presented to the LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO by FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY Mrs, Edwin W T Meise donor I Hppletons' ZTown ant) Country No. 206 FELLOW TRAVELLERS Fellow Travelers. By GRAHAM TRAVERS. i2mo. Paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.00. " Miss Ttavers interests us in her characters directly she shows them to us; the interest enhances all through, and the curtain drops before we are in the least danger of being bored by them. . . . She began well with her ' Mona Maclean, Medical Student.' Here she has done better still. Her literary style has improved, her psychologic insight has sharpened. London Daily Chronicle. Mona Maclean, Medical Student. By GRAHAM TRAVERS. i2ino. Paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.00. " The cleverest novel we have read for a long time, and yet it is thoroughly enjoyable as well. . . . The more charming in virtue of the fact that its simple entertaining quality does not ex- clude a certain fine seriousness of intent which gives it an intellectual and moral, as well as a merely narrative or dramatic, interest." London Spectator. New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue. FELLOW TRAVELLERS BY GRAHAM TRAVERS AUTHOR OF MONA MACLEAN, MEDICAL STUDENT NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1896 COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. Copyright, 1896, by O. P. Putnam's Sons. CONTENTS. PAGE AFTER MANY DAYS . . i THE EXAMINER'S CONSCIENCE 44 A GREAT GULF . . . . . . . . .67 THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY IO2 THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP : A STUDY IN SOBER TINTS . 138 AFTER MANY DAYS. I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds With coldness still returning. WORDSWORTH. I. "THIRD-CLASS, if you please," he said brusquely. " A working-man with a family can afford no kick- shaws." "No," said the young widow, looking up in the rugged face with a tearful smile ; " and that is why he can afford to come all these miles without a fee, to visit a sick child! " " Tut, tut ! " he answered shortly. " Will corbies pick oot corbies' een ? That wasn't much to do for poor Tom's boy and yours. Now, don't fret. The child's all right. Keep up his strength, and don't be afraid of fresh air. Good-bye." " Good-bye," she said, scarcely lowering her voice as much as he could have wished. " God bless you ! You are the shadow of a great rock in a weary land!" The train was moving slowly out of the station, and the doctor hastily clapped the pockets of his baggy old ulster in search of his daily paper. Its columns had already received much closer attention 2 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. than he could, as a rule, afford to the claims of poli- tics; but a newspaper, like most good things, serves many purposes. What a fuss that girl did make about nothing to be sure ! She always was a neurotic, fusionless, anaemic thing. He had told Tom so before the mar- riage, and he remembered still how indignantly his old chum had replied, "All right, old boy, many thanks; but I leave it to you to choose your wife by the number of her red blood corpuscles ! " Tom was a fool, of course. Next to a meek and quiet spirit, what did a woman want more than plenty of red blood corpuscles ? Latin and Greek and piano- playing were a poor business in comparison. Ah, well! with all her faults, and with all his ill-luck, poor Tom had at least had a devoted wife. What was it she had said as the train was moving off ? "The shadow of a great rock in a weary land." Stuff and nonsense! And yet, perhaps, it was only fair that someone here and there should look at a man through rose-coloured spectacles. That didn't happen too often now that one was growing grumpy and middle-aged, with no gift for making pretty speeches, and no belief in the universal divine mis- sion of women! The doctor folded his paper with a grunt, and looked almost defiantly at the other occupants of the carriage. There were only two. An old lady was nodding comfortably in the other corner on his own side ; and opposite her sat a young girl gazing intently out of the window. AFTER MANY DAYS. 3 "Another neurotic specimen! " thought the doc- tor almost indignantly, " white lips, and muscles all on the strain ! What is the race coming to ? And no doubt, if one only knew it, some young fool is daft about her, and declines to concern himself with the number of her red corpuscles ! " As if in response to his gaze, the girl turned her head, and an unconscious, shuddering sigh revealed yet more clearly the tension of her nerves. " Or is she in love with him ? " went on the mer- ciless critic. " If so, it looks as if he had been wise in time, and this is the result. Rough on her, poor little goose! Would Ethel have looked like that, I wonder, if Tom had taken my advice ? Poor Ethel ! When all is said, she is a plucky little soul, con- sidering that Nature never meant her to face the world alone, and least of all with a delicate child on her hands." The train drew up at a station, and the old lady, awaking with a start, proceeded hastily to collect her chattels. The young girl rose with automatic courtesy. " If you will get out first," she said, " I will hand you the things." But the step was a very high one, and the old lady hesitated. " Wait a bit," said the doctor gruffly, " I'll go first." He helped her out carefully, landed the parcels, and then returned to his corner. " Well, she can't say we're not polite," he re- marked with grim humour, as if half ashamed of the trouble he had taken. 4 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. The girl smiled in the same absent, preoccupied way. It seemed as if outward things could not pen- etrate beyond the extreme surface of her mind. The doctor began to be interested in his compan- ion from a professional point of view. Hers was a striking face, now that he got a good view of it, not so pretty as Ethel's, but intellectual, cultured; and the pose of the dainty head on its slender neck reminded him irresistibly of one of his own Scotch bluebells. But surely there was something more amiss even than the want of red corpuscles ! Either the girl was on the eve of an illness, or she was in a state of almost unbearable nerve strain. Instinctively the doctor laid his hand on the pocket that contained his clinical thermometer. For she was not an ordinary hysterical subject by any means. He noted with quiet appreciation how she controlled every muscle when the express whizzed shrieking past ; such perfect inhibition was not acquired in a day; and he waited expectantly till he saw the pale face turn a few shades paler when the noise was over. " Perfectly ridiculous that she should be knock- ing about the country by herself!" he thought. '"I'd like to know what her people are thinking of." The girl let down the window at this point, and leaned forward to get the full benefit of the sharp air. " Much better lie down, if you are afraid of faint- ing," continued the doctor, still to himself. " If I had any voice in the matter, I'd pack you off to do AFTER MANY DAYS. 5 light work on a dairy farm for the next six months. Little goose ! overwrought and underfed to such an extent that she is scarcely responsible for her actions." He began to wish that she was not so supremely unconscious of his existence. He would have liked to enter into conversation, and to give her the bene- fit of the wholesome advice that was drifting about in his mind. Overworked country doctors are not often guilty of such weakness, and our friend was far from being an exception to the rule; but the consciousness of his own generosity in making this journey at all, and the pathetic gratitude of the poor little widow, had kindled his mood into an unusually mellow glow. "The shadow of a great rock in a weary land." The words reminded him of the dreams of his youth, of the hopes and aspirations that had floated through his mind when the great man spoke such thrilling words on Graduation day. Heigho ! Life was a great disillusioner as no doubt the great man knew but speeches had to be made ! "The shadow of a great rock." Not many of his patients would be disposed to apply those words to him nowadays. They thought him rough and un- sympathetic, and rather keen about his hard-earned fees. But then, on the other hand, women had ceased to care about shadow in these times. They preferred the glaring, merciless, all-revealing sun- light. Not Ethel ! Ethel was never one of that sort, bless her ! Perhaps poor old Tom had not made such a bad choice after all. Heigho ! When 6 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. all was said, they were a poor lot, women, a poor lot, always excepting, of course, his own little sonsie-faced lassie, who had hated the country, and hated his work, and who lay now asleep in the dreary, unbeautiful kirkyard. " The shadow of a great rock." Involuntarily he glanced again at his companion, and to his amazement he saw that a complete change had come over her mood. No longer unconscious of his existence, she was gazing at him with such a hungry, searching look that his own glance fell before it. Her eyes were like those of a hunted animal. " Is this a haven," they seemed to say, " or only another snare?" His curiosity was thoroughly aroused now, and in another moment he turned to her with a prelimi- nary cough. But she saved him the trouble of breaking the ice. " You are a doctor, are you not ? " she said, con- trolling her voice with a painful effort, and coming nearer to where he sat. " I am." " I wanted to ask you," she went on, struggling to speak dispassionately, " what you would do with me if if anything should happen to me before I get to my journey's end ? " " What should happen to you ? " he asked ab- ruptly. She did not answer. " Do you feel ill?" " No. I don't think so not exactly ill. I feel " AFTER MANY DAYS. 7 she seemed to be gathering her forces for a des- perate effort " as if as if I were going mad." Well, this was a plunge into the depths ! Fortu- nately the doctor was an experienced hand, so he held his breath and waited quietly till he came to the surface again. " In the first place, let me set your mind at rest," he said gruffly ; " you are not going mad this time. In the second plaee, do you mind telling me why you did not eat a proper breakfast this morn- ing ? " He half expected that she would be angry, but she was obviously too much in earnest for that. A faint smile strove vainly to relax the tension of her face. " I can't eat," she said shortly. " That's what fools say. When a wise woman can't eat, she rings the bell and asks for a glass of milk. Did you do that ? " " No." He had succeeded at least in arresting her attention. " So I thought. And you have given up beef and mutton, haven't you ? such gross, brutal diet ! All very well for mere men! But a cup of tea fits one so much better for work, doesn't it ? That is one of the great economical discoveries that we owe to your sex ? " She was almost laughing now, though rather re- sentfully. " I suppose I have given you the right to assume that I am a silly girl ; but it is scarcely the case. I am a working woman." 8 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. He bowed. "I am not surprised. It seems to my old-fashioned eyes that the one class shades im- perceptibly into the other nowadays. My friends in town tell me that every ballroom coryphee is either absorbed in some East End mission, or is working up for what she is pleased to call the ' Higher Locals.' Let me own up at once ! If you begin to quote Greek, I am lost : and, as for Latin, I don't believe I could write a prescription without abbrevi- ations. Be merciful ! I am only a very dull, very humdrum, stupid old country doctor." " Oh dont mock me ! " she cried, a rich colour rising into her delicate cheek. " I don't know any Latin and Greek. I thought once I could paint and and other people thought so too; but it is all gone. I am a drone a drone ! " So this was all, was it ? She couldn't paint. Was the moon really out of reach, pretty dear ? What a shame ! Well, well ! He had patients in the work- house asylum who had gone off their heads for less assignable reason than that. Patience! Let her quiet down a bit and then hear her out. " I suppose," he said abruptly, " you would think me a boor, if I asked your leave to smoke?" " I wish you would ! " He produced a well-seasoned old meerschaum, looked at it caressingly, and then held it out to her. " Isn't that a beauty ?" he said. She smiled. " It's a fine bit of colour." "So I think." He nodded approvingly, filled the bowl, lighted it deliberately, and drew a few appre- ciative whiffs. AFTER MANY DAYS. 9 "Yes," he said, arranging himself more comfort- ably in his corner, " it's an old friend, and one of the best I've got. It has helped me over many a fret, and at times not too often it has shared a bit of honest pleasure. It was given me by a college chum he's dead now, poor fellow ! the husband of that lady who was with me." "I know," she cried involuntarily, "the lady who said you were " "Ay," he interrupted grimly. "Her child has been ill, poor thing! She'd have said anything just then. And that reminds me, I am bound in honour to eat the sandwiches she gave me. You'll help me, won't you ? " The very thought of eating made her throat feel like redhot iron, and the sandwiches produced from a battered, professional bag smelt strongly, she fancied, of antiseptic bandages ; but, conscious as she was beginning to be of how completely she had given herself away, if he had asked her to eat the bandages themselves, she must needs have at- temped it. "Take a mouthful of sherry," he said kindly. " That'll help it down. Feel better now ? " Her answer was an indirect one. " Oh," she said, rising and walking to the oppo- site window, " what an utter, utter fool you must think me! " He knocked the ashes'from the bowl of his pipe. "It never does to be in a hurry," he said slowly, '.' when you're judging which of your fellow-creatures are fools. So much depends on how you look at I0 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. them. I dont think I have quite made up my mind yet whether you are a fool or no." She smiled a wan wintry little smile. " Oh, 1 am a fool ! " she said. " It is past hiding so far as you are concerned. And yet you are a doctor you ought to understand. For days past I have been so horribly afraid of going mad. When- ever people looked at me, I fancied they noticed something odd about my actions. Only yesterday I had gone into a field to gather some coloured berries not that I cared to have them ! and two men were carting brushwood, and they stopped and watched me oh " she pushed away the foot- warmer with a force of which he would not have be- lieved her capable, " it is too ridiculous ! " "Ay," he responded gravely, "it is ridiculous; but I've no doubt it was real enough at the time." There was silence between them for some mo- ments. " What put it into your head that you could paint?" he asked suddenly. She smiled again. A man like this was an entirely new fact in her experience. " I don't know," she said, " except that I always was painting from the time I could hold a pencil. They all opposed me, my people at home. I mean, they thought I should be content to paint watery landscapes and Christmas cards and useless terra cotta plaques. ' So nice to be able to give pleasure to your friends!' they said. As if at my time of life I was only a girl then," she interposed naively, with a seriousness which tried his gravity almost AFTER MANY DAYS. n beyond endurance " as if at my time of life I had any right to be content with work that led nowhere, that was an end (God forgive the word !) in itself ! As if, indeed, anyone short of an idiot would rest content with producing rubbish like that!" He nodded with real appreciation. From widely different starting-points they had arrived at what was probably their one foothold of common ground in the domain of Art. " However," she continued more brightly, little guessing how narrow the foothold was, " I got my way in the end." And she told him a story of earnest effort, of eager delight in work for work's sake, of divers small successes, culminating in a definite result which even his unskilled ears could roughly appreciate. " I hope you don't think," she said with sudden shyness, " that I am giving you the opinion only of admiring friends. I was never afraid of criticism. I used to think then that there was no delight on earth like standing by, while some one not only told me, but made me see, where I had failed. And I think people knew that, more or less, and were honest with me. They told me, of course, that my work was crude ; but they thought I had ideas, and an eye for colour, and even some force in my own small way." She paused in some confusion. He nodded gravely. No doubt there was an undercurrent of profound amusement in his mind ; she took herself and her Art so seriously, this over- strung child as if, forsooth, there were not pictures 12 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. enough in the world ! But, as a case, she was interesting ; and there was a curious charm about every movement of the harebell head; and a pathetic little woman had told him only an hour before that he was " the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." So he nodded gravely, and the girl felt herself lifted, like a stranded boat, on the wave of his strong personality. " And so," she said, " I seemed all at once to find myself in the running, don't you know ? And they told me if I would only undertake a serious bit of work, I should make my mark. I really began to believe myself that I should, and that was a new experience for me ! I had never before real- ized that anything I did was good till one or two people had assured me of it, and I had come to look at it with their eyes. But now I was full of hope and confidence. I chose my subject I be- lieve I flattered myself that it ' came to me ' ! and, after I had made a lot of studies, I ordered a big canvas and began." She broke off with a sigh that was almost a sob. " Oh, I can't talk of it ! " she said. " I worked hard tremendously hard, and at first everything seemed to go on as usual. Then I began to feel that there was something inherently wrong; but I had felt that so often before and just when I was doing what proved to be my best work that I thrust the idea aside, and worked harder than ever. I knew I was applying myself too constantly, but I could not rest. I felt I must have my fate decided one way or AFTER MANY DAYS. ^ the other. And all the time the feeling that some- thing was wrong kept haunting me, as it had never done before. " I saw very little of my friends in those days. When they came to the studio, I either did not show them the picture, or I did not encourage anything more than conventional comments. " But at last one day a friend came in, with whom I had a sort of tradition of mutual honesty. He was a good deal my senior, and he had helped me often, and I knew he would not find it easy to lie to me. I can't tell you how I felt, how I longed to escape, or hide the picture or anything ; but it was too late. There I was, stripped of my defences, and my day of wrath had come ! " The doctor's eyes had been fixed for some mo- ments on the hurrying line of trees above the railway bank, but now he turned and looked sharply at his companion. Yes, she was thoroughly in earnest. The eager, quivering face bore ample evidence to that ; but, apart from the pathological aspect of the case, how supremely ridiculous the whole thing was ! What if he should begin to talk about his Dies Irtz when a fracture failed to unite, or a patient complained of the effect of a prescription ? Nay, he might suggest the expression to his little Polly as a relief to her feelings when her doll's gaudy millinery turned out less satisfactory than usual ! Fortunately the rugged face was but a poor index to the passing thoughts that came and went behind it, so the girl went on-^> ! 4 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. " He 'stood behind my stool without speaking for what seemed to me an eternity. Not that there was anything new in that. It was. always his way before he criticized anything. The strange thing was that this time he seemed to be struck by his own silence, and he began to praise the pose of this, the drapery of that any detail that pleased him. I missed the genuine ring in a moment, and I pushed back my seat from the easel, and threw aside my palette. ' In other words,' I said quietly, ' the thing is a failure ! ' It was hard on him, I know ; but I was past caring for him. It was life and death to me. I don't know what he would have said if I had given him time. As it was, he hesitated, and at least he knew me well enough to see that after that no half-hearted assurances would be of the smallest use. ' The fact is,' he said, ' you're done up. You have been sticking at it too closely. Go off home for a bit and take a rest. You'll make a success of this yet some day.' " "Excellent advice!" said the doctor, glad to be able to approve of something at last. " Excellent advice ! " she repeated bitterly, " and, like most excellent advice, utterly useless. Rest ! How can I rest when I am haunted by the convic- tion that I have begun to decay? Don't you see I have staked everything on this ? If it fails, I have nothing left. Rest ! Oh, how I could rest, if I could only do one little bit of good work first ! Just enough to give me one little ray of hope for the future! But, try as I will, I can't; and, if I can't do it to-day, what reason have I to hope that I AFTER MANY DAYS. jg shall be. able to do it to-morrow, or next day, or any day ? " Her companion did not answer. Inured as he was by long discipline, to the constant involuntary self-sacrifice of a country doctor's life, he was al- most appalled by the supreme naive self-absorp- tion of the spoilt child before him. Fortunately her next words struck a chord that vibrated in his being too. " But the last few days," she went on in a lowered voice, " even that fear has been lost in the other awful fear I told you of. You may guess what it must have been before I let myself be driven to speak of it even to you ! " There was a long silence. The neuroses of mod- ern life did not bulk very largely in the good doctor's practice ; and, when cases did occur, he was apt to classify them under rather unflattering names. If any one else had consulted him about this girl her mother, for instance he would have made very short work of the case ; a few rough sentences and a brief prescription would have been, in his estimation, amply sufficient to meet its exigencies ; and, assuredly no notice of it would have appeared among the meagre and occasional jottings in his case-book. But she was so obviously ill, as she sat in front of him there ; her misery was so real to her; her faith in him so pathetic; and, above all, she had so much spirit and pluck in her own odd way, that, in spite of his utter want of sympathy with her aims, he found himself making a clumsy effort to approach her plane of life and thought. !6 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. The train rushed shrieking into a tunnel, and he waited till they emerged into daylight again. " I suppose you can still draw a straight line?" he asked abruptly. Her reply was a quivering laugh. "I don't know," she said. "I don't like to be too sure. Straighter than most people, I sup- pose." " Well, then, give a hand to the folks behind you ! There's a village school in your parts, I suppose ? Why not go and teach the bairns to draw ? I don't care much about pictures, but many's the time I have felt the want of not being able to make a bit of a diagram. Why, there are times when a few straight lines save a world of words, and that's a good job, if nothing else is. Depend upon it," he went on, warming to his work as he felt the ground firmer beneath his feet, " you'll never be so badly placed but what you'll find some bit of work at hand that you can do well. That's enough to keep any man sane, I take it. If you probe your trouble to the bottom, you'll find you are fretting yourself to death because you can't do the thing you want to. Well, you must just make up your mind to that. Neither I nor anybody else can help you there. The work you want to do won't go undone, never fear. Some- body else is sure to do it for you. Your business is to come down a step, and do the thing you can. God bless my soul, child ! " he broke forth im- petuously, " who are you that you should pick and choose ? Don't you suppose we've all had our dreams ? " AFTER MANY DAYS. 17 There was no answer, and he did not seem to expect one. " For the rest," he went on, drawing down his brows more grimly, as if a disagreeable duty had to be got over, the sooner the better, " for the rest, your artist friend was quite right. You've got the glass of your telescope all smudged and begrimed, and here you are (yes, in that respect you are a fool, no doubt !) straining your weary eyes to see through it ! You'd be better employed if you'd rub up your lenses a bit, and let the stars take care of themselves! " She looked up half-puzzled, but with a dawning smile of appreciation ; and he smiled too, in spite of himself, well pleased that she understood. Then he put away his pipe, and, frowning, shut the shabby bag with a snap. " Quite beneath the dignity of a great astronomer, I admit," he said, "to see that his glass is kept clean, but his work won't be good for much if he doesn't ! Well, here I am ! Do you go much farther ? Hallo, what's up ?" The quiet wayside station was a scene of un- wonted excitement, and almost before the train had stopped, the station-master opened the carriage-door. " There's been a terrible accident at the pit, sir," he said, "and everybody is crying out for you. Your man has the gig at the gate." Without even lifting his hat, the doctor was gone ; and so it came to pass that the little girl with the head like a Scotch bluebell passed out of his mind almost as completely as if they had never met. !g FELLOW TRAVELLERS. II. THE rain had almost ceased now, but a drenching white mist enshrouded everything, making its way into many an unsuspected crevice. The day was darkening fast, and the wheels of the doctor's gig splashed heavily along the muddy road. " Shoe loose, sir! " exclaimed the young groom. " Well," growled the doctor, " I suppose I have ears as well as you ! " Poor old doctor ! You will see that his temper had not improved in the last ten or twelve years. The lad looked injured. He was wet and hungry too. "We're so near the smithy, sir," he said, with the air of a man whose wisdom and foresight are not adequately acknowledged by his contemporaries. " Confound the smithy ! " was the surly reply. " That's the man who lamed Darby a month ago. I said then I'd never go back to him, and I won't. Darby will get home all right. I'll take Joan out to-morrow." But, even as he said it, the horse began to limp unmistakably. " Just get down and look at his foot, will you ? It's the off hind. What like's the shoe ? " The lad dismounted as quickly as his stiff cold limbs would allow. " There's a nail come loose, that's pricking him, sir; and I can't get it out without the pinchers." "And where the deuce are the pinchers, I'd like to know ? Bless my soul ! I might as well bring a AFTER MANY DAYS. 19 tame cat out with me for all the good you are ! Pull off the shoe, and look sharp ! He'll go well enough without it for all the distance." The lad stared in amazement. " Hall right, sir," he said ; and a moment later he added cheerfully, " There's a lot of metal on the road, sir." " Light the lamps," said the doctor, pretending not to hear the last remark. " We'll be having an accident next." In another minute they came in sight of the smithy, which stood some distance back from the road. The blacksmith's quick ear had caught the false ring of the loose shoe in the distance, and he stood now, expectant in the doorway, his figure forming a fine silhouette, with the ruddy glow of the furnace behind it. When the gig had rattled past, he returned to his forge, with a scowl that gave way to a smile. " Anybody else 'd 'a bin glad to warm hisself at the smithy fire on a night like this, were't nought else," said he ; " but the doctor's" the doctor. Well, he'll find that two can play at that game ! My missis must just make shift wi' the new man when her time comes round. They say he's clever, for all he's so young." Meanwhile the doctor tossed the reins to his companion, and resigned himself, as he had so often done before, to passive, hopeless endurance of his discomfort. There were worse troubles after all than rain and wind and cold, and and Ethel had been more ailing and fretful than usual that morn- 2O FELLOW TRAVELLERS. ing. Polly would be at home, to be sure, bless her sonsie face ! If only she and he could have a quiet hour together by the study fire ! But what would Ethel say to that ? Poor thing, poor thing ! It was a shame to find fault with her. What wonder, with her ill health, that she was jealous and peevish ? If she could only get to Bournemouth for a month or two, with that spoilt boy of hers, it would do her all the good in the world. But, alas, the moon itself was not less attainable than Bournemouth just now, when there seemed to be no prospect of paying the butcher's bill, let alone the school and college fees that were rapidly becoming due ! The doctor leaned forward with a groan, and, as he did so, a stream of water from his shabby um- brella made its icy way inside his soaked woollen comforter; but he did not flinch. What mattered one small discomfort the more ? Darby was dead lame now, but at least they were at home. " Let him stand with his foot in a pail of cold water," said the doctor. " He'll not be much the worse." " Yes, sir," and the lad shrugged his shoulders in the darkness. " Oh, dad, darling ! " cried Polly's eager voice. " Come in quick ! There's a lovely fire in the study, and all sorts of things warming for you. I'll go and see about dinner while you change. Nonsense ! I shall kiss you if I choose." There was just the least suggestion of pathos in her laugh as she added, " My poor old frock won't hurt." AFTER MANY DAYS. 2 I The doctor paused for a momen^ outside the sit- ting-room door. He knew he ought to look in, and say just a word to his wife, but he could not do it, so he tramped on to his own room. The warmth and glow cheered him in spite of himself, and a quarter of an hour later, when he went in to dinner, he stopped to kiss the pale woman on the sofa. "Well, old lady," he said with gruff kindness, " how do you feel now ? " Poor Ethel ! She had thought of him so much all day, when she heard the rain pattering against the window-panes; but now that she had listened to Polly's eager greeting in the hall, her own kind words froze on her lips. " It matters little how I feel," she said. The doctor was sorely tempted to say that it mattered a good deal to him how she felt, when he came in at night worn out and longing for rest ; but, with a mighty effort, he held his peace. He knew her well enough to be quite sure that she would have given a good deal not to speak those chilling words ; but he knew too that the remorse she felt would not prevent her from doing the same thing again and again and again, though all the time she was acutely conscious that such words were daily widening the breach between her husband and her- self. Fortunately Polly came in at this moment. When she was at home she never allowed the slatternly maid-of-all-work to wait on her father. As soon as she had left the room with the empty soup-plate, 22 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. Ethel tried to say something kind. It would not have been possible for her to say it in Polly's hear- ing. It was always so easy for the bright attractive idolized girl to trump her stepmother's ace. "You must be very tired," she remarked gently. " I hope you won't be called out again to-night." " I'm sure I hope not. Has anybody been ? Some- body said Mrs. Steele's boy was ill." His tone did not respond to her advance, and she answered coldly. " Yes, Jane saw Dr. Maxwell's carriage at the Steeles' door." " Nonsense ! Not Mrs. Steele's ! " "Yes." " She must have known I was away, and got frightened " " No," continued Ethel firmly. " Jane spoke to the coachman, and he said Mrs. Steele had men- tioned in her message that she wanted Dr. Maxwell to attend them for the future." " Shows what a confounded cad the man must be to undertake it without a word to me. I'll see myself far enough before I help him out of a " The doctor stopped short. With all his faults and misfortunes, he had not sunk so low as that. So he changed the line of attack. "I wish to goodness," he exclaimed, "that you would forbid your servants to chatter all over the place. The wonder is that I have any patients at all, with all this backstairs gossip going on." " Pray ring the bell, and give any orders you choose. It is two months now since you asked me AFTER MANY DAYS. 23 to put a stop to Susan's gossiping or was it Mary Ann then ? I did my poor best, with the result that each tit-bit was flavoured with, 'Now mind you don't let on as I told you. They'd be that mad if it got talked about.' " To show an angry man that he is wrong is rarely the way to pacify him ; but Ethel had not finished her say. "As to Mrs. Steele," she continued, with a bitter little smile, " I have been expecting it all along. There are not many eligible men in this place, and her two eldest daughters are getting on ! " He might have said the same thing himself in a cynical moment, but he could not stand it from her. " Well, of all the women who belittle their own sex," he exclaimed angrily, pushing his chair back from the table, " you are about the worst ! I don't wonder Polly calls herself a ' woman's rights woman ' ! " " Nor do I," was the quick rejoinder, " when her father gives in to every whim she has. If it were poor little Algy now " "I am so sorry you have had to wait, father dear ! " said Polly, entering the room with a tray, her bright face flushed with her unwonted culinary experiments. " I was showing Jane how a steak ought to be cooked, and she says my way takes longer than hers ! " She set down the tray, and looked up with a smile at her own expense; but the smile vanished in a moment when she saw the faces of the other two. Things had never been so bad as this when she had 24 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. been at home before ; and now, of course, it was not to be expected of human nature that she should see both sides of the question. " Oh, poor Father ! " she said, leaning her head wearily against the wall when she had left the room, " and there will be no end to it no end no end ! " " Well," said the doctor, when the door had closed behind her, "you were saying something, I think. If it were Algernon ?" " There /" exclaimed Ethel indignantly. "It all lies in that one word Algernon. You have your own Jack and Polly. Would you speak of a son of your own as Algernon ? " " God forbid," said he devoutly, " that any son of mine should come by such a name ! But " he attacked the steak vigorously " I'm blest if I know what you would have ! I'm rough enough with my tongue at times, God knows! But I've never said a rough word to him." " Precisely ! " she answered bitterly. " You have said plenty of rough words to Polly." " Look here, Ethel," he said, forcing himself to speak calmly. "We've been over this ground a hundred times ; but, if it will give you any satisfac- tion, we'll go over it for the hundred and first. My bairns have faults of their own, and, as you say, I've been down on them sharply enough ; but at least I have some idea what they would be at. Your son I simply cannot understand. His mother thinks and plans for his welfare night and day, but he never gives her a thought in return : with infinite trouble we get him on the foundation at Charterhouse, and AFTER MANY DAYS. 2 $ after being warned he gets himself expelled. No doubt I'm old-fashioned and out of date, but I frankly confess that a lad of that kind has no place in my reckoning. I ventured once or twice to say a word, a word meant in all kindness; but you know what the result of that was. I don't want to be hard on any one whose nature is a complete enigma to me, so I simply give him a wide berth." " Poor little Algy ! " she sobbed. " I sometimes think it would have been better for him if if you had never made that journey twelve years ago, and saved his life ! " The doctor smiled grimly. So he and his wife had one thought in common after all. "And no doubt you think the next journey I made in the same direction might also have been omitted with advantage ? " She sobbed outright. " Oh, I know you only did it out of pity ! and I have been a terrible drag on you ever since ! If it were not for Algy, I should pray God " " Oh, drop that ! " he cried savagely ; and then he was ashamed of himself. " Look here, Ethel," he said, rising and sitting on the sofa beside her. " Can't you see that I am dead-tired, and sick at heart ? Don't hit a fellow when he's down ! " She was genuinely sorry for him, and strove to forgive the bitter words. " Well, dear," she said, stroking his rough hand, "you know you have brought a double day's work upon yourself, because Polly plagued you to take her to town to-morrow. 