes no rejoinder, and it is not till their horses are once again in motion that she next speaks not with any great fluency even then. ' I suppose that your mother Mrs. Clarence is extremely cultivated. That is the right phrase, isn't it ?' SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 213 ' Cultivated /' he repeats thoughtfully. 4 Well, no, I should not call her that. She is no great reader except of books of devotion/ 4 1 suppose that she is a sort of saint ' a little under her breath. He does not answer, except by a smile of such reverent tenderness as gives the heart of the girl beside him a slight tinge of vague pain. But that heart is too generous to entertain so unworthy a guest for a second longer than she is conscious of its presence. If she were to die for it, she would never be able to summon such a look as that which it has just worn to her companion's face. But that is her fault, not his. 1 My mother has wonderfully true and fine instincts about art and literature. She does not, as you announced that you did the first time I had the pleasure of meeting you, think reading "such waste of time."' He is smiling, but the quality of his smile has entirely changed. ' I am afraid that I still think so,' rejoins she, with a gentle, hopeless steadfastness that makes him laugh 'at least, I think it so as far as I personally am concerned. Do 2T 4 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? you remember what pains you took to en- lighten my darkness last year in Eastshire ?' 1 And you are going to have the heart to tell me that all my labour was wasted ?' * I am afraid so ' very gravely and con- tritely, but quite firmly. * Not that I did not make an effort ; for after you left I tried conscientiously to read some of the books you had recommended to me, and I did get through two or three of them.' 1 Get through f ( Well, I assure you that to me it was get through, which, I suppose, is the measure of my hopelessness.' Again he laughs, but a little ruefully. ' I got on best with one of Browning's. ' Browning ?' hopefully and surprisedly. ' It was " How they brought the Good News from ' She pauses. 1 Now, where was it that they brought it from ? I did not mind that one much, only I never found out what the good news was ; and Mrs. Bevis was rather vexed with me for saying that what struck me most in the poem was the disgraceful way in which they treated their horses. It was almost as SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 215 brutal as the military ride from Berlin to Vienna/ 'Not quite' smiling. '"Dirk and Joris and I " had at least more excuse. And that was your greatest achievement ?' 1 Yes ; I stuck fast in all the others. But then the weather was extremely fine, and we had to break in the filly. Do you remember the filly ? Well, she is going to make a first- rate tandem-leader.' Her voice is not more raised than when recounting her literary disasters, but the tone of warm enthusiasm that runs through it contrasts racily with the flat lugubriousness of her preceding confessions, and he laughs. But even while laughing the thought flashes thankfully across him that his mother is not within earshot. It must be the result of the freemasonry we often find existing between our brains that Honor's next observation shows that Mrs. Clarence has got into her thoughts at the same instant as she had stepped into her son's. ' Mrs. Clarence does not ride ?' ' I have no reason for supposing that she ever was in the saddle in her life.' 216 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? 1 She does not know or care anything at all about horses, I dare say ?' ' You would think her culpably ignorant/ 'And in everything else she would think me culpably ignorant !' This is so perfectly true that his only resource is to answer, in jocose assent : 'Culpably.' But, seeing or fancying that her face falls, he adds seriously, and, as he feels, a little pedantically : 1 My mother never judges anyone harshly.' 1 Not even us, when we broke in upon her last night ?' He notices that she never looks at him when she puts questions to him about his mother. ' Why do you ask that ?' with a precipita- tion which he feels is in itself an answer to her question. ' She was taken by surprise. She is a very shy woman, and lives very much out of the world. You must not attach importance to any indications of of dism of surprise that she showed.' They have left the wood, and entered a lane scarcely less vocal than the woodland they have quitted. A thrush close to them SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 217 is singing on a bough, voluble one moment, silent the next, listening apparently to a lark, faint with distance a lark playing its little instrument with muted strings. He would fain hope that it is her listening to the music that keeps her silent, not unfaith in his crippled apology. But her next remark knocks this walking-stick out of his hand. ' I am going to ask you a perfectly un- justifiable question, and you are, of course, quite at liberty to disregard it. 5 Again her gaze is directed between her horse's ears to a village spire at the lane-end. ' Did I last night did I do or say anything likely to provoke Mrs. Clarence's disapproval ?' Her question fills him with astonished dismay, and he sees the tell-tale nature of his tardiness to respond in the slow, deep stain stealing over the one cheek he can see. ' I I do not think I quite understand. Why, you hardly spoke !' * It is egotistical of me to suppose that she noticed me at all ; but I had an instinct that she took a dislike to me/ There is another betraying pause. He knows that to her transparent and almost 218 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? brutal truthfulness the truthfulness of the savage and the dog evasion will be vain, and will only degrade him in her eyes. Yet how tear open, widen into a chasm, the little rift he already grievingly sees existing between the two sovereigns of his heart, by owning that his love's eyes, keen with watching Nature's obscure and silent pro- cesses keen for all their softness have divined aright ? He takes shelter a poor tumble-down, un-weathertight shelter in a generality : 1 Don't you think it is a mistake to con- clude on insufficient evidence that people dislike you ?' ' I am quite aware that it is a form of conceit to imagine that strangers occupy themselves at all about one ; and if you tell me that I am mistaken, I will believe you/ As she speaks, she removes her eyes from the distant steeple, and, contrary to what has been her habit throughout the ride, places them upon his. The action removes his last chance of vamping up a successful lie. He makes the best of a bad job. ' I will tell you the exact truth. My mother has got a wrong conception of you.' SCYLLA OR CHARYBDISP 219 'How?' The brief directness of this question throws him once again on his beam-ends. She waits a second, and then adds quietly : ' I do not quite see how she can have any conception of me at all except from what you may have told her of me if you have happened to mention me.' 