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THE MONEY-SPINNER 
 
 AND OTHER CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 1 Compre7idre, c'cst imrdonner ' 
 
He Is left sitting there In the same attitude when the others have gone 
 
 {Page 4) 
 
THE MONEY-SPINNEE 
 
 AND OTHER CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 BY 
 HENEY SETON MEEEIMAN 
 
 AND 
 
 S. G. TALLENTYEE 
 
 WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR RACKHAM 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 SMITH, ELDEE, & CO., 15 WATEELOO PLACE 
 
 1897 
 
 [All rights reserved] 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Thanks are due to the Proprietors of Cornhill 
 for permission to reprint the majority of these 
 Character Notes, which were published in that 
 magazine during 1893, 1894, and 1895. Of these 
 sketches, originally intended to be written in 
 collaboration, a minority only are from the pen 
 
 of H. S. Merriman. 
 
 H. S. M. 
 S. G. T. 
 
 564 
 
.. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Money-Spinner ....... 1 
 
 The Nurse . . . 13 
 
 The Scholar 20 
 
 The Mother 27 
 
 My Lord 41 
 
 'Melia 52 
 
 The Labourer 64 
 
 intellecta 74 
 
 The Soldier-Servant 85 
 
 The Practical Woman 97 
 
 The Squire . .108 
 
 The Beauty 119 
 
 The Peasant 128 
 
 The Frenchman 138 
 
 The Schoolgirl 147 
 
 The Dog 155 
 
 The Caretaker . . 165 
 
Viii CONTENTS 
 
 TAGE 
 
 The Parson 179 
 
 The Child 188 
 
 The Bad Penny 201 
 
 The Spinster 214- 
 
 The New Woman 225 
 
 The Farmer . 233 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 He is left sitting there in the same atti- 
 tude WHEN THE OTHERS HAVE GONE . . Frontispiece 
 
 Perhaps the 'flos' he has studied most 
 is the flower-faced Leonora at his side to face p. 20 
 
 .My Lord is young with George IV. He 
 
 loses a fortune at play . . . . „ 41 
 
 He sits very contentedly in his garden 
 in the summer sunshine, and dozes a 
 great deal „ 64 
 
 She sits on James's knee, while he reads 
 Bulbs ,,85 
 
 The villagers always follow his stal- 
 wart, solitary old figure, with the com- 
 ment THAT ' HE DO BEAR UP WONDERFUL ' . „ 108 
 
 The old woman, rocking Polly's baby to 
 
 SLEEP ,,128 
 
X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 And Monsieur, leaning on his spade, and 
 looking into her bright face with his 
 kindly old eyes, says, ' yes, mademoi- 
 SELLE,— PERHAPS ' to face p. 147 
 
 Martha waters these forlorn and stunt- 
 ed GERANIUMS WITH THE GREATEST PRIDE 
 AND INDISCRETION ,,165 
 
 Bab says, 'No, I'm not. I don't want to 
 
 CLIMB TREES. It's STUPID ' . . . , ,,188 
 
 The Eldest Generosity girl bounces about 
 a good deal on the music stool, and 
 plays wrong notes maliciously . . . ,,214 
 
 Yet when Mary mentions his name . . . 
 he turns upon her furiously , „ 233 
 
OHARACTEE NOTES 
 
 THE MONEY-SPINNER 
 
 Notre humeur met le prix a tout ce qui vient de la fortune ' 
 
 He lives, of course, in the most correct part of 
 town. His sons see to such things for him. They 
 are young men with a very just sense of the re- 
 sponsibility of his position, and take care that 
 his money shall be spent in the most elegant and 
 fashionable manner possible. Quite regardless, 
 therefore, of the trouble thereby entailed upon 
 them — and the expense thereby entailed upon him 
 — they have taken care that his house shall be a 
 delicious conglomerate of soft carpets, rare flowers, 
 the latest thing in decorations and furniture, the 
 best French cooks, and the most irreproachable 
 butler. The Money-spinner would indeed be an 
 ungrateful fiend if, after expending so much 
 trouble upon it, the sons could not use the paternal 
 
2 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 mansion as headquarters for their friends, and if 
 he made any objection to his married daughter 
 giving dances in his drawing-room, and erecting 
 the sweetest little stage in the library for private 
 theatricals. 
 
 But there are people who can make money 
 and cannot appreciate it. Just as there are 
 other people who can appreciate money but can- 
 not make it. Of the first, the Money-spinner 
 might almost be taken as an example. Of the 
 second, his children are undoubtedly admirable 
 instances. They are able to say, with a very 
 laudable pride, that they keep the house ' warm ' 
 and give the servants ' something to do. 5 They 
 are wont to add that there is nothing like a large 
 house-party for keeping up poor old papa's spirits. 
 The married daughter, with a taste for society, lays 
 a very great stress upon this point. As every one 
 says she is a devoted daughter, she certainly ought 
 to know what is good for poor old papa's spirits. 
 
 And yet, but for her word, one would scarcely 
 think the house-party has an enlivening effect 
 upon him. When he creeps downstairs forlornly 
 he is apt to encounter elegant young ladies in 
 travelling costumes ascending his staircase, fol- 
 lowed by immense trunks. Beyond the fact that 
 
THE MONEY-SPINNER 3 
 
 they are going to be his visitors, a fact which, 
 under the circumstances, any fool could guess, he 
 knows neither who has invited them, nor how long 
 they propose to stay, nor even what are their 
 names. That they are equally ignorant with regard 
 to him is revealed to him by overhearing one of 
 them ask another, ' Who ever is that old thing ? \ 
 Edith (the married daughter) assures him that he 
 is in very good society — better, she insinuates very 
 sweetly and gracefully, than perhaps he has been 
 used to. She cannot forget, being a person of 
 very refined and delicate tastes, his Clapham 
 origin. And, knowing always what is best for 
 poor dear papa, will not allow him to forget it 
 either. 
 
 Perhaps the society is good. Perhaps the 
 Money-spinner thinks, as he looks down a tableful 
 of guests who are very much appreciating his 
 delicate wines and the French cooking — that it is 
 too good for him. He sits at the head of the table 
 in a rarely broken silence. The young men talk 
 across him, after dinner, on subjects of which he 
 knows nothing. Occasionally one or other of them 
 thinks that the old boy seems rather out of things, 
 and attempts to draw him into the conversation. 
 But they soon find out he has never been at Oxford 
 
 B 2 
 
4 CHAKACTEE NOTES 
 
 and is consequently impossible. They are so kind 
 as to say that he is good enough perhaps for dollar- 
 grinding, but a fellow, by Jove, of absolutely no 
 cultchah whatever. So he is left to finger his wine- 
 glass with bent hands that shake a little, and says 
 nothing. He is left sitting there in the same 
 attitude when the others have gone to the library 
 to rehearse the play Edith is so very kindly getting 
 up for a charity.* He would sit there perhaps for 
 another hour, but the butler, quite firm and polite, 
 points out to him that if the table is not cleared the 
 servants' supper will be delayed. He moves hastily, 
 apologetically, and creeps up to the drawing-room. 
 But it is bare of furniture, and druggeted for 
 Edith's skirt-dancing party to-morrow. He had 
 forgotten the party. He is beginning to forget 
 many things. In the library a young lady — the 
 Girl of the Stairs — is in a stage faint in his par- 
 ticular arm-chair. She wakes up when he comes 
 in, and says, with an immensely becoming blush, 
 directed at the eldest son, that if any one else is 
 going to look on she really doesn't think she can 
 go on with this utterly ridiculous scene and make 
 such an awful idiot of herself. ' You need not mind 
 me,' the Money-spinner murmurs in his old voice, 
 1 for I shall not be looking at you.' Perhaps it 
 
THE MONEY-SPINNER 5 
 
 occurs to him afterwards that this is not what he 
 was meant to say, that there is a plainness and 
 directness in his form of speech which savours 
 odiously of Clapham. One of the sons, who is 
 always so thoughtful, accommodates poor old papa 
 with the music-stool, the only seat of which the 
 actors have not taken possession. He sits there 
 looking so ridiculously depressed and old that 
 Edith whispers at last that he is a perfect damper 
 on them all, and if he is going to look like that 
 he had better go to bed. Perhaps he despairs 
 of looking anything except like that. So he 
 goes, slowly, to bed. 
 
 The theatricals — for the charity — have a way 
 of always taking that arm-chair, he finds. He also 
 discovers that the whole plot of the piece rests upon 
 one of the Oxford men finding, in the fourth act, 
 some one's long lost Will inside the evening news- 
 paper. Further, the Oxford man considers that 
 this incident gives him a right to retain that 
 newspaper and read it intermittently through the 
 first three acts. The stage is very comfortably 
 situated near the fire. Some woman, with an odd 
 compassion, very much out of place, for poor old 
 papa looking so utterly ridiculous on his music- 
 stool, asks if he cannot sit among the performers 
 
I CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 during rehearsals and warm himself there by the 
 fire ? But she is assured that it would be horribly 
 unprofessional, and isn't to be thought of. 
 
 Every one in town says the skirt-dancing parties 
 are perfectly charming and brilliantly successful. 
 If the Money-spinner is not grateful for all the 
 trouble Edith takes in getting them up, he certainly 
 ought to be. It is not as if they were for her 
 honour and glory. Not at all. They are given in 
 his name, and it is therefore plainly his duty to 
 make himself agreeable. Perhaps he tries. Per- 
 haps it is Clapham still cleaving to him which 
 makes him so dull, and apathetic, and heavy. 
 Perhaps it is only because he is old and tired. 
 Who knows ? If he rouses himself to think at all, 
 it is perhaps to reflect that his mother — dead, God 
 knows how many years ago— would scarcely have 
 thought, in her bourgeoise way, that some of the 
 fine ladies he is entertaining were altogether re- 
 spectable. Perhaps he would think — if he were 
 allowed to think independently — that the entertain- 
 ment itself is — well, a trifle vulgar. But then, as 
 Edith told him this morning, he is so awfully 
 Clapham. It must be because his mind is so 
 permeated with the commonness of his native soil 
 that he sees vulgarity even in a chaste and beauti- 
 
THE MONEY-SPINNER 7 
 
 ful entertainment, which is the very height of 
 fashion. 
 
 His wife, for he has a wife, is not a creature of 
 his common and earthy mould. She is far younger, 
 with beauty still, an aristocratic origin, a delicate 
 fragility, and a heart complaint which she dresses 
 to perfection. She only lives in England a few 
 months out of every year. The doctors say she is a 
 perfect exotic. A sweet term, which suits her to 
 perfection. She has a villa in Algiers, and bears 
 up wonderfully (her physician says she has a great 
 soul although she is so frail) at the parting from 
 her husband which takes place every year. He is 
 more emotional. The bourgeois always are. That 
 is one of the ways by which one can tell the breed. 
 He has not forgotten the old love he had for her 
 years ago. He does not expect — he never expected 
 — that she should return it. Numbers of those 
 obliging people who go about the world telling the 
 truth assure him that he was married for his 
 money. He accepts the fact meekly. For what 
 else should she, the second cousin, only a few times 
 removed, of an Earl, have married a creature with 
 a plebeian name, an obscure origin, and the clumsy 
 hands and feet of the People ? The Exotic tells 
 her dearest friends — and being such an eminently 
 
8 CHAKACTEK NOTES 
 
 charming person, her dearest friends are quite 
 unlimited in number — that she sacrificed herself 
 in marriage to retrieve her papa's fortunes. Her 
 dearest friends are quite enraptured at so rare and 
 sweet a self-devotion, and say to each other on 
 their way home that the Exotic is perfectly aware 
 of the value of money, and had determined to 
 marry the Money-spinner when she was a child in 
 the schoolroom. Such spiteful persons (ladies, for 
 the most part, who are probably jealous of the 
 Exotic's fine drawing-room and her well-preserved 
 beauty) add that it would have been better for the 
 Money-spinner if he had married upon five hun- 
 dred a year and lived ever after in a suburban villa 
 (once the height of his ambition). Under such 
 circumstances, the ladies add, the Exotic would 
 not have had time for her heart complaint, and 
 w 7 ould have stayed at home like other people and 
 looked after her husband and children. Or 
 would have stayed at home and died. They are 
 unable to determine which alternative would 
 have contributed more to the Money-spinner's 
 happiness. 
 
 He himself has an absolute devotion to his 
 wife — and a corresponding belief in that heart 
 complaint. He is too dull, perhaps, to form 
 
THE MONEY-SPINNER 9 
 
 conceptions of what might have been. Or is too 
 shrewd, despite his apathy, to think that his wife's 
 affection for him would have grown better in a 
 crude villa, perpetually odoriferous of cooking, than 
 in her dainty flower-scented rooms in Prince's Gate. 
 He is one of those slow-going people whose feelings 
 do not change. Even now, when her name is 
 mentioned, his dim eyes brighten, and he rouses 
 from the apathy into which he is falling deeper 
 and deeper every day. She is the only subject 
 upon which he can talk with animation. The son 
 of his old age is vacuous, idle, and dissolute. 
 There is but one interest in the world left clear 
 and fresh and strong to him — and that is the wife 
 who neglects him. 
 
 Every day, from the force of old habit, he 
 drives to the City office in which years before he 
 accumulated his fortune. The sons say it is per- 
 fectly ridiculous. Edith is not quite sure that it 
 is not — well, a little common. But sometimes, 
 when they want an extra cheque, they will consent, 
 so beautiful is their humility and condescension, 
 to drive to the office and ask him for it personally. 
 The sons wonder what the deuce he does there all 
 day. They themselves know nothing about making 
 money — only spending it. And that they do to 
 
10 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 perfection. Edith says he grubs about the old 
 Stocks and Shares, and she verily believes is quite 
 fond of them. Perhaps he is. They have for him 
 the attraction of old association. As he sits in the 
 very elderly leather chair, which neither persuasion 
 nor sarcasm can induce him to exchange for a 
 better, it is possible that he recalls his youth. He 
 recollects the old poverty, the bitter struggle, the 
 keen ambition. He remembers the fierce incentive 
 he had to work — the success coming slowly, slowly 
 — and then bursting upon him like a great dawn. 
 But Edith has come up — for a little money, she 
 says. Only people's ideas of what constitutes a 
 little money differ very considerably. ' My dear 
 papa/ she exclaims, with a tap on his shoulder, 
 'you have been dozing. And if you only knew 
 how you have been snoring I verily believe you 
 would never go to sleep again.' 
 
 One morning the valet comes to Edith with a 
 scared face. ' My master,' says the man, ' is ill ; 
 and I think a doctor should be sent for at once.' 
 
 ' Parker always loses his head in illness,' says 
 Edith when the man has gone. ' Poor dear papa ! 
 I shall go up and see him, and then I can judge 
 for myself. But I must say I hope to goodness he 
 won't want the doctor ; for who can be spared to 
 
THE MONEY-SPINNER ll 
 
 fetch him this morning, with the dance coming off 
 to-night and everything — I don't know.' 
 
 The sons do not know either. Nor the guests. 
 No one knows. And so every one continues break- 
 fast with an assumption of cheerfulness, which is 
 so very admirably done that it might almost be 
 taken for the real thing. Edith sees papa, and 
 does not think he is nearly so bad as Parker makes 
 him out. He seems apathetic and heavy, and says 
 very little. But that is all. (Edith has once been 
 engaged to a physician, so she thinks she ought to 
 know something of medicine.) Still, perhaps they 
 will go round by the doctor's, and ask him to call, 
 during their morning drive. It is hundreds and 
 thousands of miles out of their way, but it will 
 never do to let poor old papa feel himself neglected. 
 So after a little shopping at Shoolbred's, ices at 
 Buzzard's, and a detour by way of Marshall & 
 Snelgrove's, they call on the doctor. He has just 
 gone out, so there is a short unavoidable delay in 
 his coming. But that does not matter, because 
 the Money-spinner has died some hours before. 
 Parker has been with him, and has bent over him 
 with a polite affection not born entirely, perhaps, 
 of handsome wages and unlimited perquisites. His 
 master says very little. He has been in the habit 
 
12 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 of saying very little all his life. He asks that a 
 photograph of his wife — a dressy photograph in a 
 theatrical pose — may be turned so that he can see 
 it from where he lies. Once or twice he murmurs 
 her name. His intellect is quite clear. He does 
 not ask to see her, but appears to recollect perfectly 
 that she is far away from him, as she has been for 
 more than half their married life. Once he asks 
 for his youngest son, speaking of him by some baby 
 name which has long since dropped into disuse. 
 Parker explains to his master that Mr. Harold does 
 not know his father is so ill, and has gone out 
 riding. After that the Money-spinner never speaks 
 again. The monotonous ticking of the clock is the 
 only sound that breaks the silence. The old man's 
 withered hands move restlessly on the bedclothes. 
 He turns his head once, slowly, on his pillow, and 
 so dies — the most desolate of God's creatures. 
 
 The evening party has to be put off, and Edith 
 goes into very stylish mourning. The vacuous son 
 consoles himself by marrying a barmaid. It is 
 whispered that the Exotic will not long remain a 
 widow, and Parker has found a situation in a titled 
 family. 
 
13 
 
 THE NURSE 
 
 1 II y a de mechantes quality qui font de grands talents ' 
 
 Peg has an excellent situation. Her mistress has 
 often said so herself. And she ought to know. 
 ' Eighteen pounds a year and All Found is a great 
 deal more, George, than most people give their 
 nurses. And there isn't any one else who would 
 put up with what I do from Margaret.' 
 
 There is no doubt at all that Peg has a pas- 
 sionate temper, and, at times, it is to be feared, a 
 coarse tongue. She is short, sturdy, and eminently 
 plebeian, with little, quick, black, flashing eyes. 
 She is ignorant. The culture and polish of the 
 Board School are not upon her. But when Nellie, 
 her eldest charge, dares to doubt the statements 
 Peg has made to Jack, a propos of the story of 
 Alfred and the cakes, Peg chases Nellie round the 
 table and boxes her ears. It will thus be seen that 
 Peg is no fool. 
 
 Jacky is her especial care. Jacky is a gay soul 
 
14 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 of four. To say that Peg is proud of him would 
 be but a miserable half-truth. She flings, as it 
 were, Jacky's charms of mind and person in the 
 face of the Abigails of less favoured infants. She 
 steadily exhibits every day, during a constitutional 
 walk, Jack's sturdy limbs and premature conversa- 
 tion to nurses whose charges have vastly inferior 
 limbs and no conversation at all. It is unneces- 
 sary to add that Peg is exceedingly unpopular. 
 
 Jack is being ruinously spoilt. Mamma says 
 so. Mamma, however, is not a person of strong 
 character, and Peg is of very strong character. So 
 Mamma cannot possibly help the spoiling. Peg 
 indeed makes Jack obey her, but does not particu- 
 larly impress on him to obey any one else. She 
 has been known, on rare occasions, to administer 
 correction to him with a hand which is not of the 
 lightest. But when Mamma punishes him Peg 
 appears in the drawing-room trembling and white 
 with rage to announce that she will not stay to see 
 the child ill-used. ' This day month, if you please,' 
 and a torrent of abuse. 
 
 Of course it is not this day month. Mamma 
 says, S I told you she would come round, George. 
 Margaret is perfectly wide-awake, I assure you, 
 and knows a good place when she has it.' 
 
THE NURSE 15 
 
 So Peg keeps the good place— and Jack. 
 
 One summer she takes him down to a country 
 manor to stay with his cousins. Before the end 
 of the first week she has quarrelled with all the 
 manor servants — especially the nurses. When 
 Jacky, with a gay smile and guileless mien, puts 
 out the eyes of cousin Mabel's doll, and Mabel 
 weeps thereat, Peg is seen smacking that infant in 
 a corner. This is too much for the manor. And 
 it is certain if Jacky had not most inconveniently 
 fallen ill the manor spare bedroom would have 
 been wanted for other occupants, and Peg and 
 Jacky would have returned home three weeks too 
 soon. 
 
 There is not much the matter with Jacky. 
 Only a croupy cold. And Peg knows all about 
 these croupy colds. She tries upon it many ter- 
 rible and ignorant remedies. Will not hear of the 
 doctor being sent for, and one night suddenly 
 sends for him herself. And the doctor sends for 
 Jacky's parents. Peg is at the doorway to meet 
 Mamma— hysterically reproachful from the cab 
 window. Peg is quite white, with an odd glitter 
 in her little eyes, and does not lose her temper. 
 Before Mamma has been revived by sherry in the 
 dining-room Peg is back again with the boy. She 
 
16 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 has scarcely left him for a week. He has already 
 lost his pretty plumpness and roundness — a mere 
 shadow of a child even now, with nothing left of 
 his old self except a capacity for laughing— what a 
 weak laugh ! — and an odd sense of humour in 
 grim satire to his wasted body and the grave 
 faces round him. Only Peg laughs back at him ; 
 Mamma wonders how she can have the heart. 
 But then, of course, one cannot expect a servant to 
 feel what one does one's self. It may be because 
 Peg is, after all, merely hired (eighteen pounds a 
 year and All Found), and is no sort of relation to 
 Jack, that she can hold him in her arms, talk to 
 him, sing to him by the hour together ; that she 
 can do with little rest and hurried meals; that 
 she is always alert, sturdy, and competent, 
 
 Mamma thinks it is a blessed thing that the r 
 * lower classes are not sensitive like we are. It is a 
 very blessed thing — for Jack. 
 
 Papa is worn out with grief and anxiety before 
 the colour has left Peg's homely face. 
 
 Mamma is incompetent and hysterical from 
 the first, and is soon forbidden the sick-room 
 altogether. 
 
 It is melancholy to record that when this 
 mandate is issued a gleam of satisfaction — not to 
 
THE NUESE 17 
 
 say triumph — steals over Peg's resolute counte- 
 nance. 
 
 ' He's getting on nicely, doctor, now, isn't he ? ' 
 she inquires of the bigwig from Harley Street a 
 day or two later. ' He ' is Jack, of course. The 
 large and pompous physician looks down at her 
 through his gold-rimmed eye-glasses, and gives 
 her to understand, not ungently — for though she 
 is only the nurse, he thinks she has some real 
 affection for the child — that Jack is dying. 
 
 \ Dying ! ' Peg flashes out full of defiance. 
 ' Then what's the use of your chattering and 
 worriting and upsetting the place like this, if 
 that's all you can do for him? Dying! We'll 
 see about that.' 
 
 From that moment she defies them all. The 
 consulting physicians, the ordinary practitioner, 
 the night-nurse from Guy's, Death itself, perhaps. 
 She never leaves' the child. The shadow of the 
 old Jacky lies all day long on a pillow in her lap ; 
 sometimes all night too. When it is past saying 
 anything else it says her name. It has its head 
 so turned that it can see her face. When she 
 smiles down at it, the forlornest ghost of a smile 
 answers her back. She has an influence over it 
 that would be magical if it were not most natural 
 
 o 
 
18 CHAEACTEE NOTES 
 
 that devotion should be repaid by devotion, even 
 from the heart of a child. 
 
 The consulting physician says one day that if 
 there is a hope for the boy that hope lies in Peg's 
 nursing. It is the first time he has admitted 
 that there can be a hope at all. Peg's face shines 
 with an odd light which, if she were not wholly 
 plain and plebeian, would make her beautiful. 
 
 One day, when the shadow is lying in her lap 
 as usual, the night-nurse puts a telegram into her 
 hand. When she has read it she lays Jacky on 
 the bed and goes away. For the first time she 
 does not heed his feeble cry of her name. 
 
 She finds the father and mother, and, with the 
 pink paper shaking in her hand, says that her 
 brother is dying ; that she must go away. Blood 
 is thicker than water after all. She has but a 
 few passions, but those few are strong; and the 
 dying brother is one of them. 
 
 The father, broken down by the wretchedness 
 of the past weeks, implores her to stay and save 
 Jacky. But she is unmoved. Her brother is 
 dying, and she must go. 
 
 The mother, abjectly miserable, entreats and 
 prays, and offers her money, and Peg turns upon 
 her with a flash of scorn far too grand for her 
 stout and homely person. 
 
THE NURSE 19 
 
 And when she goes back to Jacky a wan ghost 
 of a smile breaks through the tears on his face, 
 and he lifts a wizened hand to stroke her cheek, 
 and says that it was bad to go away, and she is not 
 to go away any more. 
 
 And she does not. 
 
 Jacky gets better. It is as if Peg has fought 
 with Death — as she would fight for Jacky with 
 anything in this world or in any other world- 1 — and 
 conquered. Jacky's case appears in the 'Lancet, ' 
 and the medical bigwigs shake their heads over it 
 and are fairly puzzled. They have not the cue to 
 the whole matter — which is Peg. 
 
 When Jacky is past a woman's care Peg goes 
 away. Papa and mamma don't spare expense, 
 and give her a five-pound note as a parting present. 
 
 But she has another reward, wholly unsub- 
 stantial and satisfactory. In an undergraduate's 
 rooms at Christ Church — an idl & d gg ' O f an under- 
 graduate, by the way — amid a galaxy of dramatic 
 beauty, and in a terrible plush frame, presented by 
 herself, there is a photo — of Peg. 
 
 And it is believed that the undergraduate, who 
 is not in any other way remarkable for domestic 
 virtue, actually writes to her. 
 
 c 2 
 
20 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 THE SCHOLAR 
 
 ' Qui vit sans folie n'est pas si sage qu'il croit ' 
 
 He is fifty-five years old. He is erudite, classic, 
 and scholarly. He knows everything. What can 
 be duller than a man who knows everything ? He 
 is scientific and botanical. He wears grey thread 
 gloves — a size too large— goloshes and a comforter. 
 And yet, when his cousin presents him with a 
 living — a remote living in the wilds of a northern 
 county — he purposes to be married. 
 
 This Fossil, with traces of an ice age clearly 
 left on his formal manners and punctilious and 
 guarded speech, engages himself to Leonora. 
 
 Leonora is romantic, as her name declares. But 
 Leonora's guardian is eminently practical. Thinks 
 the living will do. And so Leonora is betrothed 
 to it. 
 
 Leonora is sweet and twenty. With brown 
 curls tied at the back of her head with a ribbon. 
 With an arch smile. With a charming gift of 
 
Perhaps the 'flos' he has studied most is the flower faced Leonora 
 
 at his side 
 
THE SCHOLAR 21 
 
 singing — to the harp. She is not erudite. It is 
 not the fashion for young ladies to be erudite 
 in her time. When her elderly lover shows 
 her specimens through a microscope— -which is his 
 ridiculous old way of expressing admiration for 
 her — she is never able to decide whether she is 
 looking at a flower or a beetle. She is wholly 
 volatile and lovely and inattentive. All his love- 
 making is full of instruction. It is an absurd, 
 pedantic way of showing one's affection. But it 
 is almost the only way be has. And there are 
 worse, perhaps. 
 
 They go for their honeymoon to the Eiviera. 
 And the Eiviera of forty years ago had much more 
 of heaven and less of earth about it than the 
 Eiviera of the present day. 
 
 Beneath the deep eternal blue and the everlast- 
 ing sunshine of its skies the Fossil's punctilious 
 formality melts a little. He still goes about in 
 a comforter and searches for specimens through 
 near-sighted spectacles. But under the balmy 
 warmth of an Italian sun — and of Leonora — his 
 chilliness of manner experiences a slight thaw. It 
 is thought that for those few brief weeks he is, in 
 some very slight degree of course, as another man 
 might be. It is certain that his botanical friends 
 
22 CHARACTEK NOTES 
 
 are considerably disappointed in the collection of 
 Italian flora he has to show them on his return 
 home. Perhaps the flos he has studied most is 
 the flowered-faced Leonora at his side — Leonora 
 with her poke-bonnet hung upon her arm, with 
 her curls shaken back, and her wicked, laughing, 
 roguish face turned up to his — looking for all the 
 world like one of those ridiculous pictures in an 
 old-fashioned Book of Beauty. 
 