26 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. And then if you will give your son and daughter an expensive education why do you stay on here ? You are only losing one patient after another. What chance can you possibly have against an un- married man with ^300 a-year of his own ? The butcher has been here again to-day " He sprang to his feet with an oath on his lips, and just then Jane opened the door. " If you please, sir," she said, " that's Jim to know if there's any more orders." " No," said the doctor shortly. " You said no one wanted me ? " he added, turning to his wife. " No," she answered, " Mrs. Napier sent to ask if you would look in to-morrow or next day." The doctor sighed. " Good soul ! " he said wearily. " No doubt," said Ethel quietly; " but I think it would puzzle you to name her complaint. If I had a face like a winter apple I'd be ashamed to have a doctor dangling about me continually. Talk of fancies ! " " Ay," he said sternly, splitting a large coal with a neat thrust of the poker. " She's given to fancies, and she's taken a mighty queer one at present. She thinks she sees the wolf approaching the door of an old friend, and she's minded to ward it off if she can. The simplest thing' would b^to send him a cheque for ^20 or so upon my soul, I don't know that I'd refuse it ! but she thinks I'd be insulted, so she puts herself to infinite trouble and invents no end of imaginary ailments. She must know that I see through it all; I don't think she ever took me AFTER MANY DAYS. 27 exactly for a fool ; but she knows too (God help me!) that I can't afford to charge her with it." He shook himself like a great dog, and strode out of the room. " Polly," he shouted recklessly. " Come and have a chat in the study ! " Polly needed no second call. In another moment she was seated on the rug, with her head on her father's knee in one of those easy unconstrained attitudes that bespeak long habit. He lighted his precious old meerschaum, and, for a time, they sat in silence. " Heigho, Polly," he said at last. " It's a weary world ! " She drew a long breath of relief. She had wanted so much to speak. " I've been horribly selfish, Dad darling," she said, " but indeed it was sheer stupidity. I did hon- estly think that a day in town would be a sort of a holiday for you too ! " "And so it will, my bird," he said, striving to speak cheerfully; "you won't ask me to look at pictures all day, will you." " Poor bullied old Dad! I'll tell you my plan. We'll go straight to the Academy, so as to see the pictures in some peace before the crowd comes ; and you and I will trot round for about an hour. Then the Trelawneys are to meet me, I shall be so proud to show them my noble old Dad, with his 'crown of glory ' ! and in due season they will carry me off to lunch. You will be under oath to get a good lunch too, and then you shall spend the whole afternoon 3 2 8 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. with your cronies. You always have so much to say to them." He winced. The main thing he had to say to them next day was that he must borrow money somewhere! But there was no need to tell Polly that. "Then," she continued, "the Trelawneys will conduct me to the station in the evening to meet you " " Ay," he said, " in a carriage and pair, with a footman to wait on my Polly. Poor little Cinder- ella! and it has all got to turn into a pumpkin again ! " " Now that is exactly what I want to speak to you about. It ought never to be anything but a pump- kin. I hate to drive in state while my grand old dad goes on the top of the bus. I only come by my smart friends because you insist on sending me to a first-class school. My honours are earned by the sweat of your brow, and they're too dear, a world too dear! I won't have it. No, no, Dad! My education is finished. Once for all I am on strike. I won't go back ! " He did not speak immediately. "Polly, lass," he said at length, "you know it's an old-fashioned fad of mine that my bairns should do as they're bid; but I'll give you my reasons for. this. I have often told you that your grandfather and grandmother were quite common folk as this world reckons commonness ; but they were proud and Scotch, and they made up their minds that their son should go to college. So they stinted and well- AFTER MANY DAYS. 2 9 nigh starved, and in due time I took my degree. My Mother was never given to wearing her heart on her sleeve, but when she saw me capped, she sobbed out loud, so that all the people round could hear ' That's him noo ! That's oor Jock ! ' As if it was me all the folk had come to see ! " He stopped and bit his lip. " They've both been in the kirkyard this many a year," he said; "but I can't bear to think that my Mother's saving and starving should all have been for nought." He paused and broke in eagerly upon his own thoughts. " It wasn't for nought, Polly, lass," he cried. "It wasn't for nought! No doubt I'd have done better at the plough, but I can at least give a lift to my bairns ; and it was for them she saved, Polly, not for me. Don't you see ? " But Polly saw nothing with her bodily eye at least save a blazing blur of flame through a blind- ing mist of tears. " I once made sure you'd marry," he went on after a pause; "but it's astonishing how a man's notions change ; and at least I won't have you driven to do it. You are just the sort of lass who could make her own way, if you were so minded ; and your education isn't going to prevent your tak- ing the right man if you find him." There was another long silence before he con- tinued "You're so nearly through, now, both you and Jack, that I'd be loath to give it up. I may be driven to it, but I'll live on oatcake and brose first ! Such a little would do it ! I only want a lift for the 30 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. next year or two. I don't deny that there's some difficulty just now, but I can't think but what we'll get past it somehow. I'll be honest with you, Polly, because I know you won't make a fuss when you see it's for your father's sake as well as for your own ; when you know that the education of his bairns is your poor old dad's main stake in life nowadays. I lost some hundreds this winter in an investment. I've aye been over canny with my money, so Dame Fortune turned her back on me when I lippened to her for once. And then al- though this new man hasn't taken many of my pa- tients, he has taken some of the ones that pay best. You see he lives in style compared with me; and it's something worth paying for to have a carriage like that stop at one's door ! " This was the first time the subject of the new doctor had been broached between father and daughter. "I can't think how they can be such /0 doubt that what you say is true ; but I never thought 3 8 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. it, much less said it, and indeed I'm not quite sure that I even understand it ! " She laughed pleasantly. "We won't argue about it," she said. '"As long as my life endures, I feel I shall owe you a debt, That I never can hope to pay.' If you have forgotten all your good deeds, as you have this one what a pleasant surprise you will get when you follow after them to judgment ! I sup- pose," she added, half wistfully, after a pause, "you are engaged to lunch ?" " No," he said, turning to Polly for the first time. " My daughter is, but I am not." Miss Beauchamp's soft laugh had a curious break in it, that might almost have been a sob, but for her beaming eyes. " My lucky star must indeed be in the ascendant to-day ! Is this your daughter ? I hope we shall be good friends some day, and I hope you will let me make the acquaintance of your wife too." Polly had been waiting for an opportunity to introduce her father to Mrs. Trelawney ; and now, after a few friendly words, the two parties sepa- rated. " I had no idea you knew Miss Beauchamp," said the great lady to Polly. " I wonder if your father would say a word to her for Alice ? Miss Beauchamp refused her as a pupil on the ground that her num- ber was made up ; but your father's influence might make a difference, he seems to know her well." AFTER MANY DAYS. 39 And Polly, who had been wondering greatly what might be the meaning of the morning's proceedings, answered discreetly " I will speak to him about it this evening." Scarcely a word passed between the artist and the doctor, as they made their way to her home, a fine roomy house in a green unfashionable square. Fortunately the doctor was quite unaware of the effect of the spring sunshine on his shabby Sunday coat ; and he could scarcely have believed that it wellnigh brought the tears to his companion's eyes. " These are the two studios," she said brightly . "one for my pupils and one for myself. I pay them a visit more or less often, according as Jekyll or Hyde gets the upper hand. No, no ! You didn't think I meant to take you round ! I am sure you have seen pictures enough for one day. Come to my den ! " " And now," he said, when lunch was over, and they were comfortably installed in the most beauti- ful room he had ever seen, " I want to hear all about it. Did you get safe home that day ? " " Oh yes ! Fortunately I got a touch of pleurisy on the way down, and, as soon as the doctor could give it a name, of course I didn't care what befel me. It was a long time before my strength really came back to me, though I ' rubbed up my lenses ' to the best of my ability. But it was the other part of your advice that came to me like a tonic when I was getting stronger. I could not paint, of course ; but it was perfectly true that there was always some 40 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. simple thing at hand that I could do well ; and in- deed I soon learned that, if you do a thing just tolerably, people are only too ready to recognise it and to say ' Go up higher ! ' " Do you remember telling me to teach in the village school ? It was a long time before they would let me, but I got my way at last." She laughed at the recollection. " Poor little chaps, I am afraid it was sore drudgery for most of them. I hadn't many Raphaels or Angelos, but a number learned enough to be useful, and I think one or two may ' live to be hung ' ! " She rose from her low easy-chair, and, kneeling on the soft white rug, began absently to brush up the hearth. " By the way," she said, trying to speak lightly in spite of the colour that rose to her face, " you must meet all sorts of people in your practice. If you come across a struggling genius, it would be a real kindness to let me know. I am simply rolling in money." Her voice shook slightly, and the move- ments of the hearthbrush became more aimless and uncertain. " It is not only my pictures; they bring in a windfall from time to time; but my studio is the fashion just now, and with my quiet ways I don't know what to do with all that comes in. Com- fort, and even beauty, cost so much less than show ! " The colour had been rising steadily in his rugged face too. Was this his chance ? No, no ! Not her ! Not her ! Think of presuming on a fanciful claim like that, when he had not even recognized her ! AFTER MANY DAYS. 4! It was a minute before he spoke, and then it was only to say very gruffly, " Well, I'm sure it is time I was going ! " " No, no ! " she said desperately, and, as she spoke, a vivid mental picture rose before her of Polly's faded frock. " I have more to say to you first." With a mighty effort she threw her nervousness to the winds. " Listen," she said, turning to him with a pretty, girlish smile that became her well. " I owe you so much, that I have a right to ask a favour. Twelve years ago, when you were a total stranger, I took you into my confidence, as I never took man or woman before or since. God knows I have had no cause to regret it ; but I don't need to tell you that there have been depressed and cynical moments when I have called myself a fool, and have wished with all my heart that I had given my&elf away less completely. So you see you have it in your power to be very generous now. You can take away such thoughts for ever. Give me back what I gave you then! Tell me about your life ! It is not for nothing that your face is so worn and your hair so white." There was silence for a moment, and then he opened his lips to speak, but a great sob broke from him unawares. He made haste to cover it with a cough, but the attempt was a failure. The sob re- mained a fact; it seemed to go echoing on in the room long after the actual sound must have ceased. So, as soon as he could regain control of his voice, he told her with such reservations as a hus- 42 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. band or wife must make the story of his life since they met, of his worries and frets and disappoint- ments and trials. She listened with breathless interest. "And do you mean to say," she said at last, " that you want money ? only money ! " " Mainly," he said grimly. " Money is a good deal to some of us." "Oh," she cried, "what a pity I did not give you my name that day ! Perhaps you would have seen that I was getting on ; and it might have occurred to you that the mouse's turn had come! " " No doubt I should have seen your name," he said, smiling in spite of himself, "but I am at a loss even now to know what the poor old beast did for the mouse ! I wonder what it was I really said ? Some platitude, no doubt, out of which you have been weaving all sorts of pretty things." " Perhaps it was a platitude," she said musing. " Most things are till the right moment comes, and the right lips speak them." " And the right ears hear them." " And the right ears hear them ! " she admitted. " To me what you said was simply the key of the universe. It came just at the right moment at the turning-point of my life, when I was just beginning to be wise enough to take it in." " I am afraid I can't take credit to myself for that." She smiled. " Your credit is your affair : my debt is mine. I can never repay it, you know. I shall wear my AFTER MANY DAYS. 43 shackles proudly and thankfully all my life. And yet " She sprang to her feet and clasped her hands behind her, unconscious of the tears that were raining down her cheeks. " do you know, I can scarcely believe in my own happiness ? I didn't deserve it a bit. Are you sure it isn't a day- dream ? a castle in the air ? " She dropped her hands again, with a long sigh ; and it seemed to him that the soft, sweet curves of childhood had taken possession of her face as she went on, " I shall never even ask to paint a good picture again ! I have had my share of happiness for this life, 'full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over ' ! " THE EXAMINER'S CONSCIENCE. If there's a hole in a' your coats, I rede you tent it. BURNS. I. PERHAPS I ought to say quite definitely at once that the examiner had a conscience. I wish to make this clear at the outset, not be- cause I have any doubt of the reader's discernment ; but because titles are such misleading things now- adays ! and besides, even when philosophers have had their say, conscience remains for most of us a relative thing, and we are almost tempted to think at times that, in the special walks of life, one would require a technical education before pronouncing wisely and fairly on the morality of any given act. Of course we all number divers examiners among our acquaintance, and excellent cronies they often make, with their booty of entertaining anecdotes snatched from the quivering minds of their tortured victims. Very frank and communicative they some- times are ; but their world of conscience, their stand- ard of morality, remains for the most part a hortus inclusus ; they don't talk much about that. 44 THE EXAMINER'S CONSCIENCE. 45 And this is why I say at once that the examiner had a conscience. A cynic might seek to explain the persistence of this "appendage" by the fact that the examiner had been only recently appointed, but the cyni- cal aspect of the case has nothing to do with the story. The day was grim and cloudy and bitterly cold. A frostwork tracery of curling fronds and stately firs and leafless branches obscured the windows of the railway carnage, and the examiner was fain to turn up the collar of his fur coat and to draw his cap over his eyes as he ensconced himself in a comfort- able corner. Truly it was no joke travelling across country to examine fellows in such weather as this; and indeed the January examination was on the whole an un- satisfactory one in any weather. Capable men who knew their work went in at the end of term in April or July. January was the innings of the fellows who had failed or "funked." The examiner was young and enthusiastic, and he knew his work, so he was not nervous about his own share of the programme ; moreover he possessed the gift so useful to examiners of keeping a firm hand on the helm of a Vivd voce examination, instead of weakly delivering it over to the wily candidate; and yet, when the occasion tempted him to experiment, he could cede it gracefully enough (is it not here indeed that the very essence of the humour of an examination comes in from the examiner's point of view ?), and watch with amusement or admiration, as 4 6 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. the case might be, the use the poor devil would make of it. Thus it is evident that, in addition to a con- science, the examiner was possessed of real ability, and that, if he sinned, it cannot be said of him what unsuccessful candidates are so generously ready to say of their examiners that he sinned in ignorance. The train drew up at a provincial station, and a blast of biting wind came in at the opening door. The examiner shivered and scowled, but withdrew his tacit remonstrance as his eye fell on a peach- blossom face framed in soft brown hair and cheap but becoming fur. " Jump in, Dick ! " said a girl's pleasant voice. Dick had a peach-blossom complexion too, but it failed to convey any impression of beauty. Indeed his whole appearance was commonplace and under- bred. Obviously Nature had tried her 'prentice hand on him before she made his sister. "Jump in!" he repeated derisively, showing a row of faulty teeth as he spoke. " First-class ! " " Yes, certainly First-class," she urged with pretty motherly solicitude. " I've taken your ticket now, so you must. It is bad enough to have to travel at all in this weather with your cough, you poor boy ! " She coughed herself as she spoke, and drew him gently towards the carriage. Neither of them took any notice of the passenger in the corner, and indeed he was so wrapped up in furs that he looked more like a mighty chrysalis than a human being. " You know," the girl continued softly, " we shall THE EXAMINER'S CONSCIENCE. 47 be all right once you get on the register; and I am quite quite sure you are going to pass this time you have worked so splendidly ! " "Yes," he said, with" a feeble, flattered, anxious smile; "I don't see how I can miss it, if I get an examiner who knows his work." " Oh, but I am sure you will this time ! Only don't mix up aconite and atropine, as you did last night. Do you know what I found, Dick, just out- side the booking-office ? Look ! " She held up a battered threepenny-bit with a hole in it. " Isn't that lucky ? Do you think it would be better for me to wear it round my neck or for you ? " " I think you had better." " Very well, I will ; and I'll think of you every single minute till you come back. I know you'll pass, but " she hesitated, " you won't fret, dear, will you whatever happens ? You are off now. Take my shawl to put over your knees." " A woman's shawl ! " he said, with a somewhat fatuous laugh. She lowered her voice. " It is very warm," she said coaxingly, "and no one will notice that it isn't a plaid. Take it quick. Good-bye! God bless you!" The train moved off, but only to stop a moment later, and then the bright face appeared at the win- dow again. "What do you think has come by the train ? A turkey from Uncle Jack ! So the fatted calf is all ready for you. Isn't that a good omen ? Uncle Jack is beginning to see that you are a person of 4 8 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. some importance after all. Won't we make a night of it when you come back ? " The train was really off now, and the examiner looked out from the small space between his cap and his collar at the other occupant of the carriage. So this was one of the candidates, was it ? this poor little chap who " mixed up aconite and atro- pine " ! and, even if he got his diploma, what use did he suppose it was going to be to him in the teeth of such obvious physical disqualifications ? Why, his course of study had almost finished him. There was no stamina left to begin practice with. Experience proved that a doctor could get along without super- fluous strength or breeding or ability or learn- ing; but even the great gullible public scarcely liked to dispense with all four ! The examiner sighed. He was used to candidates who ought to be at the plough ; but it was ridiculous to think of the plough in connection with this poor lad. It was a little difficult to say where his niche was to be found in the economy of Nature. The young man had taken a well-worn book from his pocket, ^nd was poring over the contents, muttering to himself the while, and turning over the leaves with moistened thumb. The examiner recognized the volume in question. It was a cram book to which he had a particular dislike. From time to time the reader stopped and hastily turned back a few pages, with an expression of intense anx- iety, having evidently forgotten some fact he had just read. It was all the examiner could do to help hold his THE EXAMINER'S CONSCIENCE. 49 peace. " Put that away, you fool ! " he longed to say. " Isn't that poor weak brain of yours quite muddled enough already?" At the next stoppage an elderly lady entered the carriage. She looked at the student with pitying motherly interest, and took an early opportunity of offering him a cough-lozenge. He seemed grateful for a little human sympathy. " Beastly nuisance going up for an exam. ! " he said. " Is that what you are doing ? Poor thing ! But it will be a comfort to get it over, won't it ? " He nodded doubtfully. " If I do get it over ! " Then the kindness of her face moved his 'facile na- ture to unnecessary confession. " I have been ploughed four times," he said. " Poor boy ! How dreadful ! But I am sure you know your work this time. You look as if you had been reading very hard." He shook his head. " I don't know it any better than I did last time," he said doggedly. " I can't think how I failed. It's all luck. You see some of the examiners have written books, and they all have theories of their own ; and, if you don't happen to have read the book, or heard the theory, it's all up with you ! There are such a lot of them, too examiners, I mean and you never know beforehand who you are going to get. And, with the best will in the world, one can't read everything! " The lady looked horrified, as well she might. " How very unfair," she said. " How how small- minded! " 50 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. The examiner glowed inwardly with a sense of injustice, but he did not fight with foemen unwor- thy of his steel, and the situation had a humour of its own. Besides, if he revealed himself now, he would only shake the little chap's nerve at the eleventh hour, and give his poor petty mind reason to believe for evermore that these indiscreet dis- closures was the cause of a failure which seemed to the examiner almost a foregone conclusion. "Well, when you do pass," continued the friendly lady, " I hope you will get rid of that troublesome cough. Can't you get away to the south for a bit?" " Oh, bless me, no ! I'm as fit as a fiddle. We've been a bit hard up the last few months," he glanced at the shabby wisp of crape on his sleeve " but we'll be all right when the fees begin to come in." Her kind eyes yearned over him. "But I am told they don't always begin to come in very fast just at once, you know." He laughed and rubbed his hands. " Oh, I'm not afraid. Quite a lot of people have consulted me about odds and ends lately, of course they couldn't offer me fees before I was qualified. The fact is, I have a sort of knack of getting on with people. There is a great deal in manner ! " Her face fell. Poor boy ! So there was a great deal in manner ! " I wish you would give me your name and ad- dress," she said at last, rather doubtfully. " I might be able to be of use to you sometime." "Flattered, I'm sure." He tore a leaf out of his THE EXAMINER'S CONSCIENCE. 5! notebook, and handed it to her with a bow that was meant to be gallant. Just then the train drew up at the terminus, and the young fellow jumped out to join some compan- ions on the platform. The examiner saw him make a motion with his head in the direction of the moth- erly lady. "Odious little brute !" he ejaculated, as he ex- changed his fur cap for a professional-looking hat. " I suppose you are telling them that ' the old girl was awfully smitten with you.' I should like to knock you down if Nature had not done that al- ready ! " II. IT was growing late, and the examiners were very tired. What they really wanted was a brilliant can- didate to wake them up, but the brilliant candidate was not forthcoming. " Bless my soul ! " said an elderly man, stretching himself with a yawn. " They are always talking of the extent to which we have raised the standard of the examinations. I wish they would raise the standard of the men a bit. We ask stiffer ques- tions than our fathers did, but we don't get half such good answers. The thing's as broad as it's long or broader." The speaker was a specialist, and much dreaded by the students as a merciless examiner. "Well," he continued in a tone of resignation, " let us have the next man in ! Have you got his 52 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. paper ? Richard Allison ? How does he stand so far?" Our friend glanced at the paper with furrowed brows. " Written rather feeble," he said. He men- tioned the figures, of course; but the reader need not be troubled with minutiae. " Clinical somewhat better. He will have to do a pretty fair Vivd, if he means to get through." " That is precisely the position most of them are in," said the elder man with a grunt. " Lucky for him that your marking leans to mercy's side ! " " I am afraid that benefit is somewhat neutralized by your questions," retorted the other, smiling. The door opened and the candidate was ushered in. Poor Dick ! It was well for his quivering nerves that he failed to recognise in the tall well-groomed examiner the amorphous chrysalis of the railway- carriage. I know of few things more remarkable than the variety of views which obtain among candidates as to the bearing, conduct, and mode of speech which are most likely to propitiate the bloodthirsty exam- iner. A whole volume of folklore might be written on the subject by anyone who took the trouble to investigate it; but for the present it is sufficient to say that Dick's idea of ingratiation was to walk in with a jaunty air of confidence and self-satisfaction. Three well-planted questions from the elder man, uttered very slowly, and with a manner abso- lutely unsympathetic and non-committal, were suffi- cient to destroy these flimsy outworks; and, at the THE EXAMINER'S CONSCIENCE. 53 end of five minutes, poor Dick had forgotten that he had a manner. He sat there with crimson cheeks, with parched mouth, with beads of perspiration on his brow, his whole physique the exponent of simple mental anguish. Not that he was altogether a fraud by any means. It was easy to see that he had read much, and, in a sense, carefully. But he possessed the cast of mind, so irritating to some examiners, and so difficult at all times to appraise fairly, which seems to nibble indefinitely round a subject, without ever being able to take a good bite. It may be that he was in no way responsible for this, that he simply belonged by nature to the great psychological class of Rodentia. The younger examiner raised his eyebrows as he bent over the paper before him, and reflected not for the first time that day that his confrere was a trifle severe. At this moment a tall urbane-looking individual in broadcloth entered the room and bent over the elder man. " One word, doctor," he said, and whis- pered in his ear. The communication seemed to be of some im- portance, for the examiner laid down the " speci- men " he was holding, and rose from his chair with a frown. Then, as an afterthought, he turned to his colleague. " Just get on get done," he said in an under- tone. " This is the last candidate, I believe ; " and he drew his friend over to the fire. The younger examiner raised his eyes to the tor- tured face beside him. 54 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. " Keep cool," he said roughly but kindly. " Don't lose your head. I've no doubt you can answer the questions I am going to ask." But the friendly words seemed to come too late. Dick felt himself sinking into a bottomless abyss. He lost all sense of time and place, and there was a great surging in his ears. The questions still seemed to reach him, however, from somewhere, in a queer far-away voice ; and, with a last instinct of self-preservation, he tried to shout back the reply. " That will do," said the examiner at last. The words seemed to break a spell, but still Dick sat in his chair without moving. " That will do," repeated the examiner. " You may go." Could it really be over ? It seemed to have lasted an eternity, and yet he could not believe that it had come to an end. He had ceased somehow to believe that it ever would come to an end ; and now, follow- ing quick on the heels of his relief, came an awful sense of despair. He had failed again, of course; he never, never would pass now ; and Kate had worn her poor little threepenny-bit in vain ! The tears rushed into his eyes, and he turned to the examiner a face from which all the vulgarity seemed to have melted away. It might almost have been his sister's face, and there flashed across the examiner's mind the thought of the " fatted calf"! The candidate had left the room, and the senior examiner still stood by the fire with his friend. THE EXAMINER'S CONSCIENCE. 55 Slowly the younger man added up the figures. They fell short without doubt, though not so very far short, and indeed he knew quite well that the man was not up to the mark. Arid yet the poor fellow had done his best ; it was morally certain that he never would do better, if indeed The examiner thought of the lad's cough, and again he saw the sweet, flower-like face at the win- dow. " No one will notice that it isn't a plaid," he heard the girl say, with a queer little throb in her anxious, motherly voice ; and then he took up his pen. " By Jove ! " said the elder man a minute later. " Do you mean to say that fellow has passed ? I am afraid, sir, you haven't sufficient regard for the standard of a noble profession ! " " He picked up a bit after you were gone," said the other indifferently and with doubtful veracity. " He obviously isn't in a state of health to do him- self justice." Some half-dozen men were assembled in the waiting-room when Dick came out. " Hallo ! " they said, when they read the report in his altered face. " I tell you what it is, you fellows," he said, sitting down, "I'll just go and cut my throat. I can't face it. It's the fifth time, and I really did know my work. Upon my soul and conscience, I did. I daren't go home. I " He stopped. " My governor will be awfully down on me too," said another man grimly. 