'You are quite right. It is I that have given it to her ' in a tone of acute vexation. At the look of wonder, a little tinged with gentle reproach, that comes into the eyes which are still meeting his, he loses his hesitancy. * When I came back from Eastshire I was naturally very full of my visit. The life had been so new to me its unconventionality, its out-of-doorness, and yet its intellectual element.' * Yes, it is a nice life.' 'I told her of your "leading" in the harvest-field ; of your sailing the boat, and breaking in the filly ; of your shrimping ; of your varied activities, in fact.' 1 Yes ?' ' You know what things words are what clumsy contrivances for misleading. I need 220 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? not tell you that that was not the impression I intended to convey ; but I fear she gathered the idea that you must be rather- masculine !' Evidently she is not going to be hasty in commenting on his blundering. ' I am not masculine-looking,' she says at last, in that tone of firm and quiet self-respect in nought akin to vanity which he had learnt last year from Mrs. Be vis to be the outcome of her difficult and thorny life. He knows that her implication is that one look at her must have removed the impres- sion of her mannishness. He repeats the word after her, as if only so could he convey the strength of his repudiation of the epithet. Then, afraid that the emphasis of his tone may have scared her and, indeed, it has had the effect of making her at once wincingly turn away her head, he hurries on : ' The misconception is, of course, ludicrous. One glance would suffice to prove that.' ' Then why, having seen me, did Mrs. Clarence still think me masculine ?' ' She did not think you masculine ' lamely eating his words * but ' 1 But what ?' SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 221 He is silent, and it is she who, still quite quietly, but with a risen colour, resumes : ' Did I say anything likely to confirm that impression ? I do not quite remember, but I think I said very little. Other people were talking ; there was no need of me.' Still silence. * I cannot recall what was the subject of conversation ' drawing her brows together. ' Let me see. Oh yes ! Mrs. Dynevor was asking me about Poppy de Vere.' She has given him his lead, and loosened the string of his tongue. It is not very loose even now. 4 1 know you will not misunderstand me I am sure you will comprehend ' flounder- ing ' how little intention the fact is, that my mother (she herself always says that she is quite a hundred years behind the time) may have been a little a little surprised at your having any information to give on such a topic. 7 It seems to himself an odious sentence the moment it is out of his mouth. He dares not look to see how she takes it. It is a long minute before she answers, in a tone that he has not yet heard : 222 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 1 1 should have been rather stupid if I had not had information to give about her when I had stayed a week in the house with her.' 1 A week ?' 4 Yes. She and Lord Camelot came for a race-week/ * And you went to the races with them ?' ' No. My father did not insist on my going, so I stayed at home. But if I had gone, I should not have been at all afraid of Poppy de Vere doing me any harm.' There is a ring of indescribable pride and self-reliance in her voice, through which he yet feels that a strain of bitter mortification pierces. He casts a remorseful glance at her. She is sitting dart upright, and her head is held high, but she looks a very small, slight thing to carry such a bold front against a destiny so unjustly ugly. 4 1 am sure that no one would admire your courage more than my mother/ he says, trying futilely to repair the mischief he has done, and succeeding, as he is stingingly conscious, only in being flat and lying. ' But her ignorance of the world amounts to a positive misfortune. Her mind is the SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 223 most extraordinarily innocent one I have ever come into contact with F He breaks off, with a suspicion that he is conveying the impression that his hearer's mind is not an innocent one, but, as she does not help him, goes on presently : ' She has lived so much out of the world, has kept such an astounding ignorance of evil, that when the existence of it is forced upon her it makes her really ill f ' She is a very fortunate lady/ replies the girl dryly, yet sadly too. * No wonder that she did not like me F And Clarence feels that his effort to pave the way for a reciprocal admiration between his two beloved women, by ensuring himself against the danger of his love's a second time airing her knowledge of the demi-monde to his parent, has resulted only in deepening by several fathoms the rift he had sought to close. CHAPTER XI. THE Bramshills are apparently in no hurry to return to the expensive London house which they have taken for the season. Perhaps their experience of it between Easter and Whitsun has shown them the not altogether new fact that you may be a very significant person on the banks of the Hooghly, and a very insignificant one on the banks of the Thames. Perhaps Euphemia's family have made the discovery that there are too many seven feet of young female stature, too many miraculous roseleaf skins, in Hyde Park for any one such to take the town by storm. Perhaps the most charitable supposition Euphemia herself prefers the cool nightingales and lilacs, the golf and croquet, of The Beeches to the SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 225 hotter and more heart-burning joys of London. And Honor stays on with her. There is nothing surprising in the fact of a sisterless girl desiring to prolong a com- panionship which an accidental meeting in a London street had renewed, and which both have found congenial. Yet the day on which Lady Bramshill has announced, in the tone of one giving a piece of good news, ' Honor is going to stay on with us no, not for another week ; do not interrupt, child !' with a shaken forefinger as she attempts to slide in a limitation * but indefinitely/ is one that is marked in Mrs. Clarence's history by a longer