 Leonora hates science — and stops the scientist's 
 prosy mouth with a kiss. Leonora can't bear 
 botany, and likes the flowers much better without 
 those interminable Latin names tacked on to 
 them. 
 
 Is she in love with her Fossil ? Who shall 
 say ? It is preposterous and unnatural that she 
 should be. But the preposterous and unnatural 
 both happen occasionally. 
 
 Is her Fossil in love with her ? A hideous old 
 fright in goloshes, a tedious, moth-eaten old book- 
 worm has no right to be in love with anyone. 
 
 Then they go home to the country vicarage. 
 The country vicarage is the incarnation of dul- 
 ness, dampness, and ugliness. And Leonora sings 
 about the house and scandalises the servants. The 
 furniture is immensely solid and frightful. And 
 
THE SCHOLAR 23 
 
 Leonora's shawl is thrown here, and her work — 
 in dreadful disorder — there, and roses from the 
 garden everywhere. 
 
 The Fossil, before he was married, had drawn 
 up a solemn code of rules for the guidance of the 
 household. A bell to tell them to get up ; a bell to 
 tell them to come down ; a bell for prayers ; a bell 
 to begin breakfast, and a bell to finish it. And 
 Leonora stops her ears when she hears these warn- 
 ings, and is never less than ten minutes late for 
 meals. 
 
 The Fossil sits in his study, scientific and 
 theological, and Leonora breaks in upon this sanc- 
 tum, without tapping, with her face glowing and 
 laughing, and shuts up the abstruse work with a 
 bang. She drags the Fossil into the garden with- 
 out his goloshes. When she wants to do some- 
 thing incompatible with his Calvinistic principles 
 she lays her fresh face against his parchment 
 cheek and says it isn't any good saying 'No,' 
 because she really Must. And she always does. 
 
 The Fossil had a great scientific work in hand 
 when he was married — an elaborate treatise upon 
 the Paleozoic Epoch — but it proceeds lamentably 
 slowly. He attempts to write in the evening after 
 dinner, and Leonora draws out the harp from its 
 
24 CHAEACTEE NOTES 
 
 corner and sings to it. She sings ' Eose Softly 
 Blooming ' and ' 'Twas One of Those Dreams,' 
 and the great work does not proceed at all. 
 
 Then Leonora is ill, and the little daughter is 
 dead before she is born. But Leonora is soon 
 better — well enough to lie on the sofa and be sweet, 
 foolish, and tiresome once more. The Fossil sits 
 by her side gravely. Sometimes he brings her 
 flowers without their botanical names. He proses 
 scientifically, as from long habit ; but he looks the 
 while at her transparent colour and her shining eyes, 
 and the science is at times unscholarly and even 
 incorrect. And Leonora looks back at him with 
 the old arch, laughing glance, and with something 
 more behind it. It is a something they do not say — 
 which can never be said. Perhaps the one thinks 
 that the other does not know it. It may be so. To 
 the last Leonora is very much better — ' Nearly quite 
 well,' in answer to a daily question. On the last 
 evening the Fossil is proposing a change to the 
 seaside to complete her cure, and she dies with a 
 smile and a jest, infinitely tender and selfless, upon 
 her lips. 
 
 The neighbourhood, who could not be expected 
 to like an l eccentric old thing ' like the Fossil, 
 decides that he is shockingly heartless. He appears 
 
THE SCHOLAR 25 
 
 af Leonora's funeral actually in a red comforter. 
 There are no signs of emotion upon his face. The 
 lines may be a trifle deeper upon it, perhaps ; but 
 then he was always deeply lined, so that does not 
 count. 
 
 He completes the great work ; he draws up a 
 new and more ridiculous code of rules for his 
 household ; and then he marries again. His wife 
 is perfectly virtuous and meaningless. She obeys 
 the bells to a second; she never interrupts his 
 studies ; she never lets the children disturb him ; 
 his comforter and gloves are never out of their 
 places. She is an excellent wife — a great deal 
 too good for him. 
 
 He grows duller and more erudite yearly. A 
 visitor describes him as a Lump of Science. He 
 composes immensely learned and dreary sermons. 
 The six yokels who usually form his congregation 
 very sensibly go to sleep. The chill formality of 
 his manner repulses the parishioners and frightens 
 his children. He attempts to teach these children 
 out of his fusty stores of scientific lore, but they 
 are too awe-struck to comprehend anything — sup- 
 posing that they had the ability, which they have 
 not. 
 
 Their mother dies ; they grow up and go out 
 
26 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 into the world. As far as the Fossil is concerned, 
 they are virtually dead also ; but then, as far as he 
 is concerned, they might almost as well never have 
 been alive. 
 
 He is not more lonely than he has been for 
 twenty years. He passes all day in his study 
 among his books. That the room is damp and 
 dreary, matters little to him. The books are behind 
 the time. He is behind the time himself. Between 
 him and the musty work over which his old head 
 bends, comes sometimes a vision of the days that 
 once were and will be no more. The Italian sun- 
 shine above, the touch of a hand, the sound of a 
 laughing voice, a girl's face, brilliant and tender, 
 and he sees — Leonora. 
 
27 
 
 THE MOTHER 
 
 1 L'etre le plus aime est celui par qui on aura le plus souffert 
 
 Mrs. Tasker lets lodgings. She lives in the most 
 remote and unknown of east coast watering places. 
 Her modest abode is not patronised by the fashion- 
 able. She does not even pretend — there is, in fact, 
 no pretence about Mrs. Tasker — that her sitting- 
 room has a sea view. Neither does she deceive the 
 impecunious hospital-nurse, the soft spinster, and 
 the struggling lady artist, who form her clientele, 
 with promises of good cooking or any description 
 of attendance. 
 
 Mrs. Tasker, in fact, lets lodgings, as it were, 
 upon sufferance. She receives her guests with a 
 cast of countenance perfectly lugubrious. She has 
 paid no attention to her dress so as to create an 
 agreeable impression upon them. Her normal 
 costume of a dingy skirt, a forlorn top of a different 
 colour, and a depressing apron is unchanged. She 
 is on the alert to tell them at the moment of their 
 
28 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 arrival all the drawbacks they will find to herself, 
 her rooms, her kitchen-range, and the place in 
 general. 'Your neighbourhood is lovely, I am 
 told/ says the lady artist with the sweetest and 
 most propitiating of smiles. 
 
 1 I've never seed as it was,' answers Mrs. Tasker 
 gloomily. She hates the lady artist. She regards 
 all lodgers, indeed, with a perfectly consistent ani- 
 mosity. Her disdain for a class of persons who 
 require frequent incidental cups of tea, hot dinners 
 every day, and dessert on Sundays is quite without 
 bounds. Her sentiments towards her guests are 
 written large upon a perfectly plain and trust- 
 worthy countenance. When she sees them sitting 
 with their feet upon her cherished Berlin wool- 
 worked arm-chair she bangs their door as she leaves 
 the room with a display of feeling which nearly 
 brings the house about their ears. When one of 
 them ventures to ask if her landlady has such a 
 thing as a pair of nutcrackers, the satiric scorn on 
 Mrs. Tasker's countenance for a woman in the 
 prime of life who cannot crack nuts with her teeth 
 causes the guest to blush, and apologise for making 
 so unreasonable a demand. 
 
 Mrs. Tasker has, moreover, a habit of thrusting 
 the dinner things on a tray on to the table in front 
 
THE MOTHER 29 
 
 of the visitor with an expression which says more 
 plainly than words, ' If you can't arrange them for 
 yourself you must be a fool.' 
 
 She never panders to the Sybarite inclinations 
 of her lodgers by bringing them hot water in the 
 morning. When they order for dinner a little 
 kickshaw like a mutton-chop she says, with an un- 
 mistakable note of triumph in her voice, 'Our 
 butcher's run out of all but pork.' 
 
 She always prophesies a continuance of wet 
 weather. 
 
 'When it do begin to rain here,' she says, 'it 
 takes precious good care not to stop.' 
 
 But in spite of a disposition so wholly honest 
 and discouraging, Mrs. Tasker's lodgers have a 
 habit of coming back to her. Mrs. Tasker is inde- 
 fatigably clean. She scrubs and polishes until she 
 is purple in the face. She would scorn the idea of 
 purloining a single tartlet belonging to the parlour. 
 She has that vigorous honesty which is often found 
 in company with a bad temper and a good heart. 
 
 In the back kitchen live Mr. Tasker and little 
 Johnnie. Mr. Tasker is thick, agricultural, well- 
 meaning, and beery. Mr. Tasker is not of much 
 account, and Johnnie is the apple of Mrs. Tasker's 
 eye. It is for Johnnie she lets lodgings. She and 
 
30 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 her husband could live well enough — by cutting 
 Taster off his beer — upon the wages of a day- 
 labourer. But Johnnie wants warm underclothing 
 and a doctor when he is ill, and presently a first- 
 rate schooling. Johnnie must have nourishing 
 food — or what Mrs. Tasker takes to be nourishing 
 food. For his sake, therefore, the mother lets 
 lodgings. For his sake she bears with persons who 
 are always wanting meals and ringing the bell. 
 For his sake she controls — in a measure, at least — 
 a temper as rough as her homely face. For his 
 sake she gets up very early in the morning, and 
 creeps upstairs to bed, with a sigh she cannot 
 wholly stifle, very late at night. For his sake she 
 gives up what she calls her independence, and 
 which, after Johnnie — a very long way after, 
 indeed — she likes better than anything she has. 
 For Johnnie's sake she does not turn the lady 
 artist summarily out of doors when that enthusiast 
 ruins the parlour table-cloth with her oil paints. 
 For the sake of a little snivelling boy, with a per- 
 petual cold in his head and no pocket-handkerchief, 
 she stints herself and Mr. Tasker in food and 
 clothing and comforts. She performs, indeed, for 
 him a thousand sacrifices, of which no one knows, 
 perhaps, the extent or the difficulty. She is, a 
 
THE MOTHER 31 
 
 hundred times a day, comparatively polite where 
 her natural disposition inclines her to be superla- 
 tively rude. She holds her tongue — at a great 
 cost. She is silently scornful where she wants to 
 be abusive. And she always manages, for Johnnie's 
 sake, to say on parting with her lodgers that she 
 hopes they will return to her next year. 
 
 In Mrs. Tasker's love towards the child there 
 is none of that weakness and softness which dis- 
 tinguish some maternities. Her love, in fact, rarely 
 rises to her lips. It is hidden away in a heart 
 wholly strong, honest, and faithful. The utmost 
 demonstration of affection which she permits her- 
 self towards her boy is to occasionally rub his 
 damp little nose vigorously with the corner of 
 her apron, leaving the nose astonishingly red 
 and flat. Mrs. Tasker ' don't hold ' with spoiling 
 children. 
 
 1 It's a poor way of caring for 'em,' she says. 
 And so when little Johnnie is naughty she whips 
 him very severely, and when he is good she cuffs 
 him occasionally, just to remind him that the 
 maternal love and wisdom are always watching 
 over him. 
 
 At present, and in default of better, Johnnie goes 
 to the village school. Mrs. Tasker neatly describes 
 
32 CHAHACTEE NOTES 
 
 the schoolmaster as a ' flat.' But would there be 
 any master good enough to teach Johnnie ? Per- 
 haps not. He is sent off to school while the lodgers 
 are taking their breakfasts. Mrs. Tasker ties him 
 up tightly in a very hygienic and scratchy comforter 
 which she has made with great pains in her rare 
 spare minutes. He is further clad in a thick coat, 
 studded with naval buttons, which Mrs. Tasker 
 bought in place of a jacket for herself. 
 
 Mrs. Tasker accompanies him to the gate. She 
 watches him out of sight, and shakes her fist at him 
 when he looks round, by way, as it were, of keeping 
 him up to his duties. It is only when he is quite 
 out of sight that something like a smile and tender- 
 ness come on her harsh face, and she goes slowly 
 back to the house. 
 
 ! You think a sight on Johnnie, I suppose,' says 
 Mr. Tasker gloomily one day, in a thick voice 
 suggestive of agricultural mud. 
 
 * A sight more than I do on you,' answers Mrs. 
 Tasker snappily, washing dishes. 
 
 Mrs. Tasker has a feeling which she does not 
 explain, or try to explain, about her love for the 
 child. It appears to her to be something sacred 
 and secret ; that one does not want to talk about ; 
 that one resents being reminded of; of which the 
 
THE MOTHER 33 
 
 roots are too deep down in one's heart to bear being 
 dug up and looked at. 
 
 She is not, indeed, always actually thinking of 
 him. She has a thousand things to occupy her 
 attention — the lodgers' meals and the parlour table- 
 cloth, and Mr. Tasker's tendency to inebriate 
 himself. But the child stands by, as it were — 
 always very close to her heart. 
 
 Everything she does is directly or indirectly for 
 Johnnie. She eyes the clothing of other little boys 
 with a view to copying it for Johnnie. She has 
 quite violent dislikes towards children of Johnnie's 
 age who are fatter and healthier than he is. There 
 are, indeed, many such. But perhaps the maternal 
 affection is only the stronger because Johnnie is 
 puny, weakly, and plain — maternal affection having 
 been so constituted by Nature — or God. 
 
 One winter, a winter when Mrs. Tasker's rooms 
 are occupied by a soft-spoken Spinster who has 
 generously sacrificed her youth to a slum, Johnnie 
 is very puny and weakly indeed. The Spinster, 
 who takes an uncommon interest in Johnnie, 
 recommends cod-liver oil. Mr. Tasker, the mother 
 having already denied herself everything except the 
 bare necessaries of life, is cut off his beer-money to 
 provide it. And the Spinster thinks this is a very 
 
84 CHAEACTEE NOTES 
 
 cold place for your dear little boy, and I am just 
 starting a school at Torquay, and won't you trust 
 him to me ? And the Spinster kisses Johnnie with 
 great self-sacrifice on the tip of his red and humid 
 little nose. Mrs. Tasker, into whose face a deep 
 colour has come, says in an unusual voice, ' I'll 
 think on it, mum.' That evening, when Johnnie 
 has gone to bed, Mr. Tasker spells out the advertise- 
 ment of the school from a paper the Spinster has 
 lent him. 
 
 Mrs. Tasker sits with a hand on each knee, 
 looking very deeply and fixedly into the fire. 
 
 ' 'Ome comfits ? - she says doubtfully. ■ And 
 what do she mean by 'ome comfits ? Will they see 
 as 'is shirt is aired and 'e don't sit in wet boots ? ' 
 
 * Un-lim-i-ted di-et,' continues the father with 
 difficulty. 
 
 c If that means letting 'im stuff 'isself, it'll kill 
 that child,' says Mrs. Tasker, pessimistically. 
 
 • What are you a-cryin' for ? ' inquires her 
 husband. Mrs. Tasker replies with considerable 
 snappishness that she is not crying, and men is all 
 fools, drat them, with other remarks so uncompli- 
 mentary to the sex that Mr. Tasker prudently lies 
 low behind the newspaper until the storm is over. 
 
 The Spinster's blandishments and her advertise- 
 
THE MOTHER 35 
 
 merit prevail. Johnnie goes back with her to 
 Torquay. She is paid her fees in advance, from 
 money slowly and hardly saved for the purpose, and 
 mysteriously hidden away in Mrs. Tasker's bed- 
 room. The mother is very courageous before this 
 parting, and, it must be confessed, towards Mr. 
 Tasker particularly uncertain in temper. She 
 initiates the Spinster into the mysteries of Johnnie's 
 underclothing. She buys him six pocket-handker- 
 chiefs, and instructs him how to use them without 
 assistance. She is up very early making his 
 preparations, and goes to bed later than ever at 
 night. She does not spare herself at all. She is 
 glad, perhaps, that she has no time to think. Her 
 hard life at this period ages her very considerably. 
 Or she is aged, perhaps, through some feelings and 
 forebodings of which she never speaks. She is 
 always very cheerful and practical and severe with 
 Johnnie, who is as melancholy at this time as one 
 can be at six years old. l It's for your good/ she 
 says, shaking him to emphasise her remarks. 
 ' And you ought to know as how it is.' Then the 
 end comes. Johnnie's sad little face is sticky with 
 tears and toffee, which has been administered to him 
 as a consolation, when he puts it up to be kissed. 
 'Mind you're a good boy, says the mother 
 
 D 2 
 
36 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 unsteadily, and with a grip on his little arm which 
 he understands to mean love, perhaps, better than 
 if it were a delicate caress. 
 
 1 He is going to be a dear, happy little fellow,' 
 says the Spinster sweetly, and the cab drives away. 
 Two tears — large, heavy, unaccustomed tears — fall 
 down Mrs. Tasker's homely face as she watches it. 
 And then she turns indoors, addressing herself by 
 opprobrious names for her weakness, and cleans 
 out the late lodger's apartments viciously. 
 
 Six months later Mrs. Tasker receives an anony- 
 mous letter. It is very illiterate and misspelt. 
 But it is so far comprehensible that when the 
 mother has read it her head falls upon her folded 
 arms on the table with a great and exceeding 
 bitter cry. Your son, says the letter — spelling the 
 word as if Johnnie were the chief of heavenly 
 bodies — ' is being treated that bad as if you don't 
 come and take him away will be the death on him. 
 She is a Beast. She has done the same by others. 
 Only Johnnie is delicater, and it's killing him.' 
 
 It's killing him. The fierce maternal heart 
 
 beating in Mrs. Tasker's gaunt person makes her 
 
 tremble in a great passion of rage, love, and yearn- 
 
 ng. Come and take him away. It sounds so easy, 
 
 and is impossible. Tasker is out of work — has been 
 
THE MOTHER 37 
 
 out of work for six weeks. The lodgers represent 
 the only source of income. There may be, perhaps, 
 five shillings in the house. But there certainly is 
 not enough for a journey across England. If there 
 were how could Mrs. Tasker leave the house ? And 
 what would be the use of sending a lout like Mr. 
 Tasker (men is all fools), who has never been twenty 
 miles from his native village in his life, a compli- 
 cated cross -rail way journey ? 
 
 So Mrs. Tasker takes the family pen and adds 
 a little water to the remains of the family ink, and 
 writes to the Spinster demanding Johnnie's return. 
 The mother has never held much with book learn- 
 ing. Does not know very well how to write, or at 
 all how to express herself. 'You can keep the 
 money,' she says. ' We don't want that. Send 
 the boy back, or we will have the law of you. Send 
 Johnnie back sharp, and curse you, curse you, curse 
 you!' 
 
 The curses, which she spells ' cus,' are in some 
 sort a relief to this poor, ignorant, angry, loving 
 soul. The coarse vigour of her ill-spelt abuse 
 comforts her for the moment a little. It is when 
 the letter is sealed, stamped, and posted that her 
 maternal tragedy begins. It is in those terrible 
 days of waiting, when no answer is returned to the 
 
38 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 letter and Johnnie does not come home, that she 
 lives through the worst hours of her life. 
 
 A most merciful necessity requires that she shall 
 work as usual, that she shall cook the lodgers' food 
 and clean their rooms, that she shall be perpetually 
 busy from morning until evening. But is there 
 any work that can make her forget Johnnie ? It 
 seems to her that his poor, pinched, white little 
 face haunts her. That it comes always between 
 her and what she is doing. She does not say 
 much. What is there to be said? Mr. Tasker 
 smokes a short clay pipe in front of the fire in 
 stolid gloominess. He does not suggest comfort. 
 Suggestions are not his forte. He is, in a dull 
 manner, shocked when Mrs. Tasker, for the first 
 time in her life that he can remember, refuses to 
 eat. She pushes away the plate of untouched food 
 and sits for a minute or two with her elbows on the 
 table and her head resting on her hands. 
 
 ' Don't give in, 'Liza, don't give in,' says Mr. 
 Tasker almost piteously. 
 
 'It don't matter,' savs Mrs. Tasker. 'I can 
 make up at tea.'. 
 
 But she does not make up at tea. Who shall say, 
 in these interminable days, what terrible, foolish, 
 impossible imaginings creep into her heart ? She 
 
THE MOTHER 39 
 
 fancies a thousand ignorant and unlikely things 
 which may be happening to the child. 
 
 'He was always weakly,' she says. 'It will 
 kill him.' She has, indeed, hitherto angrily repu- 
 diated suggestions that Johnnie is less strong than 
 other children. They recur to her now, and she 
 cannot disbelieve them. 
 
 ' He were a pore baby, weren't he ? ' she says 
 huskily to her husband, and hoping for a con- 
 tradiction. 
 
 ' He were, 'Liza, he were,' answers Mr. Tasker, 
 gloomily. 
 
 She remembers, how well ! that frail little 
 infancy. She used to compare him with other 
 babies, and insult their mammas dreadfully by 
 vaunting Johnnie's superiority in her rudest and 
 bluntest manner. 
 
 1 But his legs were pore little sticks,' she mur- 
 murs to herself sorrowfully. ' And I knowed they 
 were all along.' 
 
 And one night, when she and her husband 
 have been sitting silently on either side of the 
 hearth watching the embers blacken and die 
 out, her rough, listless hands fall at her sides, 
 and she cries out in despair, and as if she were 
 alone — 
 
40 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 'Oh Lord, don't be for hurting our Johnnie 
 any more ! We'd sooner he died outright.' 
 
 And the next day Johnnie comes. The balmy 
 air of Torquay has not been sufficient to counter- 
 act the baneful effects of insufficient food and 
 genteel cruelty. Johnnie is very ill indeed. 
 
 ' Will he live ? ' says the mother. 
 
 i God help you ! ' answers the doctor, looking 
 into her strong, homely, haggard face. S Nothing 
 human can save him.' 
 
 But to this faithless and unbelieving genera- 
 tion there remains one great miracle-worker, whose 
 name is Love. 
 
**ty^ 
 
 My Lord is young with George IV. He loses a fortune at play 
 
41 
 
 MY LORD 
 
 * Chacun aime comme il est ' 
 
 My Lord is young with George IV. He loses a 
 fortune at play, and another, amassed by a pious 
 aunt in the country, at all sorts of devilries. He 
 has thrashed the watch and staked an estate on 
 the cards in an evening. He records many years 
 after how he enters the ring with the Eegent, and 
 how the First Gentleman in Europe, with an ex- 
 quisite ease and urbanity, confesses himself 
 beaten. 
 
 My Lord is on the turf, where he wins and 
 flings away a fortune with a mad generosity: 
 where he loses, and does not retrench. He is 
 dressed with the carelessness that is a part of 
 his nature, and with a richness that becomes the 
 Court of the Eegent. 
 
 My Lord can sing a song with the best over his 
 wine, and take his two bottles — like a gentleman. 
 His speech is garnished, even in very old age, 
 
42 CHAEACTER NOTES 
 
 with those flowers of expression which were in 
 universal vogue in his youth. He recalls, forty 
 years later, a hundred stories of that mad career 
 of pleasure. He remembers with a curious accu- 
 racy a thousand details respecting his companions 
 and the manners and habits of that wild day. He 
 knows, and retails with perfect wit and point, a 
 thousand stories of the Court which have never 
 crept into print. His reminiscences are as in- 
 teresting as a book of scandalous memoirs. 
 
 My Lord, indeed, has pretty well beggared him- 
 self before he is thirty. He marries money. And 
 money in the person of a shrewish wife is false 
 to his honour and her own. His daughter, who 
 belongs to her mother's faction, marries abroad, 
 and is lost to him for ever. His son, from whom 
 he has hoped everything, is not only wild — which 
 indeed My Lord should be one to forgive easily — 
 but brings dishonour on a great name and dies 
 miserably. 
 
 My Lord is not yet sixty years old when he 
 retires to Hamblin, the estate in the country which 
 his extravagances have left heavily mortgaged, and 
 his neglect has left out of repair. A number of 
 evil stories, gathering astonishingly in volume and 
 flavour at every stage of the journey, have fol- 
 
MY LORD 43 
 
 lowed him from town. Virtue points out with her 
 positive finger that this old age of poverty, soli- 
 tude, and disappointment is but the just and 
 natural harvest of that astonishing crop of wild 
 oats sown in that wild youth. When My Lord, 
 therefore, appears in the village with his lean 
 figure stooping a little, and his narrow eyes extra- 
 ordinarily bright and keen, he excites that exceed- 
 ing interest and curiosity which it is believed are 
 never roused by anything less entertaining than a 
 reputation for iniquity. Some persons are quite 
 shocked to see him in church on Sunday. There 
 10 a terrible story current of him for a little while, 
 to the effect that he does not know the position of 
 the Psalms in the Liturgy. But he soon mends 
 this error, and lives a life of so much retirement, 
 simplicity, and apparently virtue, as to become 
 wholly uninteresting to everybody. 
 
 After a time My Lord takes unto himself a 
 domestic Chaplain, who lives with him the greater 
 part of the year. The Chaplain is round-faced, 
 benevolent, and kindly, with a full chin above his 
 white tie, bespeaking a hundred pleasant human 
 virtues. The Chaplain enjoys port wine in the 
 most honest moderation — is in no sense an 
 ascetic — has a heart full of charity and good- will 
 
44 CHAEACTEE NOTES 
 
 for all men — a kindly sense of humour, and a very 
 true and self-respecting affection for My Lord his 
 patron. 
 
 < I don't come to church to hear your sermons, 
 Kuther, you know,' says My Lord, c which are 
 damned long and prosy — you know they are. I 
 come to look at your wife listening to them.' 
 
 The Chaplain's wife, whom he calls Miriam, is 
 very sweet and simple and delicate. Miriam has 
 brown curls shading a clear forehead, a brown silk 
 frock revealing sloping Early Victorian shoulders, 
 and the most tender, candid eyes in all the world. 
 Miriam is of gentler birth than her husband, 
 whom she loves and reveres as at once the 
 cleverest, dearest, and best of created beings. 
 
 My Lord has not often met the Miriam type of 
 woman. Perhaps never before. At first he does 
 not understand her. He looks at her across the 
 dinner table with his unsteady hand playing with 
 his glass and a sort of perplexity in his shrewd 
 old eyes. g So damned innocent/ he says to him- 
 self. ' So damned innocent.' Perhaps damned 
 innocence has not been the leading characteristic 
 of the lady acquaintances of his youth. He won- 
 ders at it a little at least — in Miriam — as if it 
 were some new thing. 
 
MY LOKD 45 
 
 His wonder, indeed, gives place very soon to 
 another feeling. He has at last for this woman the 
 purest and tenderest affection he has ever known. 
 
 1 I have the devil of a reputation, Euther,' says 
 My Lord, grimly. ' Don't you do me the honour 
 to be jealous of me ? ' 
 
 1 No, my Lord,' says the Chaplain, looking at 
 his patron. 
 
 And indeed My Lord has for Miriam such a 
 feeling as, in a happier circumstance, he might 
 have felt for a child of his own. 
 
 There are a thousand ways in which Miriam 
 appeals to My Lord's ancient sense of humour. 
 He likes to hear her say ' Hush ! ' in her shocked, 
 gentle voice, when from immemorial habit he 
 ornaments his speech with an oath. He has not 
 the less a most tender respect for her purity. 
 When she asks questions, in her damned inno- 
 cence, about his youth, he bowdlerizes his old 
 stories to an extent that the Chaplain does not 
 even recognise them. 
 
 'I lie horribly,' says My Lord when Miriam 
 has left the two to their wine. ' Past absolution, 
 eh, Euther ? ' 
 
 But the Chaplain, who may very possibly be 
 right, thinks not. 
 
46 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 Miriam's most staunch and simple belief in 
 My Lord's goodness amuses him vastly at first. 
 Another feeling mingles with his amusement after 
 a while as he looks into her clear eyes. 
 
 'We were a cursed bad lot in those days,' he 
 says. 'If you knew how bad you wouldn't have 
 anything to say to me.' 
 