56 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. "Governor!" repeated Dick. "If it were my governor!" But again he pulled up short. Even he could not talk of his sister here. "We all seem to be in the same boat this time," remarked a man with a turn for philosophy. " My opinion is they are asking deuced unfair questions. What do you think the fellow said to me ? ' How does the psoas get out of the pelvis ? ' As if anybody ever thought of that ! I've never seen it in any of the books. Well, what's the odds ? It's all in the day's work. They give back part of the fees, don't they ? Let's go and have a jolly good spree ! " " Galbraith ! " said the porter " Oh, Lor' ! " exclaimed the men, for the moment had come now when they must go in one by one to learn their fate. The extra assessors had arrived, and a formi- dable circle was assembled in the council-room. Dick never knew how he commanded himself suffi- ciently to walk in when his turn came. " I have to tell you, Mr. Allison," said the chair- man without effusion, " that you have satisfied the examiners." Dick staggered, and caught hold of the back of a chair. " Beg pardon," he gasped with quivering face, " did you say I'd passed 1 } " The chairman nodded, and pointed in the direc- tion of the roll-books. " Sign your name," he said shortly. "And now that you are likely to have a little spare time, you might take a few lessons in hand- THE EXAMINER'S CONSCIENCE. 57 writing," said the custodian of the first book se- verely, as he surveyed the shaky sprawling sig- nature. " You seemed surprised at the result," murmured another member of the Vehmgericht. But Dick's jaunty manner had returned in full force. " Oh, no," he said, " I wasn't really afraid, but it's always a relief." "Humph! Very great relief, I should think. I should advise you to call for your marks to- morrow." Dick entered the waiting-room with a bound. " Passed ! " he cried, with his arms in the air. " Passed ! passed ! " and seizing his cap, he rushed out into the street. There he stopped and looked at his watch. In another moment he was tearing along in the direc- tion of the railway station as fast as his exhausted limbs could carry him. III. I HAVE said quite truly that the cynical aspect of the case has nothing to do with the story; and yet it seems necessary to remind the reader at this point that the examiner had been only recently ap- pointed. In this connection it may be well to add that although he did not yet see his way to pay the rent of the house he had taken he was rapidly get- ting into busy practice, and that he was still young 5 g FELLOW TRAVELLERS. enough to be deeply interested in the behaviour of his favourite microbe. So what with one thing and another, I suppose he began to get overworked ; and although to all appearance as robust as ever, gradually fell into the state of health in which a man is no fair match for his conscience. " Examinations are not a true test ! " he exclaimed, as he lay with sleepless eyes in the small hours of the morning. "Then why be an examiner?" said Conscience placidly. "And, indeed, what does school and hospital work amount to at the best ? " he continued, striv- ing to shut her words out of his consciousness. " Good doctors get their education from their first year's patients ; bad doctors never get it at all." " Hitherto," said Conscience, " you have invari- ably argued on the other side of the question. If you have changed your views, why be an examiner ? " " Why not I as well as another ? Public opinion demands that someone shall do the work." "And does public opinion demand that someone shall turn it into a farce ? " " I didn't turn it into a farce," retorted the ex- aminer hotly. " The fellow had worked well." " Perhaps public opinion would have preferred that he had worked wisely. In any case the fact remains that better men were ploughed." " The poor chap was run down and out of health." THE EXAMINER'S CONSCIENCE. 59 " No doubt in after years it would be a consola- tion to his patients to know that he was allowed to pass, because the Board of Examiners considered him physically as well as intellectually incompe- tent." " Bless my soul ! " cried the examiner, uncon- sciously falling back into the words of Mephistoph- eles. " He is not the first ! " " True," said Conscience, " but he is the first for whom you are responsible." Conscience knew her man, as she usually does. The shaft struck home. The examiner became more indignant. " I am not paid," he said, "to be a mere reckon- ing-machine. You can't express everything in fig- ures. Even in an examination the vital spark must come in somewhere." " No doubt. But there wasn't much vital spark about this man, was there ? From the point of view of the public, he could have been very well ex- pressed in figures with a minus sign before them perhaps ? " " Unfortunately we can't provide all humanity with perfect doctors." " True," said Conscience. " Is that any rea- son for not providing them with the best we can ? " " And if I had ploughed the fellow and sent him off in despair, you would have worried me about that." " I might have worried the man" said Conscience candidly ; " certainly not the examiner." 5 60 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. There was no reply, but Conscience is never content with the mere triumph of getting the last word. " Most of this argument is quite beside the point," she pursued remorselessly. " The case lies in a nut- shell. You were appointed to a position of public trust, and you have failed in carrying it out not some wild high-flown ideal of your own but the or- dinary, decent, commonplace expectations of your fellow-men." And so on da capo. It is extraordinary of how much reiteration the human mind is capable, in the small hours of the morning. " I wish to goodness I had waylaid the fellow on his way out of the council-room," he said wearily, "and advised him to take some post-graduate classes." But even as he spoke, he knew that the wish was perfectly futile. In the face of such obvious poverty, what hope was there of post-graduate classes ? The examiner sat for a long time before the dressing-table with his face buried in his hands. " It would be ridiculous to go and look the fellow up, and see what he is doing," he said at last; "and besides it would imply that I wasn't easy in my mind at having passed him." This, of course, was obviously ridiculous. The weeks went on. With the yielding of the frost, there came a violent outbreak of influenza, THE EXAMINER'S CONSCIENCE. 6l and, as doctor after doctor succumbed to the prevail- ing malady, the popular practitioners among the residue were hard pressed to fit in their daily quota of visits. For some time the weather was mild, damp, relaxing, and in every way favourable to the per- secutions of conscience ; but, suddenly in the mid- dle of March, a sharp frost set in, working havoc among all the young green things, which had been tempted into a deceitful world under false pre- tences. " Thank heaven ! " ejaculated the examiner, as he awoke from a good night's sleep to feel a sharp, stimulating bite in the morning air. Among his letters that morning was one from an old college chum. " I wish you could spare time to run down and see a case with me. You might be able to suggest something I haven't thought of. It is just the sort of thing you used to be strong on. ... I don't think it is a matter of life and death, but it hangs fire in a way I don't like; and I've had a run of ill-luck lately. What a hydra-headed brute this in- fluenza is! " The examiner took out his pocket time-table, and glanced again at the address. on the paper. Surely he had some special association with that place ? Ah, yes, to be sure ! It was there that fellow had got into the train, " Dick " Dick what was his name ? Richard Allison. It would be interesting to hear what he was doing, poor chap he, and that "airy fairy" sister of his. Assuredly it would be 6 2 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. worth while to go and see the case. It would be killing two birds with one stone. A few hours later the consultation was satisfac- torily over and the two medical men stood together on the doorstep. "I think I'll walk to the station if you don't mind," said the examiner, buttoning his overcoat across his broad chest. " I see I have time." " Ah, you miss your comfortable brougham. All right. I'll send the trap home, and walk with you. It will suit me just as well. You have taken a load off my mind. I never believed in luck till a few weeks ago." " And you are not going to believe in it now," said his companion, reassuringly. " By the way, do you happen to know a young fellow a doctor, Richard Allison ?" The other started. " Did you know him ? " "Slightly." The examiner refused to notice the past tense. " He wasn't very fit, poor chap. Is his home hereabout ? " " Under the mools," said the other with dismal stoicism. " He died last week. It was awfully hard on me ; I lost two cases in one house ; but the truth was they gave neither themselves nor, me a chance. I believe they were half-starved." " Good Lord ! Is the sister dead too ? " The other nodded. "This way," he said. "There's a short cut through the churchyard. It's an awfully pathetic THE EXAMINER'S CONSCIENCE. 63 story all round. You know Allison had failed over and over again in his Final." "Yes?" " He ought to have given up long ago, but the family were all sanguine and phthisical. Dick's passing always represented the coming in of their ship. Everything was to be couleur de rose when that consummation was achieved. It was perfectly amazing how they never seemed to doubt that the guineas would begin to roll in as soon as his plate was on the door. He lost two sisters during his course of study, and last autumn the father died, leaving him and one sister alone. The father never appeared to do much, but his death seems to have made a difference to them, poor things ! "Well, I can't think how it was managed, but in January Dick did contrive to squeeze through ; and if he had been senior wrangler or or prime minister, his sister could not have made more fuss about it. She " The speaker paused and broke a twig from a frost-bound willow-tree. " She was an awfully lovable girl ! I never could make out what she saw in the little chap, till till the end came. " I believe they had a royal feast the night he came home. A turkey had been sent them from somewhere, and the poor girl went to the inn for half a bottle of champagne. Awful trash it must have been ; but neither of them would know that. The next day a plate appeared miraculously on the gate, ' Dr. Richard Allison.' I confess I was an- noyed, for of course he had no right to the title. I wish to heaven I had let it alone, but I spoke to him 6 4 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. about it, and he well, he wasn't very civil. That afternoon the sister called and told me they had or- dered the plate years and years ago, when he went up for his University Final. They were all so sure he would pass ! ' But he is a doctor, isn't he ? ' she asked naively. " Certainly," I replied ; ' legally he is as much a doctor as I am.' " Poor thing, she was looking so bonny that day, but the excitement and strain and privation had been too much for her. The family malady came down like a wolf on the fold, you know how it can come ! and then I found out what she saw in her brother." " But had they no friends to help them ? " " Well, you see, they were proud, and the poor fellow hadn't the knack of making himself very popular. He had a great notion that professional men should take their position in society (God help us!), and society didn't see it. Anybody might have taken up his sister, but he was one of the people who always seem to take liberties when one shows them a little attention. Of course everything was changed as soon as folks realized how ill his sister was. One lady alone, whom he had only met incidentally in the train, sent enough soup and jelly and fruit to stock a small hospital, but it was all too late." " And the lad ? " " I gave him some work to do for me, partly to help the exchequer, and partly to give her the im- pression that Dick was making a practice. There was a lot of influenza about, and he took it. I sent THE EXAMINER'S CONSCIENCE. 65 him to bed; but it was no use; he was in his sister's room the moment my back was turned. There was no deliberate self-sacrifice about it. He had just picked up that she was really going to die, and from that moment he simply did not know that he had a life of his own. He stayed with her night and day till the end, and then he went down like a stone. I don't wonder, she was an awfully lovable girl ! " The speaker cleared his throat noisily, and there was a pause before he proceeded with studied in- difference, " So then of course folks discovered that he was a hero look ! " The sun had shone forth brightly about noon, melting the snow that had fallen in the night, and kindling into something of a glow the marble white- ness of that great bank of flowers. " How pleased he would be, poor chap ! I hope he sees it. It can't do anyone else any good." "It does me a little, I confess," said the exam- iner quietly. " When you come to think of it, what more can the best of us do than go to our death in absolute self-forgetfulness ? I am glad folks saw it." The other did not answer immediately. "Oh, there is nothing to regret," he said coldly. "When a family gets into that state there is nothing for it but " " The short cut through the churchyard ? " " Ay. Shall we go ? " The examiner nodded ; but he did not follow his friend at once. A whole flood of thought was surg- ing through his mind. He noticed absently now 66 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. that the flowers were too transparent, and that a faint breath of decay was mingled with their fra- grance. Poor boy, poor little girl! Youth ought to be so full of roses and sunshine and vitality ; and their share of the beauty of life had surely been but melt- ing snow and tainted lilies. Poor boy ! Poor little girl! It was very irrational, of course. The examiner knew as well as you or I could tell him that the morality of his action was in no way affected by the mound of fading blossoms at his feet ; and yet, as he turned away, in the teeth of a cutting wind, the re- membrance of that one fatted calf rushed across his mind again with a glow of real thanksgiving, and, in some odd illogical way, his conscience was appeased. A GREAT GULF. Oh Galuppi, Baldasarro, this is very sad to find ! I can hardly misconceive you ; it would prove me deaf and blind ; But although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy mind. ROBERT BROWNING. I. IT was Thursday afternoon, and they were stand- ing on the platform at Victoria, awaiting the depart- ure of the Club train. The beautiful girl was ac- companied by her maid, and the plain young woman by a friend. " Fine eyes," observed the plain young woman quietly. Her companion nodded. " Pretty gown," she added indifferently. " Actress ? " " American, I should think." Their friendly interest was not reciprocated. Under ordinary circumstances plain young women had no existence for the beautiful girl. "Well, keep your spirits up!" she was saying with easy familiarity to her maid. " And you will get those sleeves brought up to date a bit, won't you ? I shall be back very soon, and next time I will take you with me." 67 68 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. Ten minutes later the train was well on its way, and the girl was absorbed in a Society journal. The plain young woman had extracted Morley's " Com- promise " from an unpretentious travelling-bag, but her eye wandered incessantly from the page to rest with keen physical satisfaction on the exquisite pro- file in front of her. " I wish I could alter the con- tour of the hat a little," she said to herself critically, "but the face is perfect." The train rattled on, the voices of the other pas- sengers rose and fell : a lad, hawking swallow-be- decked post-cards, stopped expectantly in front of the two girls ; but his diagnosis was at fault ; the symbolism was too obvious for the one, too far- fetched for the other. The waiter with afternoon tea found a better market, and, as the two travellers simultaneously raised their cups, their eyes met, and, quite involuntarily, they exchanged a smile. The car rocked from side to side. With a frown of im- patience the beautiful girl rose, and laid her cup on the table at which the other was sitting. " It is getting dark," she said tentatively. "Very." The tone was encouraging on the whole. " Do you cross to-night ? " " Yes." " Do you think it will be rough ?" " I hope not." " Are you a good sailor ? " " Not very. Are you ? " " Oh yes. I am an old hand." The plain young woman smiled, and withdrew A GREAT GULP. 69 into the shelter of her Morley. When they arrived at Dover she rose, and, with that quiet unselfcon- scious independence which characterizes the plain young woman of the present day, she handed her bag to the first porter who entered the car, and fol- lowed him out into the night. She was obliged to follow him rather rapidly, for, regarded simply as a " fare," the plain young woman is not very promis- ing, and the porter was anxious to get back to the train in time to secure another. So they hurried along the platform and down the quay; and then, timidly groping her way down the dark steps, the young woman found herself on deck. The December evening was mild as May ; the water plashed softly against the vessel and the quay. A delicious sense of holiday, of escape from all re- straint, came upon her. Her figure grew lithe and agile under the severe folds of the shabby travelling- cloak, and with a step as light and elastic as that of a child, she sprang up and down companion-ways, reconnoitring the vessel from stem to stern. In the course of her exploration she came upon her ac- quaintance of the teacups, and, in the fulness of her heart at the moment, would have stopped to speak ; but the beautiful girl was engaged in conversation with a man. Even in that dim light the plain young woman was struck by his military bearing and quiet air of distinction. " I wonder," she mused, as she seated herself in a dark exposed corner of the deck, and allowed her- self to be wrapped up to the ears in tarpaulin, " I wonder whether he is a total stranger, a chance ac- ^o FELLOW TRAVELLERS. quaintance, or an old friend. Given a girl like that, it is impossible to say. Nature seems to mix some people without throwing in so much as a suggestion of immortality." A wholly unconscious smile of superiority played on her lip, but it vanished in an instant, giving place to her wonted expression of quiet thought. The wind blew hard ; the Channel steamer rose and fell on the dancing waves; the lights of land died away in the distance, and came to view again ; and then, with a heavy sigh, as of one roused from a pleasant dream, the young woman went below to wash the brine from her lips, and smooth her rebel- lious locks. To her surprise the beautiful girl rose limp and bedraggled from a couch in the saloon. " I've been deadly sick," she said, turning feebly to the mirror, " for the first time in my life too ! And I do believe," she added resentfully, "you have been enjoying it ! " The plain young woman tried in vain to conceal the physical exhilaration that radiated from her whole being. " I am a most disreputable object," she said, laughing, as she carelessly straightened her hat. " I hope you will feel all right now that the pitching is over. Good evening." Without giving another thought to her compan- ion, she turned to leave the saloon ; but a few minutes later, when she entered the dining-car on the train, the beautiful girl motioned to her eagerly. " Do come and sit at my table ! " she said A GREAT GULF. 7! " These men stare so if a woman chances to be alone." The plain young woman smiled. She had never been inconvenienced by the staring of the men. As she sat down, her eye fell for the first time on a pair of long white hands, blazing with diamonds and emeralds. To her inexperienced eyes the jewels seemed priceless, and a pang of something like fear shot through her. " Emancipated " as she was, she could still be afraid of her own sex ; but another look at the girl's face reassured her. " I hope you feel better," she said pleasantly. " Thanks. I shall be all right when I have had a pint of champagne. There is nothing like it, is there ?" " I suppose not, but I am not an authority. Champagne hasn't come much in my way." " Are you going far ? " " To Cannes." " I never heard of that place. How do you spell it?" " C-a-n-n-e-s." " I should call that cans," said the girl placidly. " Where is it ? Anywhere near Monte Carlo ? " "Yes; some thirty miles away, I should think on this side the frontier." " I mean to go to Monte Carlo later in the season not this time. I am just running over to Paris to get a few gowns from Worth. I often do that. They can't make gowns in England at all. You'll see, of course, that this is a Redfern I have on. I got it in a hurry, and it does to knock about in." 72 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. The plain young woman looked down at her own home-made serge with keen appreciation of the hu- mour of the situation. " I think even that gown will pass muster," she said, smiling. " Oh, I know I am looking a fright this evening," said the girl discontentedly, turning to the mirror, and trying to arrange her fringe. Then a new thought struck her. " How old do you think I am ? " she asked suddenly. " I can't guess ages." " Never mind. You won't offend me. Guess ! " " Twenty five," said the young woman slowly, subtracting a year or two from her mental esti- mate. " I thought you would say twenty-seven. Every- body says so, but I am only twenty-three. It's my manner, I suppose. You see I have knocked about so much. I believe I have travelled over the whole world ! Usually I take my maid with me, but I couldn't afford it this time. Poor girl, she was awfully disappointed ! " She sighed, and then took up an evening paper that lay on the table beside- her. " Do you know anything about gold shares ? " she said. " I am told they are an amusing thing to play with if you have a few hundreds to lose." The girl looked up anxiously. " But I haven't a few hundreds to lose," she exclaimed hastily. " I hate losing money. Do you really know anything against them ?" She seemed so genuinely distressed that the young woman hastened to reassure her. A GREAT GULF. 73 " Don't mind me," she said. " I am shamefully ignorant about these things. If your man of busi- ness advised the investment, no doubt it is all right." " He didn't advise it. I was determined to have them. A friend of mine made heaps of money in gold mines, and I don't see why I shouldn't make a little. It takes such a lot of money to live nowa- days," she added pathetically. " Just look at this bill ! seventeen francs that is nearly a pound for a single dinner ! And what can one do ? One must have a little wine ! " In another moment her whole face lighted up. A man was walking up the car with a lady on his arm, and she raised her eyes to bow to him. The jewels flashed more brilliantly than ever ; the picturesque hat was pushed back ; the wine had lent a more sen- suous charm to the beautiful face ; but one man at least was guiltless of the indiscretion of " staring " : the man who had spoken to her on the steamer passed her now without a glance. A cloud like the sudden chill of sunset came over her face. "Come," she said sharply, "let us go." When they reached the 'corridor she added, "The man will be making up your berth, so you can come to my den for a bit. I told them I should not lie down, as I leave the train at Paris." They entered the tiny half-compartment, and the girl lifted a sealskin coat from the seat. " It got wet on the steamer," she said, "and I spread it out to dry. If you don't mind, we'll put it over our knees." 74 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. " Great honour for me to be clad in such raiment for once ! " The owner of the coat stroked it caressingly. "You see the line where it was joined, though, don't you?" she said, with serious, childlike sim- plicity. " They said it wouldn't show, but it does. It was so awfully unlucky ! I bought it just before long coats came in, and there it was, useless ! But you should see my new sealskin ! Such a beauty nearly down to my feet ! " " Do you know," said the plain young woman de- liberately, but with a very pleasant smile, " that you are a most extravagant young woman ?" " I know," was the eager, self-satisfied response. " In dress I am. You see, dress is my hobby. I have got some lovely gowns I wish I could show them to you ! " " I wish you could. I love pretty gowns." A cloud came over the beautiful face again, and the girl sighed. "But it's all no use," she said pathetically. " I have no chance to wear them. They are simply thrown away. That is why I am going to Monte Carlo. They do dress there, don't they?" The young woman looked up with a feeling of something like reverence for such utter frankness. "I don't know," she said quietly. "I have never been on the Riviera. I am only going now for my health or I should not be travelling in state like this." The girl frowned slightly, as if a disagreeable subject had been broached. " How horrid for you ! " she said, rather coldly. A GREAT GULF. 75 A silence fell on them after that. The train rattled on through the night. The lamp was re- flected in each window, but nothing else was visible. It seemed to the plain young woman as if two oddly assorted human souls were adrift on a raft in the midst of eternity. Perhaps some such thought was vaguely present also in the mind of the other, for what little conventionality they both possessed dropped from them like a garment. It was the girl who broke the silence. "I am feeling awfully low," she said suddenly. A luminous sympathetic smile brightened the young woman's face. "Are you ?" she said. "Am I to ask questions ? " " I don't fancy I could answer them if you did. Do you know what it is to feel as if you were always just within reach of something, and yet never could quite get hold of it ? " "I do indeed." The young woman began to modify her original estimate of her companion on the raft. "It is so queer," continued the girl. "All we have got, people can take from us; but the one thing that is really our own is the power to think our own thoughts. Nobody can get hold of that. They think they have us in their power, but that one thing they never can get. We are under their very eyes, but they can't see us a bit." She paused. " And yet," she added suddenly, with a revulsion of feeling that was almost dramatic in its expression, " the very thing we dread most is to sit and think our own thoughts. We knock about 6 -,6 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. and talk and travel, and do anything rather than think. That is why I like my maid so much. She chatters away, and never lets me think. I wish I had brought her with me! I wish I had her to- night! " The young woman could scarcely find words. This was indeed a turning of the tables. A moment before she had prided herself innocently on being able to sympathize with an enthusiasm for dress; and now, behold, without any flourish of trumpets, an incursion had been made into her own particular realm of philosophy! And this was such genuine philosophy, too, of its kind! No second-hand rt- chauffe of modern essays and magazine articles, but a bit of pure, crude, untutored reflection, freshly secreted from a human heart and brain. Her reply, when it came, was not philosophical scarcely even relevant. " I suppose you know," she said slowly, leaning her head on her hand, and looking up into her com- panion's face, " that it is a little unusual for a pretty girl of twenty-three to be rattling about the world in Worth toilettes, with or without a maid as young as herself ; investing in gold shares on her own ac- count, and dropping into casinos as if they were picture-galleries ? " The other laughed rather unpleasantly. " It is just that pretty girl of twenty-three," she said, " who knows life. Men ? I believe no woman living knows men as I do. If I were to tell you things that have happened, things that I have seen " She paused. A GREAT GULF. ~- " I should listen with deference, but say that your view was necessarily a one-sided one." " Why ? " The word was a challenge. " Because " the young woman was surprised at her own boldness " going about as you do, you don't meet the best men, nor see the best side of those you do meet." " You believe there is a best side, do you ? " " I don't. I know it." The beautiful lips curled contemptuously. " If I were to write a book, and tell my experiences " " Do. I should read it, for one." " Would you ? Bah ! They're not worth it." She snapped her fingers. " I don't care that for the whole sex except one, of course ! and he is horrid : I be- lieve that is why I am feeling so low to-night." The friendly interest which had brightened the plain woman's face died out. As an outcome of the previous conversation, this was disappointing. " In that case I should be horrid too," she said coldly. " I would not break my heart for him." The girl looked as if an insult had been offered to her intelligence. " Do you think I am such a fool," she said, " as to cut off my nose to spite my face? No, no. I don't need anybody to tell me what to do. I shall wait quite quietly quite quiet- ly till he is nice again, and then I will show him how horrid / can be ! " The young woman laughed. "Is that the cor- rect treatment under the circumstances?" she said. " It never would have occurred to me." " I suppose you don't care about men ? " 78 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. " I do extremely. I have one or two friends, who " " Oh, friends ! " exclaimed the girl wearily. " By the way, you had a friend with you on the steamer, had not you?" The young woman de- spised herself the more for the direct question when she saw the colour rise to the fair face. " Yes no that is, yes, he is a sort of a friend. I hope you don't think," she exclaimed suddenly, "that is the man I was talking about ! The one on the steamer is well, no matter ! He is a cut above me, anyhow ; and besides, he is married already. It is a duty to be kind to him, poor fellow ! His wife's a brute." The little woman laughed a fresh young laugh. "I am not an authority on men, like you," she said; "but I should have thought you must have discov- ered that it js rather delicate work for a pretty girl to be kind to a man 'whose wife is a brute.' Matri- monial duties and responsibilities can scarcely be safely delegated." "Do you really think me so pretty?" was the eager, irrelevant response. The plain face hardened, then broke again into a smile. " I do. I suppose it is needless to add that ' favour is deceitful and beauty is vain.' Your retort would be too obvious. But I don't grudge you your quarter of an hour's start of me." "You mean you don't care to be good-looking?" "Would you believe me if I said so?" The girl hesitated. " I never believed any woman yet who said so; but you " she broke off sudden- A GREAT GULF. 79 ly, with a slight blush. " You know I did not mean to say you were plain," she said nervously; "you are " "Thank you; that will do." The plain young woman rose into quiet dignity at once. " I suppose you are not actually a Venus ; and my friends, no doubt, would tell you that I am not irredeemably ugly ; but we are speaking broadly, and, broadly speaking, there is no doubt that we are fair repre- sentatives of the two classes. You are a beautiful woman, and I am what, by a euphemism, we call plain. Naturally you think the advantage is all on your side. If you had thought of me at all when we met at Victoria, you would have said, ' Poor devil ! but why at least doesn't she wear a decent gown ? ' ' The beautiful girl glanced at the dark serge folds, and tried in vain to find a redeeming feature in their quiet severity. "And yet," continued the speaker, "if by any chance you and I were to travel again to-morrow night with all these men, they would say, when you entered the dining-car, ' Here is that handsome girl again ! ' When I came in, it would never occur to any of them that they had seen me before. Don't you see ? I am invisible. I have got the ring of Gyges. Nobody is on his guard with me I see people as they are." The young girl did not answer. She was per- plexed, but one thing was clear to her mind. It was obviously possible to pay too high a price even for the ring of Gyges. 