kneeling in her little improvised oratory, by blacker-rimmed eyes and a fainter voice than on any previous occasion. The smallness of his mother's voice, on which he had been wont to rally her, has got of late upon Harry's nerves. He does not give himself the opportunity of being ex- posed to its irritation for long together, both because the courts have resumed their sittings, and because what leisure his attend- ance upon them leaves him is spent under another roof than hers. It is spent chiefly under no roof at all ; for whoever would 15 226 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? court Honor Lisle must do it under the cope of heaven. And that he is courting Honor Lisle is a fact that he no longer tries to conceal from himself. Of the two mastering influences of his life, the elder and weaker has gone to the wall. But that it has done so is, as he tells himself, its own fault. It is his mother's injustice to the woman he loves that has given the necessary impetus to his decision. As the days go by he sees how little nearer grows the rapprochement he had hoped for between them the rapprochement that he had imagined needed only a better know- ledge to bloom into fullest appreciation, and for which one at least had been so ready, till his own clumsy hand warned her off. They have met but seldom, and always accidentally, as Mrs. Clarence has not once visited The Beeches since Miss Lisle's arrival an omission which in his heart he resents, though it is, in fact, but the con- tinuation of a habit of abstinence ; nor has Honor once again accompanied Lady B rams- hill in one of her not infrequent raids upon the little house in St. Gratian. Once or twice they have met in the street. SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 227 The subject for ever not only uppermost in, but solely occupying, the hearts and minds of mother and son is now never mentioned between them. Since they do not talk of that, there seems to be nothing else in the whole range of creation to talk about. Their conversation, once so free and full, has dwindled to a thread, and they both or he thinks so avoid possibilities of a tete-a-tete. Once or twice the new draggingness of her step, the languor of her eyes, and her flagging appetite, drive a needle of pain into him ; but he steels himself against her with the reflection of how little real love for him- self her mute and sullen resistance to his attainment of what she knows to be the one thing he has ever passionately wished argues. Her perpetual church-going frets him. He does not know with what an agony of ache she sees the slackening of his little daily kindnesses, nor that it is in deadly fight with the tortures of jealous hatred that are wring- ing her being that she kneels for such endless I hours in the church of whose draughtiness he so carpingly reminds her. 228 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? One day she emerges from the porch partially victorious. 'Why does your Miss Lisle never come here?' she asks, when next she meets her son says it with an abruptness not like her, and arguing a fear of not being able to put the question if she risk keeping it long by her. The light and warmth which seem to her to have been so long absent from his eyes, when turned upon her, spring back into them. * Would you like her to come ?' ' I do not want to force her inclinations ' with a little pallid smile, that yet tries hard to be cordial ' but, if she is willing ' ' There can be no doubt of that f puts in Abigail, who has just, to Harry's annoyance, entered the room, and speaking with officious goodwill. 4 Has she ever I mean, have you any reason for supposing has she ever expressed a wish ?' 1 No-o, not exactly ; but, being such a friend of Harry's, of course she must want you to like her !' The mother catches her breath, and the SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 229 son, inwardly cursing the clumsiness of his ally, hastens to take up his own parable ; but his touch is scarcely lighter or more fortunate than his cousin's. 1 What day would you like to see her ? When shall I bring her ?' If it had been his object to choose the most unfortunate verb that he could light on, he could not have been more successful. Bring ! What an implication of command over Miss Lisle's actions and intentions it carries in its very sound ! But Mrs. Clarence's heroism still lasts. * You know that I am not very apt to be out. I should wish her to suit her own convenience.' The words are stiff, and the tone is faint and dry ; but he is too much overjoyed at the unlooked-for overture to pry too nicely into details. 4 Her convenience shall be yours !' he cries triumphantly ; and again her ear is grated, this time by the shall. He does not, or will not, perceive her silence, but once again takes up his old position at her feet, with his head laid on her knees. 2 3 o SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? ' How can I thank you enough, my mother !' he sighs, almost under his breath. The attitude is the old one, adopted in earliest childhood, and never since aban- doned ; but the integral difference in the spirit, coupled with the unveiled confession in his words, are too much for her. She spoils all spoils it even while her hand is mechanically passing, with the familiar gesture of years, over his hair. 'You had better not thank me till the interview is over,' she says, with a small quivering laugh. ' You must be sure to be present, and to tell me what to talk about. I am afraid that your friend and I are not likely to have many topics in common. Do you know that, till she told us about her, I had never even heard of Poppy de Vere !' This speech (Abigail had left the room immediately after her own unlucky utterance, either because she had only come in to fetch something, or warned away by the glare in her usually friendly cousin's eyes) this speech sends him off (it is one of his free afternoons) an hour earlier than he had in- tended to The Beeches. That is, perhaps, the reason why he finds SCYLLA OR CHARYBDISP 231 Euphemia sole occupant of the little habitual camp round the hammock in which she is lying. ' She will be back directly,' says the young lady, answering his look of balked expecta- tion in a manner which shows how little deception as to the object of his search there is in her mind. ' She is only strolling about somewhere. I think she does not want me to see how upset she is.' ' Upset! By what?' 4 By having to leave us to-morrow/ ' To-morrow /' ' Yes, to-morrow. That unqualifiable father of hers has wired for her to come home at once, to entertain a party of blacklegs and Poppy de Veres for some steeplechases.' He is quite silent. She is going to- morrow ; and, despite the implication in the verb bring, which had carried ice to his mother's heart, he has as yet no hold upon her no assurance that this sudden slipping out of his life may not be a final one. He is roused by a laugh from Euphemia. ' Mother is signalling madly to us to come in to tea. I wonder what mischief she thinks we are hatching.' 