 But Miriam says, t Yes, I should,' and nods her 
 head so that the brown Victorian curls shake a 
 little, and puts her gentle hand for a moment into 
 My Lord's wizened old fingers. 
 
 For the first time in his life the wildness of 
 his youth rests a little uneasily upon that accom- 
 modating organ which is called My Lord's con- 
 science. 
 
 1 Gad ! ' he says, with that light cynicism of 
 manner which may or may not hide a deeper 
 feeling. ' I feel almost like a convert. No thanks 
 to your prosy old preachings, Euther. Don't 
 flatter yourself.' 
 
 And indeed the Chaplain, who is the most 
 humble and simple of men, does not do so at 
 all. 
 
 In the summer mornings it is Miriam's habit 
 to play with her children on the great sloping 
 lawns before the house. My Lord watches her 
 
MY LORD 47 
 
 more often than he knows perhaps from the open 
 windows of his library. 
 
 She comes in to see him sometimes, and looks 
 up with a soft wistfulness in her pretty eyes at the 
 great books on their shelves. 
 
 'I wish I could read some of these,' she says, 
 taking down a French work and holding it up to 
 him. 
 
 ' God forbid ! ' says My Lord piously. 
 
 But indeed Miriam's French is neither of a 
 quantity nor quality to do her any harm. 
 
 She goes back to the children presently. My 
 Lord sits long with the book, which he does not 
 read, before him. He has aged rapidly lately. 
 He feels sometimes very old indeed. The hand, 
 with the ruffles of a long-past fashion hanging 
 over it, is very lean and unsteady. He puts 
 down at first to approaching senility a certain odd 
 sensation of something that might almost be 
 shame for that wild past that comes to him with 
 Miriam. He ascribes to a weakened intelligence 
 a sort of emotion he knows when Miriam plays 
 Handel and Haydn in the half lights at the harp- 
 sichord. Sometimes on Sunday evenings, after 
 dinner, and before the darkness has come, she 
 draws out the harp from its corner and sings to it 
 
48 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 in the sweetest voice in the world. She sings to 
 it the old religious music which is of no fashion, 
 but for all time. Her white frock and the fair 
 piety of her bent face make one of her hearers at 
 least think, as it is probable he has not often 
 thought before, of the angels. 
 
 He sits, as he has told the Chaplain, during 
 the prosy discourses on Sunday and looks at her 
 tender rapt face and her quiet folded hands. She 
 brings the children to him sometimes. One night 
 he catches sight of her in the room set apart as a 
 nursery bending over one of them in its cot, with 
 a face all beautiful, human, and maternal, and her 
 lips moving in a prayer. 
 
 His seared old heart is touched at this time by 
 a thousand emotions which it has never known, or 
 to which it has long been dead. He is less cynical 
 — to Miriam. The stories of his wild youth have 
 lost some of their attraction for him, and he relates 
 them, even to the Chaplain, very seldom. 
 
 Is it a conversion, as he has suggested with a 
 sneer ? God knows. Is a conversion possible at 
 threescore years and ten, with a character formed 
 by immemorial habit and marked with the impres- 
 sion of a life ? God knows also. 
 
 One day My Lord is taken ill. It is a long 
 
MY LOED 49 
 
 illness, to which there can be no end but one. He 
 lies in the great state bedroom, in the great state 
 bed which has sheltered three sovereigns. If he 
 be changed in heart, as is surmised, he is scarcely 
 changed in manner at all. The simplicity of 
 Miriam, his gentle nurse, at once amuses and 
 touches him a thousand times a day. He tells 
 her, in a voice somewhat feebler than usual, the 
 royal anecdotes of that royal bedchamber. He 
 likes to watch her absorbed, reverent face as she 
 listens, for Miriam is loyalist to the core, as a good 
 woman should be, and has the Divine Eight of 
 Kings written indelibly on her simple heart. 
 
 'But they were human too — some of them/ 
 finishes My Lord with a sort of chuckle, and turn- 
 ing on his pillow to look at his listener. 
 
 She sits by his side the greater part of the day. 
 She brings her prayer-book and a volume of ser- 
 mons given to her on her marriage. My Lord 
 listens with an exemplary patience to the long- 
 winded wordiness of the Georgian divine. He 
 thinks, by a certain stoplessness in the reader's 
 method, that she does not always grasp the some- 
 what obscure meaning. He is sure by her sweet 
 voice and tender face that she is wholly edified 
 nevertheless. Sometimes during the readings she 
 
50 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 puts one of the babies on the foot of the patient's 
 bed, that he may have the inestimable privilege of 
 looking at it when he feels inclined. 
 
 'See us, Blither,' says My Lord when the 
 Chaplain finds them thus one day. ' After my 
 way of living, doesn't this strike you as a damned 
 odd way of dying ? ' 
 
 On Sunday Miriam reads the Order for Morn- 
 ing Prayer with My Lord stumbling through the 
 responses. The situation strikes him as ludicrous 
 at first ; but Miriam is very sweet and grave and 
 good. He hears the rhythm of her voice in the 
 tender majesty of the old prayers as one hears 
 sweet singing in a dream. Miriam is infinitely 
 conscientious, and reads them every one. And 
 when the Chaplain points out to her that, in con- 
 sideration of the patient's weakness, she might omit 
 to pray for the Parliament, My Lord from his bed 
 says, 'No, no. Dammy, they need it,' and begs 
 that Miriam may be left to her own devices. 
 
 My Lord grows gradually weaker as the summer 
 advances. Before the flowers have faded and the 
 leaves fallen he is too weak to talk at all. He 
 sleeps a great deal. When he is awake his eyes 
 follow Miriam, and when she is more divinely 
 simple than usual his lips wear a smile. It is 
 
MY LORD 51 
 
 apparent that when she leaves him he is uneasy. 
 Her simplicity is worth at such a time all the wit 
 and sprightliness in the world. 
 
 Before the end comes, in a sultry night, My 
 Lord talks ramblingly, with a new strength, of his 
 wild youth, of the companions long dead, who 
 belonged with himself to a society most brilliant, 
 corrupt, and artificial. He starts once from his 
 pillow with an oath. By his bedside Miriam is 
 kneeling bewildered, a white figure in the half- 
 darkness. 
 
 He repeats the snatch of a wild song in his 
 dying voice, and cries, with an exceeding bitter 
 cry, the name of the son who disgraced it. 
 
 But, before he dies, for one quiet moment his 
 reason comes back to him. And the last impres- 
 sion on the mind of My Lord, who has been a 
 sinner, is of Miriam with clear uplifted face and 
 folded hands. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 'MELIA 
 
 1 L'esprit est toujours la dupe du coeur ' 
 
 'Melia is of the gentility, genteel. 'Melia's Pa — 
 she speaks of him fondly by this abbreviation — 
 is a dreadfully successful, fat, pompous, aggressive, 
 well-to-do tradesman. 'Melia's Ma is a stout 
 lady bursting apoplectically out of a satin dress. 
 'Melia's sisters are crushingly superior persons 
 in black silk at Peter Kobinson's. And 'Melia's 
 brothers are the class of young men who shout 
 witticisms to each other from bicycles on the 
 Brighton road on half-holidays. 
 
 'Melia is perhaps two-and-thirty. She has a 
 face very refined and delicate, a taste which leads 
 her into pronounced fashions and pearls in the 
 morning, and a large and terrible fringe, which she 
 calls her ' Princess M'y,' and wears with perfect 
 modesty, gentleness, and simplicity. 'Melia is, it 
 is to be feared, a simple person in many ways. At 
 the chic school at which her Pa placed her at great 
 expense (mentioning the exact sum it cost him 
 
'MELIA 53 
 
 every day at dinner), 'Melia found herself unable 
 to take in any of the polite, superficial, and wholly 
 unsuitable accomplishments which the other young 
 ladies may be described as having lapped up 
 thirstily. At the present time, when the literary 
 Julia from Peter Kobinson's, reading the last 
 feminine and fictional treatise on the immorality 
 of man, with her feet on the sofa, says, ' Lor, 'Melia, 
 you are a cure! and after all Pa spent on your 
 learning, never so much as to take up a book — well, 
 I'm sure/ 'Melia shows by the flush in her pale face 
 that she is sensible of the justice of the accusation. 
 But if her literature never goes beyond the 
 careful study of a penny fashion paper — and in- 
 deed it does not — she has some little commercial 
 shrewdness to take its place. 'Melia is never to be 
 cheated. She is never taken in by the blandish- 
 ments of shopwalkers when she goes shopping in 
 the fashionable region which she speaks of as Up 
 West, or crushed by the scorn of the stylish person 
 behind the counter. ' Through Pa having been in 
 the linendrapery himself,' says 'Melia with perfect 
 simplicity, and meaning no aspersion upon the 
 parental character, ' I know what tricks they're up 
 to.' "Which tricks she repudiates with a flush of 
 excitement and resolution upon her delicate face. 
 
54 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 It is fancied, indeed, that 'Melia's own integrity is 
 of that kind which would cheat an enemy to serve 
 a friend with perfect straightforwardness and a 
 conscience as untroubled as a baby's sleep. 
 
 At home it is to be feared that she is not 
 nearly so beloved as loving. She can't, in fact, 
 read like Julia, and can only sit with eyes full 
 of a dumb sort of wistfulness and a very tender 
 and longing admiration when Clara dashes out 
 one of her four marches on the cottage piano in 
 the evenings, leaving that polite and elderly instru- 
 ment (which has been bought second-hand from 
 a quietly decorous spinster in the country) quite 
 shocked and astonished. Beyond an aptitude for 
 trimming hats, which is a good deal trespassed on 
 by her female relatives, 'Melia has indeed no ac- 
 complishments at all, unless one counts such very 
 old-fashioned ones as kindness and love. 'Melia is 
 devoted to her family. If she is indeed superior 
 to them in refinement of heart as she is in refine- 
 ment of feature, her devotion to her Ma, who is a 
 florid and breathless person, is not in the least 
 disturbed by that lady's comfortable earthiness, or 
 by seeing her drink stout in a shay outside a 
 public-house on Bank Holiday. While, if 'Melia 
 is herself vulgar, as persons seeing her in a flowed 
 
'MELIA 55 
 
 of a bonnet always slightly on one side, her some- 
 what disordered Princess M'y, and a style of cloth- 
 ing which she fondly fancies to be the style Up West, 
 have supposed, she at least escapes the supreme 
 vulgarity of being ashamed of vulgar relations. 
 
 As for her Pa, 'Melia speaks of him rather 
 regretfully, but with no kind of malice, as rather 
 harsh. The tradesman, whose god is prosperity, 
 can't, indeed, forgive 'Melia her inability to get 
 on in life and a simplicity and unselfishness 
 which would be enough to ruin anyone's w T orldly 
 progress. ' But, lor ! ' says 'Melia, coming in rather 
 flushed and with marks of recent tears on her face 
 to take tea with a friend, after a battle royal with 
 her parent, ' all Pas have their little whims, and 
 us gals have to humour them.' She forgives Pa, 
 whose little whims are, it is to be feared, only too 
 frequent, with a forgiveness which is as complete 
 as a child's. She forgives, if she perceives (which 
 she probably does not), that there is need for for- 
 giveness, the maternal anxiety to marry her off to 
 anyone as soon as possible, and the maternal re- 
 sentment against a nature which is full of those 
 good things that lead to no worldly advancement. 
 She is patient — how patient Heaven knows! — 
 with Julia and Clara, who are dreadfully superior 
 
66 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 and successful. She fits their dresses with in- 
 imitable good-temper and her mouth full of pins. 
 She thinks that their florid complexions and show- 
 room figures are very beautiful indeed. She is 
 proud of their good position, and, in some lonely, 
 far off, indefinable manner, of their possession of 
 the young men who walk out with them on Sun- 
 days. She does not indeed wish for a suitor of her 
 own. Has a self-respect which repudiates with a 
 very fine dignity the advances of the young men in 
 Pa's shop — Pa having now gone, in his daughter's 
 phrase, into the crockery. 'Melia, indeed, directly 
 attacked on the point, relegates her own marriage 
 to some distant period when she will, she says, with 
 entire good faith and simplicity, look about among 
 the widowers. 
 
 In the meantime the great love of her heart 
 goes out to her brother. Alfred, whom Amelia 
 calls ' H'alf ' by way of endearing diminutive, is, 
 it must be confessed, a depressing young man to 
 look at, with a very mournful complexion. As 
 he divides his time between a stuffy shop and a 
 recumbent position on a bicycle, this unhealthi- 
 ness is not surprising. It does not, at least, 
 take from the quantity or the quality of 'Melia's 
 affection. She waits upon H'alf when he comes 
 
'MELIA 57 
 
 home in the evening. She talks about him to her 
 friends with a quaint pride which is touching, 
 though it possibly also strikes them in the light of 
 a bore. He is good enough to allow her to mend 
 his socks, and look at him over them in the even- 
 ing in the parlour with eyes very fond and kind. 
 And when H'alf is taken ill — not very ill at first — 
 'Melia at once constitutes herself his nurse. 
 
 The illness begins about the time of the family's 
 annual trip to Great Yarmouth. 'Melia has always 
 been told that she enjoys these holidays, and be- 
 lieves it. Her faith even carries her so far as to 
 make her think that she enjoys the sea journey 
 which begins them. She has been wont on such 
 occasions to sit on deck with her complexion vary- 
 ing from green to grey, her fringe very much out 
 of curl, her stylish bonnet tilted dejectedly over 
 one ear, and her eyes full of patience and apology 
 while Pa, who is dreadfully blusterous and rather 
 qualmish in temper, abuses her as, ' You're a nice 
 one, you are, to bring out and give pleasure to. 
 This is a pretty return, this is, for me and Ma 
 having took your ticket, and spent no end to let 
 you travel saloon and genteel. This is gratitood 
 after all the money as has been spent on you, this 
 is ■ — and to apologise very humbly indeed for the 
 
58 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 base thanklessness of a nature which cannot duly 
 appreciate even the Yarmouth boat. On this present 
 occasion indeed 'Melia thinks nothing of herself 
 and everything of Alfred. "When they have arrived 
 at their destination she wheels the sofa of the smart 
 lodging they occupy close to the open window, so 
 that H'alf lying there may be cheered by having 
 mysterious musicians, performing fleas, and a low 
 grade of nigger minstrel as close to him as possible. 
 In the morning, brazen and hot, with the keen 
 Yarmouth wind nipping round the corners, when 
 the rest of the family have started, violently ener- 
 getic and early, on some distant excursion, it is 
 left to 'Melia to wheel the invalid about in his 
 chair, and bear with the caprice and fractiousness 
 of a failing health. She takes him sometimes on 
 to the sands, black with excursionists, buys him 
 1 Tit-Bits ■ out of a shabby purse, and sits with her 
 back leaning up against his chair while she calcu- 
 lates in a simply eccentric mind, whose want of 
 mathematical faculty has greatly enraged her Pa 
 in the shop, the precise amount of benefit each 
 breeze from the sea is likely to convey to her in- 
 valid. When H'alf is recommended to be on the 
 sea, and not merely by it, it is 'Melia who takes 
 him what she fatally miscalls a ' Shilling Pleasure 1 ' 
 
'MELIA 59 
 
 with a sublime self-sacrifice ; and when H'alf, 
 whom the air seems to revive a little, observes 
 that 'Melia don't seem partial to the motion, 'Melia, 
 fanning herself faintly with a pocket-handkerchief, 
 replies, ' Oh, it don't matter, H'alf. It's good for 
 the system,' and even attempts a smile. When 
 the others have returned from their excursion she 
 slips out sometimes, with the chic bonnet blowing 
 about on her head in a manner which Clara, who 
 is exquisitely neat and selfish, says is scarcely re- 
 spectable, and buys H'alf a relish to his tea in the 
 shape of a crab or winkles, which seem calculated 
 to put an end to his life immediately. 
 
 He does indeed get worse as the days go on, 
 and as he gets worse clings more and more to 
 'Melia, who has been so vague and irresponsible all 
 her life that only the greatness of the need and of 
 her devotion could make her different now. The 
 Doctor is himself shocked, first of all, at the 
 appearance of this nurse, with her simple, flighty 
 manner, her untidy hair, and a style of dress which 
 includes aluminium lockets at nine o'clock in the 
 morning; but he finds, pretty soon, that 'Melia 
 is worth many Claras and Julias, and has, under 
 that veneer of eccentric gentility, a heart most 
 faithful and tender. 
 
60 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 She nurses her patient at least with a devo- 
 tion which has no fault but excess. She is with 
 him all day, and almost all night. When he 
 wakes, as he is accustomed to do, in the early 
 dawn, after a brief and troubled sleep, he finds 
 her standing by his bedside removing curling 
 pins from her Princess M'y, and looking down at 
 him with pitiful eyes. When he apologises for 
 asking her to shake his pillows for perhaps the 
 fiftieth time in an hour she answers as usual, 
 1 Lor, H'alf ! it don't matter,' with her vague and 
 cheerful smile. She tries to obey the Doctor's 
 mandate, and change the current of the patient's 
 ideas by describing to him the select fashions that 
 Julia and Clara have met on the pier, while she 
 refrains, with a tact which is genius — or love — 
 from conveying to him the least hint that she 
 misses the sight of these glories herself. She does 
 indeed run out occasionally, once to say to a 
 recreant chemist, with her business instincts roused 
 and her delicate face rather flushed and nervous, 
 ' None of your stale drugs for us, young man ; ' 
 while, another time, she runs the length of the 
 parade, with her bonnet as usual half off, breath- 
 lessly, to bribe a Mysterious Musician to take up 
 his place for half an hour daily before H'alf s 
 
MELIA 61 
 
 windows, and winks so enormously at this artist 
 when he arrives on the scene of action, as a signal 
 to him to preserve the dark secret between them, 
 that he not unnaturally supposes her to be mad. 
 She sleeps — and says, eagerly, and nervous lest 
 Ma should take her post from her, that she sleeps 
 soundly— in a chair by the patient's bed. Yet 
 there is never a whisper of her name from the 
 feeble lips that she cannot hear ; and she has 
 known, for many weeks at least, no sleep so pro- 
 found that the touch of a weak hand cannot rouse 
 her. She is, indeed, at every hour, quite willing, 
 loving, patient, and eccentric. She repudiates 
 help as she repudiates the idea that her own 
 health will not stand the strain upon it. And a 
 great colour comes into her face when Clara sug- 
 gests that B/alf must be getting pretty tired of 
 'Melia, and would like to see more of herself or 
 Julia for a change. 
 
 To her sisters the sick man is a brother — 
 and one of many brothers. To 'Melia he is the 
 only creature out of all the lonely world to 
 whom she is necessary; the first and only one 
 who has made great claim on her time, her atten- 
 tion, and her affection; the only one who is in 
 some sense dependent upon her and, as it were, at 
 
62 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 her mercy. So that it may be imagined how she 
 loves him. 
 
 Towards the end she never leaves him. She is 
 glad — unconsciously, perhaps — that the nursing is 
 painful and repulsive. If it were easy she would 
 have no way of showing her affection. Her simple 
 and devoted mind takes no account, until very 
 nearly the end, of her own pain and weariness of 
 body. And then, compelled for H'alfs sake to 
 heed it, she finishes, in a tumbler, the remains of 
 H'alfs discarded medicines, with a simple satis- 
 faction and an unquestioning faith which seems to 
 have its reward. 
 
 For it is not until the hand which she has held 
 all night in her living one is cold and dead that the 
 old Doctor, coming into the room very early in the 
 morning, finds her asleep — in the deep sleep of 
 great exhaustion — at her post. 
 
 Many years later, when H'alf, whose living and 
 dying has been but an episode in their lives, and 
 who has been more or less forgotten by his elder 
 sisters, 'Melia, who is still vague and simple, and 
 has not yet found, or perhaps even looked for, the 
 widower of her promise, comes to stay with Clara, 
 and is discovered by that correct lady, one Sunday 
 night, crying softly to herself, with her flighty 
 
'MELT A 63 
 
 head resting, in a very ungenteel manner, upon 
 her arms on the kitchen table. 
 
 ' Lor ! 'Melia,' says Clara, • what a turn you 
 give me ! Is anybody dead ? ' 
 
 'No one — newer — than H'alf,' says 'Melia, 
 rather brokenly, and with a sort of apology in her 
 voice. ' But it do seem as he were the onlv one I 
 
 V 
 
 ever come by — who couldn't get on without me.' 
 
 Which is the single excuse that can be made 
 for such a foolishness and fidelity. 
 
64 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 THE LABOURER 
 
 1 Ce qu'on gagne en gloire on le perd en amour * 
 
 John lives all his life in a remote Norfolk village. 
 He belongs to a generation that has almost passed 
 away. When he is a boy the Battle of Waterloo 
 has still to be fought and the cheap newspaper to 
 be born. 
 
 John is just a little thick and agricultural. He 
 has no wit at all, but perhaps a very little latent 
 wisdom. He can, of course, neither read nor 
 write. In his time such accomplishments are 
 regarded as entirely superfluous for the class to 
 which he belongs. His knowledge of politics, there- 
 fore, does not go beyond a doggerel and patriotic 
 ballad about Bonaparty which he has picked up in 
 the village alehouse. His interest as a young man 
 in the fate of the empire cannot be said to be 
 particularly keen. He is indeed at that date 
 entirely engrossed in mangel- wurzels and love. 
 John has to get up very early in the morning 
 
He sits very contentedly in his garden in the summer sunshine, 
 and dozes a great deal 
 
THE LABOURER 65 
 
 to go about his business. He earns, by a great deal 
 of hard work, a very modest wage. He puts by 
 some of it — for a purpose. Every now and then 
 he falls into iniquity, and takes a little too much 
 beer. But upon the whole he has a good deal of 
 self-respect, and even a certain sort of independence 
 and dignity. When the squire or the parson stop 
 to have a talk with him he pulls at a reddish fore- 
 lock at very frequent intervals, to express a most 
 honest respect. John is always in church on 
 Sunday. He sings the familiar hymns which he 
 learnt by heart in childhood in a voice wholly fervent 
 and unmusical. During the sermon he looks at 
 Sally, whom he is going to marry some day, and 
 who sits very pretty and conscious under her shady 
 hat. 
 
 John has no club to go to in the winter evenings. 
 He dozes comfortably in his own kitchen instead. 
 There is no Coal Fund, or Savings Bank, or 
 Working Men's Institute provided for his benefit. 
 He is not hemmed in by charities like his grandson 
 of to-day. There is no competition to provide for 
 John living and to pay his funeral expenses when 
 dead. Perhaps John is not the worse man because 
 he is wholly self-dependent. When indeed for the 
 first and only time in his stalwart life he falls ill, 
 
 F 
 
66 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 the parson brings him a couple of bottles of port, 
 and the squire's daughter, who is pretty and pious, 
 produces quivering jellies from a covered basket. 
 The parson looks in upon John pretty often. He 
 tells a good story or two to appeal to the patient's 
 somewhat stolid risible faculties, and says rather 
 clumsily, as he leaves him, ' Don't let the dust grow 
 on your Bible, John.' And John, gratefully remem- 
 bering the port, says, ' Nay, nay, air.' And when 
 the squire's daughter comes next day she reads him 
 the Sermon on the Mount. 
 
 As a lover John is somewhat clumsy and 
 exceedingly faithful. He has lived next door to 
 Sally all her life, and remembers her when she was 
 quite a little girl. Sally is very modest and blushing, 
 with a round little waist and blooming country 
 cheeks. When they are married it pleases John 
 very much, as he smokes his pipe stolidly in the 
 front of the fire in the evening, to see Sally sitting 
 on a footstool trimming her Sunday hat and 
 regarding the blue ribbons, with her pretty head 
 first on this side and then on that. 
 
 John does not pay Sally any compliments. His 
 speech is quite uncouth and to the point. Many of 
 his expressions are, it is to be feared, what would 
 now be considered coarse. But if he uses words 
 
THE LAEOUEEE 67 
 
 and says openly things which would cause polite 
 persons to blush, John's heart has many of those 
 finer instincts which are invidiously called the 
 instincts of a gentleman. 
 
 John has the greatest respect for Sally. During 
 their courtship he satisfies his pugilistic tendencies 
 with much zest upon a rejected suitor of Sally's 
 who ventures to speak of her disrespectfully. He 
 has a certain reverence, moreover, in his affection 
 for Sally's babies, and is especially attached to the 
 first, who is a little girl. John counsels, with a 
 certain heavy paternal wisdom, that the baby be 
 soon 'took to the parson.' 
 
 ' It keeps 'em healthy,' says John. And Sally 
 being also imbued with this simple superstition, the 
 baby is ' took to the parson ' and christened by a 
 scriptural name as soon as may be. 
 
 John's life is not troubled with eventfulness. 
 Once, indeed, a bad time comes. John is out of 
 work and Sally and the children fall ill. The 
 children, with John's tender and clumsy help, 
 scramble somehow into convalescence ; but Sally is 
 very bad indeed. John sits by her bedside hour 
 after hour. He is very stupid and loving. He 
 does not know at all what to do except hold her 
 hand, and now and then straighten her pillows. 
 
 p 2 
 
68 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 1 You are not a-dying, Sally, are you ? ' he says 
 desperately. And Sally, opening her eyes and 
 seeing his haggard face, says, ' No, John — don't 
 worrit for me.' 
 
 And John sits very quietly until the night 
 covers them both. 
 
 Once John goes to Norwich. He regards this as 
 a very great event indeed. He dates all time from 
 this visit. ' Old parson died,' he says, ' a matter o' 
 six years after I see'd Norwich.' The coming of 
 the new parson is a great event also. The marriage 
 of the squire's daughter a momentous occasion, of 
 which not a single detail is ever forgotten. 
 
 1 That was the time as you had your new gownd,' 
 says John. And Sally smiles a little as she 
 remembers the ' gownd ' fresh and charming. By 
 this time her youthful prettiness has faded a little. 
 But though her figure is no longer delicate or her 
 complexion blooming, John is still convinced in his 
 faithful conservatism that Sally is the most beauti- 
 ful creature in the world. He loves her just as he 
 loved her when they were first married. They are 
 not, indeed, sentimental. With ten shillings a week 
 and five children there is no time for sentimental- 
 ity. But that there is no time for faithfulness, 
 goodness, and affection— who shall say ? 
 
THE LABOURER 69 
 
 In due time the children grow up and work for 
 themselves. John is still a labourer, having been 
 unable out of ten shillings a week to lay by a com- 
 petence for his old age. But either he does not 
 think of the future at all or else he has, in his 
 stolid way, a never-spoken trust in a Providence 
 who has been always kind. And one day Sally dies, 
 and the light of his simple life goes out for ever. 
 
 To-day in a quaint little almshouse in that 
 benighted Norfolk village there lives a very old 
 man. He is so old that the present is all dim and 
 obscure to him, and only the past stands out clearly. 
 He sits very contentedly in his garden in the 
 summer sunshine and dozes a great deal. He hears 
 in a pleasant indistinctness the murmuring of the 
 bees and the songs of the birds. The voices of the 
 people who come to see him sound, too, a great way 
 off, and the meaning of what they ask him takes a 
 long time to reach his old brain. 
 
 1 He ought to be intensely interesting, you 
 know,' says Antiquaria full of intelligence. But he 
 is not. 
 
 4 What do you remember to have heard about 
 Waterloo ? ' asks Antiquaria at the top of her 
 voice. 
 
 Nothing, at first. Then he murmurs very 
 
70 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 indistinctly a line or two of the old alehouse ballad 
 about Bonaparty. 
 
 1 Parson said 'twas Waterloo day as I bought 
 the ring for Sally/ he adds more clearly. 
 
 ' Wasn't there great excitement in the village 
 about the battle ? ' persists Antiquaria. 
 
 And he looks at her with his old eyes and 
 says, ' I dunno. 'Twas the day I bought Sally the 
 ring.' 
 