80 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. " It must be such a responsibility to carry about a work of art in your own person," went on the other. "You must inherit yourself to such an ex- tent that you cease to inherit the earth." The unintentional rudeness of this remark was fortunately lost on its hearer. "I expect," she said a little nervously, "that you are very learned." " Oh no ! " The young woman laughed pleas- antly. "Well, we are talking more or less hon- estly, so I will confess that I am learned enough to know when somebody else writes a good poem, or paints a good picture, or composes a good waltz." " And that contents you ? " " Sometimes. It leaves room for other things. At the present moment it contents me just to look at your face." " I thought you despised beauty ?" "Then you are a fool," was the young woman's mental comment, but she only said, " I don't think you can have thought that. I don't despise the Koh-i-noor because I should not care to wear it in Regent Street." "Do you write books yourself?" " No." " Nor paint pictures ? " "No." " Nor compose ? " " No." "Are you engaged to be married ?" " No." A GREAT GULF. gl There was a half minute's silence, and then the next question came suddenly " Do you believe in the immortality of the soul ? " Accustomed though the young woman was to the intense talk of the youth of the present day, the abruptness of this attack took her breath away. " I don't know " she said, surprised out of all caution. " I agree with a great teacher of mine who says that it is no concern of ours. We have enough light to live by without that. It is surely a want of faith to ask for more." The girl tapped her foot impatiently on the floor of the carriage. These were not the lines on which her mind had worked. "What I always say is," she said, "that nobody ever has come back. Why should we ever have taken it into our heads that there was another life ? We had no reason to think so. One after another goes, but nobody ever comes back to tell us." " ' Why should we ever have taken it into our heads that there was another life ? ' " repeated the young woman meditatively. " I suppose if we are to think of the matter at all that is the one great argument for its existence." "Billets, s'il vous plait ! " The smart young conductor stood in the door- way. " Oh, bother our tickets ! " exclaimed the girl, looking up with a charming smile. " If you plague me, you shall get no tip do you understand?" The man bowed with very evident admiration for the lovely speaker. g 2 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. "Tell me," she went on, "do you go all the way with this train ? " "Yes, madame." " To Monte Carlo ? " "Yes, madame." " Pretty place, eh ? " " Oh, but beautiful, madame ! " " Lots of pretty gowns, I suppose ? " "Very pretty, but none perhaps so pretty as madame's." The girl laughed gaily. " You do mean to have a heavy tip," she said. " Shall you still be on this train in a month or two ? " " Probably, madame." " Perhaps I shall be going to Monte Carlo then. No such luck this time. Tell us about the casino. What is it like ? " "Will you allow me to pass, please?" said the plain young woman coldly to the conductor. In the corridor she paused and looked over her shoulder. " I am going to see if my berth is ready," she said. " I shall see you again. Au revoir ! " But half an hour later, when she returned to say good-night, her place was occupied by the man "whose wife was a brute." "A curious acquaintance!" said the young woman to herself as she slipped away unobserved, " cuts her pointedly in the dining-car, and, an hour later, settles down for a comfortable chat in her compartment. Save me from such friends ! " And with this reflection she betook herself to bed. A GREAT GULF. 83 II. THE darkness of an autumn night was settling over Llandudno, but a rich mellow afterglow still shone back from the placid bosom of the sea. Away out on the radiant streak a boat moved impercep- tibly along, and the soft plash of the oars could be heard now and then from the shore. The band had ceased playing, and most of. the prome- naders had gone home for the night ; but down on the beach a little crowd was gathered still, lis- tening to the eager thrilling voice of a mission preacher. " Let us take a turn along the parade, if you are not too tired," said a young man to his companion. " It is a glorious evening, and, now that the world, the flesh, and the devil have retired, the place is almost bearable." He spoke with a pleasant air of camaraderie, and the plain young woman looked up with a smile. " It is lovely," she said, " and I am not a bit tired ; but I am afraid I am Philistine enough to enjoy the world, the flesh, and the devil too." " I must apologize, then, for taking you up to the solitude of the Great Orme." " I have enjoyed it so much," she said simply. " It has been one of those walks that stand out in one's memory after long years. It is very good to see you again, Fred." Her companion did not answer immediately. "And I am so glad you mean to devote yourself to figure-painting," she went on. " I have always 8 4 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. felt sure that was your line. I am certain you will get on now." " It is certainly a line that lends itself to the pro- duction of pot-boilers ! " he said moodily. " That's an advantage I had not thought of," she answered, laughing. " And yet I don't know. One sees plenty of pot-boiler landscapes. You know the kind of thing finikin foliage, and a boat with reflec- tions in the water." " Yes, I know ; like the picture I was so proud of getting into the New ! " " I absolutely decline to rise to that, Fred ; but I am very glad you mean to stick to figures. I shall look for a great success in May." " And will you provide the subject?" " I might, if I had one brilliant idea for your twenty." She paused, and then laughed softly. " Such an odd recollection comes back to me through the years, of a picture I planned when I was a girl and thought I could paint ! It was to be called ' The Shadow of the Cross.' " "Your acquaintance with contemporary art must have been limited. How long was it before you exclaimed, ' Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixer- untl ' ? " " I never said that in my life," she answered proudly ; " and on that occasion even my baser nature was in no way tempted to say it, for Holman Hunt's idea was not ' nostra' at all. The cross did not come into my picture it was supposed to be on the left but the great shadow threw its whole length across; and into the shadow I put all my ideals. I A GREAT GULF. 85 was wonderfully catholic even then. Of course a young priest was the prominent figure; but I had soldiers, and I forget now who they all were. Some of them accepted the shadow with rapture; some were crowding into it; and some were trying, oh, so hard ! to get out of it. There was one woman of society in whose jewels I revelled in prospect stretching out her arms to the brightness. Most of her figure was in brilliant light, but the shadow fell right across. Crude, was not it ? " "Very," he replied. "Why didn't you stick to art?" " I did ; but I found it more profitable to stick to other people's." " Mine, for instance," he observed cynically. " Yours, for instance." They walked on for some time in silence, till, gradually rising in intensity as they approached, the voice of the preacher fell, full, mellow, and deliber- ate, on their ears " ' He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities : the chastisement of our peace was upon Him ; and with His stripes we are healed.' " The two companions stopped short in something like awe. Only dimly in the distance could they see the outline of the motionless little throng; the won- derful voice came straight out of the darkness of the night. " Don't go, Fred ! " said the young woman under her breath. " This is magnificent." " Pity to spoil the illusion," he said. " It is a fine 86 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. voice. More suited to the music of Isaiah than to the meeting-house rant you will hear presently. Come ! " " For an artist and a philosopher, Fred," she said a moment later, " not to add, a man of the world, you are curiously bigoted. Do you expect an ab- stract statement of the Absolute Right to convert the world ? You are like a scientist who wants to feed himself and his fellows in strict accordance with a physiological table of diet, quite regardless of the fact that they wont eat the food he provides." " Am I ? " he said reflectively. " I don't think so. But I prefer to choose my own sauce." "And to scoff at other people's?" " No ; but I don't see why I should pretend to share their tastes." The young woman sighed. " It really is the great problem of life," she said, " how to reconcile absolute intellectual honesty with intense emotional apprecia- tion of every striving after right." They had turned back in their walk, and now came again within hearing of the preacher's voice " ' We elder children grope our way From dark behind to dark before ; And only when our hands we lay, Dear Lord, in Thine, the night is day, And there is darkness nevermore.' " "Is that meeting-house rant ?" she asked. " It will be directly. He can't stick to quotations for ever. Come ! " "No; I am going to join in the service." She A GREAT GULF. 87 sprang lightly down on the beach, and then turned to look up. " You are tired to-night, Fred, and no wonder. Go home." "You don't want me to come with you?" he asked doubtfully. " Certainly not." " Will you come for a walk again to-morrow ? " " With all my heart." " Then I'll call about ten. Good-night." Very softly the young woman made her way over the shingle till she stood on the outskirts of the little gathering. Then, ascending the steps of a stranded bathing-machine, she seated herself to listen and watch. A lamp by the preacher's side cast an uncertain light on the eager, upturned faces: one might have thought that here was a missionary in a heathen land, preaching a new gospel of salvation. For, whatever doctrine this man might teach, there was no doubt about his power to influence his fellows. That smartly dressed lad in the front row had clearly forgotten where he was ; those tears were evidently unusual visitors on the painted cheeks over which they flowed ; that beautiful girl Why, where in the world had she seen that beautiful face before ? Gradually it all came back to her, the night journey through France, the swaying carriage, the lamp reflected in the window-panes. In this dim light the girl looked lovelier, almost younger, than ever ; and yet it must be two ? three ? years ago. The sermon was over, and a parting hymn rang 88 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. out plaintively over the water. The young woman descended from her seat, and was about to make her way homewards, when, to her great surprise, the beautiful girl came up to her with outstretched hand. The great eyes were strangely bright, and the muscles of the lovely face quivered in pathetic self-revelation. " I thought it was you," she said eagerly, as though they had only parted the day before. " I saw you come, and during the last hymn it flashed on me who you were. You will let me walk home with you, won't you?" Her voice was almost im- ploring. " Better let me come with you," said the young woman gently, glancing at the flushed cheeks and ruffled hair. " You look tired." " Tired ? " The girl laughed excitedly. " I never was less tired in my life ! " She slipped her hand in her companion's arm. "Wasn't it wonder- ful?" " It was extremely fine." The words, though spoken cordially, struck chill on the girl's overstrained mood, and she turned on her companion with a quick, suspicious glance ; but the plain face was very grave, very sympathetic, nothing more. They walked on in silence for a time. " These are my diggings," said the girl at last, her voice still shaken by strong feeling. " Won't you come in ? Do! I am all alone." " Not to-night, I think, thank you." " Oh, but you must! I want to talk to you. I A GREAT GULF. 8 9 must have some one. Do come in ! I won't be left alone to-night ! " The full lips pouted like those of a spoilt child, and an expression of terror came into the great eyes, as, with an almost caressing gesture, she drew her companion into the house. A bright little fire burned in the grate of a pretty sitting-room, and a dainty supper was spread on the table. The window stood open, but the air was heavy with the fragrance of flowers. " If you please, ma'am," said the maid, " Colonel Whyte called while you were out. He said he would come again." The girl looked at the speaker for a moment with dazed, uncomprehending eyes ; but gradually a deep flush spread over her face. " I quite forgot," she said. Then turning to her companion, she drew her hand across her brow as if trying to collect her thoughts. " It is so odd," she said dreamily, with a nervous shiver, " to find everything going on just precisely as it did before, supper and callers and flowers and a jolly fire ! Sit down. I feel as if I were just beginning to wake from an extraordinary dream the sunset and the sea and the darkness and that man's voice ! I felt almost as if the last day had come, as they used to tell us it would, and it seemed quite natural that you should be there. Do you know, I have often thought of you ? And you see I did know you again in spite of what was it ? your magic ring." She laughed more naturally now ; she was regaining her self-control. QO FELLOW TRAVELLERS. " Your memory is marvellous." " Oh no ; it isn't that. I have no memory at all. But you were so queer, you know. I never met any- body in the least like you." The words gave the plain young woman an un- pleasant sense of responsibility. "Are you quite sure," she said, a little awkwardly, " that this is not the dream ? the flowers I mean, and the callers, and the fire and the other the reality ? " " Do you think it is ? " "I am inclined to think that the other is at least nearer the reality than this." " But you don't really believe all he was saying ? " " I didn't hear it all." " I know. I saw you come. Are you engaged to that man ? " The young woman found it difficult to follow these conversational gymnastics. " No," she said shortly. " Nor going to be ? " " Nor going to be." " I never feel quite sure that you haven't a trump card up your sleeve all the time." There was no answer. "Are you still as contented as ever? ' " I think so. Life seems sadder than it did ; but when all is said, it is very beautiful." The girl sighed impatiently. " I wish I could see where the beauty comes in ! " " Well, in that scene on the beach, for instance the intense earnestness, the magnetic human influ- ence, the longing for better things." A GREAT GULF. 9! " And yet you don't believe what the man said ? " " At least he made me wish myself a better woman." The girl sprang to her feet, and paced up and down the room. " I believe," she said with intense vehemence, "you could save my soul if you would tell me what it is you do believe ! " A look of genuine distress came over the little woman's face. " Believe, believe ! " she said. " Why do you talk so much about belief ? I believe it is worth while trying to be good." " Why ? Is there another life after this ? Is there a heaven ?" " Here at least yes." " And a hell ? " "Yes." " Where we shall burn ? really burn " she put her pretty finger close to the bar of the grate " to hurt?" " It would be a poor look-out for us if it did not hurt ; but some people never seem to feel it." The girl laughed. " I know what you mean," she said. " I once heard a clergyman say that. You mean that I am in hell now." " God forbid ! I don't need to go beyond my own experience. But I never cared to stay in hell long." " I don't know. One might be in a worse place. I am afraid," she went on, with a weird laugh, " I am one of the people who are not sensitive enough to feel it ! " 7 9 2 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. The little woman shuddered. " Don't ! " she said. " Why not ? " The splendid figure drew itself up defiantly. "Why should I talk gammon to you? What do you in your grey little world know of life, of temptation ?" " More, perhaps, than you think." " Bah ! It is easy for you to talk of ' trying to be good'! Were you ever in love? Were you ever married ? Were you ever " she hesitated, looked straight into the honest eyes, and then continued boldly, "Were you ever married and then in love?" For the first time the young woman's eye fell on the plain gold circlet which had replaced some of the flashing gems. " I did not know," she said, weakly, " that you were married. I remember that night you told me there was a difference between you and the man you cared for." " If only it had lasted ! God ! if only the differ- ence had lasted ! His coldness piqued me, don't you know ? he had been so much at my feet ; and I was so determined to win him back that I don't think I realized how much I had begun to think of somebody else. But somebody else wasn't wasn't ' free,' as the library books say ; and and it was time I was getting settled. I had lost money in gold shares, and my life was all in a muddle, and I hadn't the society I was entitled to at all. So I married and then I knew that I loathed him and somebody else's wife died. If there is a God at all, it just seemed as if he was laughing at me ! What was the use of making me pretty, and giving me A GREAT GULF. 93 money to buy nice clothes, if I am never to be happy never, never to have what I want ? And my youth is slipping away, and nobody seems able to tell me whether there is another world or not. I meet people clever men who ought to know ! who say it is all moonshine; and you would have me grow old and ugly, ' trying to be good' '! Do you know " she fell on her knees, and threw her arms across her companion in magnificent abandonment " I almost wish you would tell me there is no other life, for then I could have what I want in this ! " " Colonel Whyte, ma'am," said the maid. With a bound the girl sprang to her feet, and raised her hands to her dishevelled hair. " I have kept you an unconscionable time," she said, with a nervous laugh, "and no doubt you are longing to get home. It was awfully good of you to come in!" The young woman had flushed as though some one had struck her. " Yes," she said quietly, " it is time I was at home. Good-night." Before she had reached the threshold, however, the uncomfortable sense of her own responsibility came back upon her. " Where is your husband ? " she said earnestly, laying her hand on her companion's arm. "Who is this man ?" But the tide had turned. The girl looked annoyed and nonplussed for a moment, then broke into a laugh. " Come in, Colonel ! " she cried. " Here is a 94 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. young lady who is anxious to make your acquaint- ance." Without another word or glance the little woman slipped past the waiting figure in the hall, and made her way out into the night. III. "WELL, this is a change from smoky London lodgings ! " The plain young woman stood with a friend at the open window of the hotel. A heavy shower had fallen in the afternoon, but now the sun was shining genially, and the subtle, invigorating" fragrance of the heather was borne in from the Yorkshire moors. "We have earned our holiday honestly, haven't we ? and we mean to make the most of it. Three whole weeks ! For three weeks we are going to bask on the heather, and read Heine, and look up at the blue sky: we will forget that we ever attended a woman's suffrage meeting, or interviewed a celebri- ty, or described what royalty wore. We have left our moral responsibilities behind, too. It is a duty, a positive duty, to cultivate the sentiments and the emotions. I hope there will be some pretty gowns at dinner. I hope there will be lots of courses lots daintily served ! We are grand ladies, Rita, you and I for three weeks ! and we know how things ought to be done. Do you think we can afford half a bot- tle of Me"doc?" The plain face looked older than at Llandudno ; A GREAT GULF. 95 but the lines that took from its fresh youthfulness were genial, friendly lines, such as endear a face to those who know it. " Change your gown, dear girl, and don't chatter. The gong will sound in ten minutes." " Sadly beneath the dignity of a grand lady, isn't it, to dress in ten minutes ? Heigho ! " She slipped on an old-fashioned black silk, and went to explore the possibilities of the reading-room before going down-stairs. Two ladies were sitting there in earnest conver- sation. They lowered their voices slightly when the plain young woman entered ; but, as she stood by the window, newspaper in hand, she could hear every word. " all her life men have treated her better than she deserves. Her husband actually offered to take her back; but when she refused, of course he insti- tuted proceedings for divorce. The action was quite undefended, and, as soon as it was over, Colonel Whyte married her." The plain young woman grasped her newspaper more tightly, and turned her back upon the speaker. " It was a great surprise to every one, for so- cially she was very much beneath him, and of course they were cut by all the nice people. I am told she was a mere adventuress ! " "American, was not she ?" " Yes, but I believe she left America when quite a girl. She prides herself on being cosmopolitan. Cosmopolitan, forsooth ! " " And is she still as fascinating as ever ?" 9 6 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. " When I saw her drive up to the door on Satur- day afternoon, I thought she was handsomer than at the time of her marriage. She has a better colour I don't think it is rouge and I never saw such eyes simply lustrous! But tvhen she comes near " the speaker nodded significantly. " Her age will soon begin to show, I can assure you ! " Very eagerly the plain young woman scanned the faces assembled at table d'hote, but without find- ing the one she sought. Five years must have made a change, no doubt ; but even when all allowance was made for that, there was no woman present who could by any possibility be the cidevant beautiful girl. Dinner was more than half over when the door opened, and a lady and gentleman were ushered up to a small table in the window. Ah, there was no doubt about it now! The plain young woman would have known that face again anywhere. And it was more beautiful than ever! transpar- ent, pensive, etherealized. Poor soul, she must have suffered ! Was it more beautiful ? A sudden turn of the head had brought into startling relief the hollow in the oval of the cheek ; and was it not too transpar- ent ? was the flush deepening as the evening went on not almost that of hectic ? Scarcely a word was passing between the two in the window. The gentleman's manner was uni- formly courteous ; but it would have been hard to say which face bore more evident marks of ennui, of disillusion. A GREAT GULF. 97 The plain young woman gazed as if fascinated, only responding absently now and then to the re- marks of her companion. At last the beautiful head turned, the wonderful eyes looked straight across to where she sat. It was a mere glance at first, then a puzzled look, and then a showy lorg- nette was raised for a deliberate stare. It dropped again presently, and its owner made no sign of recognition. " It would have been strange if she had known me again or cared to know me ! " mused the young woman, as she rose to leave the table. " Is this the curtain at last, I wonder, or only another drop ? " Some minutes later the chamber-maid knocked at her door with a visiting-card. A few lines were scrawled on the back " Do come to my room for a few minutes. My husband has just gone out. No. 8, ist floor." No. 8 was a fine room, and its occupant lay stretched on a chaise longue in the oriel window. "Come along!" she said rather wearily, but with the old charming smile. " How odd that we should meet again ! I can't think how I recognized you. Sit down. That is rather a comfortable chair." " I am afraid you are not very well." " Who could be well in this hateful place ? The sharp air makes me cough incessantly. What ever induced you to come ? And yet I don't know. These cold, grey moors are admirably in keeping with your philosophy. I wonder," she looked up 9 8 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. with an arch smile " I wonder if you are still ' try- ing to be good'?" The young woman walked to the window and looked out on the daffodil sky and rich purple heather. " Cold, grey ! " she said. " Why, it is all blaz- ing with colour! " "And you know the Riviera! It seems to me yo.u carry your own world about with you, and see things that are invisible to ordinary mortals. What was it Jack was quoting last night ? ' Oh, the dreary, dreary moorland ! ' And these long evenings depress me unspeakably. If you had only heard the church bells yesterday ! I thought they would drive me mad before they stopped. I want sunshine real sunshine and roses and blue water ! I am making my husband take me away the first thing to-morrow; and he has gone out now to see if there is nothing going on that would pass away the time for an hour or two." She was silent for a few moments, and then re- sumed with a light sneer that only half concealed her nervousness. " You know all about me, I pre- sume ? I have become quite a celebrity since we met." " Yes, I heard that you had married Colonel Whyte." " Saintly of him, wasn't it ? All the good women said so. Ugh, how I hate good women ! " " Do you know," said the plain young woman almost tenderly, " I don't think you should go out A GREAT GULF. 99 to-night. If your husband goes I will come and read you something amusing. You are wearing yourself out." A curious look of fear came into the beautiful eyes a look that was only made the more pathetic by the laugh which hastened to hide it. "You think I am a gone case, do you? How long do you give me ? Two years ? One ? Six months?" " Don't talk nonsense ! " said the other sharply. "You are knocking yourself to pieces at present. Take a little ordinary care, and you will be' all right." A fit of coughing was the only answer. Hastily the beautiful woman lifted her handkerchief to her lips, and in another moment its snowy folds were stained with a crimson drop. " Do you see that ? " she said quickly. " Yes, and I have often seen it before in people who are well and strong now. It means that you must rest, and take care of yourself, and get strong." " No, no, no ! " The answer came like the clang of a passing-bell. " No need to tell me what it means! I have seen it all in my mother. I am getting thin " she slipped the rings from her long white fingers "and my neck But you never saw my neck in the old days ! " she interposed re- gretfully. " I had a dark velvet gown but there ! that's past." There was dead silence in the room for a few moments, then, " You could have saved me if you had wished," she said. " Saved you ? " I00 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. "Oh, not from this! This is nothing. Do you remember that night on the beach ? I was screwing up my courage to go and speak to that man ; but I looked at you, and saw you did not believe a word of it." " Oh ! " cried the little woman, with a sharp cry as of physical pain. " Surely I never said that ? " " No, you did not say it ; but you looked as if you had found something better, don't you know ? And your something better was too good for me." "But, dear child, it is not too late. If I were you " she threw back her head " I would make a fresh start now this very minute ! " The other nodded slowly. "I believe you would, even if you were dying," she said. " Oh, I know you have got hold of some thread in life, something that is worth having; but you don't seem able to put it into words much. Well, well, it doesn't matter ! I don't suppose my soul was worth saving and, I daresay, it was all bunkum after all. When you come to think of it, nobody ever has come back. Is that you, Jack ? Come in ! Let me introduce you to my friend " She broke off with a laugh less musical than of old. " I declare I don't even know your name ! Never mind ; we are old friends all the same, I assure you. Well, what luck ? " The newcomer seated himself with a sigh of resig- nation, and looked at his watch. " There is a revival meeting," he said, " in the conventicle down the way, A GREAT GULF. IO i and a performance of ' Johnny's Mamma ' in the Town Hall." The beautiful lips pouted peevishly. " ' Johnny's Mamma ' ! I've seen it a hundred times. Never mind ! It will help to pass the time. Good-bye, Miss Smith ? I might have known it was Smith ! Come along, Jack. We shall be awfully bored, but we'll show the folks a Parisian bonnet for once in their lives ! " THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY. Mein Kind, wir waren Kinder, Zwei Kinder, klein und froh. Vorbei sind die Kinderspiele, Und Alles rollt vorbei. HEINE. I. SHE was as winsome a little lady as heart could wish, and I don't suppose she ever looked sweeter than she did that autumn night in the gloaming, when all the brilliant colours of the sunset shone faintly back from her fresh white frock. She had climbed half-way up the great wooden gate of the carriage-drive, so that her dimpled elbows could rest on the top. The smooth beech hedge swept round behind her, throwing its cool green tints into the folds of her baby skirt ; and on the other side of the drive, the silver-grey pods of an old laburnum dangled caressingly above her dainty head. And well they might; for the bat- tered sun-bonnet had fallen back, and the fluffy red- gold curls were blown about a face that reminded one of the budding moss-roses a few yards off. " Happy laburnum ! " I had said one day when I 102 THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY. 103 found her thus for the old gate was a favourite watch-tower, and a small worn patch on the paint of the centre bar bore witness to the frequent pres- sure of her baby feet " happy laburnum ! When you grow a little taller, he'll be able to kiss you. That's what all the other old trees are gossiping and laughing about. Do you hear ? " Her face grew very solemn for a moment, and then she broke into a scornful little laugh. "Why, that's the wind!" she said contemptu- ously. "You talk like the fairy-books." " And of course you don't believe them ? " She shook her head half regretfully. " I haven't believed them since I was oh, such a wee little girl. I haven't believed them since " " Since when ?" " Since I saw Auntie putting the things in my stocking." "You ought to have been asleep!" I said indig- nantly, for I had very definite ideas as to how a well-organized child ought to behave in the great affairs of life. " I lay awake on purpose," she said placidly ; "but of course I b'etended to be asleep, or Auntie would have gone away again." She sighed. " I did so dreadfully want it all to be true Santa Claus, I mean but it was no use if it wasn't real." " Child of the age ! " I exclaimed with a smile and a sigh. " No use at all, of course. Well, ta-ta ! Poor old laburnum! You'll hold up your head like 104 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. a man if you take my advice. There's an awful snubbing in store for you if you don't." The little lady nearly toppled off her perch in the effort to see the presumptuous spray above her head. " Horrid old thing ! " she said indignantly. " Do you know it's poisonous? Nursie found me eating green peas in the garden one day, and she said if I ate one single laburnum seed by mistake I'd die ? " Her blue eyes grew round with horror as she approached this climax ; but that expression soon gave way to an apologetic little smile. " Of course Nursie's an old silly," she said with the air of a mature philosopher who has reconciled himself to the conviction that his fellow-countrymen are " maistly fules." " I believe she thinks I'm a baby still." This with a pregnant side-glance at me. "As if pea-pods grew on trees, and were skinny and knubbly like that!" But here I am maundering on with my own recollections of the little lady, when I only wanted to tell the tale of the fairing she got from Duncairn. Poor little lady ! I heard her try to tell the story herself the other day, in the gay, bright world that has just claimed her as its own ; and I loved her none the less when the eager cultured voice broke down in a childlike sob. Yes, it was her watch-tower, that great wooden gate, the coign of vantage from which she looked out with longing eyes on the forbidden world. Not much of a world, I admit, if it had not been forbid- THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY. 105 den ! Only a dusty private road, separated from the turnip-field beyond by a great uneven bank, topped by scraggy ash-trees, and starred over with blue- eyed speedwells and yellow tormentilla. Behind her lay the territory in which she was free to roam at will, one of those rare old gardens, the very memory of which is a legacy of peace and rest to many a weary soul. A garden where the spacious strawberry-bed was bounded by old world roses ; where an occasional hedge of sweet-peas broke the monotony of kail and brocoli ; where, even in the show-beds under the sitting-room windows, dear old flowers that most of us have not seen since childhood straggled at random over the warm brown earth, and followed their own wild will. But at this stage of her development my lady was pleased to consider that she had exhausted the possibilities of the garden. True, she had woven countless daisy-chains on the dear old lawn, where nobody presumed to think the daisies out of place; she had pinched her fingers with the passive Snap- dragon, and made him act the part of whale in the wondrous drama of Jonah; she and her dolls had made believe to dine on " rice and curry " from the marguerites, and on " mince " from the luxuriant tufts of red sorrel, which to be sure had no business at all in the cabbage-bed ; she had captured a few unhappy caterpillars, in order to determine for her- self whether the story of their turning into butter- flies must not be relegated to the despised region of fairy tales, but had wisely decided on the third day that life was too short for an experiment so pro- I0 6 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. longed ; she had even made attar of roses, with liberal help from the tarred old water-butt beside the tool-shed, and had succeeded in persuading her- self for nearly two days that the gruesome compound was going to prove a success ; she had But no, I cannot honestly maintain that she had exhausted the true inwardness of the strawberry-bed. Such de- lights, however, are apt to pall, even at the mature age of six, and in my little lady's case their enjoy- ment was hedged in by divers restrictions which prevented their being by any means always avail- able. So she stood on the gate, looking out on the for- bidden world as many a captive maid has done be- fore her a forlorn little beauty that only a knight with a heart of stone could resist. A long, long time passed nearly five minutes perhaps and then an approaching figure came in sight, surely the quaintest little knight you ever beheld! He was shuffling along in hob-nailed shoes a size too big for him, and he wore a shabby corduroy suit several sizes too small. The elbows and baggy knees were worn quite threadbare, and manifold patches of varying date covered the regions of maxi- mum wear and tear. And yet it had a beauty of its own, that poor old suit. It had weathered sun and rain, and outdoor play and toil, till bounteous Mother Nature had almost come to look on it as one of her children, and had warmed its shabby surface into something not unlike the mellow tints with which she clothes the walls and tree-trunks. THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY. 107 But, alas ! " the trail of the serpent is over it all ; " and, even