232 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? She says it with an air of deep amuse- ment. The misconception into which Lady Bramshill had originally fallen, and which has been carefully fostered by her daughter for the sake of the amusement that her parent's distressed antics have afforded her, has also been nursed by Clarence. He knows instinctively that, had his hostess realized the lie of the land, she would not have been above rallying him upon it a possibility at which his spirit shivers. Miss Bramshill pauses a minute or two before obeying her mother's summons- knowing that she is watching her from the window to bend her tall head languishingly towards the young man ; but, though gener- ally a willing enough confederate, he is now too preoccupied to take any part in her game, and they cross the sward in silence. 4 You have heard our bad news ?' says Lady Bramshill, greeting the young man with something less than her usual expan- siveness. ' We are going to lose our dear little Honor!' In a cheerfuller key: * We must have her here again next year.' Next year / What an infinite distance is conveyed by the promissory words ! SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 233 ' I never can remember whether you like milk or cream in your tea,' pursues his hostess ; adding placidly : * Adolphus will be inconsolable.' Since her mother's eyes are bent upon the teacups, Euphemia thinks that she may indulge herself in a smile of meaning amuse- ment, thrown at Clarence across the table ; but Lady Bramshill unluckily looks up at the moment. The discovery of the eyebeams being flung right under her very nose agitates her so much that she drops the sugar-tongs. Clarence stoops to pick them up ; but, in the act of restoring them, pauses, arrested by the sight of a great fir-bough entering at one of the French windows. It is a moment before he realizes that the little figure carrying, and all but hidden by it, is that of the lady of his thoughts. ' I hope you will not mind,' comes her small voice through its sombre screen, * but I found a golden-crested wren's nest, and I thought Adolphus might like to see it.' At the end of her sentence there comes a slight change and catch in her voice, and her lover knows that she has seen him. They gather round and admire the houselet, 234 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? cunningly hung to elude the passer's sight beneath the branch of a Douglas fir. It hangs just at the end of it, with pine needles and little twigs woven in to hold it up and make it secure. What a sweet little elfin home under the shower of enduring green, dark above and silvery below ! How vivid and bright the fresh shoots of the pine ! Clarence helps its captor to hang it in trophy upon the rod of one of the electric lights in the hall. A golden-crested wren and the electric light! But the wrenlings had wisely flown before such a desecration of their woodland birthplace had happened. Their joint occupation has a little isolated the couple from the other two, but not so much so but that Lady Bramshill's friendly plaint comes to their ears. 1 It is a sweetly pretty thing, and it was exceedingly clever of you to find it ; but I rather grudge your hunt for it, as it has robbed us of a bit of your company on your last day.' * Your last day f repeats Clarence in a voice warranted not to carry into the next room. ' Why is it your last day ?' SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 235 ' Have not you heard ? My father has sent for me.' ' To another rendezvous with Poppy de Vere?' The young man is as well aware as you or I that it is not good manners to fleer at a person to his nearest of kin, but his boiling indignation forces out the gibe. Her matter- of-fact answer shows neither resentment nor approbation : ' I do not know ; he did not say/ 1 Why do you go ?' 1 Because my father tells me.' She repeats the answer with no sign of impatience ; then, since wrath and sorrow keep him dumb, adds : ' Would you think it right to run exactly counter to your mother's wishes ?' There is, or he fancies it, an underlying meaning in her question, and it is to that underlying meaning that his answer is made, ' Yes,' he says slowly and weightily ; 4 there are conditions circumstances under which I should undoubtedly think it my duty to run counter to her wishes ; and whether it were my duty or not, I should do it/ 236 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? The cool slowness of his beginning is ex- changed in the latter half of his sentence for a pregnant hurry, and it seems to himself, when he has finished it, as if he had made a declaration. It appears to be the only chance of making one that will be given him. Contrary to her usual custom, Lady Brams- hill shows no inclination to leave the young people. She has generally seen them stroll away in a trio or quartet without showing any wish to join them. To-day their ad- journment to the encampment round the hammock is made in her company, and when they try to stroll away she calls them back. It has always been their custom to wander off in a band, and not separate till out of sight. But to-day all Clarence's efforts to abstract Honor from the rest of the party are vain. For some reason, she will not connive at his attempts in that direction. They sit round, all either out of spirits or out of temper. Presently Euphemia picks up a book lying on the grass. ' Who has left his literature behind him ? Poetry ? It must be Adolphus's tutor ; he is always imbibing poetry. I shall read aloud, to improve all our minds,' adding in a SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 237 hastily-snatched aside to Clarence apropos of her parent, ' She will never stand it ; it will drive her away.' She begins in a drawling voice : * It was the frog in the well Humbledum, thumbledum ; And the merry mouse in the mill Tweedle, tweedle, twino. * The frog would a -wooing ride, Sword and buckler by his side. * When he upon his high horse set, His boots they shone as black as jet. 'When he came to the merry mill-pin " Lady mouse, live you within ?" 1 Then came out the dusty mouse : " I am lady of this house. 