 That is all. If he had ever taken any interest 
 in the fate of Europe, which he did not, he would 
 have forgotten it. And now only remembers a 
 crisis in the history of nations as the day he bought 
 Sally the ring. 
 
 As the years pass a thousand changes take 
 place round him, and he does not perceive them. 
 A modern and spiritual ecclesiastic has long replaced 
 the old parsons with their muscular Christianity, 
 their good stories, and their port wine. The place 
 in church where Sally sang Tate and Brady 
 devoutly beneath the demurest coal-scuttle bonnet 
 is occupied by correct little boys with neat surplices 
 and Gregorian chants. 
 
 The village politicians have long come to the 
 comforting and fashionable conclusion that what- 
 ever is, is wrong, and that, as a preliminary to any 
 
THE LABOUKEE 71 
 
 sort of true justice and equality, all existing institu- 
 tions must be razed to the ground. 
 
 And John, who used to be embarrassed to fool- 
 ishness by the honour of a chat with the squire, 
 and was not even aware that he was miserable, 
 downtrodden, and oppressed, blinks his old eyes 
 pleasantly in the sunshine and lives in his recollec- 
 tions. He is capable at last of no interest at all 
 except in that fair, far past which he spent with 
 Sally. The present is a vague and pleasantly 
 confusing dream. The people round him are only 
 shadows. He has to be fed and tended like an 
 infant. When the vicar reads to him a pious work 
 in a shout he responds ■ A-mon, A-mon,' just as 
 the clerk responded in church in his youth. But of 
 the substance of that pious work he comprehends 
 nothing at all. His simple mind and his tired body 
 are alike at rest. 
 
 One summer the woman who takes care of him 
 vociferates loudly in his ear that she has had a 
 letter to say his granddaughter is coming to see 
 him. In spite of Mrs. Jones's shouts, her words 
 convey very little to the poor simple old mind. 
 She shakes John a little, not unkindly, for in a 
 perfectly practical way she is fond of him, but with 
 the idea, perhaps, of shaking her meaning into his 
 
72 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 brain. And he comprehends at last that he is to 
 have a visitor. All his visitors like to hear the 
 lines about Bonaparty, and he murmurs them over 
 to himself in his tottering voice so as to be in 
 readiness. On the auspicious day he has his chair 
 wheeled as usual into the little garden. He dozes 
 there, also as usual. And wakes up suddenly, and 
 there before him — with her blooming country face 
 and the sunshine on her hair and the bonnet with 
 blue ribbons hanging from her arm — is Sally at one- 
 and-twenty. 
 
 1 Why, it's Sally ! ■ says the old voice with a 
 piping childish cry of joy. ' It seems a sight of 
 time you've left me alone. Have you been mind- 
 ing the children, lass ? ' 
 
 Perhaps she has — from Heaven. The grand- 
 daughter, who has never seen Sally, but has withal 
 some of Sally's tenderness in her heart, does not 
 undeceive him. She kneels by his side and puts 
 her cheek warm and young against his wrinkled 
 face. And he babbles to her — as Sally — with a 
 complete childish delight. He recalls a hundred 
 incidents of his simple life. He strokes her hair 
 with his feeble fingers. And when Mrs. Jones 
 comes out to invite the visitor to take \ a bite of 
 something ' before she leaves, with one old hand 
 
THE LABOURER 73 
 
 over the girl's John is asleep as tranquilly as his 
 child may have slept on Sally's breast sixty years 
 ago. 
 
 'His mind must be in a shocking state of 
 muddle, you know/ says Antiquaria, with her intel- 
 lectual nose in the air when she hears of the 
 episode. ' A low sort of existence altogether, isn't 
 it ? The whole life must have been terribly narrow 
 and material.' 
 
 Perhaps, Antiquaria. Very narrow, very honest, 
 and very stupid. Very tender towards Sally and 
 the children, very God-fearing, very blundering, 
 human, and simple. A life, as seen by Modern 
 Enlightenment, wholly discouraging. 
 
 But as seen by Heaven — who knows ? 
 
74 CHABACTEE NOTES 
 
 INTELLECTA 
 
 1 Les f emmes courent risque d'etre extremes en tout ' 
 
 The intellect itself is not objectionable. In fact, 
 intellect is an excellent thing. It is a better thing 
 than genius for practical domestic purposes. For 
 genius is apt to be a nuisance. It always gets up 
 late, and is not particular about its bath. It is not 
 at all practical, and the tradesmen fail to under- 
 stand it. No, the fault seems to lie in the use that 
 Intellecta makes of her mind — not in the mind 
 itself. 
 
 Who has not heard of the Scotchman who 
 introduced his native thistle into some colony where 
 the soil was rich and the rainfall, it is to be pre- 
 sumed, bountiful? Nothing but thistle grows in 
 that land now, and the Scotchman has left. Some 
 imprudent women have been introducing intellect 
 and other things into the feminine mind, and, like 
 the thistle, they are beginning to spread. 
 
 Intellecta makes her first appearance at a 
 certain town on the Cam where young women have 
 
INTELLECTA 75 
 
 most distinctly and unblushingly followed young 
 men. Intellecta attends lectures which are not 
 intended for her delicate ears, and the men are 
 forced to blush, merely because Intellecta is un- 
 moved. 
 
 She drags her hair back from a brow which 
 would look better beneath a foolish feminine fringe, 
 and while the lecturer lectures she leans that brow 
 upon a large firm hand. She is preter naturally 
 serious, and there is a certain harassed go-ahead 
 look in her eyes before which even a junior dean 
 may quail. The lecturer is an elderly person of 
 the unabashed type. 'And now, gentlemen, 5 he 
 says from time to time, which is rude because it 
 ignores Intellecta. She, however, does not appear 
 to notice. She leans the rounded pensive brow on 
 her hand and simply laps up knowledge. One can 
 see it bulging the pensive brow. The dragged back 
 hair gives her head a distended, uncomfortable look, 
 as if it is suffering from the effects of mental 
 indigestion. 
 
 Intellecta's father is a well-known dissenting 
 minister in a large manufacturing town. He knows 
 the value of learning on the principle that the 
 pauper must needs know the value of money, and 
 Intellecta is sent to a high school. She graduates, 
 
76 CHABACTEB NOTES 
 
 or whatever they do at high schools, and obtains 
 a scholarship. There is no small rejoicing in a 
 chaste, dissenting way ; and very few people know 
 that only three girls are entered for the scholar- 
 ship. One retires with measles ; the second, 
 Intellecta's sole rival, bursts into hysterical tears 
 at the sight of the Algebra paper, and Intellecta 
 simply canters in. 
 
 What Intellecta does not know in the way of 
 knowledge is not worth knowing after she takes 
 that scholarship. But some say that knowledge 
 may come while wisdom lingers. 
 
 From the very first Intellecta's only joy is an 
 examination paper. She studies these in the 
 privacy of her apartment. She walks down Petty 
 Cury with bundles of them under her arm. All her 
 learning is acquired from a competitive point of 
 view. She does not want to be learned ; she desires 
 to pass examinations. Her knowledge is a near 
 approach to cunning. Moreover, she passes her 
 examinations. She exceeds her father's fondest 
 dreams. She dashes the undergraduates' hopes to 
 the ground. 
 
 She continues to attend lectures, surrounded 
 now by a guardian atmosphere of learning. She 
 despises ' boys ' more than ever. She sees through 
 
INTELLECTA 77 
 
 them, and knows that they are only working 
 because they are afraid of their fathers, or to earn 
 a living in the future. Whereas she is working 
 for something higher and nobler — to wit, the eman- 
 cipation of woman — the march of intellect. All 
 the while her hair recedes farther and farther back 
 from her brow, as if the march of intellect entails 
 pushing through tight places. 
 
 1 We are progressing/ she is heard to say in a 
 deep masculine voice to a lady with short grey hair 
 in King's Cross Station. Short grey hair is, by 
 the way, sometimes conducive to cold shivers down 
 the Philistine back. i We are progressing. We 
 are getting our feet upon the ladder.' 
 
 And good serviceable understandings they are, 
 with square toes. That is the last of her, so far as 
 Cambridge is concerned. From this time her walk 
 is upon the broader stage of life. 
 
 She is next seen at an intellectual gathering in 
 a picture gallery, where she comes suddenly round 
 a corner upon two young people, who are not intel- 
 lectual, discussing ices and other pleasant things 
 away from the busy hum of debate. 
 
 Intellecta sniffs. Which is rather to her credit, 
 as a remnant of a vanishing femininity. The ques- 
 tion this evening is one of political economy. How, 
 
78 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 in fact, are a number of ladies and gentlemen 
 assembled in a picture-gallery in Piccadilly to 
 reduce the population of China ? Intellecta is 
 great. She proves mathematically that things are 
 really coming to a pretty pass. If China is allowed 
 to go on in this reckless way some apocryphal 
 supply will exceed a fictitious demand. At this 
 point an old gentleman wakes up and says ' Hear, 
 hear ! ' And immediately afterwards ' Don't, 
 Maria ! ' which induces one to believe that he has 
 been brought to see the error of his ways by the 
 pinch marital. 
 
 Intellecta speaks for twenty-five minutes in a 
 deep, emotional voice, and when she finishes there 
 is in the atmosphere a singular feeling of being no 
 farther on. She has spoken for twenty-five minutes, 
 and she has said nothing. 
 
 Others speak with a similar result. They are 
 apparently friends of Intellecta' s — persons who 
 agree to be tolerant of each other's voices, and on 
 certain evenings they invite the benighted to come 
 and assimilate knowledge. They soon reduce the 
 population of China by carrying a few motions in 
 that picture gallery in Piccadilly. And there are 
 people who pretend that it is useless to educate 
 women even in face of such grand results as this ! 
 
INTELLECTA 79 
 
 'Of course,' Intellecta is heard to say at a 
 dinner-table, ' of course Dr. Kudos may be a great 
 man. I do not say that he is not. I went in to 
 dinner with him the other evening ; I tried him 
 on several subjects, and I cannot say that he had 
 much that was new to tell me on any of them.' 
 
 That is the sort of person she is. She is fear- 
 less and open. She would question the accuracy 
 of Gibbon if that reverend historian was not be- 
 yond her reach. The grasp of her mind is simply 
 enormous. She will take up, say, political 
 economy, study it for a couple of months, and 
 quite master it. She is then ready, nay, anxious, 
 to lay down the law upon matters politico-econo- 
 mical in a mixed assembly. If she is in the room, 
 her deep emotional voice may generally be heard 
 laying down the law upon some point or other. 
 
 Languages she masters en passant. She learns 
 French thoroughly in five weeks in order to read a 
 good translation of one of Tolstoi's novels. She 
 has not time for Russian, she says. She has not 
 the time, that is all. Having acquired the tongue 
 of the lightsome Gaul, she proceeds one evening to 
 discourse in it to a gentleman who has no English ; 
 and the Frenchman is apparently struck dumb — 
 possibly by her learning. 
 
80 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 Intellecta is now getting on towards middle age, 
 as, alas ! are those who sat with her in the lecture- 
 rooms by the Cam. She still has the go-ahead 
 look : there are one or two grey hairs among those 
 dragged back from her forehead ; and a keen ob- 
 server — one who has known her all along — may 
 detect in her spectacled eyes a subtle dissatisfac- 
 tion. Can it be that Intellecta is born before her 
 time ? It would almost seem that the world is not 
 quite ripe for her yet. She is full of learning. 
 She has much to say upon all subjects. She is a 
 great teacher. But why that mystic smile behind 
 the spectacles of Dr. Kudos ? 
 
 1 She only repeats,' he says gently. ' She only 
 teaches what she has been taught. She is nothing 
 but a talking book.' 
 
 The old gentleman may be right. There may 
 be something in him, though Intellecta cannot find 
 it. For he has seen many men and many things 
 in books and elsewhere. It may be that Intellecta 
 can only teach what she has been taught. And 
 what she has learnt at Cambridge Whitechapel 
 does not want to know. That which she has seen 
 at Whitechapel is odoriferous in the nostrils of 
 Cambridge. 
 
 That dissatisfied look haunts those who remem- 
 
INTELLECTA 81 
 
 ber laughing at Intellecta when she attended her 
 first lecture. Some of those men are celebrated 
 now ; some are leading lights at the Bar ; others 
 are pillars of the Church; the rest are merely 
 obscure and happy, and have quite forgotten to be 
 learned. But Intellecta is where she was. She is 
 still a learned woman, and nothing else. She is 
 still looking for an outlet for all the knowledge 
 that is in her brain, which has never germinated — 
 which she has not been able to turn to account. 
 
 Intellecta despises women who have husbands 
 and babies, and no high aspirations. She despises 
 still more, perhaps, those who dream vaguely of 
 the encumbrances mentioned. But even those 
 whose dreams can never be realised have not the 
 look that Intellecta has in her eyes. 
 
 She is very busy. She addresses meetings of 
 factory girls in the Mile End Boad, and she will 
 tell you in her earnest tones that she is due in 
 Bradford to-morrow evening, where a great work 
 is being carried on. She is always improving her 
 mind during the intervals snatched from the work 
 of telling others to go and do likewise. She 
 still finds time to drop in on a science and master 
 it. The old familiar curse of the lecture-room is 
 still upon her and she laps up eagerly knowledge 
 
82 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 which the limited male intellect is inclined to think 
 she would be better without. But it is not for the 
 sake of the knowledge that she seeks it. It is the 
 old story of the examination paper over again. 
 
 Her chief aim in life is to forward the cause 
 of education. She is one of the prime movers in 
 the great schemes for bringing knowledge to the 
 masses — instead of letting the masses come and 
 take it when they have need of it. She may be 
 seen at cheap suburban lectures in. an ill-fitting 
 cloth dress, leaning that heavy brow on the large 
 firm hand, drinking in the lecturer's periods. 
 
 She does not go much to church. She com- 
 plains that the clergy are deficient in intellectual 
 power. There is a mystery overhanging her re- 
 ligious tenets. She has learnt too much. It is 
 often so with women. One finds that as soon as 
 they know more than the local curate they begin 
 to look down upon St. Paul, good Bishop Butler, 
 and a few others who may not have been intel- 
 lectual as the word is understood to-day, but who 
 nevertheless wrote some solid stuff in their time. 
 
 Intellecta is not a tragedy. Not by any means. 
 She would be indignant at the thought. She is 
 naturally of a grave temperament — all great 
 thinkers are She is devoid of any sense of the 
 
INTELLECTA 83 
 
 ridiculous, which is a great blessing — for Intel- 
 lecta. She is profoundly convinced that she is 
 an interesting woman. She feels at the cheap 
 lectures that the local young women of mind 
 nudge each other and ask who she is. She trusts 
 they will profit by her example, and in time they 
 may perhaps acquire her power of concentration — 
 they may, with perseverance, learn to bring their 
 whole mind as she brings hers (a much larger 
 affair) to bear upon the question in hand. She 
 does not know that they are, as a matter of fact, 
 wondering where on earth she bought that hat, 
 and longing for the lecture to be over that they 
 may walk home with a person who is waiting for 
 them outside. 
 
 There is no one waiting for Intellecta outside — 
 not even a cabman. 
 
 Being devoid of humour, she is naturally 
 without knowledge of the pathetic, and therefore 
 does not see herself as others see her. She is 
 probably unaware of that dissatisfied look in her 
 eyes. It is a physical matter, like a wrinkle or a 
 droop of the lips. It is the small remnant of the 
 woman quailing before the mind. 
 
 1 Knowledge is power/ she always says when 
 
 G 2 
 
84 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 driven into a corner by some argumentative and 
 mistaken man. 
 
 1 Yes — but it is not happiness/ Dr. Kudos 
 replies. 'And we are placed here to try and be 
 happy.' 
 
 ' We are making progress,' says Intellecta still. 
 1 We are getting our feet upon the ladder.' 
 
 Yes, Intellecta ; but whither does that ladder 
 lead? 
 
1 / 1 
 
 KePJJ - nj 5 
 
 1 
 
 ■II I 
 
 _ ^ 
 
 
 
 HBMHKf^ Jff l^^lkt (HI IP tBBH 
 
 1 
 
 She sits on James's knee, while he reads Bulbs 
 
85 
 
 THE SOLDIER-SERVANT 
 
 4 La politesse de l'esprit consiste a penser des choses honn&te 
 et d^licates.' 
 
 James has been through the Crimea. He has a 
 number of medals, of which, very likely, he is 
 vastly proud, but which he never wears. He has 
 very seldom been heard to give an account of his 
 exploits. But then he is very seldom heard to give 
 an account of anything, being a perfect bulwark 
 of silence, and preferring to contribute nothing 
 towards a conversation except a few grunts. 
 
 Manners, indeed, are not James's strong point. 
 The Crimea may have rubbed them off. Or he 
 may always have despised them. He is now em- 
 ployed as a gardener and handy man on week- 
 days, while on Sundays he blows the organ at a 
 neighbouring church with indomitable perseverance 
 and strength. 
 
 It must not, however, be supposed that James 
 knows — or wishes to know — anything about matters 
 ecclesiastical. He blows the organ with the air of 
 
86 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 one who would say, { This seems to me confounded 
 nonsense. Why can't you say your prayers 
 without all this noise ? Still, you must have your 
 whims, I suppose, and I must humour them/ He 
 so far humours the whims of the Parson-in-Chief 
 as to take down for his benefit the Easter texts 
 with which the guileless James has ornamented 
 the church at Christmas. It appears, very likely, to 
 James that one verse of Scripture does quite as 
 well as another, and is equally true at any season 
 of the year. But he undoes his handiwork with a 
 perfectly good-natured scornfulness, and with the 
 best-tempered and impolitest of grins upon his 
 countenance. 
 
 James, both as gardener and churchman, has 
 the old soldierly virtue of implicit obedience de- 
 veloped to an extent for which the ordinary civilian 
 is quite unprepared. When his mistress — a lady 
 of vacillating turn of mind — says, ' James, you 
 really must kill that cat,' on the spur of an im- 
 petuous moment, the cat is in dying agonies five 
 minutes later, and while the mistress is lamenting 
 its decease in the drawing-room she can behold 
 James from the windows mowing the lawn in the 
 calm consciousness of virtue and with an unmoved 
 diligence. 
 
THE SOLDIER-SERVANT 87 
 
 When the master complains that the whole 
 flower garden contains nothing but pinks — which 
 James has been growing, with much trouble, in 
 serried ranks like an army — by the next morning 
 there is not a single pink left in the garden, and 
 James may be seen quietly pitchforking a bonfire 
 behind the shrubbery. 
 
 James's horticultural instincts incline as a rule 
 towards the useful rather than the beautiful, and 
 he cultivates vast quantities of cabbages with per- 
 fect steadfastness and indifference to the fact that 
 no one wants or eats them. But he has so much 
 of the true gardener nature within him — in his 
 case entirely free and untrammelled — that when 
 Miss Laura trips into the garden w 7 ith a smile, a 
 rustic basket, and a pair of scissors, he shouts 
 from the cabbage-bed, 'Why don't you leave 
 them 'ere roses alone ? ' And Laura retires quite 
 abashed into the house. ' James's rudeness is 
 really dreadful, Charles/ says the mistress. When 
 he is shown the new baby, and asked if it is 
 not a remarkably fine child, he is understood 
 to say, with his contemptuous smile, and between 
 grunts, 'Pretty fair, pretty fair,' and when 
 the mistress points out to him some beautiful 
 drawings in a weekly paper illustrative of the 
 
88 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 Crimea he gives way to a deeply scornful 
 guffaw. 
 
 It is surmised that James has, on the whole, 
 rather a poor opinion of the weaker sex. He 
 listens to the mistress's This will be best, James, 
 or perhaps that, or what do you think of a third 
 (and totally opposite) alternative? with a good- 
 natured tolerance for a race of beings who cannot 
 make up their minds, or have no minds to make 
 up. 
 
 He never flirts with the maids, his disposition 
 being infinitely removed from any species of gal- 
 lantry. Besides, he has a wife at home. The 
 wife — familiarly 'Liza — is a voluble and excited 
 female of shrewish tongue and a particularly ener- 
 getic temper. Fifteen years ago, when she be- 
 guiled the unwary James into matrimony, she may 
 very likely have been an attractive person in her 
 style. That James could at any time have been 
 attractive in his style is scarcely conceivable. But 
 very likely his stalwart six feet and his red coat 
 did much better than the honeyed words and flat- 
 tering phrases of which he can never have had to 
 accuse himself. 
 
 James^sits at home in the evenings after his 
 work and tranquilly peruses an exciting manual 
 
THE SOLDIER-SEKVANT 89 
 
 on Bulbs. As a rule James does not hold much 
 with reading, considering it an unpractical and 
 even feminine employment, and having met in the 
 course of his own experience a number of good 
 men who did particularly well without it. 
 
 But Bulbs are a duty. They may also be a 
 refuge from 'Liza. So strong is the force of habit 
 that her running accompaniment of volubility does 
 not in the least disturb the placid James at his 
 literature. 
 
 When 'Liza is more than usually objection- 
 able — which happens on an average about once a 
 week — James sends her to Coventry. She abuses 
 him with a tongue which it is to be feared is not a 
 little coarse. But it is conceivable that the army 
 has prepared James for some slight lack of re- 
 finement, just as it has inculcated in him a 
 habit of indomitable self-control. James never 
 abuses 'Liza. He is a rock of patience and 
 silence. He immerses himself deeply in the Bulbs, 
 and sits calm and unmoved amid the domestic 
 thunders. 
 
 James has children. Boys, for the most part, 
 to whom he has conscientiously done his duty by 
 a periodical thrashing in the back yard. Albeit 
 James has a heart for these children — a heart 
 
90 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 which is even very soft and kind. And there is a 
 rough justice in his treatment of them which they 
 very likely prefer to the mother's unreasonable 
 kisses and blows. 
 
 There is one little daughter to whom James's 
 affection goes out with a great strength and devo- 
 tion. The little daughter has inherited to a marked 
 degree his silent ways and faithful heart. Her 
 mother, with the terrible plain speaking of the 
 poor, has condemned her to her face as an unlikely 
 child, and as ugly as they're made. And Nellie has 
 hidden that poor ugly little face on her father's 
 rough shoulder, and has found in his awkward 
 kindness and homely care for her as happy a child- 
 life as can be. 
 
 She sits on James's knee while he reads Bulbs. 
 He takes her to church with him on Sundays, 
 seats her near him, and addresses encouraging 
 and audible remarks to her in the pauses of his 
 organ-blowing. 
 
 On Bank Holidays and other gala occasions the 
 two go country walks together. Neither of them 
 say much, both considering very likely that con- 
 versation mars enjoyment, and that they get a 
 great deal too much of it at home. But James 
 has Nellie's small hand in his vast horny palm, 
 
THE SOLDIER-SERVANT 91 
 
 and it is to be believed that they understand each 
 other perfectly. 
 
 On one memorable occasion they spend a happy 
 day at Margate. The beauties of sands black with 
 excursionists and of a jetty packed to suffocation 
 appeal to both very much indeed. Perhaps upon 
 the principle that one is never so much alone as in 
 a crowd. Or with the idea that this is seeing a 
 fashionable watering-place at the height of its 
 glory and to perfection. Or merely because they 
 are together. 
 
 Nellie is very tired after so long a day. Tired, 
 pale, and shivering, and 'Liza says, ' You've done 
 for this child, drat you ! ' with a great deal of force 
 and energy, and carries Nellie up to bed in a 
 temper. 'Liza, like a great many other people, is 
 always cross when she is anxious. And that night 
 James tramps a long six miles for the doctor. 
 There is a cold fear creeping about his heart, 
 the presence of which he is, somehow, afraid of 
 acknowledging, and he says to the doctor, \ Not 
 much wrong — nothing but a cold/ several times 
 over, and with deep grunts. It is nothing but a 
 cold at first. But it is a cold that turns to a high 
 fever, which rages in Nellie's frail body and beats 
 down her feeble strength. James does not leave 
 
92 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 her room for a week. His master considers so 
 much devotion very unnecessary, and intimates to 
 James that his place cannot be kept open for him. 
 And James damns the place quietly, and lets it go 
 — as he would let go heaven for Nellie. He nurses 
 the child as a woman might. Or, perhaps, as no 
 woman could. He is profoundly ignorant of 
 disease. It is to be feared that he is at times pro- 
 foundly foolish. The child loses strength every 
 day before his eyes. The delirium and fever fight 
 fiercely for her weakly life. It is her father's part 
 to watch a struggle in which he can do nothing, 
 and his rugged face gets haggard and ghostly. 
 Nellie lives — so far as she can be said to be living 
 at all — upon milk and brandy ; and one day, the 
 first for a fortnight, James leaves her in charge of 
 'Liza. He walks over to the doctor. A rapid 
 walk, full of purpose, during which he takes no 
 heed of anything by the way. He implores the 
 doctor— a request which, is, somehow, pathetically 
 ignorant and ridiculous — to let Nellie have some- 
 thing solid to eat. 
 
 1 'Liza could do a beefsteak very tender,' he 
 says. And there is a look so miserable and des- 
 perate in the man's face that the doctor does not 
 even feel like smiling. 
 
THE SOLDIER-SERVANT 93 
 
 It takes more than medical assurance to con- 
 vince James that Nellie wants anything but 
 i strengthening up.' He arrives at the surgery 
 at all sorts of unseemly hours of the night and 
 day to reiterate his request. He has the dogged 
 persistence of a great ignorance and a great love. 
 If there can be any pathos in connection with a 
 beefsteak — which is manifestly impossible — James 
 puts it there. 
 
 The delirium leaves Nellie one twilight, and the 
 father fancies as he watches her that she knows he 
 is near. He sits by her all through the sultry night. 
 The little house is very quiet indeed, the voluble 
 'Liza having gone to sleep downstairs. Before 
 dawn Nellie stirs a little, and smiles as if her 
 dreams were happy. Her poor little life goes out 
 quietly with the stars, and her father is roused 
 from a broken sleep by the chill of the wasted hand 
 lying in his own. 
 
 In a few days 'Liza has already begun to 
 derive a good deal of consolation from some deeply 
 woeful mourning and the celebrity and glory im- 
 parted to her from being a near relation of a 
 corpse. She enjoys a relish in the shape of a 
 bloater, and a few friends to her tea, with a good 
 deal of zest and any number of easy tears, while 
 
94 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 James sits alone with Bulbs in front of him, 
 reading it with a dogged sense of duty, and com- 
 prehending not a word. 
 
 James cannot derive any consolation from his 
 friends — having only a very few, and at no time, 
 even the happiest, treating them to confidence and 
 conversation. Perhaps his grief is of that kind which 
 words would not at all relieve. Perhaps, after all, 
 it is much like the trouble of more highly culti- 
 vated persons, and he fears sympathy as one fears 
 a touch upon an open wound. 
 
 He resumes his work, his master having re- 
 pented of his hardness, or found that James is 
 necessary to the place, or both. And James, 
 having been at all times a very temperate person, 
 puts by from his week's wages a modest allowance 
 usually devoted to beer. He makes many other, if 
 no greater, sacrifices for the same object. 'Liza 
 talks of putting by something too towards Nellie's 
 memorial stone. 'Liza says they must do some- 
 thing 'andsome by the child. It is characteristic 
 of them both that 'Liza only talks and James only 
 does. 
 
 James is deputed to choose the stone. There 
 are tears in his eyes, perhaps, which obscure his 
 sense of the beautiful— or he has no such sense at 
 
THE SOLDIER-SERVANT 95 
 
 all. Only wants Nellie — in 'Liza's phrase — to be 
 done by 'andsome. Wants to show her, by spend- 
 ing a great deal of money that he can very ill 
 afford, how dear she is to him, and how faithfully 
 his heart keeps her memory. Perhaps he thinks 
 — the uneducated have such ideas — that she looks 
 down from some baby heaven and approves an 
 erection which it must be confessed is unmiti- 
 gatedly hideous and pagan. 'Liza takes a great 
 deal of pride in pointing out the stone to her 
 friends, in mentioning its price, and recalling the 
 expenses of the funeral. But James is pleased 
 only because Nellie will be pleased too. He goes 
 often to contemplate the grave in the churchyard, 
 and derives from its gloomy hideousness a comfort 
 and easing of sorrow which he does not find else- 
 where. Very plebeian and uneducated ? Yes ; but 
 it may be that in its vast heart Providence takes 
 account of griefs so simple, and itself provides for 
 them these simple consolations. 
 