if he had been a born painter, I fear the little knight was too much a man of the world to be consoled by his own artistic value. He knew well how great a gwlf separated him socially from the little lady, for although a sort of tacit exception was made in his own particular case, on the ground that he was a "cannie laddie," he was aware that a well-defined rule forbade her speaking to the cot- tar-children unless some responsible person was at hand. He saw her now, of course, the moment he came in sight of the gate; but, boylike, he pretended not to see her, while at the same time he clutched his old cap with an awkward gesture that might easily have been taken for an accident. From which you may guess that, although he was only a common Scotch laddie, this little knight of mine, he was rich in the possession of a good mother with old-fashioned ideas on the subject of "mainners." The little lady grasped the top bar of the gate with her chubby, sunburnt hands, and, bending low over it to send her voice across the road, she called in a mysterious whisper "San-dy!" The boy turned his head, smiled somewhat sheep- ishly, and continued his shuffling gait. "Sandy!" she called imperiously. No man on earth could have resisted that, not even a man of nine ; so he crossed the road rather doubtfully, and lifted an honest, brown Scotch face, framed with straight fair hair. It was not at all a Io g FELLOW TRAVELLERS. remarkable face; only serious, " cannie " (as the cottar-folk said), with sweet gentle curves about the firm little mouth. " Cut me a switch ! " said the little queen. Oh, Rosie, Rosie, did you even then read the other sex by instinct ? How could you possibly know Sandy's weak point, the straight road to his heart ? How could you know that only the day be- fore he had found a knife by the roadside? Old and rusty, it is true, and with the large blade broken across ; but an honest knife still, and one that re- sponded bravely to a long course at the grind- stone. Sandy's grave little face shone like a sunbeam, and, darting across the road, he hastily examined the undergrowth of the nearest ash, in search of a suitable switch. He chose a royal one at length, and the brave knife was already at work on it as he crossed the road again to her side. " No, no, no ! " she cried, with an impatient little stamp of her foot. "Don't peel the skin off; you'll make it sticky ! And let the leaves alone, please," she continued more gently, mollified by his instant obedience. "I'll pull them off for myself." He handed up the switch, and wiped the trusty blade on his sleeve rather ostentatiously, hoping she would take notice of it ; but my lady's cleverness, after all, had its limitations. "They're gey teuch," he said deprecatingly, after a pause, pointing to the switch in her hand. " It's ill gethrin' them withoot a knife." But the lady was examining the points of the THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY. ICQ switch with a critical eye, and did not deign to notice his treasure at all. So poor little Sandy was reduced to a direct attack. "It's an auld ane," he said humbly, holding it up to .her, "an' no by-ordinar bonny; but it's a braw ane to cut ! " She looked at it with fastidious eyes. " It's very ugly," she said candidly. " You should see my Auntie's knife ! It's a teeny-weeny thing the colour of bluey-white milk." He did not answer immediately. He was too much of a philosopher not to have discovered before now that women cannot be expected to look at things from a man's point of view. " Ay," he said slowly at last, " I've nae doobt it's bonny; but I wadna wunner if she'd no be muckle pleased gin she catched ye cuttin' switches wi't! " This argument was irrefutable, and Sandy was emboldened to proceed. f " Noo mines," he said, "is no fit for the like o' her; but it's unco stoot ; in fac'" why not clinch the argument at once? "it's like my faither's ! " But the little lady was once more absorbed in her switch. " There ! " she said at last, holding it up in well-pruned elegance. " Next time Nursie takes me to see the pigs, I'll switch the flies off their backs ! Sandy, mustn't it be dreadful to be a pig? " Sandy gazed open-mouthed. His imagination was not equal to the strain she put upon it. " They're so hidjus," she went on, " that's the first IIO FELLOW TRAVELLERS. thing; and then they're always in a mess, that's the second thing ; and then I'm quite sure their tails are no use at all ! " Sandy listened in respectful silence to this lecture on Natural History. " It would have been so easy for God," she con- tinued, " even if He wanted to make them ugly, to give them proper tails. Look how the horses can swish the flies off ! And they don't need to half so badly with their thick coats. I think its dreadful ; and then on hot days Ugh ! " Sandy ventured humbly on a practical view of the case, even although it was not strictly relevant. " My Mither says whiles she disna ken what we'd dae, wantin' oor pig. Mony's the time my Faither himsel' hasna a bite o' butcher-meat frae Sawbath to Sawbath ! " This was beneath contempt. " Swing me, Sandy ! " said her ladyship serenely, moving like a crab to the end of the gate where she would get the benefit of the maximum motion. Sandy looked round doubtfully. " I doobt she'd no be pleased gin she catched us at it." " Who ? " asked the child frowning. " Auntie has gone away; she won't be back till to-morrow night. Nursie is at supper." " An' she's left ye here yer lane ? " " Oh no ! Sarah is taking care of me; but she met a gentleman she knew, and I think she's giv- ing him some raspberries. You mustn't tell ! Sarah wouldn't be pleased if Auntie was to hear of it. She's letting me stay up an extra half-hour, but she THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY. IIT made me promise not to go beyond the garden. I suppose," she added ruefully, "you can go to the farm as often as ever you like ? " He shook his head. "It's fower ere I get hame frae the schule; an' then I hae my lessons to get, an' odd jobs to dae for my Mither." " It can't be nice to go to school and get the tawse," she said meditatively; "but then there are such lots of things you can do ! You can walk along the dykes, and wade in the burn, and climb the straw-sou, and ride in the corn-carts oh, Sandy, it must be fine to be a boy ! " "Woa, Snowflake!" Sandy looked up shyly, breathless with the exertion of pushing the heavy gate. " I'm no carin' sae muckleaboot thae things," he said, with a little air of superiority, " but I'm gaun to the Fair the morn ! " It was well that the fiery steed had checked its pace, for the lady nearly lost her balance in the ex- citement of the moment. "Sandy! No! " she exclaimed. He nodded. " Oh, Sandy, you lucky, lucky boy ! I do want so dreadfully to go to the fair ! I heard the servants speaking about it ever so long ago, and I begged and begged Auntie to take me. But she only laughed, and said it wasn't a place for little girls. Oh, why didn't God make me a boy ! " Sandy racked his brains, as many a wiser man has done before him, to find some suitable words of con- solation, but in vain. II2 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. "Kirsty that's my big sister" he said at length " her that's in the dairy the noo, is seekin' a place ; so she maun gang to the hirin', an' my Mither maun gang wi' her; an' Faither says there'll be room i' the cairt for me." " What a nice father you must have, Sandy ! Do you think I don't s'pose there'd be room in the cart for me too ? " Sandy shuffled uneasily from one foot to the other before he ventured to look up. " There wad that! " he said emphatically, measur- ing the tiny figure with his kind, honest eyes. " But oor cairt's no the place for the like o' you. What'd yer Auntie say, missy ?" She tossed the curls out of her eyes. "Auntie's not here, so I can't ask her," she said loftily. " Never mind. I dessay your father wouldn't take me." "I'm sure he'd be prood," cried poor Sandy; " but he'd no daur. He says there'll no be a horse in its stable the morn, nor a cairt in its shed. A'body '11 be on the road, an' a'body 'ud be speirin' at him hoo he cam' by the braw wee leddy. An' yer Auntie Na, na, Missy. It'll no dae. Ye maun e'en pit yer mind past it. Haud on to the yett, an' i'll gie ye anither swee." But the joys of the " swee " had paled like a star in sunshine. Carefully climbing down from the gate, the lady put her knuckles in her eyes, and sobbed as if her heart would break. Not noisily : Sandy could have borne it better if she had " howled like the wee lassies at the schule " : THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY. 1*3 but this silent tearful misery was almost more than he could bear. Being only a man, he did not re- flect that his heartbroken lady had not the smallest desire to summon Sarah and the "gentleman " from the raspberry bed. So he held his cap in both his hands, and moved awkwardly from one foot to the other, repeating monotonously at intervals, " I wadna greet if I was you, Missy, I wadna greet." He thought it very brutal of Auntie to be so obdurate, and in the bottom of his heart he longed to run away ; but of course, for a true knight, such a course was impos- sible. At last the lady dried her eyes with the air of one who makes a mighty resolution. " I know what I'll do ! " she said. " Nobody '11 take me to the Fair, so I'll go myself. /'// walk ! " " Hoot awa', Missy ! " cried Sandy, glancing un- consciously at her dainty shoes. " It's juist no' po'sible. Ye cudna dae't. It's sax mile guid sax mile an' a bittock ! " " I don't care," she said resolutely, though for a moment she was staggered. " I've got a big strong pair of boots at home, and I'm sure I've walked six miles often and often with Nursie. She keeps me out some days for hours and hours till I'm so " " Tired," she was going to say, but decided that a more advisable word might be found under the circumstances. Failing to think of one at the mo- ment, she continued irrelevantly, 114 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. "I'm just as strong as strong! Everybody knows I can walk far better than Auntie ! " " But, Missy," urged scandalized Sandy, " ye'll no get. It's no to be expeckit. Yer Auntie's awa, an' yer nurse that's left in chairge o' ye " " Nursie won't know anything about it," she said serenely. " Now that I'm a big girl, she sleeps in the little room off mine, and I'm awake hours and hours before she is. Oh, Sandy, how she does snore ! I don't believe she'd hear me a bit if I got up early, and I'm sure I could dress myself for once. I can't get out at the frontdoor," she continued reflectively, " for the big key is too heavy to turn ; but the back- door is unlocked when the dairymaid gets up, and I'm sure I could slip out without anybody see- ing me. " Sandy, dear ! " She drew him down towards her with a pretty caressing gesture. " Let you'n me go to the fair together ! I'll meet you here quite, quite early, before anybody is up, and we'll have such a good time. Please! Please! You'n me, Sandy ! " " But they'll miss ye, my wee lassie," he said gently ; " an', afore we was halfw'y there, a'body 'd be seekin' ye, an' there'd be an awfu' stramash! " " Not if we started soon enough," she answered pouting. " Don't you see ? I just want a wee little peep of the music and dancing, and the merry-go- rounds, and the ladies in spangles. I don't care how soon they bring me away after that, and I'm sure I don't care if they keep me on bread and milk for a week ! " THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY. njj (Brava, little lady ! " Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife ! To all the sensual world proclaim, One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name ! ") "But of course," she went on cruelly, "you want to go in the cart." "It's no that I'm mindin' sae muckle aboot the cairt," he said honestly, "but I nae ken what I'm to say to my faither. I'm loath to lee to him at ony time ; an' he'd be sweer to persuade that I was wantin' the walk, for he kens fine I'm aye keen about the ridin'." There was a long pause before he continued in a very low voice, " An' I was to get haudin' the reins mysel'." Oh, selfish little lady ! Can't you retire grace- fully even now ? "You could always come back in the cart," she said. " But never mind ; I'll go by myself. You won't tell ? " she demanded with sudden eager- ness. Sandy hesitated. " Na," he said at last, " I'll no tell ; an' gin ye gang ye'll no gang yer lane nayther, Missy. I'll watch for ye here aboot sax the morn. It's no like ye'll be wauken ; but if so be as ye're aye mindit to gang we'll gang thegither. Guid nicht ! " FELLOW TRAVELLERS. II. FOR the first time in his life, with the exception of one awful week when he had his first and only experience of " the toothache," Sandy lay awake that night for half an hour after he went to bed. True, as he had said, the chances were all in favour of the lady oversleeping herself ; a healthy child, accus- tomed to breakfast at eight, was not likely to wake very early ; still, there was an amount of uncertainty about the whole adventure which sent cold shivers down the little lad's spine. However he was big and strong for his years, and quite able to take care of the bonny bit thing till the people began to get drunk ; and, of course, her friends would find her long before that. When they did find her the very thought made him brace his muscles for a blow of course there would be an "awfu' stramash," as he had told her, and then he must simply take the whip- ping and be done with it. He would never be allowed to speak to the little lady again, that was certain. Everybody would say he had presumed on the favour " Auntie " had shown him, and - here Sandy buried his face in the pillow, and, being a sensible boy, soon fell asleep. It was no hard task for him to wake at sunrise. He was old, as well as big, for his years, and he often rose early to help his mother with her " chores," " sairwrocht " as she was with household cares and farm-labour combined. So five o'clock found him out in the road, with THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY. ujr his flaxen head under the pump. He tried to be very quiet, but before he was fully equipped in his " Sawbath claes" his father turned uneasily in the old box-bed. " What's ta'en ye, Sandy ? " he asked sleep- ily. "Ye're sune up. It's no lang chappit five." "Ay," said Sandy. "I'll pit on the fire for my Mither. She'll be thrang the day." (He blushed deeply at his own wickedness as he said this.) " It's a bonny day. I was thinkin' I'd juist step on, an' see if the berries are ripe in the den, I daursay ye'll catch me up." His heart nearly stood still with fright ; but, for- tunately for him, his father was too much of an epicure to rouse himself unnecessarily from that de- licious state of physical relaxation which is half sleep and half waking. An hour or two later, how- ever, the farm-labourer waxed eloquent on the sub- ject to his wife. " There's nae pleesurin' thae laddies ava," he said. " It's nobbut twa-three days sin naethin' wad please him but drivin' the cairt, an' here he is awa on his feet ! " " Weel, there's no muckle hairm i' that," said the mother, who always kept a particularly warm corner in her heart for her " cannie, mindfu' laddie." " Nae doobt he's awa wi' some o' the ither laddies. He's gey chief wi' Ritchie's An'ra the noo, an' he was to foot it. I'm houpin' he's ta'en a bit cake in's pooch. It's a gey lang road." "Hoot, they'll juist be playin' theirsels, I'se war- jjg FELLOW TRAVELLERS. ran'. They'll no win faur I wadna wunner but An'ra's lippenin' to a lift frae hiz." Meanwhile Sandy had mounted the hill towards the " muckle hoose " in a state of no small perturba- tion. No doubt she was sound asleep, the little lady unconscious alike of nurse's snoring and of all the wild dreams of the night before. Sandy had always been a quiet, steady laddie ; but even he was well aware of the blighting effect of the morning light on plans that had seemed quite feasible at bedtime. Of course she wouldn't be there : the very idea was ridiculous; and, as he came to this conclusion, he felt an odd little throb of disappointment in the midst of his mighty relief. Could it be possible ? Yes, there she was ! limp- ing along with a face as white as a snowdrop, cloak and bonnet all awry, and with one tiny boot and sock clutched almost convulsively in her chubby hand. " Oh, Sandy, dear Sandy ! " she said, looking up with two large tears just ready to escape from her long eyelashes. " I have been so frightened ! Nursie stopped snoring, and I was so afraid she'd wake up ! I left my socks and boots to the last, because I thought if there wasn't time I could go bare-footed at first; but it does hurt so, Sandy! I never thought a common road could be so prickly. And I couldn't find the button-hook anywhere. Do you think you'll be able to fasten them without ? I've got one boot on, you see ; but it isn't but- toned." THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY. IICj " That will I ! " said Sandy bravely, concealing his doubts like a man. " But we'll no bide for that the noo, Missy. Juist pu't on onyw'y, till we get bye thae cottar-hooses." So, hand in hand, they started on their moment- ous journey, the knight and the lady. They were very silent at first, and an occasional sobbing sigh bore witness to the terrors the lady had come through ; but, after all, Nature is a kind mother to the little ones. It was a flat, agricultural landscape through which they passed, and you or I might have longed for mountain and wood to break its dreary monotony ; but the children were more than con- tent. The unclouded sun overhead, the single row of scraggy trees by the roadside, the rippling burn, and the occasional late dog-roses, were enough to fill their tiny cups, without their knowing how or why. So they gathered flowers, and cut switches, and chased the "flying bluebells," as Rosie called the azure-tinted butterflies, and enjoyed their common birthright to the full. Breakfast, of course, was quite a serious function. Sandy had secured a bit of oatcake, and Rosie had saved a biscuit from her supper the night before. These dainties were shared with the microscopic exactness of which only children are capable, and were followed by a raw turnip, together with a few unripe bramble-berries from the hedge, and some handfuls of water from the burn. Was not that something like a breakfast ! And all the time the sweet " caller " air caressed their heated brows, and swept away both memory I2 Q FELLOW TRAVELLERS. and forecast ; so you see for at least one sunny morning the knight and the lady knew what it was to live. To be sure no pleasure is wholly without alloy, and the knight had a very bad ten minutes when he tried to button the lady's boots. It really was the very hardest bit of work he had ever attempted, and the beads of perspiration stood on his puckered fore- head before he had accomplished half of his task. Fortunately the lady was graciously pleased to let the matter rest there ; and, when the knight had washed his bruised red finger-tips in the burn, they continued their way. They must have covered fully a third of the ground when Sandy sighed deeply. " I'll be back at the schule the morn," he said. "I've begun lessons too," said she. "What do they teach you at school, Sandy ? " "Oh, juist a'thing," he replied with unconscious satire " readin', an' writin', an' coontin' " " I've got to subtraction," said my lady proudly. " Have ye though ? Weel I niver ! " "How far have you got?" she pursued "Weel," said he unwillingly, "I'm a laddie, ye ken, an' a muckle sicht aulder than ye, Missy. I'm at compoon' long diveesion." This was crushing ! " What's that ? " asked the lady faintly. " Weel," said Sandy, scratching his head in great perplexity, " diveesion is a wee thing like subtrawc- tion, ye ken, juist as multiplication is maist the same thing as addeetion only different," he added con- THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY. I2 i scientiously. " But there, what am I bletherin' aboot ? Ye've no gotten the length o' multiplication yet." " I know all about the multiplication table," said my lady severely; "at least," she added as an after- thought, " I've got as far as two times nine." "Weel to be sure! It's juist wunnerfu' ! An" what'll twa times nine be, Missy ? " He only wanted to help her to show off, but she looked at him as though he had been convicted of cheating at cards. " That's not fair ! " she said coldly. " Is't no ? Than we'll drap it. I hadna tellt ye what 'compoon*' means." " Tell me," she said, still without effusion. " Weel, ye see, it's like this. In simple diveesion or subtrawction ye juist pit doon the feegures on yer sclate, three, fower, sax, aucht, or whativer it may be. But in compoori subtrawction or diveesion ye ken what it is ye're dealin' wi', an' ye pit doon the like o' money. Tak' fowerpence frae saxpence, or whativer it is that's in the buik." He was rather proud of himself for finding so simple an example. " Oh, I'd like that ! " cried the lady, forgetting her grievance in a moment. " I'll make Auntie teach me compound what was it? compound long division to-morrow." Sandy was sorely tempted to let this remark pass unchallenged, but he was too conscientious for that. " I doobt that'll no dae, Missy," he said, with the air of a man who will go to the stake for his convic- I2 2 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. tions. " Ye maun e'en gang through wi' the simples, an' than commence wi' compoon' addeetion." The lady thought it was time to change the sub- ject, and she did so like a true conversationalist, with no unseemly wrench. " Do you know how much I've got to spend at the fair, Sandy ? " she said. " A shilling and six- pence penny ! " And she produced the three coins in triumph. " My word ! " "How much have you got, Sandy?" "Weel," said he, looking rather unhappy, "I'm no mindit to spen' ower muckle, for I'm savin' up to buy a horse." " A horse ! " "Ay. My faither thinks I'll manage it by the time I'm twinty. ' Mony a pickle mak's a mickle," he says. I've sax poun' the noo, an' maybe a wee thing mair. It's maistly gey slaw wark coontin' the bawbees, but I got a graun' lift when my graunfaith- er deed. He left me five pun'." " Oh, Sandy, how splendid ! " cried the lady, moved to genuine enthusiasm. " A real big horse, instead of the stupid old gate. Will he be like Snow- flake?" " Ay," said the boy, with the air of a connoisseur, such as his father might have assumed on tasting a sample of wheat, " no unlike Snowflake, but no sae langnebbit, an' a wee thing braider i' the hench." "And will you give me a ride, Sandy, as you did on the gate last night ? You called the gate Snow- flake, you know." THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY. I2 3 The boy's face fell. They had become such ex- cellent friends in the last hour. "Ye maunna forget, Missy," he said, "I'm no to get it ere I'm twinty, an' I doobt ye'll no be carin' muckle aboot a ride than l t " There was something irresistible in this argument, and the lady's face fell too. "But, Sandy," she said shyly, "perhaps by the time you're twenty, you'll be a gentle- man ! " " Na, na," he said with honest Scotch pride, " I'm no wantin' to be a gentleman. I'd suner be like my Faither, an' mak' the finest furrow an' the straucht- est stack i' the hail countra-side! " Alas, for the cloud no bigger than a man's hand ! There could be no doubt at all that a shadow had fallen upon the tiny " twosome," and now the shadow began to darken. "D'ye no hear wheels?" said Sandy suddenly, stopping short, and putting down his ear to listen. " Ay, it's a gig ! Gang a wee thing forrit, Missy, in front o' me, an' I daursay they'll no tak' muckle heed o' ye. Carry this bit switch ower yer shouther, an" pu' yer bannet weel forrit. Ye're in an awfu' mess o' dust that's ae guid thing an' no vera like yersel'." In a few minutes the gig rattled past, and, for- tunately, its occupants took no apparent notice of the two little travellers. " It's a man an' a wife," said Sandy presently, " but I dinna ken wha. I dauredna lift my een till they were bye. Nae doobt the gig's been loaned 9 124 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. them, an' it's ill kennin' folk frae the luik o' their backs on Fair day ! " " Wha's yon ? " remarked the driver of the gig to his wife, when they were past. " I'm no that sure. Tbe laddie's like Tamson's Sandy, but I nae ken wha the wee lassie can be. She disna favour the Tamsons ava." The children drew a breath of relief, but before long a spring-cart came up, and this time a woman leaned over to speak. " Wha's yon ye've gotten wi' ye, Sandy ? " quoth she. "A lassie," said cautious Sandy. " I see fine it's a lassie, but what'n a lassie ? " Then poor Sandy, ^driven to desperation, was guilty of the one piece of unjustifiable rudeness of which I ever heard him accused such trite rude- ness, too, unrelieved by a single spark of originality. "Ask yer granny!" he said, with as bold an air as he could muster. A shout of laughter from the cart greeted this retort. Humour of the crudest type is allowed to pass muster on Fair day. But the baffled questioner did not join in the laugh. " My word ! " she exclaimed angrily. " He's no blate ! An' they say the Tamsons' Sandy is that canny an' fair-spoken. I niver ! " " Hoot, wumman, it's the Fair ! " said her hus- band soothingly, and so the matter dropped. Thus danger Number Two passed by, but al- though the little lady had held up gallantly hitherto, THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY. 125 there could be no doubt that her strength was be- ginning to flag. She denied vehemently that she was tired, and she still talked gaily of merry-go- rounds and "ladies with gold spanglies " ; but, as Sandy looked at her drooping dusty little figure, he began to feel quite sure of what he had feared all along that she would never reach the Fair at all. He was still looking at her, with a very pitiful feeling in his honest heart, when a great cloud of dust came up behind them, and, when it settled behold the figures of Mr. and Mrs. Thomson and the lady's nurse ! not to speak of poor old Snow- flake, patiently wondering why he had been lashed into such an unconscionable lather. At first it was impossible to distinguish anything in the violent altercation that ensued ; but at last the nurse succeeded in dismounting from the cart, and as is the way with nurses while an explana- tion is pending shook her little charge violently by the shoulder. " I wunner at ye ! " cried poor Sandy with trem- bling lips. " It wasna her blame a wee bit thing like yon ! " "An* ye're no feared to staun' there an' say it was your blame ! " shouted Sandy's father, white with rage, yet amazed, in the midst of his indigna- tion, that a lad who had never needed a thrashing in his life should have earned one so richly now. " There'll no be ony Fair for you, ma man. Ye'll gang straucht hame, an' change yer claes, an' when I come hame the nicht I'll pay ye! " I2 6 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. This was indeed an appalling threat ; for although Bill Thomson was a decent, well-doing, kindly man in the main, it was not to be expected of human nature that the night after the Fair should find him in a peculiarly conciliatory or reasonable frame of mind. Sandy turned as white as a sheet of paper ; but, selfish as my little lady was, this was more than she could bear. She shook off her nurse's hold in a moment, and, darting up with crimson face and clenched fists to the huge, passionate man, she stamped her tiny foot on the dusty road. " It's not his blame ! " she shouted, quivering with anger, and unconsciously making use of their own expression. " It's not his blame, and you know it ! It's my blame. He wanted to drive Snowflake. He didn't want to bring me a bit; and I made him, I made him, I made him ! I said I'd come alone, so he had to take care of me. And and and I made him promise not to tell so there ! If you whip him, or send him home, or say a single word to him, I'll " she gasped literally for breath " I'll KILL YOU ! " And, having thus delivered herself of all the points in the evidence, having even got safely through a most impressive peroration, counsel for the defence broke down in a torrent of tears. " Is that true, Sandy ? " said his mother, putting her arm round the trembling boy. Now Sandy had never lied to his mother in his life; and being, as I told you, only a common Scotch THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY. 127 laddie, and no gallant French gentleman being, moreover, much too young and inexperienced for a heavy role like that of knight in so trying a drama, he hid his face in his mother's shawl, and sobbed out a most unchivalrous " Ay ! " "Just to think," cried Nurse, still white with fright, " o' that hussy, Sarah, never lettin' on till we missed her that the bairns was together last night. I'll gie her a hearin' once I get hame ! " "Weel," said Sandy's mother cautiously, "I've nae doot ava that Sarah's gotten a fricht as weel's yersel' ! " But the hint was lost upon Nurse. " I'm that pleased," she said, " that I didna tele- graph to the missis. There's no need now for her to ken onything aboot it." " Hoot, wumman ! " said Mrs. Thomson. " Hon- esty's aye the best policy. Tak' my advice, an' mak' a clean breist o't the meenit she pits her fit ower the door. She'll be wantin' a word wi' wersels as weel, I'm thinking ! " Nurse had come on with' the Thomsons to save time, but had left word that the governess cart was to follow as soon as possible, so there was no diffi- culty about getting home. And so it was settled, with more immediate justice than we are accustomed to meet with in human affairs, that Sandy should go on to the Fair, as originally arranged, and that the lady should be conducted ignominiously home by her nurse. I think I need scarcely inform the reader who has followed her fortunes thus far, that, under these I2 8 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. trying circumstances, she conducted herself with due dignity, as a heroine should, flatly declining to ex- cuse or incriminate herself in any way till Auntie should arrive. III. THE poor little lady had sobbed herself to sleep that night, and Auntie and I were still sitting over the drawing-room fire, congratulating ourselves and thanking Heaven that the adventure had ended no worse. The fire had burned low, and we were talking of going to bed, when the door burst open, and our motherly old cook came in with a white, scared face. " If you please'm," she said, " they say wee Sandy at the cottar-hooses is deein', an' he's awfu' keen to see Miss Rosie." "Dying!" exclaimed Auntie. "What do you mean ? He was well enough this morning." " Ay, but he'd an awfu' accident at the Fair. He was on ane o' thae muckle swees, leanin' atower to speak to the laddies below, an' he fell. He was kin' o' stunned like at the first, but he's himsel' the noo ; only they say the doctor's feared his neck's broke." " And does the doctor think there is any immedi- ate danger ? " "Ay. He niver thocht the laddie'd live to get here, but the Mither, puir body, couldna rest till she got him hame; so they brocht him on a shutter. The doctor says it's no a case in which he'd like to THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY. 129 be unco sure ; but he's no expeckin' him to bide wi's till the morn." "Then of course Rosie must go at once," said Auntie hastily. " Tell Nurse to put on her warm dressing-gown, and wrap her up in a blanket. No, stay. I'll go myself. You'll come with us?" she said, turning to me. Poor Rosie was sadly scared and disconcerted at being wakened out of her first sleep. I doubt whether such a thing had ever happened to her in all her baby life before. It was the grieve who had brought the news, and now, as he lighted us down the dark road, Auntie tried to prepare her little niece for what she was to see. This was no easy task, for, beyond a general idea, picked up mainly from the servants, that God was responsible for most things, and might, or might not, be inclined to listen to human prayers, the child had received no religious training at all ; and the eclectic knowledge of Scripture, witnessed by her familiarity with the story of Jonah, had by no means been calculated to fan the flame of devo- tion. For Auntie was one of those people who be- lieve that only a mature intelligence should grapple with what she called "the problems of religion." The cottage consisted of a but and a ben, and we "went ben" at once, while the grieve prepared the family for our visit. We drew back in a moment when we found' the doctor in the sitting-room; but the house was so small that it was impossible not to hear every word he said, for he had brought with him his nephew, fresh from college. 