1 " Hast thou any mind of me ?" " I have e'en great mind of thee." ' There is a sound of shuffling on one of the garden-chairs. 4 What fearful rubbish !' says Lady Brams- hill, a streak of pettishness in her good- humoured voice. ' Come and tell me when you have finished ;' and she walks away homewards. 4 We may perhaps go on till dinner-time, 1 replies Euphemia demurely ; but the instant 238 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? that her mother is out of sight she tosses away the book, and, springing out of the hammock, slips away into the shrubberies, followed by the other two. She keeps ahead of them, and at the path's first elbow dis- appears. The manoeuvre is so patent that for a moment it makes both those who benefit by it feel awkward. But in Clarence's case it is only for a moment. This is one of his life's big moments, and he must wring his destiny out of it. But he has never in his life before asked a woman to marry him, and he has not the remotest idea how to begin. 'Was it anywhere near here that you found your wren's nest ?' * No, oh no ; that was in a fir-tree, and these are all hardwood ones. What a pity ' looking up ' that there is such a plague of caterpillars on the oaks this year !' ' Yes, isn't it ?' * But it has one advantage. 1 1 brings a great many more nightingales.' 4 Do they eat caterpillars ?' ' Yes.' It was hardly worth while to have fled for privacy into the heart of a wood in order to SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? 239 exchange remarks of the above kind. This thought puts a kind of rage into his next sentence. ' Are we to spend our last walk in talking of caterpillars ?' There is no rage in her answer : ' I think one has dropped on my neck at the back. Would you mind taking it off ?' She stoops her large-hatted little head as she speaks, and presents to him her nape, on which, sure enough, a many-legged wanderer is expatiating. It is with very mixed feel- ings that the lover picks off the little green wriggler. He feels the confidingness of the request in one whom her unhappy experience of men has made so stand-off, and not all his reverence can quell a strong thrill at this first, perhaps last, contact with the warm satin of her skin ; but yet, that at such a moment she should be able to talk of a caterpillar ! ' I thought you would have cared a little !' Her answer is almost inaudible : * I never care a little about anything/ He is still pondering the enigma of this sentence, when a turn in the path brings 2 4 o SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? them into close view of its end, and a moment later they are looking down at the sunk fence that bars their further progress. It is overhung by a giant elm, iron-clamped, to hinder the two halves, like separate trees, of its prodigious bulk from leaning further and further apart, surprising, by its majesty, those who come suddenly into sight of it. Under its boughs they must needs halt. This pause gives him at least the advantage of a little command of her face, standing opposite, instead of beside her. ' You never care a little about anything ?' he repeats. ' Does that mean that you ever care a great deal ?' * I have never had anything much to care about/ she answers ; and, though she does not intend it, the words ring forlornly. ' But if you had anything to care about, would you care about it much ?' The question sounds in his own ears ridiculously like, ' If you had a brother, would he like cheese ?' but her sense of the absurd is not very quick, and she only answers, almost under her breath : 4 Perhaps/ Interpreting her one word in the sense he SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 257 4 1 may be detained,' he says, stopping a second on his way out ; * do not wait dinner for me.' Her movements are usually so slow in their noiseless grace that he is not prepared to find her at the door before him ; but there she stands, with her back to it, one white hand pressed against the panel behind her. ' You shall not go !' she says in a key of quivering command. ' I will not let you ! You shall not go to pour out your heart to those those upstart strangers, while you keep it shut to me !' There is such an anguish of jealousy and hurt-to-death love in her voice that once again, as so often of late, alternating with re- sentment, there rushes a billow of reverent pity over his heart. 1 You are mistaken,' he answers. ' I have told them nothing. You are my only con- fidant, as you have been all my life ; and, besides, she has forbidden me to tell anyone until she has obtained her father's consent.' 4 Is there any likelihood of his refusing it?' If he recognises an involuntary hope in the breathlessness of her voice, he hastens to quench it. 17 258 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? ' Not the slightest. He will be thankful to be rid of her.' He dislikes the phrase as soon as uttered, since there is an apparent belittling of his love's value in it. 1 I should be only too glad if you would tell me a little about her. You you used to like to have me for a listener. 1 The humble appeal of her tone, showing the fulness of her surrender, touches him to the quick. 1 The wide world could not give me any- thing I should like better.' He passes his arm around her as 'he speaks, and draws her head to his shoulder. It lies there peaceably for only a moment. She lifts it restlessly. ' Tell me now, here, now ! Do not go away !' ' I am afraid that I must/ he answers soothingly, and still caressing her. * Lady Bramshill has something that she wishes to say to me I cannot conceive what and has appointed this hour ; but I will not stay a moment longer than I can help, and then then ' SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 259 It is with an inexpressibly light heart that the young man canters across the pastures of the now so familiar short-cut to The Beeches. Fortune is showering her goods on him with both hands. If she will only add to her liberality that of making Lady Bramshill short-winded ! A transient wonder crosses his mind it has done so several times before as to what communication she can have to make to him that needs the pomp of an appointment. But his heart is too full of joy to have much leisure to pause over it. He leaves his horse at the stables, and, reaching the house, is shown at once upstairs into Lady Bramshill's private room, into which he has never before penetrated. She is apparently waiting for him, sitting on a sofa, and with no visible occupation. There is a constraint, which surprises him, in her manner of greeting and complimenting him on his punctuality. 'Am I so punctual ? I was afraid that I was a little late.' 1 No, no! Quite punctual.' 