 Years after, when James still gardens grumpily, 
 and despises Miss Laura's essays in horticulture 
 with perfect good-humour and impoliteness, a 
 small circumstance reveals that Nellie is still un- 
 forgotten. 
 
 ' Drat this place ! ' says 'Liza, who is still 
 
96 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 voluble and emphatic, and she votes that they 
 retire upon their savings and end their days 
 fashionably at Eamsgate. 
 
 James does not give any reason why this plan 
 does not please him. Perhaps he thinks that 
 reason is wasted upon women — particularly upon 
 'Liza. Perhaps his contempt of words and his 
 habits of silence have deepened with time. And 
 they have always been deep. Or perhaps he has no 
 reason to urge — only a feeling. And anyone who 
 thinks that James would ever urge his feelings 
 can know nothing at all about him. 
 
 But when 'Liza can swear it's because he won't 
 leave our Nellie, who has been a corpse these ten 
 years, there is no knowing that she may not be 
 right. 
 
97 
 
 THE PRACTICAL WOMAN 
 
 II n'y a guere de femme assez habile pour connaitre tout le 
 ma Jqu'elle fait ' 
 
 At an early age Nora fixes her calm and discerning 
 eye on a wholly eligible young man. The fact 
 that he is comfortably off and has excellent pros- 
 pects has, of course, nothing to do with her regard 
 for him. Love is, we know, superior to these 
 
 But, as Nora often remarks, Love is not superior 
 to the tradespeople, who must always be taken into 
 consideration when one is deciding where to place 
 one's young affections. - : 
 
 There is no silly sentimentality about Nora. 
 She is pre-eminently a girl who will make an 
 excellent wife. On the very first evening she is 
 engaged she produces a large note-book and a foot- 
 rule. In the note-book she makes a list of the 
 utensils which will be required for her new kitchen, 
 and asks Arthur if he really thinks a cook can 
 possibly require more than six saucepans. 
 
 H 
 
98 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 Arthur says, ' Don't bother about saucepans 
 yet awhile/ and begins to be immensely sentimen- 
 tal. Arthur is sentimental. There is no doubt 
 about it. Nora raises a face wholly pretty and 
 good-tempered, and gives Arthur a little peck on 
 the cheek, shakes her head at his foolishness, with 
 an engaging smile, and returns to the saucepans. 
 Afterwards she measures carpets with the foot- 
 rule, and is just a trifle vexed with Arthur that he 
 cannot remember if his drawing-room is 12 feet 
 by 8 or 12 feet by 10. 
 
 It is delightful to see a girl so thoroughly 
 practical and sensible, especially when one re- 
 members what fools most people make of them- 
 selves when they are engaged to be married. Nor 
 can it possibly be supposed that Nora is not rather 
 fond of Arthur. It is one's duty to care for the 
 man one is going to marry, and Nora's sense of 
 duty is immense. Her feelings are always regu- 
 lated by principle ; and they never run away with 
 her, as Arthur's do, for instance. 
 
 * I cannot say,' says Nora to a girl friend, with 
 that delightful candour which is part of her attrac- 
 tion, ' that I am devotedly in love with Arthur. 
 In fact, I should say that if Mr. Morton had pro- 
 posed to me, as I expected he would have done, I 
 
THE PKACTICAL WOMAN 99 
 
 should have married him in preference. But 
 Arthur is very good and right-minded, and is 
 always at church on Sunday, which is more than 
 one can say of Mr. Morton. Therefore I am sure 
 everything is ordered for the best.' 
 
 The engagement is not a long one, but long 
 enough for Nora, in company with the note-book 
 and Arthur, to choose the furniture in a particularly 
 competent, shrewd, and business-like manner. 
 They meet other couples doing the same thing. 
 These, perhaps, blinded with love, may take painted 
 deal for oak, and the latest imitation for the 
 genuine antique. But not so Nora. 
 
 Arthur trots behind her, and when he has a 
 chance — and he very seldom has — murmurs soft 
 nothings in her ear. Nora receives them with 
 admirable good temper. 
 
 ' But because we are in love,' she says, with a 
 very pretty smile, ' there is no reason why we 
 should be cheated.' 
 
 "Which, indeed, is perfectly true. 
 
 Nora is a very pretty bride. Other girls have 
 been seen on the auspicious day flushed with ex- 
 citement or pale with nervousness, or even with 
 noses reddened from weeping. But Nora is char- 
 mingly calm and collected. 
 
 H 2 
 
100 CHAKACTEE NOTES 
 
 They have a delightful wedding trip, of course. 
 Where is the person who has not had a delightful 
 wedding trip ? Then they settle down, and the 
 cook is comfortably established with her six sauce- 
 pans. Nora is a wife for whom any man ought to 
 be thankful. She feeds Arthur with great judi- 
 ciousness. She institutes a daily reading of the 
 Scriptures aloud for his benefit. 
 
 \ By Jove ! ■ says Arthur weakly — he is a weak 
 person — ' can't I be trusted to read them to 
 myself?' 
 
 Nora replies, with her usual clear good sense 
 and a highly principled face, that it is a great deal 
 better he should read them with her, because then 
 she has certainty to go upon, and not trust. 
 Which is eminently more satisfactory. 
 
 She manages him very well. She is fond of him, 
 of course, but does not allow him to be maudlinly 
 sentimental. 
 
 'Dear Arthur,' she says, with her prettiest 
 smile, * of course I like you. It is my duty. But 
 I don't mean to say that if you were to die I 
 should not most likely marry again — that is, of 
 course, after a decent interval.' 
 
 1 Thank you for the interval,' says Arthur. 
 Perhaps he thinks he is sarcastic. But Nora very 
 
THE PRACTICAL WOMAN 101 
 
 properly takes him quite seriously, and says that 
 if there were no interval people would talk. 
 
 She is full of kindness and deeds of mercy. 
 She discovers a little Mrs. Jones, with an income 
 of one hundred pounds per annum and a great 
 number of children. Nora decides, in her com- 
 petent and business-like way, that the colonies are 
 the place for Mrs. Jones. Therefore she proceeds 
 to arrange for the emigration, and makes outfits 
 for the emigrants. During this time Arthur hardly 
 ever sees her. He would be a selfish beast if he 
 complained. But he is a selfish beast, and he does 
 complain. 
 
 On which Nora says, * Now, dear, how would 
 you like to have one hundred a year, ten children, 
 and no prospects? You should* consider other 
 people a little.' 
 
 And Arthur is duly crushed. 
 
 Mrs. Jones is so overcome with all the kind- 
 nesses she receives from Nora that, one day, being 
 an overwrought and emotional person, she throws 
 her arms round her benefactress's neck and kisses 
 her, with deplorably weak tears. 
 
 Nora dries the tears carefully from her dress, 
 which is a new one — and Nora is always economi- 
 cal — and looks at Mrs. Jones with an amused little 
 
102 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 smile — the best thing for Mrs. Jones, undoubtedly, 
 for it has the effect of chilling her emotions a little 
 and making her recover herself quickly. * 
 
 ' John/ says Mrs. Jones to a worn and harassed 
 husband that evening, ' if Nora were not without a 
 heart at all she would be the kindest-hearted person 
 in the world.' 
 
 A ridiculous remark. But Mrs. Jones is a 
 ridiculous little person. 
 
 Nora, it is very true, has a better foundation 
 for her good deeds than mere feeling and impulse. 
 She is a mass of Principle. Some weak persons 
 are loving and sympathetic because they feel so. 
 A poor reason indeed. They remove suffering 
 because it hurts them to see it ; which is plainly 
 pure selfishness. But Nora has never done a good 
 deed — and her good deeds are many — which was 
 not prompted solely by duty. 
 
 ' Dash your duty ! ' Arthur has once said. 
 1 Dash your duty ! If that's the only reason you 
 care about me I'd rather you didn't do it at 
 all.' 
 
 Nora very properly first reprimands Arthur for 
 his strong language — it is such bad taste — and 
 then says she is sure he would not be so cross and 
 discontented without some reason, and is afraid it 
 
THE PEACTICAL WOMAN 103 
 
 must be his liver. She doctors him, therefore, 
 indefatigably for that organ — Eno's fruit salt and 
 Beecham's pills. 
 
 But his liver never seems to be completely 
 cured. 
 
 One day an infant appears upon the scene. It 
 is an interruption. Any one who has work — 
 charitable work, too — upon their hands, as Nora 
 has, would feel the same thing. The secretaryship 
 of the Amalgamated Shop Girls, a district of coster- 
 mongers, a cutting-out class, and a golf club — all 
 have to go to the wall for it. 
 
 It is not even a pretty infant. It is purple in 
 colour ; and its nose turns up in the air and is red 
 at the tip. It is a chilly and disconsolate-looking 
 baby, in fact. And yet, though Nora cannot pre- 
 tend to find it interesting, as some weak-minded 
 mammas have been known to find equally dull 
 specimens, it is beautifully brought up — on Prin- 
 ciple, and on a System. 
 
 The System involves bracing and much open 
 air ; fogs and east winds useful for their hardening 
 properties. Crying not allowed by the Principle. 
 The house not turned topsy-turvy because of the 
 infant's presence therein. From the first moment 
 of its existence it is brought up on a prearranged 
 
104 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 plan — a plan absolutely infallible, and not admit- 
 ting of modification. 
 
 Nora may not — indeed, does not — crow and 
 make a fool of herself over the baby, as many 
 mothers do. But it has the best of everything — 
 hygienic clothing, and a nurse who does not dare 
 to rebel (openly at least) against the System. 
 
 When Nora returns to her good works she by 
 no means, as so many might, neglects the baby for 
 them. The baby has been Sent. It is her duty. 
 She visits the nursery, therefore, several times a 
 day between other engagements, and sees that the 
 System is carried out. She moves the cradle with 
 the toe of her boot, and looks at the infant proudly, 
 of course, but perhaps a trifle critically. She feels 
 a slight and very natural annoyance that it is 
 plainer than other persons' babies, and then hastens 
 off, full of duty, to the cutting-out class. 
 
 Arthur is weak over that infant; for a man, 
 deplorably weak. Once, indeed, Nora finds him 
 kneeling by the cradle with one of the baby's ridi- 
 culous hands grasping his finger. He really looks 
 most idiotic. When Nora sees him she looks in 
 his face and laughs ; not maliciously, or as if she 
 were displeased— only a laugh of amusement. But 
 it causes him to drop the ridiculous hand and feel 
 
THE PRACTICAL WOMAN 105 
 
 as if he had made a fool of himself ; which shows 
 how a little good-humoured ridicule may cure a 
 man of his worst failings. 
 
 One night the infant is taken suddenly ill. It 
 has, indeed, been systematised the day before in a 
 north-east gale, and, being a misconstructed infant, 
 instead of benefiting by a regime, is dying of it. 
 
 Nora is admirably calm and collected. While 
 another mother — Mrs. Jones, for instance — would 
 be agitated into putting the baby into an ipeca- 
 cuanha bath and pouring hot water down its 
 throat, with a delightful composure and common 
 sense Nora is reading a medical book to see what 
 ought to be done under the circumstances. 
 
 * Confound that book ! ' says Arthur, who has 
 come very interferingly into the nursery in an ex- 
 ceedingly impromptu costume. ' It is too late to 
 begin learning now what you ought to do. I should 
 have thought instinct would have taught you some- 
 thing of the way to manage it.' 
 
 1 1 have never heard/ says Nora, with a perfectly 
 good-tempered smile, ' that instinct instructs any 
 one in the science of medicine ; but it is certainly 
 to be wished that it did.' 
 
 The baby lies on her lap, and they wait thus for 
 the doctor. The nurse stands by sobbing. Sobs 
 
106 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 are so useful. But the nurse is plebeian and 
 emotional. Arthur watches the child with a face 
 suddenly grown haggard. He is not plebeian ; but 
 he is emotional, it seems. 
 
 Before morning the frail life goes out with a 
 sigh, and the plebeian nurse is carried away in 
 hysterics. 
 
 The parents leave the nursery with the doctor. 
 
 * What was the cause of death ? ' asks Arthur in 
 an odd voice. 
 
 'The System,' answers the doctor. He looks 
 at Nora. He does not spare her. He need not. 
 If there is a shadow on her pretty face it is a very 
 faint one. 
 
 ' It answers with most babies,' she replies. 
 
 And the doctor says, ' If you have another 
 child, madam, try a little more love and a little 
 less System. Believe me, that will answer better.' 
 
 Then he leaves them alone. 
 
 For awhile they stand in silence. 
 
 'We must try,' says Nora, laying a hand on 
 Arthur's shoulder, ' to be resigned. Of course, it 
 is very sad, but it is Sent.' 
 
 Arthur is usually a weak man, Heaven knows. 
 But he turns upon her now, his eyes burning with 
 some strong passion. 
 
THE PEACTICAL WOMAN 107 
 
 * Confound you ! ' he says ; ' confound your 
 systems, and your resignation, and your religion — 
 confound them all ! ' 
 
 The quarrel, if quarrel it can be called, is made 
 up, of course. Quarrels are so wrong. And Arthur 
 apologises for swearing. Swearing is so dreadful. 
 And soon there is another baby, who really does 
 just as well as the first. And Nora is as bright 
 and good-tempered and sensible as ever; and 
 Arthur is perfectly satisfied, of course, except when 
 his liver is wrong ; and that, as everyone knows, 
 makes anyone take a discontented view of life 
 and think things are not as satisfactory as they 
 might be. 
 
108 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 THE SQUIEE 
 
 1 II n'y a pour l'homme qu'un vrai malheur, c'est d'avoir quelque 
 chose a se reprocher ■ 
 
 He is fine, fresh-coloured, upright, and over seventy 
 years old. The old gaffers in the village remember 
 him in his youth as the straightest rider in the 
 county. ' Our Squire was a game 'un,' says one 
 of them, with a twinkle in his ancient eye. He is, 
 for that matter, game still. He drives even now 
 twenty miles to the Derby, in a sporting coat with 
 a rose in his button- hole and a fine expectation of 
 enjoyment on his brave old face. There is still 
 about him a certain freshness, keenness, and vigour 
 very pleasant to see. He is yet as good a judge of 
 a horse as any man in the neighbourhood. He has 
 organised and presides over the village cricket team, 
 and is proud that his eleven should be the terror of 
 other persons' elevens for miles round. 
 
 The Squire lives in a great stone house, which 
 has been in his family for many generations. His 
 estate and his tenants are admirably looked after. 
 
The villagers always follow his stalwart, solitary old figure, with the 
 comment that 'he do bear up wonderful' 
 
THE SQUIRE 109 
 
 He walks over his property, with a fine elastic tread 
 that is almost youthful, every day except Sundays. 
 His people are a little afraid and infinitely fond of 
 him. To his servants he is perfectly just, strict, 
 and kind. There is not one of them who would 
 dare to neglect his duty, nor one who is not certain 
 of finding in his master a great justice and 
 liberality. 
 
 His charity is as little abused, perhaps, as any 
 man's. Even the people to whom he gives speak 
 well of him. The little village girls, after a fine 
 simple old custom, drop him the profoundest of 
 courtesies. He knows nearly every one of them by 
 name — has known by name their parents and 
 grandparents before them. He walks regularly 
 with his family, rather slowly and with a good deal 
 of dignity, to church every Sunday morning. The 
 gaffers, remembering his wild youth, wink at each 
 other sometimes as he passes thus. But, indeed, 
 even his wildness has been characterised by a blame- 
 less honour and generosity, and there is no man 
 to-day who can remember against him anything 
 unworthy of an upright and honest gentleman. 
 
 The Squire is sprucely dressed upon all occa- 
 sions. On Sundays particularly he recalls to one's 
 mind the dandyism of his youth. He always has a 
 
110 CHARACTEK NOTES 
 
 flower in his coat, and his grey felt hat is perfectly 
 trim and well brushed. Upon Sunday, too, he wears 
 gloves, and has a fine solemn air with him, which 
 of itself almost makes one feel Sabbatical. 
 
 He reads the lessons in church with perfect 
 conviction and simplicity. * He do do it beautiful ! ' 
 says Granny, who is deaf, and has not heard a word. 
 But his reverent old face and fine devout air im- 
 press her, perhaps, as they impress many other 
 simple people. The Squire says his prayers in a 
 sitting posture, with one hand hiding his face. 
 One can distinguish his deep ' Amen ' among the 
 rustic responses. He does not turn to the east at 
 the creed to gratify the prejudices of an enlightened 
 youthful vicar. He is quite conservative and 
 narrow-minded. His feelings are a great deal hurt 
 and wounded when singing is introduced where 
 saying has been the fashion ever since he can 
 remember. His religion, indeed, is so perfectly 
 simple and faithful and behind the times that it 
 seems very little different from the childish religion 
 he learnt — Heaven knows how many long years 
 ago — at his mother's knee. Perhaps it is not 
 different at all, and in this brave old heart the 
 simple, tender little ideas of a simple little mother 
 still live and bear fruit a hundredfold. 
 
THE SQUIRE 111 
 
 The Squire is, as he should be, the hottest of 
 Tories. The little village constitutes an absurd 
 little branch of the Primrose League. The Squire 
 gives the Primrose League two suppers and a series 
 of village entertainments every year to keep up its 
 political energy. He addresses it with a great deal 
 of vigorous simplicity, which suits it admirably. 
 Perhaps his arguments are not very good. It is 
 not an argument at all, very likely, 4 o ~aay -th at 
 Mr.' Gladstone is a double-dyed villain. But in 
 this case the statement does as well or a great deal 
 better than an argument. The first article in the 
 village political creed is to believe what the Squire 
 says. And indeed, in many things, the village 
 might do worse. 
 
 After the politics the Squire's daughters, who 
 are plain, kindly, and middle-aged, play duets, the 
 Vicar's wife sings one of her three little songs, and 
 the Squire reads an extract out of Dickens. The 
 Squire is not a literary man in a general way. He 
 believes in the Bible and Sir Walter Scott, and 
 sometimes in the mellow, lamp-lit evenings he takes 
 his Byron and re-reads some of those wild love 
 lyrics which in his youth, at a certain romantic 
 time, he very likely knew by heart. He looks up 
 from the book sometimes, with very kindly old 
 
112 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 eyes, at Madame sitting opposite to him. Madame 
 is still upright, and handsome in spite of grey hairs 
 and wrinkles. The world finds her, indeed, a little 
 too quiet and dignified for its liking. 
 
 And the Squire says, with a smile half tender, 
 half humorous, ' Do you remember this, Mary ? ' 
 and reads her a line or two in some such voice as 
 he reads the Song of Solomon in church. 
 
 And the faintest delicate colour starts in 
 Madame's old cheeks, and there is a little soft 
 droop about her lips, and she remembers it — very 
 well indeed. 
 
 The Squire is quite devoted to Madame. Per- 
 haps to him she is still bright-eyed and one-and- 
 twenty. Or perhaps he thinks that seventy-two is 
 the most charming and becoming age in the world. 
 The old couple are still quite enterprising. Now 
 the children are w 7 ell advanced in middle life 
 Madame feels she may safely leave them — for a 
 few weeks, that is— to themselves. So every 
 autumn the old pair take a trip abroad. The 
 Squire's attitude towards Madame is quite 
 chivalrous and protecting and considerate. He 
 studies Murray and Baedeker through his gold- 
 rimmed spectacles, and tells Madame, who is 
 horribly submissive and old-fashioned, where it 
 
THE SQUIKE 113 
 
 will be best for them to go next. The Squire 
 speaks languages in the perfectly precise and 
 grammatical manner in which he learnt them in 
 his youth, and which considerably astonishes the 
 natives. Madame does a great deal of standing-by 
 and following her husband. She was young when 
 such an attitude was common to all women. She 
 is not learned. She is not at all ambitious. She is 
 quite loving and simple. She knows very well how 
 to manage a house. She is very proud of her table 
 linen and her china. She used to be fearfully and 
 wonderfully learned with her babies. She is ever 
 so little shy and chilling in her intercourse with 
 strangers, and is devoted to her husband with all 
 the depth and strength of her faithful heart. 
 
 The Squire is pre-eminently the master in his 
 own house. To Madame he is master also, but a 
 master how infinitely kind, loving, just, and tender 
 only Madame knows. He reads Prayers — a solemn 
 chapter out of the Bible and a long supplication 
 compiled by a prosy old bishop — at eight o'clock 
 every morning. Madame kneels by his side, with 
 grey bent head and devout, folded hands. After 
 breakfast the Squire leaves her to her household 
 duties and takes a ride. His costume is admirably 
 correct and youthful. His fine fresh-coloured old 
 
 i 
 
114 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 face glows with the exercise. He is still ' game '- 
 enough to occasionally drive four-in-hand. To be 
 complimented as the best whip in the county causes 
 his honest, dignified old face to redden pleasantly 
 with pride. In the afternoons he watches the 
 cricket or his daughters playing tennis. ' A fine 
 game,' he says. 'A very fine game.' He thinks 
 all games fine almost, and those in which horse-- 
 flesh can be introduced the finest of all. He would 
 play tennis himself only Madame is anxious about 
 his heart, and when he handles a racquet comes 
 into the garden with a face so appealing and dis- 
 tressed as to cause him to desist immediately. 
 
 But after all it is Madame herself who first 
 goes the way of all flesh. She dies very quietly 
 indeed. The Squire is by her bedside, and holds 
 her feeble fingers to the last in his strong old 
 hand. 
 
 < We have been very happy, my dear/ says the 
 wife. 
 
 'Ay, ay, Mary. God has been very good,' 
 answers the Squire in his simple fashion. The 
 daughters, who have known the devotion which 
 the old couple have borne to each other, are sur- 
 prised at their father's steady courage and com- 
 posure when the end comes. 
 
THE SQUIRE 115 
 
 * You must take comfort,' says the Vicar. 
 
 1 I have taken it,' says the Squire. i I am not 
 far from eighty years old. I shall not be long 
 without her.' 
 
 At the funeral in the little churchyard, sur- 
 rounded by his children and by the poor people 
 who have received a thousand tender charities from 
 the dead woman, the Squire's fine old face stands 
 out with a great courage and serenity against the 
 wintry sky. 
 
 Afterwards, when he has reached home, he 
 goes to the stable and gives some orders about 
 Madame's pony. ' Don't work her any more,' he 
 says to the groom. i Let Nellie enjoy herself. Her 
 mistress would have wished it.' And Nellie answers 
 him with a neigh, and rubs her old nose against 
 his black coat. When he gets back to his library 
 he writes in a firm old hand to beg that the village 
 football match may not be postponed on account of 
 4 my great loss.' 
 
 And for the first time the full extent of that 
 loss comes upon him. 
 
 In the short winter twilight his eldest daughter, 
 who is a plain, homely little woman, with a great 
 loving heart, finds him sitting, with bent head and 
 dreary eyes, looking into a lifeless fire. 
 
 i 2 
 
116 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 * Will you come to tea, father ? ' she says softly. 
 ' We are waiting for you.' 
 
 1 Presently, presently,' he answers in an old voice. 
 
 Above him is a picture of Madame at three- 
 and-twenty years old, sweet, bright, and blushing. 
 He remembers her to-night just as she was 
 then. He recalls the beautiful, rapt maternity 
 upon her face as she bent over the first of their 
 children. The child died a baby. It comforts the 
 Squire's brave, simple old heart to think that the 
 two are together to-night. He goes back in fancy, 
 no doubt, as he sits in the darkening room beneath 
 her picture, to a thousand trivial incidents of their 
 quiet married life. They have been very happy. 
 There have been troubles, indeed, but they have 
 shared them. There has been the poor old human 
 need for forbearance. He thinks to-night that 
 such a need made them care for each other not 
 less, but more. If his memories are sad, as at 
 such a time they must needs be, they are not bitter 
 at all. He has been blessed, is still blessed, above 
 other men. When he joins his daughters, a sad 
 little party in the lamp-lit drawing-room, there is 
 a courage and even a certain hope and cheerfulness 
 upon his rugged face. 
 
 Such a courage and cheerfulness mark all his 
 
THE SQUIRE 117 
 
 life afterward. He shoots pheasants in the autumn 
 in the home coverts as he used to do, and appears 
 to enjoy the sport as he has always enjoyed it. He 
 takes the same interest in the horses and dogs and 
 the farming. The estate is as carefully looked 
 after as ever. 'But he thinks on her,' says 
 Granny. i He thinks on her all the time.' Granny 
 is right, perhaps, though she has only the wisdom 
 of the simple. The Squire is very particular that 
 none of Madame's charities should be neglected. 
 He himself audits the modest accounts of her 
 Clothing Club. He desires that one of his daugh- 
 ters shall distribute, in her place, simple remedies 
 for the poor old people's aches and pains. He 
 likes still that the house shall be cheerful, and to 
 see happy faces about him. He does not very 
 often talk of the dead wife. It is his habit, instead, 
 to do as she would wish. His children are startled 
 sometimes to see how faithfully her smallest desires 
 are remembered and obeyed. By a tacit consent 
 her place by the Squire's side in church is always 
 left vacant. But, except this, his fashion of mourn- 
 ing her is almost wholly practical. He calls in 
 sometimes in the afternoon to chat with a certain 
 small farmer whom Madame, in her fine goodness 
 and innocence, thought she was going to reclaim 
 
118 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 from habits of inebriation. He takes out her great 
 retriever every day for a long walk, Madame having 
 had a theory that Don's internal arrangements 
 required an abnormal amount of exercise. 
 
 One of his daughters tells the story long after, 
 smiling, and with tender tears in her eyes, how he 
 even wears the warmest and scrubbiest of under- 
 clothing during the winter, in accordance with one 
 of the dead Madame's fond and anxious wishes. 
 
 There are a thousand ways in which the brave 
 old man is faithful to her memory. With his 
 simple faith in the Unseen, he fancies that she 
 looks down from some happy Heaven, and is glad, 
 as she would have been on earth, to see him well, 
 active, and, so far as may be, contented. 
 
 He is so to the end. To the end the brave old 
 face has a cheery look for every man. To the end 
 he is a fine, honest, sportsmanlike, God-fearing 
 country gentleman. To the end he has a mind 
 fresh, keen, active, a great love for his dogs and 
 his horses, a great generosity, a great manliness. 
 To the end he has a heart full of kindly and noble 
 thoughts — with one most faithful and abiding 
 memory. 
 
 And in that Place whither his works shall 
 follow him he joins Madame at last. 
 
119 
 
 THE BEAUTY 
 
 La beaute trompe encore plus la personne qui la possede que 
 ceux qui en sont 6blouis ' 
 
 Lena is seven-and-thirty years old. She is the 
 best-dressed woman in London. 'And the best- 
 looking/ she adds judicially and with the candour 
 for which she is distinguished. She has a house 
 in Park Lane. She has a villa at Florence of 
 which she is immensely fond — when she is in 
 England ; and a great estate in the Midlands which 
 she always hates. She is of the world, worldly. 
 She is so shallow and brilliant that one feels she 
 ought to make a great name. She knows some- 
 thing about everything. She reads before she 
 comes down in the morning during the prolonged 
 rest she always takes for the benefit of her perfect 
 complexion. She reads theology when theology is 
 the fashion. She is a Buddhist one week and a 
 Mahatma the next. An Agnostic pretty frequently. 
 Agnosticism is so convenient. She talks over her 
 beliefs with her admirers. There is a point and 
 
120 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 audacity about her statements which make them 
 infinitely more telling than if they were the 
 soundest of arguments. No one argues with her, 
 however. Her beauty, her perfect poses, her wit, 
 her brilliancy, her fine sense of humour, her com- 
 plete vanity and self-satisfaction make argument 
 in some sense impossible. The laugh is always 
 with her. To put her in the wrong is quite out of 
 the question. ? She is so confoundedly clever, you 
 know,' some one says of her. That is it. She is 
 so confoundedly clever. 
 