130 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. " I don't see why you should suspect a cervical fracture, uncle," the young man was saying. " There is no paralysis, and his breathing is practically all right." " That's true, lad," said our dear old /Esculapius, whom a happy chance had brought to the spot a few minutes after the accident. " But I got a creak once that I didn't like, and I'm sure neither you nor me is wanting to get it again. Besides it's not for nothing that he's holding his head so stiff. I've got it now between sandbags, and I've told him to keep it steady (though that wouldn't have been much use if Nature hadn't been beforehand with me, as she mostly is). But we must make some better arrange- ment for the night, in case he falls asleep, puir lad- die ! I've told his mother it may come any minute, and if it comes it's like to be over before she knows." At this moment Mrs. Thomson entered the tiny passage in which we stood, and, after a vain con- vulsive effort to speak, beckoned to us to follow her. It is little to say that none of us will ever forget the sight that met our eyes as we entered the kitchen. By the smouldering embers of the fire sat the father, ill at ease in the unaccustomed "braws" donned for the fair, his whole attitude one of the uttermost dejection. The light .of a single tallow candle fell on the bed where the little patient was lying, strangely straight and stiff, but otherwise not half so changed as we had expected to find him. On one side his Mother stood by the head of the bed, looking at him Ah, how she did look ! Surely her THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY. ^ very soul was flowing into his ! and on the other side sat the young minister who had lately come to the parish, with one hand stretched out towards the boy, the other grasping a well-worn Bible. A curious fit of shyness seemed to come over the little lad as we entered the room. Unable to turn away his head, he laid one hand across his eyes, while with the other he groped stiffly about the counterpane. " I brocht ye a fairin', Missy," he said timidly. " Whaur is't, Mither ? " Half-blind with weeping, the poor woman put something into his hand, and he held it out to the little lady whom Auntie had placed on the foot of the bed. Surely half the pathos of death lies in the weird touches of comedy that cross his path to the very last. Solemnly Rosie held out her hand, and solemnly she took possession of a gingerbread man, and a bit of the crude red confection which is a staple commodity at the Fair. " It's naethin' by-ordinar," he said humbly, re- covering from his shyness, now that the longed-for ordeal was over. "No what I wad ha' likit ; but they wadna let me bide " Na," said his mother. " It was efter they had him on the shutter, and he'd begooed to come to hissel'; but the doctor had tellt me Naethin' wad please him but he maun get a fairin' for Missy. I'm sure I juist gruppit onythin' that cam' to my han'. I canna even richtly ca' to mind that I p'yed for't. It is a puir bit thing ! Ye maun e'en ex- cuse it." 132 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. "You dear little boy," said Auntie, kneeling down by the bed, and stroking the rough brown hand. " You shouldn't have spent your money on Rosie. She has lots of toys. When you get well " Here she broke down ; but now Rosie, who had been sitting half dazed, suddenly found voice, "And he didn't mean to spend his pennies, Auntie. He's saving up to buy a horse ! " " Na, na," said the boy hastily. " Hae they no tellt ye ? I'm no gaun to get better, Missy. The meenister says," he added, with a shy smile, "that he wadna wunner an they gied me a horse when I get there. He's been readin' me an awfu' bonny scnpter aboot the white horses. I'm no sae feared o' Heaven, an it's like yon." For just one moment the minister looked rather shamefacedly at Auntie. She was a beautiful woman, and he was very young, and they had had some wondrous discussions of late; but criticism was very far from Auntie's eyes just then. " I am sure you deserve a horse if you want one," she said, " you little hero ! " He pointed to the lady at the foot of the bed. " She was pluckier than me the day," he said simply. " I've been beat by a lassie." " That you haven't, darling ! Rosie has told me all about it, and I'm sure she is as sorry as I am for the trouble she got you into. If Rosie grows up to be half as brave and good as you are " Here Auntie broke down completely, and a troubled look came over the little face. "I was aye mindit to be guid to my Mither when THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY. 133 I was big. She's been sair owerwrocht, puir Mither ! But I'm thinkin' God maun ken fine that He hasna gied me the chaunce." The doctor had entered the room, but I don't think there was one of us who could have found speech to answer this, when Rosie's worldly little voice broke in upon the silence. " But you must get well, Sandy ; indeed you must ! I like you better than all the other boys Ronald and Harold and Hugh. They're so rough and selfish, and they won't have girls in their games. If you'll only get well, Sandy when you're big I'll I'll marry you, even if you're not a gentle- man ! " Did we laugh or cry ? Both I think ; but the little knight on the borderland took the situation very seriously. "Ye're unco guid, I'm sure, Missy," he said simply; "but ye're no for the like o' me. It's no that I couldna wark for ye. I could that ! But ye'd aye need a wumman body to dae for ye, and I'd no like to see ye wantin' the bonny bit things ye've been used to. Maybe," he went on, changing the subject with delicate tact, " the meenister wad read us yon bonny chapter again." And without opening his Bible the minister be- gan in a deep sympathetic voice, " ' And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse, and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns ; and he had a name 134 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. written, that no man knew but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood ; and his name is called the Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.' " Did he think the next words were too stern for so young a disciple ? I do not know, but after a moment's silence, he fell back upon the same allegory, as it issued from the lips of the proph- et, in whose mighty heart and brain it first took form. " ' And he said, Surely they are my people, children that will not lie ' " He paused again for a moment, and the poor mother broke in eagerly, " That's him, sir, that's Sandy ! It's as if it was wrote for him ! " And then the minister went on, " ' so he was their Saviour. In all their afflic- tion he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them : in his love and in his pity he redeemed them : and he bare them, and carried them all the days.' " The little lady listened with rapt attention, strain- ing her ears to catch every word ; and who knows what vague, grand image formed in her baby mind ? As for the little knight, he forgot his injury, and with a hasty, unconscious effort, turned to speak to the minister. In a moment he remembered, but it was too late. Even as he fell back, before he had time to guess that the summons had come, a change came over his brave little face. . . . I think his young visitor scarcely noticed the THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY. 135 change, for the doctor hastily signed to us to leave the room, and we went. Shivering with excitement we made our way up the dark avenue to the house. " Auntie," whispered the heathen little lady, forc- ing her head out of the blanket and gazing all around, like a chicken from under its mother's wing, " has the man on the white horse come to fetch him ? " Poor Auntie ! It would have taken a wondrously pure Agnosticism to stand the blast of a furnace like that. " I believe he has, darling," she said, clasping her treasure more tightly. " ' He shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom ' ! " An hour later, when the little lady was sound asleep once more, Auntie stopped on the stair, candle in hand ; and I saw she had been seized by one of those odd relapses into cynicism, with which her friends were so familiar. " I always knew Rosie was a witch," she said lightly, "but the amount of discrimination she has shown in the last thirty hours " Here the cynicism broke down, and the cynic made good her retreat. IV. IT was New Year's Day, and a party of bright young girls were gathered in Rosie's pretty boudoir waiting for afternoon tea. " Leap Year," said one of them, taking down a ,^6 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. calendar from the mantelpiece. " Now's your chance, all of you ! " And they jested as young girls will, to whom life (in the orthodox social sense) is a "joke that's just begun." " I wonder," said a dreamy voice, "whether any woman ever did avail herself of her privilege ? " " Of course ! " said Rosie calmly. A shout of indignation and surprise greeted this speech, for Rosie was far from being in the habit of giving away her own sex. "And, to hear her talk, you would think she knew something about it ! " laughed one. " I know this much about it, that I have done it myself ! " " You ! " " Proposed to a man ! " "Your first season, and the ball at your feet! " " Nonsense! " " Nevertheless it is true," said Rosie quietly. " I was six years old, and he was nine. He was dying, and I said, if he would get well, I'd marry him. I would have done it too," she went on, looking round her royally, " if he would have had me, though he was a farm-labourer's son ! His mother is one of my best friends to this day. I was a spoilt ill-mannered little minx ; and he I wish some of our fine gentlemen could learn manners from him ! No well- worn tricks ; none of the ' little way ' which we women are supposed to be quite unable to resist ; no surface veneer; only real chivalry and inborn fine breeding as deep as his brave little heart ! " So then of course they made her tell the story, as THE KNIGHT AND THE LADY. 137 I have tried to tell it to you. There was dead silence when she finished. She had risen towards the end, and had walked over to the window; but she was Auntie's own child, and now she turned, and brought us back with a jar to " The C Major of this life." " Oddly enough," she said, " we were at Duncairn last summer. The Fair came round while we were there; and oh, the noise and the squalor and the tawdriness! There was no escaping it. It seemed to blast the country for miles around. Sic transit gloria mundi ! " "Ay mundi!" I answered thoughtfully. "But it seems to me that Sandy's memory is wondrous green." THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. But thou and I are one in kind, As moulded like in nature's mint ; And hill and wood and field did print The same sweet forms in either mind. . . . And so> my wealth resembles thine ; But he was rich where I was poor, And he supplied my wants the more As his unlikeness fitted mine. TENNYSON. I. THE docks have a poetry of their own when im- partial night throws her uniform dark domino over fair and foul alike when the red and green lights fall in spangles on the water, and the flare of torch, or perhaps the gleam of moonlight, makes an impres- sionist picture out of every commonplace group. The docks at night would be a not unfitting scene for the opening chapter of a love-tale. But this is no love-tale that I am about to tell ; it is the simple story of a brief Bohemian friendship ; and it begins fittingly enough, perhaps not in moonlight and glamour, but in the prosaic, shadow- less glare of an unclouded September noon. The good ship Puffin was getting up steam, and 138 THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. 139 its belching funnel radiated a sickening intolerable heat: the well-scoured planks glowed in the sun, the paint and the metal fittings scorched the unwary hand like redhot iron, and the creak and rattle of the crane added a final note of unrest to the general glare and discord. " Do come under my sunshade, Ned ! " said a tall young girl. "This heat is perfectly killing." Her companion a man of perhaps five and thirty raised a delicate, sunburnt hand to put the prof- fered shelter aside. He was standing on deck with one long leg thrown lazily over the arm of a wooden seat. " Heat suits me," he said, with a touch of irrita- tion in his voice ; " and, if it didn't, it would be almost worth while being grilled to gather first impressions of one's fellow- passengers. It's for all the world like putting into a lottery." She let the dainty, lace-frilled parasol fall on her shoulder, and looked round with a low laugh. "Mainly blanks this time, I fear! " " Perhaps. You are young and hard to please ; and your rdle in life does not happen to be merely that of spectator. But there's a certain interest in the thing itself apart from the chance of a prize. Do you notice the difference of opinion that seems to exist as to our destination ? These business men come on board with as little ado as if they were stepping into a city omnibus; and to see those weeping schoolgirls, one would think we were bound for " He paused. " The Antipodes ?" 10 140 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. "Ay. Or that our jovial captain was old Charon himself." He paused again, and smiled rather grimly. "Who knows? Perhaps he is for some of us!" "Ned!" The girl frowned impatiently, and hastened to change the subject. " Your ' schoolgirls ' are pretty mature," she said. "You ought to have a chaperon. It is astonishing how every small shopkeeper nowadays must needs send his daughter to Germany to study music." " Why not ? Where is Edith ? " " I don't know. Tipping the steward to see that you don't fall overboard, I should think." " She is quite capable of it. Tell her it is high time you were going on shore. Think what it would be for me to be saddled with both of you, just as I am looking forward to a little peace ! " She smiled with the quiet assurance of a girl who knows her own value. " Don't be uneasy. We have no desire to miss the tournament. And here comes Edith at last to set your mind at rest. Do I look as sweet and cool and willowy as that ? I often think, Ned, how grateful you must feel for your sisters when you look at other people's!" " Oh, I do," he said quietly. " The thought of their back hair brightens my darkest hours. Good Lord ! " A cab had just driven up, and from it was alight- ing a young girl. She seemed to be about eighteen, though the short, scrimp gown of heavy plum- coloured stuff scarcely bespoke so mature an age. Her brow was moist, her cheeks crimson with heat ; THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. I4I and an old-fashioned jacket was thrown open, reveal- ing an uncompromising row of bright metal buttons. "Oh, the pathos of her ! " murmured Edith from out a cool cloud of lace and cambric. But the new arrival, fortunately for herself, was as yet wholly unaware of her own pathos. All she knew was that she meant to catch that steamer, and she was too inexperienced a traveller to feel sure even now that she was safe. So, with dogged deter- mination, unconscious of the undisguised amusement in the eyes of the lookers-on, she took a basket, a tin hat-box, and a bundle of wraps in one hand; and carefully grasping a violin-case in the other, she proceeded to thread her perilous way across the narrow gangway. " Go it, Sturdy ! " said Ned under his breath, and he went forward, with such haste as his languid nature allowed, to offer his help. But the well-meant act only awakened her to a tardy, painful self-consciousness. ""Thank you ; I can manage," she said stiffly, though with a catch of fatigue in her voice ; and, by dint of a mighty effort, she deposited her traps at the top of the companion-way. The young man returned to his sisters with a comical light in his blue eyes. " That is what you call the snub direct," he said. " Minx ! " said Sybil softly. " Nonsense ! " corrected Edith. " She is accus- tomed to help herself, that's all. Poor little soul ! I wish she wasn't quite so hot." " So do I." Ned took off his straw hat, and 142 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. passed his hand through his straight brown hair. " She has raised the temperature on board by several degrees." "Well, miss, you've run it pretty close!" said the porter, dropping a large tin box with a bang on deck. The girl glanced uneasily at her ill-used box, and then turned to the porter with a sense that an apology was due somewhere. " I know," she stammered awkwardly. " I couldn't help it. My train stopped in the tunnel for forty- seven minutes. They said " But the porter, having secured his meagre tip, naturally did not stop to hear what they said. " Well, good-bye, Ned dear ! " said Edith, offering him her soft pink cheek in an incidental, perfunctory way. " Do get proper food, and don't stay in the North after the cold weather begins ! " "Steep your soul in Wagner," said Sybil, "and avoid Heringsalat if you can." Ned just touched the fair cheeks with his lips, then lifted his hat, and looked after the graceful retreating figures with very genuine admiration. The little girl in the plum-coloured gown was sitting close to the gangway, so for a moment she neces- sarily formed a part of an otherwise charming picture. Yes, he did feel grateful for his sisters when he looked at other people's! THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. II. 143 LUNCH on board was a dreary affair that day. The saloon was stifling, and everyone seemed more or less depressed. Even the man whose rdle in life was merely that of spectator could wring from this first social gathering only the mild form of amuse- ment to be gained by revising his conception of his fellow-passengers, now that he saw them for the first time without their headgear. " Odd," he reflected, " how in some cases the upper part of the face makes no difference, while in others it gives the lie to the' mouth and chin. I hope I don't go about the world dumbly exclaim- ing, ' Oh, wretched man that I am ! ' What a head little Sturdy has! Is it genius or a tendency to hydrocephalus ? I wonder why people with that particular shade of sandy red hair always choose that particular shade of inflammatory red gown. And what demon can have prompted the brass but- tons?" The captain, to be sure, was in excellent spirits, as captains are wont to be, answering impossible questions with imperturbable good humour, and striving in the intervals to enliven the little party of " schoolgirls," collapsed and unselfconscious as these were under the first fierce throes of homesick- ness. The only woman on board who struck Ned as being in any way eligible from the point of view of companionship, a young married lady travelling with her little boy, left the table before the soup was removed. She seemed to be suffering from a 144 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. strong preconceived notion that she ought to be sea-sick. Altogether he was thankful when the meal was over and he was free to escape, free to bask in the sunshine on a luxurious deck-chair with a handker- chief over his face, and a copy of Keats within easy reach of his hand. He must have fallen asleep, for it seemed only a moment before his meditations were disturbed by a peal of rippling laughter. The schoolgirls must surely be coming to life again. Yes, there they were, comfortably ensconced under an awning on the captain's bridge, laughing and chatting as gaily as if there had been no tragic parting only an hour or two before. " Chameleons ! " ejaculated Ned. " No more sleep for me this afternoon." And his conclusion proved perfectly right. The ripple of laughter went on with scarcely a break till it seemed to him that a tiny stream of it was drawing nearer to where he sat. It was a very tiny stream mentally he stig- matized it as a giggle and he was not a little sur- prised when it broke over him with a plash. " May I ask if you are courting a sunstroke?" He removed the handkerchief from his face, and looked up calmly with wide blue eyes. Chivalry was not one of the virtues on which he prided himself, so he was in no hurry to respond. Moreover, although he had travelled a good deal, he had rarely travelled alone, and he had never realized that young girls did this sort of thing. Yet there was something quite attractive about THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. ^5 the speaker's face, a fresh, sweet beauti de diable which made no pretension to anything more remark- able. He had no objection at all to entering into conversation, but, before he had found the reply he sleepily sought, another voice broke in, " ' In the days of my youth,' Father William replied, ' I thought it might injure the brain ; But now I am perfectly sure I have none I do it again and again.' " Ned turned his eyes languidly to the second speaker. There was no difficulty in classifying her a typical soubrette, with red cheeks, large round eyes, diminutive nose, and a mass of touzled hair. Few men feel themselves at a loss in dealing with this particular type, and, as it chanced, her quota- tion supplied him with the answer for which he sought. " ' Curiouser and curiouser,' " he said, looking at her gravely. But the girl who had spoken first was not pre- pared to be taken on her companion's level. " I hope you will forgive the liberty we have taken," she said with a pretty blush. " The fact is we are all so homesick and the sea is so unexpect- edly calm, that we thought of having a little, con- cert to-night to cheer us up. Some of us play and sing a little, and and we are all quite sure you are musical, so we thought you would not mind our ask- ing your help." He smiled pleasantly. " You flatter me," he said. " I shall be delighted to turn over your leaves." I4 6 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. " Is that all you can do ? " asked the sou- brette. In her social circle at home audacity was con- sidered to be her forte, and she had cultivated it accordingly. "That is all." " Then of course you can't do that decently. But we don't believe a word of it, you know. Look here, will you sing for us?" " Sorry I can't." "Then what is your instrument ?" " I don't know. When I was very young, and felt the absolute necessity of converting my energy into sound waves " " Well ? " " I found the toilet comb a fairly satisfactory medium." She laughed, then tapped her high-heeled shoe impatiently on the deck. "Look here," she said again, "we don't know you, you know." " Oh ! Thanks. I confess I was forgetting the fact." " So you might just give us some idea how much urging you usually take. If it's a case of fetch- ing camp-stools, it would be kinder to say so at once." He had half risen from his comfortable chair, but was by no means prepared to relinquish it. " No," he said candidly. " I think camp-stools would be a mistake." Then he turned to the girl who had spoken first. "I am sorry I can't be of THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. 147 use," he said; "but you will find me an excellent listener." " Humph ! " ejaculated the soubrette. " Never mind, Miss Lawrence. We still have the profes- sional to fall back upon." " The professional ? " said Ned, with languid in- terest. " Yes ; don't you know ? The girl who arrived late, with big box, little box, carpet-bag, and bundle and violin-case on her shoulders. Looks musical, doesn't she ? I say," she lowered her voice to a whisper, " do you know how she is employing her time this lovely afternoon ? Studying German ! Her particular genius seems to be for doing things at the eleventh hour." "Enviable woman!" said Ned. " My particular genius is for planning to do things at the eleventh hour, till my resolutions are disturbed by hearing the clock strike twelve." " Well, I think you have the best of it. All the German she'll learn on the voyage won't do her much good." " Nonsense, Miss Brown ! " interposed her com- panion good-naturedly. " How do you know she is studying German ? " " I can see from here. Her pages are all broken up into exercises an inch deep. ' Der Vater ist gross. Die Mutter ist gut.' You know the sort of thing." " A whole philosophy of life, in fact," said Ned with a twinkle in his eye " ' He for God only ; she for God in him.' " 148 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. The girls looked puzzled, and he regretted his far-fetched observation. What intelligent women Edith and Sybil were, with all their limitations! But Miss Brown saw she had missed a point, and hastened to change the subject. " Do come and help us to tackle her," she said. " I believe she is strong-minded." "Then my sex is clearly out of it;" and, just lifting his straw hat, he resumed his lounge and his book with a sensation of considerable relief. And then he found himself wondering how solemn Sturdy would enjoy the baiting that awaited her. But there ! She was a girl, of course, and bourgeoise at that. No doubt she would be highly flattered by the request, and only too pleased to trot out her repertoire of pretty pieces. But here he was mistaken. " Solemn Sturdy " only looked up from her book to give a brief refusal. " I never play in public," she said. " Public ! " exclaimed Miss Brown. " Call this public!" The girl coloured, but stood to her guns. "It is to me," she said simply. "But I don't see what is the use of studying music at all," said Miss Lawrence persuasively, " if you don't mean to give pleasure to other people." The girl opened her lips to speak ; then closed them again. "There are other uses," she said shortly. " Oh, I know ! I am used to hearing talk about Art for Art's sake, and all that sort of thing. I am afraid I must be a very commonplace person, and THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. j^g quite unworthy of true Art; but it always seems to me a pity when superior people throw cold water on the simple pleasures that crop up by the way " " It's a thing any fool can do ! " put in Miss Brown tersely. " We don't ask them really to enjoy things that are beneath them," went on the other, taking a leaf from her companion's book; "but sometimes I think it would be worth while to make believe a little bit. It is very weak and frivolous, of course; but we do want to be happy in our own way, not in theirs." She paused for a moment, awaiting a reply ; but the girl did not look up, so the two companions walked away. " One to you, Sturdy ! " thought Ned. " I wonder how you like that ? " She did not leave him long in doubt. In another minute she had walked up to the two girls, blushing furiously. " I didn't mean not to answer," she said, her voice quivering with the effort the action cost her. " I was thinking. You said some very true things just now. I was thinking only of myself; and and I will play to-night if you like; but I know I shall do it very badly." "Well played, Sturdy, by Jove!" was Ned's emphatic mental comment. And it pleased him to fancy that from that moment the conversation of the trio was on quite a different level. They ceased for the moment to be merely " schoolgirls," and al- most became human beings. "But, oh, my child," he said regretfully, " you are 150 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. sadly out of proportion. Why that beetroot red ? And what a hat for the North Sea ! " Then he stretched himself with a yawn. " So we must sit out this blessed concert after all ! " It did not prove so great an ordeal as he had anticipated. Several of the girls played well as girls do nowadays and one or two of the men threw themselves into the entertainment with commend- able zeal. But the feature of the evening was un- doubtedly " Sturdy's " performance. Her violin was cheap and harsh in tone, and her nervousness was ridiculously out of proportion to the importance of the occasion. Indeed the moral effort it cost her to play at all might, under other circumstances, have enabled her to lead a forlorn hope, or to face the tortures of the Inquisition. But, apart from all this, it was easy to see that her ear was indifferent, and her whole method hopelessly bad. Her kindly lis- teners scarcely knew where to look as she played ; the ignorant simply suffered ; the initiated saw no glimmer of hope or promise ; but Sturdy scraped doggedly on to the end. It was over at last. She evidently realized that it had been a failure, for she turned a deaf ear to the well-meant conventional remarks that followed it, and her lips were set firm and hard as she deliber- ately returned the showy new violin to its showy new case. " Is that a ' Straddledarius ' ? " said Ned playfully, for the mere sake of breaking the awkward silence. " Oh, of course ! " she replied with unnecessary THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. jj! bitterness; and, unconsciously holding her head very straight, she made her way up the companion- way to the darkness and solitude of the deck. Poor little Sturdy ! " Well, if that's what you call Art for Art's sake," said Miss Brown, " I prefer to give my friends a little Philistine pleasure ; " and, seating herself un- asked at the piano, she dashed into a swaying irre- sistible waltz, which covered poor Sturdy's fiasco more effectually perhaps than the kindest intentions could have done. III. IT was shortly after midnight when the steamer began to roll, and, an hour or two later, Sturdy awoke in her berth with that unearthly sense of strangeness and loneliness which almost makes the inexperienced traveller feel as if he had awakened in another world. The lamps were burning low in the cabin, and from every peg a gown or cloak was swinging mys- teriously to and fro like the pendulum of a clock. The dash of the waves past the port-holes seemed suggestively near; and it was a relief even to listen to the noisy monotonous rattle of the screw, which seemed unwearyingly to reiterate that all was going well on deck in spite of the wind and the darkness. For a time Sturdy lay steeped in a sense of lone- liness and home-sickness ; but at last this was broken up, as a breeze breaks up enshrouding mists, by a vague haunting recollection. Surely there was some- 152 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. thing else, something more definite, about which she ought to be fretting, than her mere loneliness? Ah, yes, to be sure, there it was ! No need to go in search of it. Why had she been such a fool as to attempt that Bolero 1 It was too trying! She had played it so well the day before she left home, and now she never wished to hear it again as long as she lived ! Of course she would never see these people any more, so after to-morrow it would not matter ; and even now if there was a real storm, they would be sick and frightened, and would forget all about that miserable concert. And, having thus, in a figure, set Rome on fire to cook her poor little chop, Sturdy composed herself to sleep once more. It was broad daylight when she awoke to see a tangled head peeping through her curtains. " I say ! " said Miss Brown's cheerful voice. "Yes?" " I have been lying awake for the last hour try- ing to think what the 'other uses' of violin-playing are. Do you think I could understand if you ex- plained them to me?" Sturdy did not stop this time to reflect what was the right and honest thing to say. She took the first weapon that came to hand. " When people are fortunate enough to give as much pleasure by their music as you do," she said coldly, " they don't need to think of other uses." Miss Brown's round eyes grew rounder with sur- prise. " You are queer," she said candidly. " Do THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. 153 you know, yesterday afternoon I thought you were going to turn out pious ? " The other blushed painfully, but would not admit that the words struck home. " I know," she said. " You thought you had only to put your penny in the slot, and take out your nice little cake of butter-scotch." Miss Brown made her way to the looking-glass in search of a hairpin, but presently came back again "Look here," she said. "Was that original what you said just now ? It was clever, you know." " Nonsense! " " And you don't look clever a bit." "So I have often been told." " I don't see any fun in being clever myself. Men like you far better if you are jolly." " I don't see that that has anything to do with it. Is it nearly breakfast-time ? " " Quite, I fancy ; but my watch has gone wrong." She gave the dainty enamelled toy a vigorous shake, and looked up with eyes full of serious perplexity. " Do you think the engine-man will be able to put it right for me ? " Sturdy smothered a laugh in the bedclothes. " If not, I would try the stoker," she said. " Do you mind letting me get up ? " Breakfast had already begun when the two girls entered the saloon, and their appearance was a matter of some interest, as the sea was by this 154 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. time sufficiently rough to keep all the other ladies in their cabins. Moreover, each of the two had acquired a definite individuality the evening before in the eyes of the other passengers Miss Brown by her frank audacity, Sturdy by her ludicrous and pathetic failure. As soon as the meal was over, Miss Brown en- sconced herself in the deck smoking cabin, with a little circle of admirers round her ; while Sturdy sat uncomfortably perched on a high wooden seat in the open, her country-shod feet dangling some inches from the ground, and her eyes fixed on the book which had afforded Miss Brown so much enter- tainment the day before. Ned was amused by the contrast between the two girls, and mentally sketched an impressionist description of them for Sybil's benefit. It was his custom to do this when separated from his sisters ; but lest he should appear too incredible in his character of brother it is only just to add that very few of these descriptions were ever committed to paper. And then he began to wish that the lady with the little boy had been able to come on deck. He was depressed, and inclined to be sea-sick, and, manlike, he wanted someone to interest and amuse him. Anybody would do. He spent a few minutes on the captain's bridge, but the deafening wind drove him down on deck again. He was not in the least degree tempted to join Miss Brown's coterie; and the plum-coloured gown was certainly not attractive either, even though the THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. 155 vulgar hat had been replaced to considerable ad- vantage by the hood of a dark grey cloak. More- over, the owner of the gown had twice already repelled his commonplace, conventional civilities; and, although he justly attributed this to mere girlish gaucherie, he had no desire to lay himself open to snub number three. The bait was not sufficiently tempting. True, the girl had given some sign of possessing rather a fine moral vein the evening before, but one might talk to her for hours without striking that particular vein again; and if, by ill luck, one struck music instead ! So he paced up and down till it became almost impossible to retain a footing on the wave-washed deck ; till Miss Brown, with the roses all fled from her cheeks, had been assisted down the companion- way; till he and the plum-coloured gown retained sole possession of the field. A sudden lurch of the vessel made him stagger, and he wondered whether his companion felt as acutely miserable as he did. Apparently not. She had just raised her eyes from her book, and the expression of her face as she gazed absently over the heaving grey water, recalled to his mind incongruously enough it seemed a rapt young nun whom he had seen one day at Lyon through the grating of a queer old chapel. That transient expression gave her face a note of distinction that almost startled him it was so curiously at variance with his previous conception of her; and he began to wonder what her book ii FELLOW TRAVELLERS. could be. Not German exercises surely. What a pity she was not decently dressed, and a little less self-conscious ! But in spite of these obvious drawbacks her placid self-sufficiency and complete disregard of the buffeting elements were prevoking, and at last he stopped in front of her, balancing himself with difficulty, and wrapping his Inverness cape round his lean figure. " You are plucky," he said. No one could have resisted the charm of those clear boyish eyes, but unfortunately their very frankness had the effect of making her self-con- scious, and she made an obvious effort to pull the scrimp skirt over her clumsy boots. She was angry too. She felt quite sure that this languid, superior- looking man would not trouble to speak to her when women of his own set were present; so why should he go out of his way to be agreeable just because they chanced to be alone ? " I don't see any occasion for pluck," she said. " I think I could find you a more sheltered seat if you would let me." " Thank you ; I am quite comfortable here." This was so obviously impossible that his face broke into a broad brotherly smile. " I can only congratulate you on your book then," he said; "it must be enthralling." " It is." Her expression changed, and her eye fell lovingly on the page. He took this as a sign that the interview was THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. 