4 I think I understood that you wished to speak ' 260 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? She cuts off the tail of his sentence. ' How is your mother?' ' She is pretty well, thanks. She feels the heat a good deal at least, she looks pale/ 1 Looks pale, does she ? Has she been worried about anything lately ? Has she had anything to worry her ?' He hesitates. 1 She has had nothing that she need worry about.' While he is speaking his companion has got up to draw aside and look behind a hanging of Indian grass-cloth which screens a recess of the room. * These portieres are such treacherous things one has no security that someone is not listening to us.' The evident agitation of her manner is beginning to make him feel uncomfortable, though he would be puzzled to say why. ' Would it matter ' smiling * if they were seven deep at the keyhole, like the servants at Sir Pitt Crawley's proposal ?' She comes back. ' There is no one there, but perhaps it would be safer if we did not speak very loud.' SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 261 His vague disquietude grows more acute. ' What can you have to say to me that requires such secrecy ?' he asks in a voice of suppressed ridicule, and only half-sup- pressed irritation. Again she rises and walks to a window, which she shuts. ' Voices carry so far through an open window.' ' I must beg you ' civilly, yet impera- tively, too * not to delay any longer telling me what it is that needs so much mystery as a preamble.' ' I will, I will !' her flurry palpably in- creasing. ' Of course, I have no right to keep you in suspense ; but it is such a very difficult thing to say to put into words liking you as I do, and your mother before you. You believe how much we have all liked you ?' 4 Have liked !' repeats he, struck by her employment of the past tense. ' Are you going to tell me that I have done anything to forfeit your liking ?' ' No, oh no ! At least, not intentionally, I am sure/ ' Unintentionally, then ?' 2 62 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? 1 I know that your mother's son must be, and is, the soul of honour.' ' Honour f repeats he, growing deeply red. ' Do you mean to imply that there is any question of my having behaved dis- honourably ?' ' No, no ! You must not run away with an idea. I am sure that nothing was further from your thoughts ; but you have just been drifting.' A light a disagreeable one breaks upon him. This officious fat woman is going to take him to task about his conduct towards his darling. Well, perhaps, having no more knowledge than she has upon the subject, she is only doing her duty. She may, with some show of reason, suppose that he is trifling with her affections. He smiles in- voluntarily at the grotesqueness of this idea. It is an innocent smile enough, but its effect is unfortunate. ' It may be a laughing matter to you/ says his companion, and he sees that indignation has superseded the distress hitherto reigning on her good-natured face ' it may be a laughing matter to you, but I assure you it is none to me.' SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? 263 He hesitates, undecided how to clear him- self from the imputation brought against him without disobeying his dear lady's com- mands, and with an outgoing of real friendli- ness towards the fussy, hot woman, who at the expense of much unpleasantness to her- self is so bravely mothering his little mother- less treasure. His hesitation gives her time and, ap- parently, inclination, for she goes on more fluently than hitherto to take up her parable again : * You may ask why I have not spoken to her, but if you knew the ins and outs of things, you would allow that it is not so easy. I have tried to approach the subject once or twice, and she has treated me with derision absolute derision !' 4 Derision f repeats he, in indignant de- fence of the absent. ' How unlike her ! She is always so scrupulously courteous !' His partisanship seems to heighten her ire. ' Perhaps you may find her so ; though in the beginning I have seen her not very civil to you.' 1 1 certainly never perceived it ' wounded. * I do not want to say anything against 264 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? her ; she is a very good girl in the main, but headstrong is not the word for her! If once she takes the bit between her teeth, it is all over. Well, we have no one to thank but ourselves. We have spoilt her des- perately. I suppose it is often the case with Indian children. We had to be separated from her for so long that when we did see her we felt we could not make enough of her/ She stops, and he sees tears in her eyes ; but any compassion he might feel for her is drowned in the flood of light as to her meaning that pours over him. It is, then, her own daughter Euphemia in whose de- fence against him she has been ruffling her feathers and sharpening her beak. Ludicrous as the misconception appears to him, he feels at once that it is a perfectly natural one, and a relief that his own sacred secret is still intact, mingled with a doubt as to how to keep it so while clearing himself from the accusation brought against him, gives her time to go on : ' When we have discussed the subject of her marriage, she has always given us plainly to understand that she means to consult her SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 265 own wishes, not ours, in the matter ; and, within certain limits, we perfectly acquiesce.' ' And you do not consider that I come within these limits?' again reddening, and more intensely than before. She looks at him with what he sees to be a perfectly unput-on astonishment. ' I do not know why you should force me to say these painful things to you ; but I must really refer you to your own common- sense for an answer.' A flash of angry amusement darts across him at the absurdity of the mistake which has made him so unpleasantly acquainted with Lady Bramshill's opinion of her social superiority to him for what other meaning can attach to her sentence ? But the good manners so early instilled into him make him try to keep both out of his voice. ' You are labouring under an entire mis- conception. The idea of winning Miss Bramshill's affections has never once crossed my mind, nor, I am very sure, hers either ; so I think you will see the needlessness of any further pointing out to me what presumption it would have been in me if I had entertained such a thought/ 266 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? She is looking at him again with the same unaffected astonishment, only acuter than before. ' Presumption ! What does the man mean? You talk as if you did not know what I was alluding to.' ' 1 think you made your meaning suffi- ciently clear that you did not think me worthy of the honour of being connected with you/ The red, of which he has not, even so far, had a monopoly, spreads from her good- natured and now deeply-distressed face to her neck. ' Great heavens ! Talk of mistakes ! You are making one with a vengeance now ! Presumption / Why, do you think that there is any young man whom I should have been so ready to take to my heart as you ? so steady as you are ; your relations to your mother so beautiful ; getting on so well in your profession ; the son of my dear old friend if ' 'If what ?' The hopeless mystification in which he has been floundering is growing tinged by a vague alarm. SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? 