 Her beauty is perfectly preserved. An excellent 
 digestion and a heart and conscience which have 
 given her no sort of trouble have contributed to 
 this desirable result. * I shall be thirty-eight next 
 birthday,' she is in the habit of saying with the 
 most delightful candour. ' And I should be con- 
 stantly mistaken for my own daughter if I were 
 not so very much better looking.' Her vanity is 
 as transparent as that of a child admiring itself 
 in a new frock in a looking-glass. It is, as it 
 were, the weak point in a character that is other- 
 wise strong. Lena will lap up greedily the most 
 fulsome of compliments. There is no flattery too 
 blunt for her ear. Her pride and her cleverness 
 cringe to it. Her worship of her own beauty 
 
THE BEAUTY 121 
 
 would be ridiculous if it did not strike a note that 
 reverberates in tragedy. To be lovely and admired 
 Jbas been the whole aim of her life. She has 
 sacrificed her soul to it, and achieved it. 
 
 Lena was married at nineteen. ' I was the 
 handsomest girl in London/ she says to her hus- 
 band, looking at him with perfect scorn and good- 
 humour down a table glittering with glass and 
 silver. ' I might have married anybody. And I 
 married you.' 
 
 Her husband does not answer. He seldom 
 replies to Lena's innuendoes. He has a habit of 
 sitting with his hands crossed behind his chair 
 and his grey head a little bent. He is a fool, of 
 course. "What could he have been but a fool to 
 think that Lena, brilliant and nineteen, could be 
 marrying him for anything except his money ? 
 What can he be now but a fool to go on worship- 
 ping this woman who insults him a dozen times a 
 day with her scornful good-humour and her cruel 
 wit? The world — the world always knows — says 
 he only has himself to blame for her treatment of 
 him. The world scorns scarcely less than she 
 does herself his slow patience and long-suffering, 
 his persistent kindness and forbearance. 'My 
 husband has no brains to speak of, you know,' says 
 
122 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 Lena conversationally. Her husband can hear the 
 remark from the other end of the table. 'He 
 wrote a prize essay at Oxford,' she continues, en- 
 joying herself very much. l That speaks for itself.' 
 Lena is wearing diamonds which this fool gave her 
 a week ago. Her bad taste is sometimes so ex- 
 ecrable that one wonders even society applauds 
 her. \ It's a dreadful shame,' people say, and 
 accept her invitations to dinner next month with 
 perfect pleasure. But there is indeed something 
 about Lena which leads the world, as well as her 
 husband, to forgive her. It may be her wit, or her 
 beauty, or her manner which makes some women 
 and all men lose sight of, or care nothing for, the 
 nature which they cover. Or it may be that even 
 Lena is not so bad as she represents herself. 
 
 There is good in her. There is a certain im- 
 pulse and a generosity which would be very good 
 if they were not so exceedingly brief. There are 
 days and moments when Lena is quite pleasant 
 and civil to the man who has married her, and 
 given her great wealth, great faithfulness, great 
 affection. The day he brings her home the dia- 
 monds she is surprised into pleasure and gratitude. 
 \ You can kiss me if you like,' she says. And he 
 is fool enough to touch her cheek reverently with 
 
THE BEAUTY 123 
 
 his lips. She wears the diamonds all day for 
 nearly a week. Her pleasure over them is like the 
 pleasure of a child. She tries them first in this 
 position and then in that. She looks at her- 
 self in all the mirrors in the drawing-room. They 
 dine alone in the evening, and she is wholly gra- 
 cious, and brilliant, and good-humoured. She has 
 put on her very finest dress. She has made the 
 maid do her hair a hundred times. 'Diamonds 
 suit me exactly,' she says ; ' and there isn't one 
 woman in ten thousand who ought ever to put 
 them on.' Her beauty is so rich and perfect one 
 cannot believe she is nearly forty years old. When 
 she is good-humoured, as she is to-night, she looks 
 younger than ever. Her dress is inimitably chosen 
 and suitable. She affects none of the airs of a 
 very young woman. She is too confoundedly 
 clever, you know, for that. 
 
 But the next day she is less gracious ; and in a 
 week is herself again. 
 
 Lena has a few occasional plain lady friends 
 whom she loves passionately for a month and 
 loathes for the rest of her life. She has admirers. 
 Everyone admires her. She has so little heart 
 that her only danger from their society lies in her 
 most gullible vanity. 
 
124 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 It is in society that she shines most. She is 
 incomparably brilliant and amusing. She will 
 question the theology of an archbishop with the 
 easiest wit and audacity across a great dinner-table 
 of persons who pause in their talk to listen to and 
 look at her. She is the centra] figure everywhere 
 she goes. Her candour and frankness are inimi- 
 table. Her vanity is of its kind perfect, and she is 
 always comfortably assured that every man in the 
 room is in love with her. 
 
 Then Sir George falls ill. The illness is alarm- 
 ing ; it even alarms Lena. In the very middle of 
 the season she goes down to the Midlands to nurse 
 her husband. She puts on a very becoming cap 
 and a delightful apron. She is for a time quite 
 attentive and good-natured. She cheers the patient 
 with the most deliciously scandalous and piquant 
 stories which she has heard in town. The sick 
 man always lies so that he can see her. She has 
 done her best to break his heart, and he loves her 
 still. The touch of her hand raises in him now 
 a thousand tender emotions. She is still the one 
 woman in the world for him. And she leaves him. 
 The deadly dulness of the place and the monotony 
 and depression of a sick room soon get intolerable. 
 She has always been quite selfish. Admiration is 
 
THE BEAUTY 125 
 
 the breath of her life. And who is there to admire 
 one here ? She goes back to town, and a telegram 
 informs her of his death. 
 
 She laments him and curses herself passionately 
 for a few days. But there is the estate to see 
 about, and one's black, and all sorts of things. It 
 is a relief to her — it would be to any woman so 
 placed — that a modern widow is not required to 
 make herself wholly frightful. 'I am not sure 
 that black is not more becoming to me than any- 
 thing else/ she says. The fact affords her a great 
 deal of consolation. 
 
 She soon resumes her usual mode of life. She 
 is more admired than ever. She is a very rich 
 widow indeed. Her style deteriorates, perhaps. 
 But that does not matter. Her admirers are not 
 too particular. 
 
 And then she falls ill herself. It is not a com- 
 mon illness ; it does not affect her brain or incapa- 
 citate her body ; it only destroys her beauty. She 
 goes to the best physicians in London and abroad. 
 She tries quackery. She spares herself no trouble 
 or money. While she is going through treatment 
 she shuts herself up in the great house in the 
 Midlands. For a while she almost despairs. She 
 reads a great many French novels, and tries desul- 
 
126 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 torily, and with little of her former splendid vigour 
 and brilliancy, a new religion. And she hears of 
 a doctor, a great specialist for diseases of the skin, 
 whom she has not yet seen. She flings aside the 
 new religion and puts herself under his treatment. 
 It is irksome always and sometimes painful ; but 
 she carries it out with a courage and resolution not 
 ignoble. She suffers, and not a complaint passes 
 her lips. She has never been a weak woman. 
 She is not weak now. And her whole happiness 
 and success in life are at stake. 
 
 One afternoon, when she has been sitting, 
 bored to death, looking above her novel through the 
 window at the dripping autumn garden, the great 
 doctor is announced unexpectedly. 
 
 1 Doctor ! ' she exclaims. ( How good of you to 
 look me up ! I should have gone melancholy mad 
 if you hadn't come ! This is the most hateful 
 place in all England. How much will you give 
 me for it ? ' 
 
 She has still her old vivacity and the manner 
 of a beautiful woman. She is perfectly dressed, 
 and in the creeping shadows of the November 
 afternoon, with her face half hidden by her white 
 hand, one might fancy her lovely still. 
 
 * I have been studying your case, madam,' 
 
THE BEAUTY 127 
 
 says the doctor. He is comparatively young and 
 eager in his profession. He looks straight at Lena 
 as he speaks. 
 
 ' Well ? ' she says. She sits down at the tea- 
 table, which is placed near the fire, and alters 
 the position of some cups. The china clatters a 
 little in her hands. 
 
 'It is not well, I fear,' he answers not easily 
 and after awhile. 'I have come here for a pur- 
 pose, madam. I have made up my mind — I think 
 it right to tell you — that I can do nothing more 
 for you. Your case is incurable.' 
 
 ' It's a lie ! ' she cries suddenly. ' It's a lie ! ' 
 And she turns upon him in a rage. 
 
 After a while he leaves her. She believes him. 
 Perhaps she believed at first. The short twi- 
 light fades very quickly — the fire almost goes out. 
 One last flame shows, haggard and terrible, the 
 face which she used to say with some sort of justice 
 was the most beautiful in London. A horror of 
 great darkness covers her at last. 
 
 1 If I were a woman in a book,' she whispers, 
 1 1 should kill myself ; but in real life I shall go on 
 living, and living — for ever.' 
 
 And her head falls upon her hands. 
 
128 CHABACTER NOTES 
 
 THE PEASANT 
 
 1 De tous les appuis le plus sur est encore la force d'ame ■ 
 
 Anna may be seventy years old. She has a face 
 hard and strong and so wrinkled and furrowed that 
 one cannot tell at all what a girlish Anna may 
 have been like. She has a great, gaunt, bent, old 
 figure like a man's, hands that have done the work 
 of a man for years, and a nature which is cele- 
 brated rather for its stern enduring masculine pro- 
 perties than for any feminine softness at all. 
 
 Anna is not, it must be confessed, lovely to 
 look at or meek to deal with. She is of Norfolk, 
 and has the cool steady independence which is 
 essentially of eastern England. Anna will look 
 her visitor, be he king or beggar, full in the face, 
 and with an unruffled composure which, if one met 
 it in a duchess instead of an ugly old woman w T ho 
 works coarsely for her bread, one would say was 
 the perfection of good-breeding. Anna is never 
 surprised, or, as she would say herself, took aback, 
 
The old woman, rocking Polly's baby to sleep 
 
THE PEASANT 129 
 
 under any circumstances. She will turn round 
 from swearing in a gruff voice and deeply at her 
 farm boy, who is also her grandson, to bid the 
 parson ' Good-morning ' with an ease that has a 
 kind of dignity in it, and with the finest uncon- 
 sciousness of wrong-doing. No one indeed has ever 
 attempted to teach Anna her duty — or, at least, 
 has never made such an attempt twice. Once, it 
 is true, the parson's gentle sister essays to point 
 out to Anna that to treat Sunday with a sublime 
 indifference and to work through it as if it were a 
 week-day is morally wrong. 
 
 1 Ay/ says Anna, quite unmoved, and looking 
 her visitor very full and directly in the face, with a 
 lean horny old hand resting on the table. ' That 
 may be. Like enough. But if I don't do wrong 
 Polly 'd starve. And I'll be damned first.' 
 a If Anna had anytime for religion, which she 
 has not, she would be a Dissenter. She has no 
 better reason to give for her predilections for 
 schism than to say, with her usual calm directness, 
 ' That may be all very true. But it's my way of 
 thinking — same as yours is yours.' "Which seems 
 in a manner to clinch the argument. 
 
 Anna's husband, whom she regarded, and now 
 makes no disguise of having regarded, as a fool, 
 
 K 
 
130 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 has been dead many years. Anna's children, with 
 one exception, have left that bleak Norfolk village 
 and gone out into the world. For the exception 
 Anna toils and will toil till the day of her death. 
 
 Polly is supposed by the neighbours, whisper- 
 ing among themselves, to be a little daft. They 
 take very good care indeed that their whisper does 
 not reach Anna, of whose steady, keen eyes, gruff 
 old voice, and great, slow anger they are not a 
 little in awe. Polly marries miserably, but on the 
 wedding-day there is a certain dumb sort of 
 triumph in Anna's manner. Men don't marry 
 daft ones. It seems that the wedding should be a 
 sort of proof, not to Anna, who has no self-decep- 
 tions, but to Anna's neighbours, that Polly is as 
 sensible as any of them. 
 
 Eight years afterwards Anna, who has watched 
 over the fortunes of her child like some grim and 
 loving Providence, falls ill, during which illness 
 Polly's husband takes the opportunity of deserting 
 her, and leaves her, half-witted and wholly incompe- 
 tent to meet the world, to fight it alone. Anna gets 
 up from that bed of sickness cursing herself quite 
 freely for having given way to an indisposition for 
 the first time in her hard life. The neighbours notice 
 a new sternness and resolution about her grey old 
 
THE PEASANT 131 
 
 lips, which have been firm always, and there is a 
 singular keenness and steadiness in her eyes. 
 
 From that time forth she devotes her old life 
 and her fierce old energies to Polly and the hap- 
 less half-dozen babies with whom Polly has been 
 left. Out of a meagre saving Anna buys a little 
 farm, which she works at seventy years old un- 
 aided, unless her grandson of six can be looked on 
 in the light of a help. She takes Polly and the 
 babies to her own cottage, and toils for them 
 fiercely, and yet contentedly, late and early, Sunday 
 and week-day, always. She takes no holidays. She 
 is ignorant of farm work, and learns it at three- 
 score years and ten with astonishing patience, 
 thoroughness, and sagacity. She goes out in all 
 weathers. She wears always the same dun-coloured 
 garments, half-feminine and half-masculine. Her 
 furrowed and shrewd old face is always partially 
 hidden in a great bonnet which may have been 
 white once and is certainly white no longer. She 
 has not a single affectation of manliness — 
 having indeed neither the leisure nor disposition 
 for affectations of any kind — and is yet more than 
 half a man and doing a man's work with perfect 
 simplicity and thoroughness. In quite a little 
 while after she has purchased her farm the live-stock 
 
 K 2 
 
132 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 dealers become aware that they have to deal with 
 an old woman who can drive a bargain better than 
 any of her sons, and who can tell the points of 
 a horse with exceeding shrewdness and accuracy. 
 Anna may be heard swearing at her pigs and 
 chickens in a great, gruff, friendly fashion in the 
 early mornings and at night, or met trudging the 
 eight miles to market, with her old eyes, under the 
 disreputable bonnet, getting even a little brighter 
 and keener than usual over the prospect of sharp 
 business in the future. 
 
 She is everywhere spoken of as honest. She 
 has certainly not derived a code of morals from 
 the Church, which she doesn't believe in, or from 
 the chapel, which she doesn't attend, but has, 
 perhaps, drawn up one unconsciously for herself, 
 and made it uncommonly short, simple, and 
 sincere. 
 
 The gentry to whom she regularly sells the 
 farm produce are a little afraid of a person so 
 direct and uncompromising. Anna, indeed, is the 
 woman of one idea — which is Polly — and has no 
 time or inclination for social amenities at all. The 
 neighbour who joins her when she is driving her 
 pigs in to market is not a little rebuffed in her 
 gossip by a person who is entirely intent on the 
 
THE PEASANT 133 
 
 business in hand, and whose answers and dictums 
 are perfectly gruff, shrewd, and to the point. 
 It is thought, and said, by the Squire's lady, who 
 attempts to interest Anna in the outside world, 
 that the old woman is invincibly ignorant and 
 narrow. When she is told, with some effusion and 
 a desire to make her realise the importance of the 
 event, of the birth of a prince, her old eyes rest 
 wistfully for a moment on the smallest and for- 
 lornest of Polly's babies, and she can't be brought 
 to say anything more enthusiastic than that it's 
 to be hoped he'll be brought up godly. 
 
 She is, in fact, as is said, narrow. Her staunch 
 old life has but one interest, and anything which 
 does not touch that does not touch her. For a 
 feeble Polly at home she w r orks ceaselessly her 
 rheumatic old limbs and her weary old brain. 
 Because of Polly she has no time for the talkings 
 and tea-drinkings which alleviate other old lives, 
 perhaps. For Polly her business instincts must 
 be ever shrewd and on the alert. Because of Polly 
 she must toil always and rest never — must be, if 
 you will, narrow, concentrated, money-grubbing, 
 and, as it is often said, wholly unfeminine ; 
 though that she is unfeminine in the sense in 
 which an idle woman shrieking for her rights on a 
 
134 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 platform, or an hysterical one blaspheming for 
 them in a novel, is unfeminine, will scarcely be 
 thought. The only right Anna wants is, in fact, 
 to keep Polly. She does the work of a man, 
 because if she did not Polly would starve. She 
 has lived among men, and become in some sort of 
 them, because she must. Even if it had been in 
 her nature to be tender, clinging, and simple, her 
 circumstances would have denied her the indul- 
 gence of those old-fashioned qualities. She has 
 the coarseness of a man because she has done the 
 work of a man, and is infected with his roughness 
 as well as with his strength and purpose. 
 
 Yet even Anna — towards Polly and Polly's 
 babies only— has some of the dearer and softer 
 virtues which make a woman. When she goes 
 home in the dusk she will tend Polly's babies, 
 especially the smallest of all, whom she thinks 
 lovely, with her hard old face tender and her 
 rough hands gentle. 
 
 She encourages this infant — a sad infant, with 
 some of Polly's daftness on its poor little vacant 
 face — to walk, or lift itself up with the assistance 
 of a great finger, and calling it all the time by a 
 number of names and in terms which shock deli- 
 cate persons, but mean love not the less. Towards 
 
THE PEASANT 135 
 
 Polly herself Anna is always in a coarse fashion 
 gentle, and strongly patient. Though she will 
 allow no one else to suggest to her that Polly's 
 brain power is not so great as it should be, that 
 she accepts the fact is evident, if only by the way 
 in which, worn out with hard work herself at 
 night, she will do Polly's work for her without a 
 word of rebuke. Sometimes in the dusk when 
 Polly falls stupidly asleep, with her pretty, foolish 
 head on her folded arms on the table, the old 
 woman, rocking Polly's baby to sleep on her 
 shrivelled breast, looks at Polly with eyes full of 
 yearning and pity; wakes her up at last with a 
 great gentleness ; helps to put her to bed, smooth- 
 ing the pretty hair with a sad pride and old rough 
 fingers ; and stands for a moment looking at this 
 girl, who has been a burden and sorrow all her life, 
 asleep in the poor bed, a child on either side of 
 her, with shrewd old eyes that are dim with some- 
 thing that is not wholly tenderness or pain or 
 affection, and yet partakes of them all. Anna is 
 up the next morning long before Polly is stirring, 
 and may be heard swearing at the animals and 
 the grandson farm boy, of whom she is infinitely 
 fond, in the first dawn. 
 
 One day Anna is taken ill. She says nothing 
 
136 CHAEACTEK NOTES 
 
 about it. There is no one to say anything to. 
 Polly has herself weakly health as well as a weakly 
 intellect, and has the children to see to as best she 
 can. A doctor is out of the question when one 
 lives as hard ak Anna has lived all her life. So 
 she goes to work as usual, and as she must. There 
 comes a day when her gruff old voice, shouting, 
 and, it is to be feared, cursing about the farm, is 
 weaker than usual. There is a sort of mist before 
 her keen eyes, and she has a feeling creeping 
 into her heart as if nothing mattered very much, 
 and would soon cease to matter at all. She gets a 
 little brandy from the inn. Having been sternly 
 abstemious all her life, it revives her for a while. 
 She puts the farm in careful order. She gives a 
 few instructions to her little grandson, who looks 
 up bewildered into her grey old face. She sits 
 down in the stable at last, with her trembling lips 
 moving in a vague prayer. She has not prayed 
 much hitherto, unless to work is to pray, as some 
 think. * Polly won't be able to keep up the farm/ 
 she says faintly ; ' Polly's too daft.' She prays 
 God to see to that helpless creature and those 
 helpless children when this thing which she feels 
 coming upon her has come. 
 
 * It'll be the Union,' she says ; ' I could only 
 
THE PEASANT 137 
 
 keep them out of it a little while.' She murmurs 
 over the verse of a hymn — a hymn ending * Glory, 
 glory/ and entirely inappropriate and unsuitable — 
 which they used to sing at chapel in the far-off 
 days when she had time to go there. After that 
 she knows nothing. The little grandson, finding 
 her presently, runs crying for help, and two 
 labourers lift this poor old dying creature on a 
 board and carry her towards home. She does not 
 know who they are. She has forgotten most 
 things. She has ceased to care for almost every- 
 thing but one thing, and only gasps to them before 
 she dies not to take her home— dead — to Polly — 
 lest Polly should ' take on.' 
 
 A heroine ? A martyr to a cause ? Why, no. 
 Only a coarse, ugly old creature, who expiates the 
 crime of bringing a daft Polly into the world by 
 working and dying for her. Only that, after all. 
 
188 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 THE FRENCHMAN 
 
 1 La gaite est pres de la bonte ' 
 
 Jean is perhaps five-and-thirty years old. Jean 
 has a little moustache waxed carefully at the ends, 
 a little intellect uncommonly quick and bright, and 
 a manner into which are condensed the most perfect 
 good-humour, cheeriness, politeness, obligeance and 
 savoir-faire in the world. Jean owns, in fact, a 
 number of charming characteristics for which 
 synonyms are not to be found either in the English 
 language or nation. He has a verve and aplomb 
 quite unlimited. He dramatises his words by an 
 action of the hands, face, and shoulders entirely 
 expressive. He is as free from self-consciousness 
 as an infant. He wears, with a delight that is per- 
 fectly fresh and youthful, collars and cuffs which 
 have Frenchman stamped all over them, and ties 
 his ties in a little bow the jauntiness of which no 
 Englishman has ever accomplished or, perhaps, 
 essayed. 
 
THE FRENCHMAN 139 
 
 Jean is from Paris. He is not, as he would say 
 himself with a perfect freedom from embarrassment, 
 of the high world. Jean's papa, whom he speaks 
 of even now with tears in his quick and emotional 
 eyes, was in fact an obscure clerk in an obscure 
 office on the Boulevards. Jean himself lives in 
 London, and having a very little voice, a great sense 
 of music, and an infinite amount of what his earliest 
 patroness calls chic, as if it were a substantive, 
 sings comic songs in his own language at the ! At 
 Homes ' of great persons in London. 
 
 Jean is by way of being a success. He sings, 
 and, if it may be so said, makes a fool of himself 
 with an abandon which pleases greatly a solid 
 British audience, that has never and could never so 
 abandon itself for a second. Jean uses a thousand 
 gestures — from Paris. He gives one the impression 
 of being entirely carried away on the swing and 
 rhythm of his song and music. He is undaunted 
 always by the adversities of any circumstances in 
 which he may find himself. And that he often 
 finds himself at the fashionable party in circum- 
 stances uncommonly trying to his art and to his 
 temper will not be doubted. 
 
 Jean makes a little way for himself to the piano 
 through the rudest crowd in the world, a crowd of 
 
140 CHAKACTEE NOTES 
 
 well-dressed English women, with an infinite 
 patience, politeness, and sweet temper. Jean 
 receives the elbows of the modern Amazonian 
 daughter in his eye, with a murmur of apology in 
 his own courteous language on his lips. Jean, who 
 has the misfortune to understand English perfectly, 
 though he can only speak it a little, listens to a 
 thousand perfectly candid expressions of opinion on 
 himself. It dawns upon him, quite early in his 
 modest career, that his audience do not for the most 
 part understand a word of what he sings. 
 
 1 When I come to Tde Park in my song, 5 he 
 says in confidence and the very worst English to an 
 elderly and cynical guest who is leaning against 
 a mantelpiece, yawning, 'they laugh — 'ow they 
 laugh ! And there is no joke there —none.' 
 
 'It's the first word they've understood, you 
 know,' says the cynic. And Jean lifts his shoulders 
 with a resigned smile and a sigh. 
 
 He perceives, with his gay little sense of 
 humour pleasantly tickled, that many persons are 
 shocked at his innocent airs, on the principle that 
 whatever is French is also necessarily improper, 
 while others, the * new English mees,' for instance, 
 are pleased in the delusion that they are listening 
 to something risque and music-hall. Jean bears, 
 
THE FKENCHMAN 141 
 
 with his gay equanimity quite undisturbed, the 
 stony, unsmiling stare of the despondent British 
 milor 9 who has been towed to the party by a fashion- 
 able wife, and is full of pessimism and longings for 
 his study and a newspaper. 
 
 1 But yes,' says Jean, with a shrug. ' It is easier 
 when you smile. You do not smile much, you 
 English. I do not do it for pleasure, you under- 
 stand. I am — how do you call it ? — mercenary. 
 It is for Marie, and little Jules and Bebe.' 
 
 Marie is Jean's wife, a young wife still, who 
 takes her part in the performance by playing Jean's 
 accompaniments and smiling a little at the jokes 
 which she has heard a thousand times, and at Jean. 
 Jean, whose good temper has never been shaken by 
 the rudeness of servants, the meanness of employers, 
 the candour of audiences, and the sips of sweet 
 lemonade which are spoken of by the hostess as 
 'refreshment,' has a quick rage storming in his 
 breast when an English madam suggests as delicately 
 as she can to Marie that Marie should dress, for 
 professional purposes, in a style more gay and French. 
 Jean thinks Marie quite lovely always. Loveliest 
 of all, perhaps, in that very old black frock which 
 he bought with her in Paris in a brief honeymoon 
 time of prosperity. He thinks Marie looks her 
 
142 CHAEACTEE NOTES 
 
 best with her dark hair disordered by the clutches 
 ofBebe, with the little flush that comes into her 
 cheeks after a vivacious game on the floor with 
 Jules. It is Marie herself who perceives that 
 madam is right, who soothes Jean's indignation 
 with a small, brown hand laid appealingly on his 
 gay waistcoat, who reminds him that little indigni- 
 ties mustn't matter when one has to think of the 
 children, and who makes herself, out of the cheapest 
 materials, a fine little gown and bonnet, bright with 
 a contrast of colours such as only a Frenchwoman 
 dares to attempt. 
 
 The little couple are poor indeed, even when 
 Jean becomes among a select coterie in some degree 
 fashionable, but they are as happy, perhaps, as any 
 two people in the world. They trudge cheerfully 
 from Pimlico, where they lodge obscurely, to some 
 fine house in the West End. Jean tucks Marie's 
 blight hand under his arm. He treats her with a 
 politeness which is not only of the manner, but of 
 the heart. He is attached to her with that generous, 
 impulsive, demonstrative affection which is just a 
 little ridiculous, and most true. Marie, indeed, is 
 not amused, but touched, when Jean, with a spon- 
 taneous action which is wholly natural, lays his 
 hand on his heart, and bursts out into a quick 
 
THE FKENCHMAN 143 
 
 French torrent of warm words. They have been 
 married six years, and have still for each other, in 
 some sort, the feeling of lovers. Madam, in fact, 
 their early patroness, who has herself been a long 
 while prosily married to a great deal of money, 
 suspects them for some time of being bride and 
 bridegroom, and, when she learns of her mistake 
 by accident, says, ' Aren't these French people 
 extraordinary ? ' and gives them up, as it were, in 
 despair. 
 
 Jean adds to domestic affection an infinite and 
 blithe contentment. He has an air of enjoying 
 himself at the parties he attends professionally which 
 is quite inspiriting. He takes a cup of tepid tea 
 beforehand with quite a blithe smile, and by way of 
 raising his spirits to the requisite pitch of hilarity 
 necessary to his entertainments. When the party 
 is over he buttons himself cheerfully into a tight 
 overcoat, wraps up Marie in her shawls, and the 
 pair go out into the winter night, talking and gay. 
 They slip through the carriages waiting for the 
 guests and take the last omnibus to Pimlico. Jean's 
 good-humour does not desert him even in this 
 abominable vehicle when he is sat on by the two 
 stout women who apparently live in omnibuses, or 
 when his boots, which are small and patent leather, 
 
144 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 and of which he is a little bit proud, are crushed by 
 the heavy feet of the vulgar. 
 