157 over, and staggered away in no very amiable humour. He asked so little of women as he went through life, and it happened very rarely that they failed to give him as much as he asked ! " Little stick ! " he said to himself. " She is not so attractive that she need hold herself so dear ! " He smoked a cigarette, and then, looking at his watch with a yawn, he decided to go downstairs. But just at this moment the wind caught his companion's paper-covered book, and threw it in half-a-dozen pieces across the deck. Before he had realized the situation, she had sped on an awkward chase after the farthest fragment ; and, by dint of a desperate scramble, they gathered up the remainder between them. The shabby grey cover fell to his gun, as he afterwards expressed it; and, before re- turning it to her, he glanced frankly at the title, Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts, von Gotthold Ephraim Lessing* "Jove! " he exclaimed, forgiving and forgetting in a moment the undignified exertion to which he had been put. " Is that the sort of literature with which you while away the time on a stormy voyage ?" He was smiling again, but this time his face bore witness to such genuine surprise and interest that she answered eagerly, " Thank you so very very much. .1 was afraid it was gone for ever, and another copy would never have been the same. Have you read it ? " * The Education of the Human Race, by G. E. Lessing. Ijj8 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. " Not in the original. You have the advantage of me there. I have read Robertson's translation." " I don't read German well," she said colouring, "but this is worth digging at." " Rather. I am afraid my knowledge of the language is too limited to be utilized even as a pick- axe." He turned over the leaves as lovingly as she might have done herself. " The fellow was a poet as well as a seer. He put his heart as well as his head into this." He paused, wondering whether it was worth while to give utterance to the thought in his mind. " A book written with the intellect only, affects me like a picture on which the artist has ' lavished all the wealth of his paint-box,' as the novelists put it, without producing a bit of real colour." Was it really the same girl who stood looking up into his face, hanging on his random words with such breathless interest ? The vulgar unbecoming dress had somehow vanished out of the picture alto- gether ; even the homely features were merged in an expression of living interest, compared to which beauty itself might well have appeared tame. At last she drew a long breath. " It seems to me just wonderful," she said in a low voice, " though I have only spelt it out line by line. Perhaps, as you have read it, you would be so very kind as to explain one or two things I didn't quite under- stand ? " " Oh, come ! " he said, his blue eyes dilating with a comical expression of alarm and amusement. "I shall begin to regret that I owned up to having THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. '59 read it. It seems much more likely that you can help me." " Don't laugh at me, please ! " she said. Why, there were actually tears in her eyes ! What a queer little customer she was ! Robinson Crusoe could scarcely have looked more excited when he came upon the footprint in the sand. " I never could have said what you said just now. I didn't even understand it all, and yet it seemed so true." He laughed softly. He may be forgiven if Gretchen's words passed through his mind "Why, that is what our pastor says, only in rather differ- ent words." "You must have read so much, and seen so much," she went on ; " and I mine is such a little world ! I thought I never should meet the people who like the books I like! " He looked down at her from his great height with a pleasant smile, amused at the turn affairs had taken. As his admiration for her grew, he realized more fully what a child she was. " Come and sit in that sheltered corner I told you of," he said kindly, " and tell me about the books you like." And that was how it began. Z 6o FELLOW TRAVELLERS. IV. A man unspoil'd, Sweet, generous, and humane ; With all the fortunate have not MATTHEW ARNOLD. SURELY there are few things on earth so alto- gether desirable as a rare old friendship issuing, not from glamour and ignorance, but from well-tried confidence and knowledge; animating us, not with the heats and chills of fever, but with the quiet con- stant glow of vivid life, providing us, now with fresh springs of energy, now with rest and healing waters after labour and defeat ; throwing back to us an image of ourselves which we recognize, and yet would fain live up to; taking us thankfully for what we are, and yet ever unconsciously reminding us of what we would be. Restful in its very essence is a friendship like this, though constantly stirred through its depths by a silent spring of effort to attain more nearly its own ideal. And yet, when all is said, there is a charm about new friendship too, with its shallow transparency, its pretty leaps and bounds, its constant sparkle of sur- prises. In youth we find it full of infinite possi- bilities. In manhood hope and interest are not so easily roused : experience has proved most things to be mediocre, and the true exception occurs so seldom that we have almost ceased to believe in its existence. Yet, surely, although it is only the tyro who is always ready to believe he sees the phenomenon which his THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. j6l handbook marks " very rare," the wise man will be disposed to walk warily, in science as in life, keep- ing his eyes and mind open even for that which he scarcely expects to find. But at this time, of course, neither Ned nor Sturdy had any thought of friendship. As iron sharpeneth iron, so their minds worked upon one an- other; and yet the simile fits them ill, for his mind was as tempered steel compared to her rich crude ore. It was natural that she should hear in all his criticisms the ring of true genius, for, broadly speak- ing, she had read only books, not books about books. Here at last was life, here was such conversation as she had pictured when she had read of the Nodes Ambrosiana, of the old dramatists at the Mermaid, and of the Lake poets at the Swan. And, somewhat to his surprise, he found un- doubted charm in her. talk too. It was so impos- sible to predict what her views would be about anything, and yet she was so honest in all her in- consistencies. He thought he had never met such a curious mixture of humility, insight, conventionality, and downright priggishness. " And what is taking you to Germany ? " he said, when they had talked of books galore; and his eyes brimmed over with that quiet smile which al- ways seemed to have a trace of raillery in it. " Simply the search for culture and for kindred souls?" She frowned, but only with the effort to answer honestly. " I want to make my life tell" she said slowly. FELLOW TRAVELLERS. " It seems a dreadful thing to have only one life, and to let that slip away. Do you know what I mean ?" There was no smile on his face now as he looked rather grimly over the grey water. " Unfortunately," he said, with just a touch of bitterness in his usually mellow tone, " or fortu- nately perhaps for long-suffering mankind the Fates have not given it to all of us to ' make our lives tell.' Some of us are fane to be content if 1 From day to day our little boat Rocks in its harbour, lodging peaceably.' " She glanced up quickly at his delicate, intellec- tual face. She would not have dared to follow up the opening he had given her, but he had not real- ized how often tact takes up her abode behind the least likely exterior, and he hastened to retreat to safer ground. " And why Germany in particular ? " he asked genially. She tossed back a little streamer of hair from her forehead, and answered almost defiantly, as though she were well used to opposition on this score. " There is so much good thought in Germany. I want to get into the heart of it. And there is the music, and living is cheap." " I am glad to hear it." " Oh, not for you ! But I think I can do it very cheaply, and earn something by teaching English. You see, my people have already kept me for a year at a London boarding-school." THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. I6 3 He raised his eyebrows. Was this the prod- uct of a London boarding-school? "And didn't you get a feast of culture there?" he asked, amused. She shook her head seriously. " I think I got more culture from the public library at home, with its Carlyle and Smiles and George Eliot, and Blackie's Self-Culture. Boarding-school was all chocolate cream and lemonade, don't you know ? French and dancing and water-colour painting and " "Violin-playing," he suggested mischievously. She blushed so painfully that he was ashamed of the uncalled-for thrust, especially as she obviously had not the savoir-faire to parry it. " I shan't play the violin any more," she said at last humbly, surprised to find how much less sore she felt on the subject than she had done an hour or two before. " it ought not to have needed last night to teach me that. But my Mother was so proud of it, and I I thought if I could learn even a little, it would give me a better position as a teacher." There was a moment's pause while he reflected what a brute he was. " So that is how you mean to make your life tell?" She nodded. " It seems absurd now, I know ; but I have such a wonderful picture in my mind of what a teacher might be, and some people are teachers who haven't even got that." " A few," he answered drily. 164 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. " And if one tries and tries to make the very most of oneself " She broke off abruptly. "But don't you mean to specialize a bit? It is all very well to make the most of yourself ; but you can't teach everything." Her eyes shone with the perception of a deeper meaning in his words than he had meant them to bear. " I know. Of course one only ought to teach the things that set one's own mind on fire ; but it is difficult to get your foot on the ladder when you have no influence at all. It is not a question of what you have got, but of what other people want. You can get a good price for the shadow ; the sub- stance has no market value at all." He laughed good-humouredly. " It is a pity you weren't more fortunate in your boarding-school. They do that sort of thing rather well nowadays. Where was it ? " " At Cromwell Park." "Ah!" Then perhaps there was some excuse for the remark about the substance and the shadow. But the emphatic monosyllable was not lost on her. " You see, down in the black country one doesn't know; and indeed it was my own fault if I didn't learn a good deal, for they took us about to see things, and we sometimes heard a good lecture or a good concert or a good preacher. But I was thirsty, don't you know ? They always seemed to be just letting me wet my lips when I wanted to get a good drink." He laughed. " Like that remarkable child," he THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. ^ said, " you were constrained to amuse yourself with pebbles, while the great ocean of truth lay all undis- covered before you." "Yes," she answered ruefully, half entering into the spirit of his chaff, "and they wouldn't even let me fill my basket with pebbles ! " " Ah ! It is a mistake, you see, to have a larger basket than other people." But this time he had gone just too far. " Oh," she said, suddenly waking up into full self-conscious- ness, " I was so longing to hear you talk, and now how I must have bored you ! " " On the contrary. You have whiled away the time delightfully. I am afraid the story of my aim- less driftings would fall very flat after yours." But he wanted good-naturedly to set her at her ease again, and he talked on for half an hour, so simply, so picturesquely, that it did not occur to her till long afterwards how rarely in the story of his wanderings he referred directly to himself. He talked to her of Cambridge, till she heard the plash of oars on the river,, and the solemn pealing of the organ through the lofty arches of King's ; till she saw the smooth-shaven lawns, and smelt the heavy scent of the syringa in the college backs. He talked, too, of his first winter in Italy, of how he had looked out from his third-floor window on the stretch of blue water with its strip of yellow sandstone ; and, beyond these, on the sage-green olive slopes and the grey limestone precipices of the Carraras, gradually shading off into the dazzling white of the snowy peaks. !66 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. His enthusiasm for colour and beauty was a reve- lation to her. Cambridge she understood, as she understood Germany. The very names were full of the suggestion of eager life and intellectual pro- gress. But Italy ! Italy seemed asleep or dead. Surely one little human life was too short for mere Italy ! It was with no deliberate intent that Ned avoided all unnecessary mention of himself, nor was his silence on this subject merely a question of his riper years. Such personal talk was at all times as foreign to his nature as, when she was roused, it was easy and natural to her. He was one of those rare souls, who, even in an introspective age, instinctively live not in their own moods and feelings, but in the world outside, and in the thoughts of those " who gave us larger hopes and larger cares." So natural was this habit of mind that he scarcely recognized it himself, and perhaps for this reason he was moved to greater admiration than most men and women would have been by the strong individuality of his little companion, and by her dogged determination to "make her life tell." And so he talked, and so she listened, as Desde- mona might have listened to the Moor, till the luncheon bell brought them back to the present again to the deserted deck and to the grey North Sea. THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. j6/ V. THE sea became much calmer during the after- noon, and one by one the passengers struggled up on deck, looking not a little washed-out, and rather indifferent as to the details of their personal appear- ance. A few young men, in a rebound of high spirits, started a game of quoits, and Ned threw himself into it heart and soul, though, under the conditions, it was rather a question of chance than of skill. He belonged to the well-marked class of men who have a knack of looking superior to their surroundings, without in any way suggesting the idea that they are aware of the fact. When the game was over, his eye fell on his little acquaintance, as she leant against the bulwarks, watching the whirling white trail in the wake of the vessel. She turned with a bright smile as he came up. " That's right ! " he said, sitting down and cross- ing his legs as comfortably as might be. " I didn't feel sure that I wasn't going to be suppressed again, like the dormouse." "Suppressed ?" she said wistfully. " You!" He laughed. The game had proved exhilarat- ing. " One would think, to hear her talk, that she had not done it systematically for twenty-four hours." " Was I horrid ? I am so sorry " " You were quite right. In a general way, when a girl is travelling alone, the best thing she can do is to keep herself to herself." Z 68 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. "It wasn't that," she said eagerly. "Not with you." She ought to have stopped there, of course, but her naturally quick perceptions had been only very partially developed. " Do you think I don't know," she went on quietly, with suppressed feeling, " that I am only a plain ill-dressed girl whom no man is likely to speak to for his own sake ? I knew you only did it out of kindness." I suppose few men would have enjoyed the situa- tion she forced upon him ; but the blue eyes had never looked more limpid, more absolutely imper- sonal than when he turned to reply. The very un- dercurrent of quiet amusement seemed gone from them for the moment. "And 'what ails you' at kindness?" he asked gravely. " Do you make a point of never doing a kind act yourself ? Suppose I did do it out of kind- ness ?" She laughed rather bitterly. "Why, then, of course it was very kind of you ! " There was a pause, during which she groped her way to his point of view, and saw the matter imper- sonally. " Of course," she went on apologetically, with a sudden sense of her own smallness, " if it had oc- curred to me that you knew infinitely more about the things I like than I do myself, I should not have cared whether it was kindness or not. I mean I should have accepted the kindness gladly and grate- fully as I do now." She paused again. THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. i$g " I only want men to understand that I quite realize that I can't compete with Miss Brown." He laughed. " You are severe. No, I am afraid you can't." " Miss Brown's name slipped out. I didn't mean to be spiteful. I meant I can't compete with with other girls. And I have made up my mind to that, and am content that it should be so, if only men wouldn't sacrifice themselves, and make believe." " I don't know that I am qualified to speak for my sex," he said drily ; " but it seems co me that what I have always cared most about in young girls is that they should be pleasant and unselfconscious, and take life simply. When you come to think of it, there are more ways than one even of suppressing people." He looked up with his comical smile, and saw that he had said enough. Indeed she winced so per- ceptibly that he thought she was offended. Well, what then ? She had laid herself open to it, and he was not going to retract. If she declined to com- pete with other girls, she must not expect pretty speeches. She looked out over the sea for a minute or two, deliberately measuring the meaning of his words, de- liberately trampling underfoot the pride and resent- ment and shyness, which stretched like a prickly undergrowth across her path. Then she turned to him with a smile, a smile that almost startled him with its half unconscious revelation of her mood. It was not distinctively a woman's smile ; still less was it that of a child. It was the smile of a comrade 170 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. who frankly accepts a helping hand, and, by its aid, climbs to a higher level. Now Ned had not intended to proffer any helping hand ; it was not in his nature under any circum- stances to pose as a moral guide or preceptor ; he had simply given natural expression to a mood that was half amusement, half irritation. It was some- thing quite new to have his random utterances taken au grand strieux in this fashion, and he did not alto- gether like it. It savoured too much of what he was wont scornfully to characterize as "soul-out- pourings." However, to do the child justice, she had not spoken ; she had merely smiled ; and perhaps it was not her fault if her smile spoke more plainly than words. So he adjusted his estimate of her once more, and remarked that the weather was im- proving. " Those two seem to be getting on, don't they ?" said one of the passengers. " Scarcely a case of ' birds of a feather' either." " I don't know," said Miss Brown placidly. " She's not such a fool as she looks. She said something about butter-scotch this morning that was really rather clever. I have made a note of it for my own use in future." " Butter-scotch ? " " Yes ; and that reminds me I have left my cara- mels in the saloon. Do you mind fetching them ?" She fastened an unnecessary eyeglass on her tip- tilted nose, and looked across at Ned and his friend. THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. 171 "So that's the girl who doesn't care what men think of her ! I wonder what they are talking about ?" She pricked up her ears to listen, but the conver- sation was dead. Sturdy had killed it, as earnest young women will at times, by becoming too pain- fully personal. She longed to return to their former easy and pleasant footing, and was too young to realize that for the moment she had made that im- possible. Her best move now was simply to go away, but of course she did not know that. Fortunately just at this moment a spoilt little boy on board came to the conclusion that life was not worth living unless he was allowed to catch fish over the bulwarks ; and, having received the requisite per- mission, he proceeded, as was natural, to catch a pas- senger instead. " It's well for you that that infernal machine of yours didn't chance to take hold of my gills, young man," Ned said good-humouredly, but, before he had extracted the hook from his coat-sleeve, the boy's mother came up to apologize. She was not beautiful, and she was still looking pale and weak after a violent attack of sea-sickness ; but, from the moment she appeared on deck, she seemed in some unconscious indescribable way to raise the whole social standard of the little com- pany. Sturdy's crudities became more manifest; Miss Brown's ill-breeding more intolerable. Even the men who were out of earshot became more care- ful of their words, as they watched her sitting there, and one and another strolled past on the FELLOW TRAVELLERS. chance of being able to render her some trifling service. The lady chaffed her little boy for his clumsiness, and addressed a few remarks to Ned with the easy assurance of an attractive woman whose position in life is indisputable, and to whom the homage of men is as much a matter of course as the air she breathes. She might have struck a still higher note, perhaps, if she had included Ned's little companion who so obviously belonged to a different social class in her casual remarks; but her omission to do so seemed to the girl herself perfectly natural and fitting. " I think I have a letter to write," said the latter awkwardly to Ned. " Good good-night ! " She wrote her letter dutifully and then dropped her head on her arms. "Oh," she moaned, ''what a teacher I should make if I looked and spoke like that ! How quiet she is how graceful how " (poor Sturdy !) " how ladylike ! And I oh, dear God, what a clodhopper I am ! " And Ned, conversing placidly with his new com- panion, did not ask her whether she had ever heard of Lessing. He took her for what she was and found her very restful and soothing. When she had gone away and left his thoughts free to revert to his friend of the morning, he shrugged his shoulders philosophically. "It would ill become an old bellows-mender like me," he said, " to find fault with girls for doing men's work ; but if the woman of the future really means THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. ^3 to live at that pressure, who on earth is to keep us all sane ? " He seated himself at the saloon-table, and open- ing the heavy leathern writing-book, he saw to his surprise the modest grey cover of the Erziehung. " Hallo ! " he said, " she must have fallen asleep ! " and, turning over the leaves of the book, he tried to recognize his favourite passages. Presently he came upon some pencil jottings on the fly-leaf at the end, and turned to them in the hope of getting a little fresh light, " Surely, surely, if God ever began to educate the human race, he is educating it still ; and great and noble men and women, such as Huxley and Darwin and Harriet Martineau, are not thwarting his pur- poses, but working them out. We have been grad- ually taught Lessing tells us to believe in the one- ness of God, in the immortality of the soul ; and if we are learning now that the earth is the Lord's it is due more to science than to anything else. . . . Sci- ence, Art, Religion are not these just the colours that the prism casts on the wall ? and, as all these colours must be blended to produce the kindly light so, surely, science, art, religion all the bits of thought and work and insight man has heaped to- gether are but broken lights of God." It would be impossible to describe the panorama of varying expression that passed over Ned's face as he read. But, as he finished, the habitual look of quiet philosophic amusement had settled down again. " Huxley and Darwin, and Harriet Martineau ! " he ejaculated. " These be thy Gods, O Israel ?" 174 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. Then he read the pencilled lines again. "Art!" he said. "And what do you know of art, my child, when it ceases to illustrate The Pil- grim's Progress ? I will lay my first groschen that your favourite picture is The Man with the Muck- rake!" Half an hour later, when he carefully stowed his long limbs into the confines of his berth, some lines of poetry glimmered tantalizingly just out of reach of his memory. In the midst of the effort either to remember or forget them he fell asleep ; but he woke a few hours later to find the stanza floating free on the surface of his mind : ' ' Give strenuous souls for belief and prayer !' Said the South to the North, ' Who stand in the dark on the lowest stair, While affirming of God, He is certainly there,' Said the South to the North." VI. I would have you be ... like a fire well-kindled, which catches at everything you throw in and turns it into flame and brightness. MARCUS AURELIUS. IT was a grey November morning, and Ned was standing in front of the Conservatorium, chatting to one of the professors. A knot of men students in queer little round felt hats lounged on the door-step, discussing the merits of a new contralto who had made her first appear- ance in the Opera House the night before ; and from THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. 175 time to time a young woman passed in or out, looking anxious or indifferent, depressed or elated, as the case might be. Presently a girl came out with a quick, firm, un- selfconscious step. She looked neither depressed nor elated, but her whole expression was a study of eager vitality. Ned declared afterwards that he would have recognized her in the wilds of Arabia simply by the way in which she grasped her cum- brous old-fashioned portfolio. Her face rippled into a, radiant smile when she met his eye ; and the two men lifted their hats with a common impulse. " Do you know ihe English Meess ? " asked the professor. " I crossed with her on the steamer. I forget her name." "Meess Dunbar. She is my best pupil." " What ! " exclaimed Ned, startled out of his mood of lazy indifference. " Dock ! " said the professor doggedly. " She is no Englishwoman. Your English ladies breakfast at noon, and cannot have a lesson till two ; but she she comes before eight every morning, and she is of a perseverance no ! " " Oh, no doubt. That I can well believe. But all that does not make her musical." " Musical ! " repeated the professor contemptu- ously. "Your musical English ladies think they know more than we do. Miss Dunbar has not got to music yet. She could do nothing for it that she was trained in England. Of course she came to me FELLOW TRAVELLERS. and played some absurd piece Weber's Perpetuum Mobile!" He chuckled at the recollection. "I let her play two lines, and then I throw it aside. ' That,' I exclaim, ' is mere illusion. It were better you had never learnt the piano ! ' ' " To which she ? " " She regards me with a smile. ' I know,' she says quite simply, ' I have come to you to learn it now.' ' Good ! ' said I. ' You put yourself in my hands. It will be three months before you play an- other piece.' But I was wrong. At the end of six weeks Miss Dunbar had a touch! Ah, but she is per- severing, industrious ! " He turned away as he spoke, and Ned looked after him with mingled envy and contempt, envy of a man who had mastered technique, contempt for one who could attach to it so disproportionate a value. From time to time in the months that had elapsed Ned's thoughts had drifted back to his sturdy little friend, and he had wondered, without any definite desire to renew the acquaintance, whether their paths would cross again. But now he found himself swing- ing along at a very creditable pace, with a keen look- out ahead in the direction she had taken. There seemed little chance of his overtaking her in these busy thoroughfares, and it was with some surprise and a gcod deal of amusement that he saw her at last looking into the window of a large Conditorei, with a lean purse in her uncertain hands. " Well," he said, holding out his hand, and assum- THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. 177 ing his most fatherly air, " how goes the human race ? ' still in the go-cart ' ? " She started as if she had been caught red-handed in a crime. " I don't know," she stammered con- fusedly : then, recovering her wits, " I hope the whole is progressing better than this poor little unit." " Oh, come ! I have just been hearing great things of you." " From Herr Waldstein ? " Her face beamed and crimsoned with pleasure. She longed to know just what her teacher had said ; but was too shy and proud to ask ; and indeed Ned would not have thought it right to tell her. " She would never see the remark in its true proportion," he thought. "Art for her is nothing but technique just now." She turned to leave the window; but he held back. " Don't let me interrupt you." he said, with the old, wide-eyed smile. " I would not interfere with the commissariat for the world." She winced again, and then, with a sudden lumin- ous recollection, bethought herself of what he had said about taking life simply. " I am awfully hungry," she said bravely. "You see, I have to breakfast at seven on my music days, and they only send me up one Brodchen" " Poor little starved thing! Let us go in." But she shut the shabby purse resolutely with a snap. No," she said firmly, " I can't afford it, and it is a bad habit to get into. It is yielding to the flesh. 178 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. In fact " she blushed " I voived I wouldn't spend my money like that." " Don't you find it rather exhausting to bring such mighty principles to bear on such trifling affairs ? " " They are not trifling to me," she said apologet- ically ; " or rather, they are all the more important because they are trifling. I don't see how I can expect the human race to grow any better if I give way to a little temptation like that. Besides " she paused " two of those cakes would pay for a Bilse concert." "But I am awfully hungry too," he said men- daciously. "I was just wishing I could find some- one to drink a cup of chocolate with me; and you an'd I have two whole months of experiences to discuss. Come ! Your vow does not cover deeds of necessity and mercy. Look at those Windbeutel and Apfelkuchen. They are just yearning for ap- preciation." Vanity was not one of Ned's faults, and, least of all, vanity where women were concerned ; but she had made no secret of her pleasure in his society, and he could have guessed which way her inclina- tions pointed, even if her face had not borne pa- thetic witness to the effort it cost her to be true to the traditions of a narrow upbringing and an unlovely girlhood. " No, no," she said ungraciously, as she turned to walk on. " I mean don't let me keep you ; but I am not really hungry, you know ; and I ought to be at my practising place by now." THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. 