267 1 If it were not for the one dreadful, dread- ful drawback.' ' What drawback are you alluding to ?' She goes close up to him, and lowers her voice : ' You do not know ? No, I see you do not. Is it possible ? and have / to tell you ?' ' If you please/ He knows that a blow is coming, and has the manly impulse to string himself up to bear it pluckily. She is quite near him ; and he can see pulses going in her throat, and her lips moving in the effort to comply ; but apparently she cannot manage it. * It is impossible !' is all that she can bring out at last. ' You must get someone else to tell you your mother.' ' You must tell me/ She had begun to sidle doorwards ; but his tone, for he uses no other method of com- pulsion, arrests her. She sinks her voice, and braces herself. ' I took it for granted very stupidly, I own, for people whom they may concern are always the last to hear things that you must be aware of the the ' The what ?' 268 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? ' The terrible curse disease that is hereditary in your family.' 4 What curse ? What disease ?' ' The disease of insanity.' A beam of relieved incredulity darts across him. Here must be a second error absurder than the first. Were there this deadly malady inherent in his blood, would his mother have allowed him to blunder on in the dark all his life, ignorant of and unprovided with the armour of foreknowledge against so hideous a foe ? Impossible ! ' Are you sure that you are not mistaken that you are not confounding us with some other family ?' Probably the unbelief of his tone, try as he may to veil it with politeness, gives her the impetus necessary to complete her task. * I wish to God that I were ! But, unfor- tunately, since I lived from infancy in the immediate neighbourhood of your family, that is not possible. Your father died in a lunatic asylum, as did his two brothers and his sister, as did his father and grandfather before him.' She pauses to take breath, but no fresh ex- pression of incredulity reaches her ears. ' It is, unhappily, one of the best-authenticated SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 269 cases of hereditary homicidal mania on record, and has been quoted as such repeatedly in medical journals.' She has done her work effectually this time. He stands before her dumb and blanched so dumb, so blanched, that her tongue falters over her next words : ' I I thought I took it for granted that you knew.' She may continue or leave her halting apology. He neither knows nor cares whether she adds another stone or two to the cairn she has built upon his heart. But the instinct of civility still survives. ' At least, I know now/ he says, with a smile, which she is not fond of remembering afterwards. * I am obliged to you for having enlightened me, and I quite agree with you that I should not be a desirable son-in-law.' [2 7 o] CHAPTER XIII. WHEN he goes to his grave Clarence will be scarcely less conscious of the transit than he is of how he gets home. The ride across the fields is a blank, except that at one spot, where he skirts the edge of a hayfield, the smell of the new-cut grass recalls to him a thought of peculiar sweetness that had crossed his mind as he passed it on his way to The Beeches. When the air has carried away the balmy waft, he relapses into blank, with no feeling beyond that of an impulse to get home with the least possible delay ; though if anyone had asked him the reason of his hurry, he is probably stunned enough to have been puzzled to give one. Happily, he meets, and is consequently questioned by, no one. His mother is not at church. The thought SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 271 that she might be so had struck him with a vague rage of fear. Had she been so, he must have dragged her even from the altar- foot to answer him. Neither is she in her oratory. She is in the drawing-room, quietly working, with a heap of coloured silks making a rainbow beside her, while she listens with a slight, absent smile to Abigail's communications from the window. 1 Someone has come to stay with the Mitchells. She has given the parlourmaid the fare to pay the cabman. He will not take it; it is not enough. She evidently thinks that it is a shilling fare. Ah ! she has given him another sixpence. He is driving off.' Mrs. Clarence's face turns towards her son as he enters, like a sunflower to the sun- ludicrous comparison for anything so palely small ! For the first time for weeks, it wears no apprehension of seeing coldness or averse- ness on his. But the moment that her eye encounters his it loses its light. He stands beside her, with his back to the girl at the window, for the first moment so speechless that she asks him in a frightened whisper : 1 What is it ?' 272 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? Then he finds enough voice to answer : ' I must speak to you alone now not here.' She rises without a word, and follows him out of the room, the unconscious Abigail's voice sounding in their singing ears. He leads, and she follows, down to the smoking- room, whose French window stands open to the little back-garden. Through it a mat of white pinks is sending the sun-warmed spice of its fragrance. Opposite the window they both come to a standstill, and look, pale and hard, at each other she with a dull, terrified sense of some enormous overhanging woe, he as if without words he would force an answer to his unspoken, almost unspeakable, question. He fails. She remains mute in her trembling before him, and he must put his dread into speech. * Is it true?' 1 Is what true?' ' Do you mean to say that you do not know to what I am alluding ?' 