 For Marie's sake, indeed, he would like to ride 
 in a carriage. Towards her his feelings are infinitely 
 chivalrous, tender and protecting. For himself, he 
 is not particular. Perhaps because he has not been 
 brought up with the more fastidious tastes of a 
 higher class. Or, perhaps, because he is by nature 
 gay, unselfish, and well contented to take things 
 as they are. 
 
 Jean is glad when his performances take place 
 in the afternoon. Then, when he and Marie come 
 home, they can have a game with the children. 
 Jean lacks, it may be, many of those stout, solid, 
 durable virtues of which Englishmen are proud, 
 but he is at least domestic to a fault. After the 
 game Jean smokes meditatively. The room is only 
 the usual room of a second-rate English lodging- 
 house, abominable with antimacassars, artificial 
 flowers, and oleographs, but it makes a pretty 
 picture with Jules of four, in a frock, playing on the 
 floor, and Marie, in her old gown and the pretty 
 disorder in her hair, walking up and down and 
 singing, in a little voice that would be of no use at 
 all professionally, to the baby on her shoulder. 
 When she has put the children to bed, and she and 
 
THE FEENCHMAN 145 
 
 Jean have had coffee such as the British servant 
 never made, Jean comes to the little fire where 
 Marie is standing and puts his impulsive arm round 
 her waist. He says a number of things to her 
 which do not bear translation ; which are ridiculous 
 even in French, perhaps ; or in any language ; though 
 Marie does not think so. 
 
 They practise Jean's new songs afterwards, to 
 Marie's accompaniment on a lamentable hired piano. 
 Jean makes his grimaces and expressive actions of 
 hand and shoulders quite faithfully. He overhears 
 once someone say at one of his parties that to make 
 a buffoon of yourself is, from a cultured point of 
 view, possibly one of the lowest means of making 
 a livelihood extant. Is it ? Well, perhaps. The 
 remark strikes a little chill at the time even into 
 Jean's brave and cheery soul. But, after all, what 
 would you ? To earn a livelihood commonly is 
 better, when one has Marie and the children to 
 think of, than not to earn it at all. The end 
 justifies the means, perhaps. And if one can be a 
 clown and buffoon, and yet gay, honest, sober, and 
 self-respecting, Jean is no doubt the person who 
 accomplishes that difficult feat. 
 
 The last news of the little party is, however, that 
 
 tt 
 
146 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 Marie's uncle has left them some money, enough 
 and not too much for wants so quiet and domestic ; 
 that Jean thinks of giving up his occupation, and 
 returning with Marie, Jules, and Bebe to that heaven 
 which is called Paris. 
 

And Monsieur, leaning on his spade, and looking into her bright face 
 with his kindly old eyes, says, 'Yes, Mademoiselle,- perhaps' 
 
147 
 
 THE SCHOOLGIRL 
 
 i Le temps s'en va, le temps s'en va, ma dame ; 
 Las ! le temps non : mais nous nous en allons ' 
 
 Joyce has brown curls tied with a ribbon. She 
 has a face all laughter and dimples. She is fifteen 
 years old, and the happiest creature in creation. 
 
 Joyce does not learn very much. She has, 
 indeed, come to school with the express purpose of 
 learning as little as she can. She comes down to 
 practise Beethoven perfectly blithe and contented 
 at seven o'clock on a winter's morning. She 
 murders 'that master w 7 ith a gaiety of soul quite 
 unconquerable. She glides from the sonata in G 
 to the irresistible air of the last coster song. She 
 commits this and all her other misdemeanours in 
 such a manner that they are invariably found 
 out. 
 
 Before an examination she may be seen en- 
 deavouring with astonishing hopefulness and a 
 gay smile to learn propositions of Euclid by heart, 
 
 L 2 
 
148 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 Her fingers are always covered with ink, and the 
 ridiculous curls fall over her French exercises and 
 blot them. 
 
 She is lectured to by a University Extended 
 gentleman, and draws little caricatures of him upon 
 her blotting-paper all the time. She astonishes the 
 examiners at the Viva Voce at the end of the term 
 with the singular ignorance and vivacity of her 
 replies. "When she is reproached by Intellecta of 
 Girton for her terrible frivolity at the mathematical 
 class, Joyce puts her impulsive arms round that 
 learned lady's neck, and says with a hug that she 
 is frightfully sorry, only she doesn't really think 
 she can help it. 
 
 Perhaps she cannot. Perhaps it is not her 
 fault that she is so absurdly careless and light- 
 hearted. But if it is, they are both iniquities, 
 Girton thinks with a sigh, which time is sure to 
 cure. 
 
 It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to say that 
 Joyce finds herself quite unable to keep the rules. 
 There is an irresistible force in her nature which 
 compels her to jump down-stairs two or more steps 
 at a time, to talk in the passages, and scream in the 
 awful solemnity of the German class when a mouse 
 runs across the floor. 
 
THE SCHOOLGIRL 149 
 
 When Madame, who is ugly, and old, and 
 kindly, and of whom Joyce is fond, takes her pupil 
 to task for her naughtiness, Joyce's storm of 
 crying and repentance is, for two minutes, quite 
 overwhelming. And then she looks up with an 
 April face of smiles shining through her tears, and 
 in an incredibly short space of time may be heard 
 enjoying herself without a care in the world in the 
 playground. 
 
 Is she insincere ? She has rather a heart full 
 of impulse, and honesty, and good intentions. She 
 is only young. With her companions she is quite 
 popular and well beloved. She quarrels with them 
 sometimes, and is perfectly outspoken. She kisses 
 them five minutes afterwards — on both cheeks - 
 and is wholly reconciled and devoted to them until 
 the next dispute. 
 
 Madame's husband, who is seventy years old, 
 is one of Joyce's particular admirations. She is 
 first attracted to him because he does not teach, or 
 try to teach, her anything. Joyce opens a conver- 
 sation one day with him when she finds him work- 
 ing in his flower garden, and from henceforth 
 constitutes herself his especial friend. The old man, 
 who has a shrunken, stooping figure, and wears a 
 very ancient shiny black coat, is himself no doubt 
 
150 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 attached to this blithe, unthinking creature with 
 her dancing eyes, her whimsical short petticoats, 
 and her brown curls. 
 
 * He is the sweetest old love I ever saw,' says 
 Joyce to Madame. And Madame has not some- 
 how the heart to say that this tender and effusive 
 mode of speech is scarcely respectful. 
 
 ' Don't you get tired, now you are so old, doing 
 all that stupid gardening ? ' Joyce asks with her 
 gay candour as she stands looking at him one 
 day. 
 
 Monsieur, whose English accent is quite perfect, 
 replies, ' Yes, Mademoiselle, a little.' And Joyce 
 thinks how awfully funny it must feel to be hun- 
 dreds of years older than anyone else. 
 
 1 Doesn't it ? ' she asks. 
 
 And Monsieur, leaning on his spade, and look- 
 ing into her bright face with his kindly old eyes, 
 says, ' Yes, Mademoiselle — perhaps.' 
 
 Yet he is glad almost to think, as Joyce dances 
 away to join her companions, that he will not live 
 to see this blithe, quicksilver creature in that 
 ' awfully funny ' stage of age and experience. 
 
 Joyce is now more than sixteen years old, and 
 there begins to be some talk of her leaving school 
 for good. Monsieur, as they walk about the garden 
 
THE SCHOOLGIRL 151 
 
 sometimes in playhours, feels it his duty to try and 
 prepare her a little for the world, of which she 
 knows nothing and hopes everything. It is always 
 borne in upon him, indeed, after such conversa- 
 tions, that his efforts are quite useless. To this 
 girl, who has known neither, sorrow and disappoint- 
 ment are words without meaning. 
 
 6 Of course, I shan't be perfectly happy,' she 
 says gaily. ' Why, I'm not perfectly happy here, 
 though this is a love of a school, if they weren't so 
 horribly mean about holidays, and the butter at 
 the fifth form table wasn't too horrid for anything. 
 I get into rows, you know. And the last time 
 Madame was angry with me I cried so awfully 
 I had to borrow all the pocket-handkerchiefs in the 
 dormitory.' 
 
 Monsieur says no more at the time. He arrives 
 gradually at the conclusion that to prepare Joyce 
 for the world is impossible, and perhaps undesir- 
 able. As he watches her unconquerable joyousness 
 he has, with Madame — though life has spared 
 neither of them — a vague and ridiculous idea that 
 it may possibly spare Joyce. 
 
 At the end of the term which is to be her last, 
 the girls act Julius C&sar, with Joyce herself in 
 the title role. Julius Csesar bundles up his brown 
 
152 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 curls under a head-dress which he fondly imagines 
 to be Eoman. He betrays an innocent girlish 
 angle in every fold of his toga. He has not par- 
 ticularly bothered himself to learn his part. He 
 displays a joyous and total ignorance of the Shakes- 
 pearian meaning in every line. He makes signs to 
 the prompter in the wings. When the situation 
 grows particularly tragic he laughs. He has such 
 an innocent, bright face, such dancing eyes, and 
 such a gay and palpable enjoyment in his own 
 ridiculous performance that the audience would 
 forgive him a thousand worse blunders. When he 
 is murdered he can't for the life of him help lifting 
 up the corner of the garment which covers his face 
 and exchanging a wink with a friend in the front 
 row. He is seen jumping up after his murder, 
 some time before the curtain has quite descended. 
 He removes his toga and the head-dress in three 
 minutes, and is Joyce again — Joyce in a girlish 
 party-frock, her curls tied up with a gala white 
 ribbon, and her cheeks the soft carmine of happi- 
 ness and excitement. 
 
 She eats a very healthy schoolgirl supper. 
 When, indeed, she thinks of the next day, when 
 she is to leave school for ever, she is quite 
 overcome with emotion. But then she never 
 
THE SCHOOLGIRL 153 
 
 thinks of unhappy things very often or very long 
 together. 
 
 As Monsieur plays for the girls' dancing in the 
 long schoolroom afterwards, on the jingling school 
 piano, he looks up often from the music, which, 
 indeed, he knows by heart, at Joyce. She is gayer 
 almost than anyone. 
 
 ' It is perfectly dreadful to be going away to- 
 morrow,' she says to Monsieur, as she stands by 
 his side for a minute, and her eyes grow suddenly 
 a little dim. She dances away again in a moment, 
 and he looks after her. 
 
 The next day Joyce leaves the ' love of a school' 
 for ever, in floods of tears and a four-wheeler. An 
 old figure, very bent, and wearing an old coat, 
 looks after the cab a long time. He is glad to 
 think that Joyce, whom he has loved more than 
 he knew, will be smiling again very soon, and yet 
 he turns into the dull house with a sigh which is 
 not all for his own loneliness. 
 
 Monsieur and Madame do not see their old 
 pupil for five years. Joyce has been abroad. She 
 has been very gay, she writes. 
 
 ' Does very gay mean very happy ? ' says 
 Madame, and Monsieur answers, ■ Not always, I 
 think,' in his old voice. And then she comes back. 
 
154 CHAEACTER NOTES 
 
 She has put up the brown curls and let down her 
 whimsical frock, as was to be expected. She looks 
 a good deal older and, in some subtle sense only, 
 different. "Which might also have been expected. 
 
 She kisses Madame impulsively on both cheeks 
 as she used to do. She insists, with a great deal of 
 her old wilfulness and gaiety, that Monsieur shall 
 take her round the garden. She puts her girlish 
 arm — it is still a girlish arm, and very round and 
 slender — through his, and chatters to him in her 
 bright voice about a thousand of her gay doings. 
 Once she stops and looks all round the old garden 
 carefully. 
 
 1 1 used to be so — extraordinarily — happy here,' 
 she says. 
 
 ' My dear Mademoiselle,' answers the old man 
 almost impulsively, * have you not been happy 
 away from here ? Is there anything — the matter ? ' 
 
 ' Nothing,' she answers very lightly. ' Nothing 
 in the world. I am only grown up.' 
 
155 
 
 THE DOG 
 
 * Le devouement qui ne s'exprime que par des preuves — ' 
 
 Don is a Dandy Dinmont ; is sober, middle-aged, 
 and respectable. 
 
 He never gambols with the light-minded of his 
 species, but he will fight with any of them, plan- 
 ning his attack with infinite discretion, and taking 
 the deadly undergrip of the throat which makes 
 him equal to any dog twice his weight. Don goes 
 to bed regularly at a certain hour every night. 
 He rises regularly each morning. He takes his 
 meals in a decent, serious manner, like an elderly 
 gentleman at his club, without haste or vulgar 
 enjoyment. He has a cloth laid for him beneath 
 his plate. If the cloth is not there he will not eat. 
 If the cloth is laid for him in the kitchen he will 
 not eat likewise. Don has all the instincts of a 
 gentleman. He is not, indeed, proud. For that 
 he is too well-bred. But to a person with a pedi- 
 gree and of his known rank and sobriety he feels 
 
156 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 that some consideration is due. Such considera- 
 tion he exacts. 
 
 He will not sleep in his bed, for instance, unless 
 his straw is fresh and perfect. If it is defective he 
 looks down at it reproachfully, and then looks up 
 still more reproachfully at his master, who is a 
 silent, lonely man. 
 
 These two old bachelors are not demonstra- 
 tive, but they seem to understand each other. 
 One knowledge they appear to have in common, 
 namely, that of the limitations of life. They 
 both have a few small enjoyments, to be duly 
 taken with gravity, but they know that there is 
 nothing in existence worth making much stir 
 about. They take walks together. Don's ebulli- 
 tions of joy at the prospect of exercise are no 
 doubt as irrepressible as they are short-lived. He 
 soon settles down into a trot full of grave enjoy- 
 ment and decorum. He resists temptation to hunt 
 in the brushwood with a careful self-denial. These 
 walks of master and dog in the lanes are rather 
 like their walk through life — pessimistic and varied 
 by a very limited interest in passing events. It 
 would almost seem that they have an object at the 
 end of their walk, but the end is home again, and 
 there is no visible object beyond the taking of 
 exercise. 
 
THE DOG 157 
 
 To his master, who is preoccupied and spends 
 many hours at his desk in the compilation of grave 
 law-books, which no one ever seems to read, Don 
 is indeed most honestly devoted. Nevertheless, he 
 errs sometimes. Thrice he stays out all night in a 
 manner disreputable and unworthy of his serious 
 character. Once the savage instincts of his nature 
 overcome his gentlemanly civilisation, and he 
 destroys a couple of spring chickens. Another 
 time he stands by, applauding, while a visitor 
 commits a similar indiscretion, and exhibits a most 
 reprehensible self-righteousness during the period 
 of his friend's castigation. Once he escapes from 
 supervision to wreak a long-harboured vengeance 
 upon a fox-terrier in the neighbourhood. It is 
 grievous to relate that the murderer is not peni- 
 tent, but elated, when he sees his enemy lying 
 torn and dead in the dust, and is only brought 
 to a fitting grief and contrition when his master 
 stands over him with a riding-whip. It is thought 
 by his master, who is not sentimental, that the 
 blows hurt less than the grave words with which 
 he represents the enormity of such conduct. It is 
 at least sure that, while Don takes the punishment 
 with a certain subdued philosophy, when it is over 
 he retires to his sanctum at the back of the rockery 
 and howls. 
 
158 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 Philosophy is one of Don's strong points. 
 Though he hates being washed, he submits to the 
 weekly bath by a vulgar and heavy-handed coach- 
 man and a most insulting disinfectant soap with a 
 pessimistic submission and the air of having made 
 up his mind to face the worst. As to the rest of 
 the quiet household, he is in a gentlemanly and 
 condescending manner sufficiently attached to the 
 parlour-maid to trot round the table with her at 
 meals, but he never loses sight of the fact that he 
 and his master are of a different world from that 
 beyond the green-baize door. 
 
 To his master Don gives, indeed, an affection 
 such as he gives to no one else. It is like a human 
 affection, only better, perhaps. For his master 
 never actually feeds him with his own hands, and 
 rarely punishes him, so it has its root neither in 
 self-interest nor fear. Don feels perhaps that they 
 two have much in common. They have their sex, 
 first of all. They are grave and judicial, as no 
 woman could be, when they linger over their wine 
 in the twilight dining-room after dinner. They 
 are well content to lie meditative and quiescent in 
 the field on Sunday afternoons. They have de- 
 veloped in them that talent for rest and thought 
 which is not developed in either the cook or the 
 
the Doa 159 
 
 parlour-maid. They have, above all, a certain 
 philosophic pessimism of life. They are too wise 
 to think that existence is really worth having, but 
 they endure it with an uncomplaining high-bred 
 patience that gives them the air of awaiting a con- 
 summation which they never really expect. Don 
 stretches himself before the fire on a winter even- 
 ing with a grunt which says as plainly as words, 
 'There are alleviations,' and his master lights a 
 pipe, with a half-suppressed sigh, and turns reso- 
 lutely to a book. 
 
 The Old Bachelor looks over the page at his 
 companion once or twice. He has lived so long 
 and so entirely with Don that it is possible that he 
 endows the dog in his own mind with the power of 
 thought. At all events, he tells a number of stories 
 about Don which his hearers entirely refuse to 
 believe. During the long winter evenings they sit 
 thus, their comfort emphasised by the howling of 
 the wind in the chimney, the master with his book, 
 the dog with his long, long thoughts — for Don is 
 no great sleeper, but appears to reflect much. 
 They sit and await the consummation. 
 
 Don is not an old dog, though grave of habit 
 and without the graces of youth. His head is 
 indeed too large for his queer round body. His 
 
160 CHAEACTER NOTES 
 
 legs are too short and his person so long that in 
 the middle he almost touches the ground. 
 
 'That's a centreboard dog of yours/ says a 
 yachting friend one day, but the remark falls flat. 
 For, like many of his betters, Don has overcome 
 physical deficiency by mental excellence. He per- 
 severes in the chase with a fine sporting spirit, 
 although he knows full well that the smallest 
 rabbit can get away from him in a canter. He 
 probably has a tolerant contempt for leggy dogs, 
 and if any, leggy or stumpy, cast the eye of dis- 
 paragement upon him, they have to deal with the 
 abnormal jaw and the deadly undergrip. 
 
 With women Don is patient, but contemptuous. 
 His master has an only sister who comes to stay 
 once a year, during which visit Don's regular habits 
 are sadly put out. He walks out in the garden by 
 himself, and obviously prefers solitude and a word 
 with the gardener to the society of a person who is 
 more than half afraid of him, and calls him 
 1 Doggy ' and ' Pretty.' 
 
 Children he fails entirely to understand. He 
 evidently considers them to be some debased form 
 of human creature, and endures their caresses with 
 a doubting eye fixed on his master, awaiting the 
 word to up and slay. 
 
THE DOG 161 
 
 Don is wholly content with his life in a philo- 
 sophic way, though at times there is a look in 
 his melancholy eyes which seems to explain the 
 desire to get beyond the limitations of his intel- 
 ligence. He would like to understand a little 
 more and a little better, which desire assuredly 
 brings him within touch, as it were, of the human 
 intellect. 
 
 1 Get out, Don ! ' ejaculates the Old Bachelor 
 sometimes, when the dog's clumsy body takes up 
 the best part of the hearthrug ; and Don gets out 
 with a grunt. They understand each other, quar- 
 rel in a half-hearted, manlike manner, and never 
 formally make it up. The Old Bachelor is quite 
 alive to Don's faults, and the dog, who has never 
 had another master, possibly dreams of one who 
 might be less absorbed in dull books, who might 
 take more notice of a faithful friend, and acknow- 
 ledge loving eyes and a wagging tail awaiting him 
 at the foot of the stairs every morning at breakfast - 
 time with the regularity of a clock. For the Old 
 Bachelor hurries into the breakfast-room and 
 takes up his letters with an eagerness which is re- 
 awakened every morning, and dies a sudden death 
 before the coffee is poured into the solitary cup. 
 The letters are from printers or publishers, and are 
 
 M 
 
162 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 dull, like the books they print and publish for the 
 Old Bachelor. 
 
 Thus, year in, year out, these two philosophers 
 live together. A little grey appears at the Old 
 Bachelor's temples, and on Don's heavy jaw. 
 Don begins to grow rather stout and comfortable ; 
 his special quarries in the rabbit-warren at the 
 back of the field hardly honour him by running 
 away from him — a leisurely trot will secure a safe 
 retreat from the pursuit of a person so long and 
 round in the body, so short in the leg. 
 
 Then suddenly the consummation seems to 
 loom upon that mental horizon which has absorbed 
 the Old Bachelor's attention so long. Someone 
 has died somewhere and . . . well . . . there are 
 letters which are not from printers and publishers. 
 One day the Old Bachelor packs his portmanteau 
 and goes away in a cab, leaving Don disconsolate 
 by the dining-room fire. 
 
 Don will not be comforted, and acts at this 
 time with a gentlemanly reserve which is worthy of 
 the pedigree on the fast yellowing sheet of paper 
 upstairs in the master's writing-table. He ac- 
 knowledges the efforts of the parlour-maid to con- 
 sole him ; but he cannot, with the best will in the 
 world, be comforted. He knows that before women 
 
THE DOG- 163 
 
 and menials it would be bad form to break down, 
 so he preserves his dignified demeanour and leads 
 his quiet dignified life alone in the dining-room, 
 where he takes his meals in solitude. There seems 
 to be in his mind some dim knowledge that he is 
 master now, and he walks up the garden every 
 morning to see what the men are doing. He sits 
 in the sunlight on the lawn with a certain air of 
 possession. And when a great cleaning of floors 
 and washing of spring curtains takes place he 
 gravely notes the bustle, and steps outside until 
 the rooms are fit for his reception. 
 
 The household excitement seems to increase, 
 and one day Don is forced by sudden circumstances 
 to forget himself. He sees the cab approaching, 
 and, recognising the portmanteau, so far loses 
 sight of his position as to rush wildly into the 
 kitchen to tell the cook, who, as it happens, is in 
 her best black dress and a fluster. 
 
 Don gets a little flurried, and does not exactly 
 know how he comes to find himself in the arms of 
 a total stranger, who hurries into the dining-room 
 and, kneeling impetuously on the hearth-rug, 
 presses a cheek which is young and fresh stil 
 against his grizzled face. 
 
 1 This is Don — this is Don, I know/ she says. 
 
 M 2 
 
164 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 And the Old Bachelor answers in a queer 
 voice : 
 
 ' Yes — that is Don.' 
 
 * Poor old dear — he doesn't understand,' cries 
 the Consummation, with another hug and a laugh, 
 which is only half gay. 
 
 Don looks from one to the other with a doubt- 
 ful wag of the tail. Perhaps he does understand — 
 a little. 
 

Martha waters these forlorn and stunted geraniums with the greatest 
 pride and indiscretion 
 
165 
 
 THE CARETAKER 
 
 1 Quand c'est le coeur qui conduit, il entraine ' 
 
 Martha caretakes a decrepit City warehouse. She 
 cleans, or imagines that she cleans, the offices of a 
 depressed company of tea merchants and of a neces- 
 sitous land surveyor. They confound her hope- 
 lessly when they arrive every morning and behold 
 the thickness of the dust on their ledgers and the 
 black and smoky nature of their fires. And 
 Martha speaks of them tenderly as ? my gentle- 
 men/ and inquires fondly after their w T ives and 
 families. 
 
 Martha's appearance has, it must be confessed, 
 a worn and dingy air, not unlike the house she 
 lives in. She is invariably attired in an ancient 
 shawl and a frowsy black bonnet. People are apt 
 to forget that the wrinkled old face beneath it is 
 very kind and tender. The blackness of Martha's 
 aprons and the streaky nature of her house-clean- 
 ing cause them to lose sight of the fact that 
 
166 CHAEACTER NOTES 
 
 London griminess has never reached Martha's 
 soul. 
 
 Martha is boundlessly simple and contented. 
 It is fortunate that an external cleanliness is not 
 necessary to her happiness, since it has been her 
 fate to look at Thames Street, breathe Thames 
 Street, and live in Thames Street since she was 
 five-and-twenty. Once she has been into the 
 country. But that was a long time ago ; though 
 on the window-sill of her attic there still live 
 miserably some of the cuttings she took from the 
 plants she brought back with her. 
 
 Martha waters those forlorn and stunted gera- 
 niums with the greatest pride and indiscretion. 
 She imagines that the smutty and despairing musk 
 still smells deliciously, and puts her old nose into 
 it and sniffs with the greatest enjoyment in the 
 world. On sultry days she opens her window and 
 sits at work by her ' garden.' Her old face is 
 quite placid and contented. The expressive lan- 
 guage of the costermonger below rises to her ear. 
 The refreshing scent of decaying vegetables must 
 quite overpower that of the elderly musk. But 
 either Martha has long ceased to expect unalloyed 
 pleasure, or is of such a very simple nature that 
 she can enjoy imperfect happiness perfectly. 
 
THE CARETAKER 167 
 
 Martha is very proud of her attic. It may not, 
 in fact does not, contain much oxygen. But there 
 is a beautiful picture of the Queen smiling blandly 
 out of a tradesman's almanac of the year fifty. 
 Martha's circumstances render it necessary that 
 there should constantly be washing drying in lines 
 across the ceiling. But she takes her meals quite 
 blithely beneath this canopy, and has no feelings at 
 all about cutting her cheese — she never seems to eat 
 anything except cheese, or drink anything except 
 tea — on the patchwork quilt which covers the 
 neglige manner in which she has made her bed. 
 
 Martha has a table indeed, but it is quite 
 covered with the accumulated treasures of a life- 
 time. There is a religious work presented to her 
 by a Bible Minister angling for a congregation, 
 which Martha no doubt values the more because 
 she cannot read it. There is a creature which 
 may or may not represent a parrot, with boot 
 buttons for eyes and a body of many-coloured 
 wools. Martha blows the dust from the glass case 
 which encloses it with an infinite affection and 
 reverence. She made the parrot herself a long, 
 long time ago, and is tenderly proud of it still. 
 By its side is a Testament scored by a hand long 
 dead, and with Martha's homely name written on 
 
168 CHAEACTEE NOTES 
 
 the fly-leaf. There are two china shepherdesses, with 
 pink sashes and squints, on the mantelpiece, and 
 an In Memoriam card of Martha's dead nephew. 
 
 By the window there is a bird in a cage, to 
 whom Martha chirrups cheerfully, and whom she 
 addresses as 'Enery. The bird never chirrups 
 to Martha, old age and the stifling air of Thames 
 Street having long silenced him for ever. But 
 Martha's placid optimism has caused her to believe 
 persistently for many years that if she only chir- 
 rups long and cheerfully enough 'Enery will reply 
 to her at last. 
 
 ' He's wonderful for company,' she says, ' and 
 eats next to nothing.' "Which to Martha's mind is 
 the greatest recommendation a friend can have. 
 
 Martha is indeed well paid for her caretaking. 
 When one considers the sketchy nature of her 
 cleaning she appears to be ridiculously overpaid. 
 Martha's money is not spent on herself. She eats 
 very little — and cheese and tea may be bought 
 incredibly cheap and nasty in Thames Street. 
 She indulges in no vanities of dress. The frowsy 
 shawl and bonnet are of immemorial antiquity. 
 Her employers surmise uncharitably that she does 
 not waste her substance on soap. Martha, in fact, 
 wastes nothing. She has a money-box secreted 
 
THE CARETAKER 169 
 
 in a drawer amid an awful confusion of other 
 treasures. She is a miser. She has saved and 
 stinted herself for years and years. She has denied 
 herself not luxuries, for luxuries have never even 
 suggested themselves to her, but what other people 
 would call necessaries. 
 