1/9 " Don't you practise at your diggings ? " " No. There are far too many of us. I go to the wareroom of a small manufacturer." " Straight from the Conservatorium ? " " Oh yes ! " she laughed shyly. " Sometimes I run most of the way, in case I should forget some of the things Herr Waldstein has told me." " By Jove ! I don't wonder he is delighted with his pupil." " I am delighted with my teacher," she answered eagerly. " It is an inspiration to have lessons from him." " Whew ! " He raised his eyebrows. " Inspira- tion is a big word. Waldstein's technique is first- rate. It seems to me that the German school is crushed to earth by the weight of its technique just now." "Do you think so?" she asked surprised, as if the idea were quite a new one. " I am not in a posi- tion to say. I think one must master technique be- fore one can judge of its value." The blue eyes dilated with a humourous smile. "That is severe. On the other hand, it must be a tremendous sell to spend years in drudgery, and then wake up to find you have simply been walling in ' the nothing you set out from.' " " Yes," she answered absently ; " I wish you had been at my lesson this morning. I had practised one of Mendelssohn's Lieder ; but, although I knew the notes, I hadn't grasped the idea a bit. Herr Waldstein let me plunge right through to the end, and disgrace myself hopelessly before the two other FELLOW TRAVELLERS. students; and then, without a word, he played the treble alone on his own piano. It was a revelation to hear how he brought out air and accompaniment both in the right-hand part, sustained singing notes above, and crisp chords below. It was won- derful." "No doubt," said Ned, smiling; "but I suppose there have been one or two fellows since Men- delssohn, who could have done as much for you." She had been " standing up to him " so well that he expected a frank retort ; but she collapsed into one of the odd fits of humility, which always made him feel himself a brute. " Of course," she said awkwardly. " I forgot how widely your standpoint differs from mine." "As widely as the standpoint of the onlooker differs from that of the genuine worker." "Yes," she responded sadly. "You are on a vantage-ground, surveying the building as a whole; while I am studying the grain of the stones in the porch." He turned to look at her with frank admiration for an appreciative metaphor, and, for the first time, it struck him that the plum-coloured gown had given place to one of shaggy homespun which was quaintly becoming to her independent figure. Her face, too, was different. Its curves were less childlike than they had been two months ago, and there was almost a touch of chic in the poise of the resolute chin. "What splendid use you are making of your THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. jgj time ! " he said with a pang of envy. " You look as if you lived on live birds." She laughed and shook her head. " Nothing so recognizable," she said ; "and, oh, I haven't done one-third of what I planned to do in the time." " One-third ! I call that brilliant. When I used to make plans, I never accomplished more than .oox of the original design." " And x equalled ? " He shrugged his shoulders. " Oh, x was so far from the decimal point that the equation wasn't worth working out." " Poor Algebra ! " she said, " that knows no equal- ity, ortly quantity;" and then she was ashamed of being too clever. "Are you studying music now?" she asked shyly. " Not at the Conservatorium. I am scraping away at the cello a bit, and dipping into harmony, and frequenting the opera. Fine house, isn't it ? " " I haven't been inside it yet. Oh, I mean to go. I want to hear both Lohengrin and Tannhduser ; but I should like to learn a great deal more first. This is my destination." Her eyes expressed a doubtful invitation, and he followed her with rising curiosity through a squalid doorway into what appeared to be the living-room of a large family. The atmosphere was close and offensive ; food, cooking utensils, and unwashed dishes lay about in hopeless confusion ; and three or four dirty children were clamouring for the bread which a slatternly mother cut from a long brown FELLOW TRAVELLERS. loaf held against her breast. The whole scene struck Ned as being a hideous travesty of the well- known picture of Werther's first meeting with Lotte. " Guten Tag ! " said Miss Dunbar pleasantly. " Ein englischer Herr ist heute mitgekommen." " Ach so i '" replied the woman, bowing; and she hastened to add with an eye to business, "Vielleic/it tnochte der Herr die Clavier e probiren. " " Oh ja, gewiss" Ned's answer came rather stiltedly, and he felt an uncomfortable sense of his companion's superior fluency in speaking the lan- guage. The girl hastily led the way through a door at the farther end of the room into a dreary best par- lour ; and thence into the wareroom, where some eight or ten cheap and showy pianos stood awaiting a purchaser. Ned laid his hand against the ice-cold tiles of the stove, and thought of his own pleasant sitting-room overlooking the Thiergarten. "Your surroundings are picturesque in a broad sense, certainly," he said ; " and the local colour of your home letters must be excellent. How many hours a-day do you spend in your barracks?" " Five as a rule. Sometimes more." " And is the stove never lighted ? " " No. The room is very dry." He sat down and struck a few chords. " Jove ! The tone isn't half bad. And now you are going to initiate me into the true inwardness of Mendels- sohn." THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. 183 She looked at him. "I wonder," she said slowly, " whether I shall ever learn not to make a fool of myself." He did not seem to hear. His long fingers were producing some fine arpeggios from the cheap in- strument. Then he rose languidly from his chair, his fair face devoid of all expression. " I have never had much sympathy," he said, " with the morbid desire to appear wiser than one is. It is too much fag, for one thing. Let the world call me a fool and be done with it ! When you come to think of it, the desire is just a bit of intellectual or moral vulgarity, isn't it ? " Her face was very grave. " I don't think I quite know what you mean by vulgarity." He laughed. " Rather a fundamental hitch that. Vulgarity, to my mind, is veneer, want of simplicity." She nodded slowly. " Did you ever think how much easier it is to be simple, as you call it, when all the conditions of your life are beautiful in them- selves ? If my life was furnished with oak, I should have no use for veneer." "And if my life was furnished in deal, I should be content to keep it well scoured. I should not pretend it was oak." Her face flashed into sunshine. " That is self- evident," she cried, " when you put it so ; and yet I believe I have been groping blindly after it for years." "Then I am sure you have been very near it sometimes," he answered half abashed, "nearer FELLOW TRAVELLERS. than most of us perhaps. And now no doubt you are longing to turn me out. Good-bye." Later in the day he made his way to a house in a very different part of the town, and was duly ushered into a comfortable English drawing-room. A graceful woman lounged idly in an arm-chair by the fire. " That's right," she said languidly, holding out a pretty white hand. " I haven't seen you for a fort- night, and to-day I am bored to extinction. Sit down, and tell me what you are doing with your- self." He looked round the room with an amused smile. " I have just been making a call," he said, " in a very different drawing-room from this. Do you re- member the bright little girl with the tawny hair who crossed with us to Germany?" And he drew a highly-coloured picture of dogged little Sturdy in her odd surroundings. The lady laughed and stifled a yawn. " Upon my word," she said, " you are good to that child. Don't you realize that you are turning her head ? " He looked down thoughtfully at his unfashion- able hat. " It wouldn't be a very easy thing to do," he said. " I don't think you quite understand her. She is not an English rose, I admit ; but I am greatly mistaken if she is not a regular young oak-tree. I'll have one more quarrel with fortune if she doesn't get space to grow." He walked over to the English fireplace, and turned his back to the cheerful blaze. " Do you THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. ^5 know," he said, " if I were a woman I should think it a thing worth doing to give a little girl like that a chance. She is the most receptive creature I ever met." The lady's laugh had a ring of annoyance in it. "Really, Mr. Beresford," she cried, "you are impay- able ! By the way, what did you think of the new contralto ? She sang flat once or twice ; but, apart from that, her voice seemed to me perfectly gor- geous." VII. " THERE'S a lot of liver left over from dinner to- day," said Pauline, the maid of all work. " Well, God knows I am glad to hear it ! " was Fraulein's reply. "We'll use it for supper to-night. The girls have been eating the very hair off my head lately." Sturdy slipped past the kitchen door unobserved, and, frowning, ran down the long stair. How petty it all was! Must one really die and be buried before one could escape from the sordid groundwork of life ? Germany had seemed so ideal, so romantic, before she came, all music and art, and literature, and development ; and, now that she was here, the shoe pinched just the same. She was genuinely sorry for Fraulein's worries, and she understood only too well the look of pa- thetic anxiety that followed the course of the dish round the circle of growing girls; she never asked for a second helping without feeling herself a brute ; 1 86 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. but healthy, hungry youth would assert itself in spite of the most heroic resolutions. Ah! Life seemed brighter now that she had reached the keen frosty air. The last brown leaves had fallen from the trees in the square, and the winter evening was darkening fast. Thank God for her music, her work, her dreams ! Poor, poor Frau- lein ! The girl drew her shabby cloak more closely round her, and sped like a hare through the unfash- ionable streets. Vita brevis, ars longa ; and, quite apart from that, it was desirable to lay up a store of animal heat before facing the chilly " bar- racks." The wareroom looked bare and desolate, and the pianos cast great shadows on the whitewashed walls, as she trimmed her ill-smelling lamp by the light of a succession of matches. These little discomforts were nothing to complain of, but unfortunately one of the pianos had been moved into the best parlour for the benefit of another student, and Sturdy now had to practice her simple studies as best she might, counting aloud to drown the crashing chords that re- sounded through the wall. " One, two, three, four. One, two, and three, four!" till her fingers grew stiff and her voice grew weary. Suddenly the volley on the other side of the wall ceased, and the door between the two rooms opened. "Gott!" ejaculated a fair-haired German girl. " Didn't you know your lamp was smoking ?" THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. I8 7 Sturdy slipped from her chair and turned down the flame. " No," she said simply, " I hadn't no- ticed." " Gott ! " exclaimed the girl again, with a look of genuine commiseration for the kleine Engldnderin, whose perseverance was so sadly out of proportion to her talent. " You may have my room now if you like. I must hurry home to supper. We are going to the opera to-night." Sturdy looked up with more of reverence than of envy for a mortal so highly favoured. " Thank you very much," she said humbly. She felt the unspoken pity keenly, and recognized the justice of it. Would it end in nothing after all, this visit to Germany, of which she had hoped so much ? Well, she was in for it now, and must make the best of it. Work was the cure for this mood. To work, to work ! " One, two, three, four. One, two, and three, four ! " It was thus that Ned found her when, attired in a great fur-lined coat, he dropped into the barracks an hour or two later. " Miss Dunbar," he said abruptly, " I want you to go with me to Lohengrin to-morrow night. I have two seats, and the other fellow can't go." If he had broached the subject gradually, she would probably have refused. As it was, she sprang to her feet with a spontaneity that would have given valuable hints to a stage ingenue. 13 j88 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. " Really ? " she cried. " Really ? Oh how good of you to think of me ! " The sunshine in her face seemed to brighten the whole dreary room. Ned felt like a schoolboy on the eve of a spree. " These things begin absurdly early here," he said apologetically. " I am afraid you will miss your supper; but we'll pick up a bite somewhere." He thought it judicious to pass lightly over this part of the programme. " Shall I call for you here or at your lodgings ? " He added the alternative doubt- fully, with a man's natural reluctance to face a posse of women when he only wants to see one. " Oh, don't trouble to call. I'll meet you at the place." "No, no!" " Then come here. I'll be ready, never fear ! " "All right! Say half-past five. 1 suppose you'll have to take your hat off," he smiled at the novel experience of giving a woman instructions in such a matter, "but you don't need to dress." She wnt with him to the door, and then, throw- ing on her old cloak, ran home like the wind. " Girls," she cried, bursting into the room where the boarders sat over their books, impatiently await- ing the call to supper, " I am going to the opera to- morrow ! " " Nein ! " "Mein Gott!" "Z>u lieber Himmel! " " Quite right, too ! " said a sprightly large-eyed French girl. "You have worked like a hero, Mis- THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. 189 schen, and you have scarcely so much as been to a Bilse concert. Who are you going with ? " Sturdy set her lips. "A friend," she said, "an English gentleman." " That is charming. Where are the seats ? " "Well, naturally I didn't ask." " But you will wear your velvet dress, in any case ? " " No. I shouldn't think so. I hadn't thought of it." But this folly was overruled in a moment. " Nonsense, Misschen ! " " And it is so becoming ! " " You are stupid ! What do you suppose you have got a pretty dress for ? " "And you will let me do your hair?" said the French girl coaxingly. " You mustn't drag it back like that. I'll make it a little fluffy in front, and twist it into a simple Greek knot behind. You will look perfectly charming." And so it came about that Ned's companion at the opera the following evening was one of whom no man need have been ashamed. The quaintly-cut gown of deep Gobelin blue had been chosen by her schoolmistress in London, and was the one garment poor Sturdy had ever possessed which made any pretensions to beauty. Happy accident, or the re- straining influence of her French friend, had pre- vented her from adding any jarring note in the shape of ribbon or cheap jewellery ; and her whole expression and bearing were so transfigured with 190 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. happiness and excitement as to form a fruitful sub- ject for conversation among the boarders during the evening. They had often found her neidlich, they agreed; but to-night she was really charming. And, indeed, no ordinary girl, whose life contains its due sequence of pleasures, can form the least con- ception of the intense capacity, the fierce thirst for enjoyment, which Sturdy carried with her, when, with beating heart, she ran down the long dimly-lighted stair. No wonder her face was a poem ; no wonder it suggested to Ned the rush of life one feels all around on a glowing day in spring after rain. Her winter had been so long, poor Sturdy ! In her wild- est dreams she had prayed only for starry nights and Alpine peaks ; and now behold for a few short hours sunshine and morning and a smiling green valley at her feet! I must not attempt to describe the events of the evening as they appeared through her temperament. If I did, I might seem to be borrowing a page from the Arabian Nights, whereas everyone knows the comfortable cafe where they supped, and everyone knows the bright effective Opera House as it looks on gala nights, when its crowded tiers are aglow with gay costumes and expectant faces. The emperor and empress were in the royal box " der greise Kaiser ;" no one guessed then in what quick succession he was to be followed by "der weise Kaiser " and " der Reise-Kaiser " and Sturdy found herself for the first time in her life under the same roof with royalty. Not for one minute through the long evening did THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. Ic ,i her delight and interest flag. Of course the opera, as an opera, was far above her comprehension ; and yet, in an emotional unconscious way, she drank it in as Wagner meant she should, yielding up ear, eye and soul in one to the great complex whole of his creation. Singers and orchestra surpassed themselves that night ; Brandt was superb ; Mallinger and Niemann renewed their best days. But, for Sturdy, the or- chestra had no existence ; the music came from everywhere, was in everything ; Elsa and the others were not opera-singers, they were real, the only real people in the world ; and the whole thing meant, not recreation nor amusement, but life, the distilled essence of human life. At last the dove flew off, drawing after it all that had made the little world of Brabant a very kingdom of heaven ; the curtain fell ; and Sturdy found her- self back in the emptying, darkening Opera House, back in the work-a-day world, where life was so complex and so slow that one could not see its plan. She turned to Ned, her eyes brimming over with tears. " Though I should live to be an old, old woman," she said, "I shall never have another night like this." Ned had enjoyed the evening too, though in a very different way. It would be idle to deny that there had been moments, both at the cafe* and in the Opera House, when his friendly interest in his little companion had threatened to develop an emotional side which might have been all the more dangerous I9 2 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. because he considered himself so entirely proof against its advances. It is difficult to be absolutely self-contained in the presence of such a redundancy of throbbing young life. Indeed, if the girl had possessed even the simplest and most laudable in- stincts of coquetry, my story might have had a very different name. VIII. WHEN Sturdy awoke at half-past six next morn- ing, she felt an even greater disinclination than usual to get up ; but five minutes later she sprang out of bed with a bound. " It would be too terrible," she said, as she groped for her match-box with shaking hands, "if a great moral and mental and physical treat like that was to make one less fit for the duties of daily life." From which it appears that even a superficial study of " Huxley and Darwin and Harriet Mar- tineau " does not necessarily suffice to disturb the original bias of a Puritanic mind with the logic of natural laws such as that of the Conservation of Energy in the spiritual world. She drew aside the window-blind and looked out. Nothing was visible save a blurred street-lamp, and two great snow-flakes melting on the pane. " Slush underfoot," she said with a shiver. " That means thick boots and a short skirt." She took the old plum-coloured gown from be- hind the chintz curtain which did duty as a ward- robe, and threw it on the bed ; then, with her THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. 193 teeth set hard, she poured the ice-cold water from the ewer. Washing is a prolonged operation when one's basin is what in England would be designated a small pie-dish ; and there is no denying that life looked very dark while the operation lasted. So dark that a whole new crop of severe moral resolu- tions had to be twisted into a great knot of sandy hair, with the result that the knot was tight and rather uncomfortable, and very unbecoming. There had been little time to discuss the opera on the way home the night before, and it would probably have occurred to most women that Ned might look in to the barracks in the course of the day, but such an idea never crossed Sturdy's mind; so when he actually arrived about noon, the consciousness of her own plainness and general commonplaceness marred even the glad spontaneity of the greeting to which he had been looking forward. The sun was shining brightly now, and the streets were drying fast, so the short skirt and heavy boots had lost even such beauty of fitness as they had possessed in the early morning. Without any doubt the glamour of the night before was gone. Ned was disappointed of course, and yet his dis- appointment was mingled with relief. After all, this was her true self ; and he respected her the more for going on her simple dogged way quite in- dependently of him. They had seemed very near for a little while the night before, and now they seemed very far apart. Well, so much the better ! How indeed could it possibly be otherwise ? 194 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. They exchanged a few conventional sentences awkwardly, at arm's length, so to speak. He had come with the full intention of discussing Lohengrin, but now he felt a curious reluctance to broach the subject. And yet he did not want to go away. He wanted to throw fresh fuel on this eager mind, and watch it burn. He wanted to see what she would make of her life. "Very tired?" he asked kindly. " Not a bit," she replied, and she thought she spoke the truth. " It was a real charity to go with me last night. It does one good to hear the mother tongue after this eternal guttural jabber." " Doesn't it?" she responded quickly; "and yet it is surprising how little barrier the difference of nationality makes after all." " No doubt that "is your experience picking up the language with the extraordinary facility you do." She smiled. She was used to compliments on this score. " Do you know, even now I don't follow every word of a sermon unless I sit quite near the preacher." This gave the flagging conversation a suggestive fillip. "What church do you go to ?" She blushed, unable now as always to answer a question superficially. " In the morning I go to please my people at home. Our minister gave me an introduction. It is THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. 195 not exactly a church. They meet in a sort or school- room " She hesitated, and was relieved that he did not press the subject. " In the evening I go to please myself. I have heard Herr Prediger Stocker of course," she smiled "and Paulus Cassel, and Hossbach " " You are catholic ! " " One learns to be," she said with the profound philosophy of eighteen. " In the afternoon " " In the afternoon, I suppose, you complete the epigram and go to please your Maker ? " " Im Gegentheil ! " she flashed back, and then blushed with shame at her own flippancy. " In the afternoon I go to the National Gallery." " Well done ! I wish you would take me with you next Sunday." " Oh ! " she cried, " would you ? would you ? It would be an education for me. I know so little of art. When the other pupils at the studio talk of values and balancing and impressionism and tem- perament, I feel as if the rest of the world was breathing air while I was buried alive." " What studio ? " he asked abruptly. " Herr Lulves'. I have been working there twice a-week lately." A look of profound depression came over his sanguine face. " By Jove ! " he said drearily, "you are a wonderful woman." Then, metaphorically speaking, he gave his own personality the con- temptuous kick to which it was so well accustomed, and returned to the matter in hand. 196 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. " Sunday afternoon, then," he said cheerfully. " What time do you go ? " " Any time," she said ; but her face had lost the bright assurance of a moment before. " There can 't " She hesitated. " There can't what ? " She blushed painfully. " There can't be any harm in it." He turned his great blue eyes full upon her. " What harm should there be ? " he asked coldly and innocently. " Does your landlady object ? " " Oh, no. She says I am so ' ernst,' so unlike other girls. She never enquires into my comings and goings." " Sensible woman ! So even a German Hausfrau is capable of flashes of insight. Then where is the difficulty ? " She looked miserable. " I don't see any," she said ; then added desper- ately, " it it isn't customary." He took a turn up and down the room, perhaps to conceal a smile, and then seated himself on a broken-backed chair, languidly crossing his legs. " Look here, Miss Dunbar," he said ; " I am old enough to be your father, so suppose we abjure the customary for a few minutes, and indulge in a little plain speaking just to clear the air. You told me some months ago that you didn't profess to compete with other girls, and any fellow who wasn't an ass could see that you spoke the truth. Well, when an ever-watchful Providence saw fit to wreck my constitution some years ago, it decreed that I should THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. ^7 cease to compete with other men, and the position suits me admirably. I haven't a grain of senti- ment in my composition. So you see we have one thing in common. Each of us is at loose ends, so to speak, as regards the other sex. The winds and waves of life have thrown our boats alongside for a bit, and in due time we shall drift apart again. Can you tell me why, in the name of the height above or the depth beneath, we should scruple to extract what amusement or interest or benefit we can from our brief companionship ? " In the name of these mighty things, of course, the "customary" sank into nothingness, and she would not have been herself if at the moment she had even thought that, in addition to the height above and the depth beneath, there were divers little craft round about. He rose from his chair again, and strode up and down the room. Even the events of last night formed a welcome relief from this. " But I wanted to hear your opinion of Lohengrin" he said. *' Did it come up to your expectations ? " " Oh, you know ! It far surpassed them. And yet in one way I was disappointed. I could not have liked\\. better, but I felt that I wasn't appreci- ating it. It was too big to get into my mind." He smiled, well pleased. " Well, if we can't have opinions, let us at least have impressions. One can't avoid them." " No," she answered thoughtfully. Then sud- denly she turned on him, " Wagner must have had a very low opinion of women ?" 198 FELLOW TRAVELLERS. He laughed a hearty laugh of amusement and surprise. " Why ? " " I don't know which is worse Elsa or Ortrud." "You don't mean that." " I do at least I* almost mean it. I don't believe one woman in a hundred would have been such a fool as Elsa was." He raised his eyebrows. " Do you mean by that that not one woman in a hundred would have had Elsa's spiritual insight?" She did not answer. Her honest face revealed in a moment that he had taken her out of her depth. He looked at her calmly. She was too clever and too independent to require any quarter, so he went on drily and relentlessly, " I don't fancy Wagner intended Lohengrin as a brochure on the woman question." She coloured. " I didn't suppose he did," she responded warmly, dropping back at once into the schoolgirl. Her words and tone jarred on him indescribably, and he became more acutely aware of her unpre- possessing appearance. Was this really the glowing sentient thing who had sat by his side last night ? For the first time in their intercourse he was moved to trample on her, to make her feel her own limita- tions. " The reply is unworthy of your honesty, Miss Dunbar," he said coldly. " It seems to me that is exactly what you did suppose. What I meant to say was that Elsa in Wagner's conception is not THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. 199 only a woman, any more than Lohengrin is only a man. She is a human soul." He paused, half ashamed of his own priggishness. "And Lohengrin ?" she said eagerly. " Is the spiritual element in life, I suppose. Elsa has faith to see the invisible, but she has not faith to lean her whole weight on it. The time comes when she must have it translated into the tangible. The problem came to her in that particular form, but it comes to all of us in one way or another; and you tell me that ninety-nine women out of a hun- dred have not only eyes to see the invisible, but faith to turn their backs upon the substantial obvi- ous pomps and vanities, and trust themselves, body and soul, to what in most moods seems only a rain- bow bridge." She was altogether at his mercy now so far as the argument was concerned, but she had forgotten everything else in the new vista he opened up. " Go on ! " she said, almost under her breath. " Oh, do you think Lohengrin will soon be given again ? " He shook off his rare ill-humour in a laugh. " It seems to me," he said reflectively, " that a great artist uses the whole question of sex as a means, not as an end. He doesn't revel in it for its own sake." Then he broke off abruptly. The days had not yet come when men discussed such ques- tions with young girls. " It is refreshing to see a woman stand up for her sex," he said in a lighter tone; "but a woman who looks at life, who looks at every work of art, 2QO FELLOW TRAVELLERS. through the medium of her sex, only shows how subject she is to its limitations." Sturdy drew down her brows. " I should like to think about that," she said. " It sounds very true, but it doesn't walk straight home like what you said about Lohengrin. I think aa artist is bound on the whole to keep even the petty balance between the sexes pretty level." " On the whole perhaps, but not in each indi- vidual work ; his canvas may not be big enough to get it all in. Don't condemn Wagner till you have at least heard Tannhduser as well." " Oh, Wagner ! " she said simply. " I wasn't thinking of him. That was only my ignorance." " Well, good-bye," he said. " You won't thank me for wasting so much of your time." " Good-bye," she said shyly, taking his proffered hand. "Would would three o'clock suit you on Sunday ? I should love to come." Half an hour later she made her way home to dinner. One of the German girls opened the door. " Ach! " she cried in some dismay, surveying the shabby old frock. " Then you haven't seen the English gentleman to-day?" " Yes, I have," said Sturdy, hastily pulling off her weather-beaten hat. " So! " with a glance at the unbecoming coiffure*. "I suppose he isn't young?" " No, he isn't young." " Hm. Married perhaps. What a pity ! We were hoping last night that something might come of it." THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP. 2 a. 8. " The Right Honourable." By JUSTIN McCARTirrand Mrs. CAMPBELL-PRAE.U. 9. The Silence of Dean Maltland. By MAXWELL GRAY. 10. Mrs. Lorimer: A Study in Black and White. By LUCAS MALET. 11. The Elect Lady. By GEORGE MACDONALD. 12. The Mystery of the "Ocean Star." By W. CLARK RUSSELL. 13. Aristocracy. A Novel. 14. A Recoiling Vengeance. By FRANK BARRETT. With Illustrations. 15. The Secret of Fontaine-la- Croix. By MARGARET FIELD. 16. The Master of Rathkelly. By HAWLET SMART. 17. Donovan: A Modern Englishman. By EDNA LY ALL. 18. This Mortal Coil. By GRANT ALLEN. 19. A Fair Emigrant. By ROSA MULHOLLAND. 20. The Apostate. By ERNEST DAUDET. 21. Raleigh Westgate ; or, Epimenides in Maine. By HELEN KENDKICK JOHNSON. 22. Arius the Libyan. A Romance of the Primitive Church. 23. Constance, and Calbofs Rival. By JULIAN HAWTHORNE. 24. We Two. By EDNA LYALL. 25. A Dreamer of Dreams. By the author of Thoth. 26. The Ladies' Gallery. By JUSTIN MCCARTHY and Mrs. CAMPBBLL-PRAED. 27. The Reproach of Annesley. By MAXWELL GRAY. 28. Near to Happiness. 29. In the Wire Grass. By Louis PENDLETON. 30. Lace. A Berlin Romance. By PAUL LINDAU. 30}. The Black Poodle. By F. ANSTEY. 31. American Coin. A Novel. By the author of Aristocracy. 32. Won by Waiting. By EDNA LTALL. 3. The Story of Helen Davenant. By VIOLET FANE. 4. The Light of Her Countenance. 34. The Light of Her Countenance. By H. H. BOYESEN. 35. Mistress Beatrice Cope. My M. E. LE CLERC. 36. The Knight-Errant. By EDNA LYALL. 37. In the Golden Days. By EDNA LYALL. 38. Giraldi ; or, The Curse of Love. By Ross GEORGE BERING. 39. A Hardy Norseman. By EDNA LYALL. 40. The Romance of Jenny Harlowe, and Sketches of Maritime Life. By W. CLARK RUSSELL. 41. Passion's Slave. By RICHARD ASHE-KING. 42. The Awakening of Mary Ff.nwlck. By BEATRICE WHITUY. 43. Countess Loreley. Translated from the German of RUDOLF MENGER. 44. Blind Love. By WILKIE COLLINS. 45. The Dean's Daughter. By SOPHIE F. F. VEITCH. 46. Countess Irene. A Romance of Austrian Life. By J. FOGERTY. 47. Robert Brownings I'nmApal Shorter Poems. 48. Frozen Hearts. By G. WEBB APPLETON. 49. Djambek the Georgian. By A. G. VON SUTTNER. 0. The Craze of Christian Engelhart. By HENRY FAULKNER DARNELL. 51 . Lai, By WILLIAM A. HAMMOND, M. D. 52. Aline. A Novel. By HENRY GREVILLE. 53. Joost Avelingh. A Dutch Story. By MAARTEN MAARTENS. 54. Katy of Catoctin. By GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND. 55. Throclcmorton. A Novel. By MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL. 56. Expatriation. By the author of Aristocracy. 57. Geoffrey Hampstead,. By T. 8. JARVIS. APPLETONS' TOWN AND COUNTRY LIBRARY. (Continued.) 68. Dmitri. A Romance of Old Russia. By P. W. Bain, M. A. 59 Part of the Property. By BEATRICE WHITBY. 60. Bismarck in Private Life. By a Fellow-Student. 61. In Low Relief. By MOBLET ROBERTS. 62. The Canadians of Old. A Historical Romance. By PHILIPPE GASPE. 63. A Squire of Low Degree. By LII.Y A. LONG. 64. A Fluttered Dovecote. By GEORGE MANVILLE FENN. 65. The Nugents of Carriconna. An Irish Story. By TIGHE HOPKINS. 06. A Sensitive Plant. By E. and D. GERARD. 67. Dona Lvz. By JUAN VALERA. Tianelated by Mrs. MARY J. SERRANO. 68. Pepita Xtmenez. By JUAN VALEBA. Translated by Mrs. MARY J. SERRANO. 69. The Primes and their Neighbors. By RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON. 70. The Iron Game. By HENRY F. KEENAN. 71. Stories of Old New Spain. By THOMAS A. JANVIER. 72. The M 'aid of Honor. By Hon. LEWIS WINGFIELD. 73." In the Heart of the Storm. By MAXWELL GRAY. 74. Consequences. By EGERTON CASTLE. 75. The Three Miss Kings. By ADA CAMBRIDGE. 76. A Matter of Skill. By BEATRICE WHITBY. 77. Maid Manan, and Other Stories. By MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL. 78. One Woman's Way. By EDMUND PENDLETON. 79. A Merciful Divorce. By F. W. MAUDE. 80. Stephen JSllicott's Daughter. By Mrs. J. H. NEEDELL. 81. One Reason Why. By BEATRICE WHITBY. 82. The Tragedy of Ida Noble. By W. CLARK RUSSELL. 83. The Johnstovm Stage, and other Stories. By KOSTSRT H. FLETCHER. 84. A Widower Indeed. By RHODA BROUGHTON and EI^IABETH BISLAND. 85. The Flight of a Shadow. By GEORGE MACDONALD. 86. Love or Money. By KATHARINE LEE. 87. Not All in Vain. By ADA CAMBRIDGE. 88. It Happened Yesterday. By FREDERICK MARSHALL. 89. My Guardian. By ADA CAMBRIDGE. 80. The Story of Philip Methuen. By Mrs. J. H. NEEDELL. 91. Amethyst : The Story of a Beauty. By CHKISTABEL R. COLERIDGE. 92. Don Braulio. By JUAN VALERA. Translated by CLARA BELL. 93. The Chronicles of Mr. Bill Williams. By RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON. 94. A Queen of Curds and Cream. By DOROTHEA GEBARD. 95. " La Bella " and Others. By EGERTON CASTLE. 96. " December Roses," By Mrs. CAMPBELL-PBAEB. 97. Jean de Kerdren . By JEANNE SCHULTZ. 98. Etelka's Vow. By DOROTHEA GERARD. 99. Cross Currents. By MARY A. DICKENS. 100. His Life's Magnet. By THEODORA ELMSLIE. 101. Passing the Love of Women. By Mrs. J. H. NEEDELL. 102. In Old St. Stephen's. By JEANIE DRAKE. 103. The Berkeleys and their Neighbors. By MOLLY ELLIOT SEA WELL. 104. Mona Maclean, Medical Student. By GKAHAM TRAVBRS. 105. Mrs. Bligh. By RHODA BROUGHTON. 106. A Stumble on the Threshold. By JAMES PAYN. 107. Hanging Moss. By PAUL LINDAU. 108. A Comedy of Elopement. By CHRISTIAN REID. 109. In the Suntime of her Youth. By BEATRICE WHITBY. 110. Stories in Black and White. By THOMAS HARDY and Others. IIOJ. An Englishman in Paris. Notes and Recollections. 111. Commander Mendoza. By JUAN VALERA. 112. Dr. Paull's Theory. 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