1 No, I do not.' Her looks are as of one on the edge of a swoon, and her denial is hardly audible. Yet he draws a tiny drop of comfort from it. She SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 273 is a rigorously truthful woman, and it is a denial. ' That my father died in a mad- house ?' His key is no higher than hers. She gives a sort of stagger ; but so she would were she hearing for the first time a terrific calumny. ' Who told you so ?' The form of the rejoinder puts his sick hopes to death. ' Lady Bramshill.' She has leant for a moment as if to prop herself against the window-shutter, but at his answer she stands upright again, and a light of blazing indignation such as he has never before seen in them flares out from her great tragic eyes. ' Lady Bramshill ! His own son ! How dared she f ' She was perfectly right from her point of view. She imagined that I wanted to marry her daughter. But what does all that matter ?' pushing his own explanation aside. ' Is it true?' Her little wrists are manacled almost brutally by his hands. He has forgotten 18 274 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? compassion, forgotten reverence, forgotten love. He remembers only that hideous fear. She is to him for the moment only the mouthpiece of destiny, the machine by which he is to be made or unmade. To her the idea has not the dreadful novelty that it has to him. Her mind is even capable of the flashed thought of how true an intuition had been her apparently incommensurate dread and dislike of the renewed acquaintance of her youth. Then, recognising that what she has darkly feared for him for five-and-twenty years has now irrecoverably befallen him, her lips form a lifeless but unmistakable ' Yes.' ' That he died in a mad-house ?' 'Yes.' ' That his father before him did the same ?' ' Yes. 1 4 That it is a case of hereditary lunacy ? 'Yes.' ' And that it is homicidal ? ' Yes.' Her five yeses are at first only five words knocking at the door of his brain, but after a moment or two they are let in. He gives SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 275 a sort of lurch, and her hands tumble out of his suddenly loosed grasp. She thinks he is about to fall, and, snatching at his arm, leads him since a momentary blindness seems to have come over him to a chair. Then she falls on her knees beside him, and with her handkerchief wipes the cold sweat that stands out on his brow. Our instincts survive our reason, as we all know, and a vague surface sense of unfitness in the humility of her attitude plays over the chaos of his mind. 1 Thank you, mother, thank you ! But, please, do not trouble ; I I am all right.' So they remain awhile, he sitting upright, staring straight in front of him ; she kneeling humbly, with all her riven heart in her great eyes, beside him. At length he speaks: 1 Did you know it when you married him?' 1 Oh no, no !' 4 Did your guardian know it ?' ' He must have done.' ' You were only seventeen ?' 'Yes.' Another silence. The blind look has gone out of his eyes, and his mind is shaking off its paralysis. He is evidently piecing together 276 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? fragments of the past, clearing up long-ago intelligibilities, joining them on to the present. ' That was why you never would go out into the world ?' 4 Ye es.' Another pause more piecing. * That was why you were always in such terror at the idea of my marriage ?' Her lips move ; but, no doubt to save him pain, or perhaps because her powers of endurance are giving way, the- assent which they frame is not even so decided a one as its hesitating predecessor. ' And I ' with an accent of bitterest self- reproach 'could attribute it to a paltry jealousy !' Again her lips stir, but produce nothing. For the moment his mind, happily for him, has lost sight of his own abysmal fall, and is running in the track of his misdoings. ' I used the argument of your own happy married life to reconcile you to mine !' To defend him against his self-accusations, she recovers voice : ' You did not know how could you ?' A new interval of silence. * How soon did you find it out ?' SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 277 * About six months after I married.' ' It ' his voice has sunk to a whisper * it came on in paroxysms ?' 'Yes.' ' With intervals of perfect sanity between ?' 4 Yes. 1 ' When it when it came on first, did he did he ill-use you ?' She hesitates. ' He was not accountable.' ' He was in confinement for the greater part of your married life ?' ' No, only on and off for the last half-year.' * You kept him at home up to then ?' 'Yes.' ' At the peril of your life ?' ' I was not much afraid.' Again, even at this moment, but now in tantalizing misery, the idea of the intrinsic likeness between his mother and his love darts across him. ' Was there any warning of the attacks coming on ?' ' I grew to know the signs.' 'And you carried your life daily and nightly for four and a half years at a mad- man's mercy ?' 278 SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS ? 1 Yes.' ' With no one to share your burden ?' ' Your nurse, Nasmyth, knew/ ' You did it because you loved him.' Hitherto she has answered like a machine, with lifeless precision ; but her son's last sentence is a statement, not a question, so it naturally goes unanswered. He lifts her off her knees, as if there were sacrilege in her adoption of such an attitude towards himself. ' Mother mother ! I always knew that you were one of God's saints ; but I did not know till now that you were one of His martyrs, too !' And then the two poor smitten creatures cling together awhile, and mix the bitter water of their tears. But, though the tidings are old to her, and new to him, hers are beyond measure the bitterest ! It is not till he has had the enormity of a whole perfectly sleepless night in which to measure it that he realizes the size of his calamity -- that he recognises it in all its bearings knows that it is commensurate with his whole future life. His mother does not appear at breakfast, SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS? 279 and he has to face Abigail's babble alone. He even eats eggs and bacon without choking, and echoes her puerile suppositions as to her neighbours' affairs, though across his mind at the same moment is darting the grotesquely horrible wonder whether it is safe for her to breakfast tete-a-ttte with him. It is not till noon that Mrs. Clarence opens the door of the smoking-room, and gives him the shock of seeing what his discovery of her secret has cost her. In her eyes he reads that her own consternation at the change in his appearance is not less. He takes her in his arms with the tenderest com- passion. ' You poor soul ! you have not slept ?' Her eyelids quiver.