 On that far-off visit to the country Martha 
 found and loved a great-niece. Tilly was, it must 
 be confessed, a dreadful, stout, stolid, apple-cheeked 
 plebeian baby. But she took possession of Martha's 
 lonely old heart. Martha carried back to London 
 a cheap photograph of Tilly in her best frock, and 
 a deep-seated resolution concerning Tilly in her 
 foolish old soul. When Tilly is old enough she is 
 to come up to London to live, at Martha's expense, 
 with Martha, and be 'prenticed to what Martha 
 speaks of reverentially in the abstract as ' the dress- 
 making.' Martha, like a true Cockney, loves and 
 despises the country, and is convinced that London 
 is the only place in which to get on. And the 
 dressmaking is such a genteel employment. 
 
 To 'prentice Tilly to a very good house, to be 
 able to clothe Tilly as her high position will re- 
 quire, to be able to support Tilly elegant, as 
 Martha says, Martha instituted the money-box, 
 and puts into it weekly much more than she can 
 
170 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 afford. She works for Tilly with the dogged per- 
 sistence of the woman of one idea. The stout 
 earthy child whom she has not seen for a dozen 
 years or more has been beautified, perhaps beyond 
 recognition, in her fond and foolish imagination. 
 Or she thinks that large red cheeks and a stolid 
 gaze — admirably caught by the cheap photograph — 
 are incapable of improvement. Tilly's picture is 
 assigned an honourable place by the side of a 
 terrible but beloved portrait of the Prince of Wales. 
 Though Martha is devotedly attached to the 
 Eoyal Family, there have been days on which 
 the Prince's countenance has been left thick in 
 dust. But Martha always makes a point of clean- 
 ing Tilly reverentially with a corner of her shawl. 
 She gazes at the picture when she has performed 
 this operation with an admiration and tenderness 
 in her dim old eyes which are quite ridiculous and 
 pathetic. Two or three times a week she breathes 
 on the glass which protects Tilly, and rubs it 
 vigorously with a piece of a cloth used indiscrimi- 
 nately as a duster or a handkerchief. 
 
 For Tilly's sake she refuses to join a party of 
 lady friends who are going by water to Greenwich. 
 One has to live in Thames Street, perhaps, to 
 know what a temptation such an expedition repre- 
 
THE CARETAKER 171 
 
 sents. The land surveyor's wife sends Martha a 
 cheap petticoat for a Christmas present. It is 
 beautifully striped in many colours, and Martha 
 says, * It's too good for my likes,' and puts it 
 tenderly away in a drawer for Tilly. For Tilly's 
 sake she denies herself sugar in her tea. For 
 Tilly's sake she creeps about the old house in boots 
 so aged that the tea merchant is constrained to 
 speak to her severely on her disreputable appear- 
 ance. For Tilly's sake she goes to bed early to 
 save candles, and lies awake hour after hour with 
 her old thoughts to keep her company. For Tilly's 
 sake she daily makes, in fact, the thousand little 
 sacrifices of which only a great love is capable. 
 
 The tea merchant, exasperated beyond bearing 
 at last at her incompetence, tells her her services 
 will be no longer required. On consideration 
 perhaps of her having inquired tenderly after his 
 relations every morning for an indefinite number 
 of years, he consents to her still occupying the 
 attic on the payment of a modest rent. 
 
 Then Martha seeks some new employment. 
 Her old heart sinks when a week has passed and 
 she has failed to find it. For herself she can live 
 on almost nothing. But Tilly is seventeen now, 
 and is coming up to London next year. Martha 
 
172 CHAKACTEE NOTES 
 
 would rather starve than take a penny from her 
 money-box. She has called it Tilly's money so 
 long that she really believes now to spend it would 
 be robbing Tilly of her own. She is reduced to 
 selling 'Enery — with tears. He fetches a very, 
 very small sum, and Martha has loved him as if 
 he were a human creature. The theological work 
 presented by the Bible Christian minister goes 
 also, and Martha, who has never read it, cannot 
 see the vacant place on the table because of the 
 mist in her old eyes. 
 
 At last she is engaged by the parish clergyman 
 to clean the church. Up to this period Martha 
 has been a Baptist — not so much because she has 
 a leaning towards that particular sect, or any 
 particular sect, as because the Baptist chapel is 
 very handy, the minister affable, and the footstools 
 large, fat, comfortable ones of a showy red baize. 
 
 ' But it 'd be sooperstition to let them 'assicks 
 stand in the way of my niece,' Martha says 
 thoughtfully to herself. The 'assicks do not stand 
 in Tilly's way. In a day or two Martha, with an 
 optimistic smile on her wrinkled old face, may be 
 seen providing Bitualistic books of devotion to 
 devout young gentlemen who have come to church 
 to attend Prime. 
 
THE CAEETAKEK 173 
 
 Then Tilly comes. Martha has house- cleaned 
 her room for Tilly's reception. She has not, indeed, 
 house-cleaned it very thoroughly, partly because 
 she has not had time and is seventy years old and 
 a little feeble, and partly because Martha has 
 never cleaned anything thoroughly, including her- 
 self. But she has blown the dust off most things, 
 and put up a piece of new window curtain. She 
 has bought a shilling looking-glass for Tilly's 
 benefit, Martha never seeing her own kind, tender, 
 wrinkled, grubby old countenance from year's end 
 to year's end. She has provided quite a sump- 
 tuous tea — with sugar. She has made the bed 
 almost neatly. She has, in fact, done everything 
 that love can suggest to her. 
 
 Before she goes out in the frowsy bonnet and 
 ancient shawl to meet Tilly at the station she 
 takes a last look, through eyes proudly and ten- 
 derly dim, at Tilly's picture. The day has come 
 for which she has been working for years, for 
 which she has denied herself gladly, for which she 
 has yearned and prayed. She can feel her heart 
 beating quicker under the threadbare shawl, and 
 her hands tremble a little. 
 
 She is much too early for the train, and has to 
 wait so long in the waiting-room where she has 
 
174 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 arranged to meet Tilly that she falls into a doze. 
 A robust female with a developed figure, a tight 
 waist, and a flowery hat nudges her at last impa- 
 tiently with a tin hat-box. 
 
 1 Lor, aunt ! ' says Tilly, ' what with you so 
 shabby, and snoring so ungenteel in a public place, 
 I 'ardly liked to own yer.' 
 
 1 My dear ! ' cries Martha in a trembling voice. 
 ' My dear ! My dear ! ' and she puts her withered 
 old arms round the girl's neck, and kisses her and 
 cries over her for happiness. 
 
 ' What a take on to be sure ! ? says Tilly, who is 
 perfectly practical. * Let's go 'ome.' 
 
 And they go home and begin life together. 
 
 For a month Martha is happy. She is happy 
 at least so far that she can watch the accomplished 
 Tilda reading a novelette and profoundly admire 
 so much education. She puts her ridiculous old 
 head on one side to look proudly and fondly at the 
 stylish black curls shading Tilly's rubicund coun- 
 tenance. She ventures to kiss Tilly's cheek very 
 gently when that young lady is snoring profoundly 
 after a day's pleasure, for Tilly has not yet started 
 'the dressmaking.' And the premium is still 
 wrapped up safely in dingy newspaper in the 
 money-box. 
 
THE CARETAKER 175 
 
 Martha is creeping upstairs one night, weary 
 but optimistic, after a hard day's cleaning at the 
 church, when a slipshod infant from next door 
 thrusts a note into her hand. The slipshod infant, 
 who has received an education, reads it to Martha 
 at Martha's desire. It contains only a few lines. 
 
 Tilly has gone away. Tilly has eloped with a 
 costermonger. Married respectable at a registry, 
 she phrases it. ' That's all,' says the infant of 
 education. 
 
 That is all. But that is why Martha falls back 
 with her face drawn and ashen and her lips trem- 
 bling. That is all. It is the end of those years of 
 work and denial and hoping. Yet what is more 
 natural than that Tilly should desire matrimony, 
 and try her blandishments upon a costermonger 
 who plied his trade most conveniently beneath 
 Martha's window ? "What is more natural in this 
 cruel world than love repaid by ingratitude, and 
 trustfulness by deceit ? 
 
 Martha gropes her way blindly to the attic. It 
 is not yet so dark there but she can see distinctly 
 the poor little improvements she made for Tilly's 
 coming. She turns the cheap looking-glass with 
 its face to the wall. It was meant to reproduce 
 Tilly, buxom and twenty, and not Martha, poor, 
 
176 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 old, ugly, and disappointed. She catches sight of 
 Tilly's picture at four years old — Tilly, stolid 
 enough indeed, but little, loving, and good. And 
 Martha cries, and buries her head in her arms, 
 and the tears mark grimy courses down her fur- 
 rowed cheeks. 
 
 'If you could 'a trusted me, Tilly,' she says. 
 ' If you would but 'a trusted me.' 
 
 Until this bitter hour she has not known how 
 Tilly has filled her life. How she has lived only 
 for Tilly, and thought and hoped only for her. 
 And Tilly has gone away, and Martha's house is 
 left unto her desolate. 
 
 A footstep outside startles her. For one wild 
 foolish moment she thinks that Tilly has come 
 back — that she has but dreamt a bad dream and is 
 awake again. And she recognises the voluble tones 
 of the mamma of the educated infant, and dries 
 her tears, not from pride — Martha has so little — 
 but from loyalty to Tilda. 
 
 Mrs. Jones always have said that Tilda w r as a 
 bad lot. ' A impudent, brazen-faced thing,' says 
 Mrs. Jones, warming to the description. 
 
 And Martha, with a little colour coming into 
 her poor white cheeks, knows as Tilly meant no 
 harm. And marriages are made in 'eaven. 
 
THE CABETAKEK, 177 
 
 She may have to acknowledge Tilda erring to 
 her own heart, but how can she give her up to the 
 merciless judgment of a merciless world ? 
 
 * You're a poor sperited one, that you are/ says 
 Mrs. Jones, * and as likely as not you've never 
 looked to see if she 'ave made off with the pre- 
 mium.' 
 
 Martha has not looked. Is startled into con- 
 fessing it. She has not thought of the premium, 
 so hardly earned. She has only thought that she 
 has loved Tilda, and Tilda has not loved her. And 
 a swift burning colour comes into Martha's cheeks, 
 and some sudden deadly premonition creeps to her 
 heart and closes coldly upon it. And she answers 
 steadily, • My Tilda's as honest as you are.' 
 
 * Don't you be so sure,' says Mrs. Jones vindic- 
 tively. ' You look and see.' 
 
 Perhaps Martha takes some sort of resolution 
 as she goes heavily to the drawer where the money- 
 box is kept. Or perhaps no resolution is necessary, 
 because her ignorant, loving old soul is of its 
 nature infinitely faithful. Her hands and lips are 
 quite steady now, and she is not afraid of Mrs. 
 Jones's ' sperited ' gaze. The money-box is quite 
 light, and the money collected was chiefly in pence 
 and halfpence. It is also unlocked. And Martha 
 
 N 
 
178 CHAEACTEK NOTES 
 
 turns with her back to the drawer and faces Tilda's 
 enemies. 
 
 1 You can tell all as asks/ she says in an old 
 voice that is very clear and firm, ' as my Tilda is 
 quite straight and honest. And them as says she 
 isn't — lies.' 
 
 ' I'll believe as you speak true,' says Mrs. Jones. 
 6 If you don't, well, the Lord forgive you ! ' 
 
 And who shall say that He will not ? 
 
179 
 
 THE PARSON 
 
 1 Le monde est une foule d'isolSs ' 
 
 He lives in the days of Farmer George. He is 
 perhaps fifty years old. He has a jolly, round, 
 red, tanned, weather-beaten face with shrewd grey 
 eyes under shaggy eyebrows. He wears a dress 
 which is as careless, as comfortable, and as un- 
 clerical as may well be. He has spurs clinking 
 under his surplice, and a dozen easy tumbled pink 
 coats in his untidy bachelor quarters at the 
 Eectory. 
 
 The Eectory, an abominable, dull, damp, moth- 
 eaten hole, is the reward of vigorous Hebrew at 
 Cambridge. It is whispered, indeed, that Parse n 
 Jack was not only vigorous at Hebrew and at com- 
 pelling the errant undergraduate attention with his 
 great burly voice and fine broad English person- 
 ality, but also, says report, at athletics of every 
 kind. At games and on the river. At a rollicking 
 song, at a rollicking story, the life of a college 
 
 N 2 
 
180 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 breakfast in his gravest days, and the wildest of 
 the wild in his wild youth. 
 
 It is certain that Parson Jack knows very well 
 how to take odds or lay them on any race or racer 
 the sporting Squire of his parish can name to him. 
 It is whispered, indeed, that he knows the points 
 of a horse a good deal better than the subtleties of 
 theology. He thinks perhaps — God bless him, 
 says the Squire — that a good seat, a brave zest for 
 a fine old English sport, and the keen healthy ex- 
 citement that comes with a fair crisp morning and 
 the bay of the hounds are in themselves part of an 
 honest virtue and conducive to it. 
 
 He is not, it will be seen, strictly clerical. He 
 has his notions of duty indeed, which are, like him- 
 self, broad and honest. He will go round the 
 parish after his late, untidy bachelor breakfast at 
 the Eectory and ask Hodge, in uncommonly for- 
 cible language, which has never even occurred to 
 him as being unorthodox, why he was not in church 
 last Sunday. He has a joke for the women, and 
 the worst jokes sound better in his great jolly tones 
 than the best in another man's, and a shining six- 
 pence out of his own poorly-equipped pockets for 
 the children. He is not, perhaps, very dignified. 
 The only advice he ever offers is quite worldly and 
 
THE PAESON 181 
 
 material — how to buy a horse, and how — God bless 
 you, Sir, says Jeannie, with tears in her country 
 eyes — to pay the rent. He will send down the 
 people, when they are ill, one of the prime puddings 
 made by his housekeeper, or a bottle of his old port, 
 which he takes to be a cure, or at least a panacea, 
 for every ailment under Heaven. He gives them 
 no spiritual directions. A sense of his own un- 
 worthiness oppresses the most humble heart in the 
 world. When Hodge, dying, confesses to him 
 some sin of a wicked youth, the Parson says, ' God 
 forgive us ! ' including himself in that need for an 
 especial mercy. He has the widest charity and 
 pity for the faults of his people, feeling himself to 
 be more faulty than all. When he reads, in his 
 great tones, the Confession in Church, one guesses 
 whom he takes to be the worst of lost sheep and 
 miserable offenders. 
 
 He is unorthodox enough at the service, Heaven 
 knows. His Georgian congregation are not indeed 
 particular, and accept complacently irregularities 
 which would cause the hair of the faithful of the 
 present enlightened generation to stand on end. 
 The Parson's great dog follows him always into 
 Church. If Eough lingers, as he will sometimes, in 
 the aisle, taking a simple canine interest in the 
 
182 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 congregation, the Parson whistles to him with per- 
 fect simplicity and no idea of irreverence to come 
 into the Vestry, where Eough scrabbles at the door 
 feelingly during the service. Neither does the Parson 
 perceive any moral wrong in curtailing the Liturgy 
 when the day is fine, and his human nature, as 
 well as everyone else's, is longing to be out in the 
 sunshine. He preaches the long formal sermon in 
 fashion in his time, in loud, honest tones, and 
 getting over it as fast as he can. He is not parti- 
 cularly grieved at heart to hear Hodge snoring in 
 the free seats during the discourse, which the Par- 
 son knows to be trite and dull as well as anybody. 
 The hideousness of a Church built in the reign of 
 Queen Anne does not pain his artistic sense in the 
 least, nor does the excruciating band in the gallery 
 jar on his fine outdoor nerves. When My Lady 
 from the Manor, who is town-bred and delicate, 
 complains to him that there are black-beetles in her 
 pew, he replies, g Crush 'em, Madam, crush 'em ! ' 
 in his great voice, and considers the matter settled. 
 He gives out notices in Church which are in no 
 way connected with religion. * The hounds meet 
 on Blakely Green on Thursday,' he says in a friendly 
 fashion, i and mind you're all in time.' His eccen- 
 tricities, if indeed they can be called by such a 
 
THE PAKSON 183 
 
 name in his day, are so far from being disliked by 
 the people that they even seem to put the Parson 
 on a friendly human footing with themselves. The 
 fact that he finds the Litany, as they do, conducive 
 to slumber, makes as it were a bond of union be- 
 tween them. They are even pleased when they 
 discover, as they very soon do from his man, that 
 the Parson finds it impossible to rise early, except 
 for hunting, that he is honestly fond of his port 
 wine, and takes a nap after dinner in the pleasantest 
 human fashion. 
 
 With his equals the Parson is popular too. 
 The Squire forgives him his Hebrew when he finds 
 that the books are moulding away unread in the 
 Eectory library. And the Parson is famous for his 
 good stories and his loud honest sense of humour. 
 His very laugh even — a great, huge, burly, vigorous 
 laugh — amuses his friends. He is held, no doubt 
 rightly, to be as good a judge of port as any man 
 in the county, and takes his bottle after a hard 
 day's hunting without, it must be said, any evil 
 result. The Parson tells his best stories indeed 
 after his wine. If his influence on the party is 
 certainly not spiritual, or even clerical, it has, 
 in a coarse age, a robust cleanliness. For the 
 Parson, for the sake of one woman in a past of 
 
184 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 which he never speaks, respects all, and when he 
 is at table the conversation is at least decent. 
 
 After dinner the Parson — and it is to be feared 
 that the fact that many of his friends are not in a 
 position to accompany him does not shock him at 
 all — goes upstairs to take tea with Madam in her 
 drawing-room. He sings some of his rollicking 
 college songs to her accompaniment. He misses 
 out such verses as he thinks unsuited for her hear- 
 ing. He is fond of this woman, who is gentle and 
 good, though neither beautiful nor young, with a 
 quite simple affection. He likes to sit in her draw- 
 ing-room, with the flowers in bowls on the table, 
 with the pretty old tea things and silver by the 
 fire, with the harpsichord open and lighted by 
 candles in massive candlesticks, with her woman's 
 work here and the delicate touch of a woman 
 everywhere. He is fifty years old, a robust out- 
 door person, who has no business to be moved 
 by such things as these — no business to miss them 
 when he goes back to the Eectory with its dull 
 furniture and its masculine hardness and untidi- 
 ness. And yet — and yet the Parson has a habit 
 which grows upon him yearly of lingering a long 
 while in Madam's drawing-room, of sitting there 
 and leaning forward in his great chair and looking 
 
THE PARSON 185 
 
 deep into the fire when she has gone upstairs to 
 see her children, and of walking home alone pre- 
 sently to the gloomy old Eectory with his hands 
 thrust deep into his pockets and his honest eyes 
 full of an unwonted thought. 
 
 He has there many lonely and unoccupied 
 hours. In his day it is not expected of him to 
 form guilds, clothing clubs, and temperance socie- 
 ties. He would laugh his jolly laugh at the idea 
 of a sporting bachelor, such as he is, lecturing on 
 the rearing of infants at a mothers' meeting. 
 Neither has he any need to write sermons, having 
 a fusty batch of the very dullest discourses (from 
 which he draws a couple haphazard every Sunday) 
 lying ready to hand in a cupboard mixed up with 
 hunting-boots and riding- whips. He has long given 
 up his Hebraic studies. What is the use of Hebrew 
 after all when one's companions are agricultural 
 labourers, or sporting squires scarcely more en- 
 lightened ? He is indolent too, perhaps. Has been 
 an indolent man all his life, he thinks humbly. He 
 draws out his great tobacco-pouch from his pocket 
 with a sort of sigh when he has dined solitarily of 
 an evening and come into his study to drink his 
 bottle there alone. He has been used to be much 
 alone always. He has never known the care or 
 
188 . CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 THE CHILD 
 
 Plus on aime, plus on souffre ' 
 
 Barbara is six years old. She has stout cheeks, 
 stout legs, and a temper. She has a sister called 
 Pollie, who is sweet and seven, and a brother in 
 button-up shoes and a frock. Pollie and Bab and 
 Tom spend nearly all their days in the nursery. 
 Mamma has a taste for society, and has not much 
 time to play maternity. 
 
 1 Children are a great deal happier left to 
 themselves,' she says comfortably. Mamma is 
 constantly announcing such convenient axioms, 
 and believing them. 
 
 The children are indeed very happy by them- 
 selves. Bab particularly, perhaps, because Bab 
 has thoughts, and lives, with the dolls, in a far 
 world of her own. She has, perhaps, five-and- 
 twenty children, who are dressed, taught, and 
 amused, put to bed, and nursed through dire 
 diseases. Matilda is the eldest of them. Matilda 
 
Bab says, No, I'm not. I don't want to climb trees. It's stupid 
 
THE CHILD 189 
 
 has black hair, large, beautiful, staring eyes, and 
 the loveliest vermilion complexion. She accom- 
 panies Bab everywhere. When Papa takes the 
 children a trip in his yacht Bab refuses, with 
 much temper and firmness, to go without her 
 child. Bab, lying prone on the deck, when the 
 chops of the Channel have become too much for 
 her inner woman, holds Matilda's kid paw tightly 
 in her own moist hand. She feels as if she were 
 dying, but even in death she will not desert 
 Matilda. Matilda's perambulator has always to 
 accompany the party. It is considered by Bab too 
 precious to be packed up, and if she loses sight of 
 it she roars. 
 
 Bab has indeed a fine pair of lungs, to w r hich 
 it must be confessed she gives plenty of exercise. 
 The potency of her emotions will not allow her to 
 weep gentle tears like Pollie. A rising colour in 
 Bab's fat face and the slow opening of Bab's 
 particularly competent mouth are perfectly reli- 
 able signals to Mamma to ring the bell and have 
 Bab forcibly ejected from the room by a muscular 
 nursery-maid. 
 
 In the nursery the children play at House. 
 The enterprising Pollie is generally abroad cater- 
 ing for the family. Tom goes out hunting on the 
 
190 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 rocking-horse. But Bab sits at home surrounded 
 by her children. Sometimes they have to be cor- 
 rected, but more often to be hushed and loved on 
 Bab's maternal breast. Anyhow, they always 
 need her. Her sense of responsibility is perhaps, 
 in its childish way, as great as that of many real 
 mothers. She has at least so far the true 
 maternal feeling that, though she has so many 
 children, she loves each as singly and devotedly 
 as if she had but that one alone. 
 
 On Sundays the children play Church. Pollie, 
 correct and officious in a night-gown, is the clergy- 
 man. Tom plays the organ on a penny whistle 
 in a handy cupboard. Bab and the dolls form 
 the congregation. At a certain signal Bab causes 
 Matilda to faint with a scream. And Tom 
 removes the prostrate body with great zest and 
 enjoyment. Tom and Pollie indeed sometimes 
 forget the solemnity of the occasion and laugh. 
 But Bab is always serious and tranquil. She is 
 a mother. She has to set an example to the 
 children. 
 
 ' Bab thinks dolls is real,' lisps Tom. 
 
 1 No, I don't/ says Bab, her face getting very 
 red and holding Matilda very tight indeed. But 
 it is a story. They are real — to her. 
 
THE CHILD 1U1 
 
 Bab reads. She reads all the books she can 
 find, whether she understands them or not. She 
 reproduces the long words she encounters in her 
 conversation afterwards with a perfectly original 
 pronunciation and adapted to a meaning of her 
 own. 
 
 Mamma says, ' What a queer child ! ' — a trifle 
 scornfully. And Bab goes back to her book- world 
 — so much simpler and easier than the real one — 
 with that disparaging accent lingering somehow 
 about her small heart. 
 
 Pollie is a much more successful child than 
 Bab. Bab knows that Mamma thinks so. Bab 
 thinks so herself. Pollie is very courageous, for 
 instance. Pollie climbs trees in the garden- 
 quite high trees. She puts her heroic counten- 
 ance through the branches and calls to Bab, fat 
 and timid, beneath : ' You're afraid.' 
 
 Bab says, ' No, I'm not. I don't want to climb 
 trees. It's stupid,' with quite unnecessary vehe- 
 mence. But in Bab's heart her greatest ambition 
 is to be like Pollie in everything. Bab has indeed 
 for Pollie one of those blind, faithful devotions 
 which seldom survive childhood. Bab is not angry 
 with Pollie for being so mush prettier than she is 
 herself. Bab thinks that Pollie, dressed in white 
 
192 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 muslin and a pink sash to go out to a party, is 
 just like an angel. She smooths Pollie's white 
 silk legs with a small, reverent paw. She loves 
 Pollie, and loves to see her beautiful. 
 
 Mamma likes Pollie best. Who could help it ? 
 It is at least a preference against which Bab her- 
 self makes no appeal. And if there is a little 
 wistfulness in her fat face when Mamma kisses 
 Pollie and looks at her with admiring eyes before 
 she starts for the party, it is a wistfulness in which 
 there is no shadow of bitterness or disloyalty to 
 Pollie. 
 
 Bab sometimes goes to parties too. Not very 
 often, because Bab is not a party child, nor likely to 
 do Mamma any particular credit. Bab outsits all 
 the other guests at tea. She is calmly consuming 
 her tenth piece of bread and butter in the dining- 
 room long after the other children have retired to 
 play games in "the hall. When the lady of the 
 house, affable and gracious, inquires if Bab has 
 enjoyed herself, Bab replies with grave simplicity, 
 ' A little, thank you, but not very much.' 
 
 Bab is, indeed, fatally honest. When she is 
 sent down to the drawing-room to be looked at by 
 the afternoon visitors Bab surveys those visitors 
 with so calm and direct a gaze as to sometime 
 
THE CHILD 193 
 
 quite embarrass them. No wonder Pollie is the 
 show child. Bab is quite plain and fat and simple. 
 She hugs Matilda and speaks the truth. 
 
 Mamma is never unkind to Bab. Bab has 
 every opportunity of indulging a fine appetite for 
 bread and butter. She is suitably clothed. When 
 Mamma says Bab has a passionate temper and an 
 obstinate will, Mamma is perfectly right. And 
 Mamma is so constituted that she cannot love — 
 particularly — a child who gives her trouble, and 
 upon whose appearance and manners she is never 
 complimented. 
 
 It happens, therefore, that Bab's small life has 
 many dark moments. She does not understand 
 exactly why Mamma is not fond of her. For her- 
 self, it is to the ugliest and forlornest of her 
 children that her deepest tenderness goes out. A 
 faded infant with a squint, and pale hair mostly 
 pulled out by Tom, appeals by its very misfortunes 
 to Bab's sweetest love and compassion. 
 
 When Mamma invites Pollie to go with her to 
 evening church, Bab, standing unnoticed in the 
 background, bursts into a terrible howl. It is not 
 that Bab particularly wants to go to church, 
 which has always seemed to her a dull function of 
 unnecessary length. But she wants to be asked 
 
194 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 to go. The background is such a cold place in 
 which to spend one's poor little life. 
 
 Bab strokes Mamma's delicate hand, not the 
 less lovingly because her own little paw is grubby 
 with recent excavations in the garden. And 
 Mamma says sharply : 
 
 1 Eeally, Bab, what have I told you about your 
 hands ? Go away directly, child ! ' 
 
 Bab forgives — is there any forgiveness like a 
 child's? — a thousand sharp speeches and hasty 
 words. But she does not forget, or repeat her 
 small overtures of love and devotion. 
 
 Mamma teaches Bab music — for a week. She 
 smacks Bab's fat stupid fingers when Bab, whose 
 genius does not lie in the direction of music, i$ 
 more exasperating than usual. She says hard 
 things too, and Bab carries them away to a dull 
 lumber-room where she is used to fight out her 
 small tragedies alone. The lumber-room has a 
 very narrow window, affording just a glimpse of 
 sky. It has a very old carpet, whose faded pattern 
 Bab has often studied dully through hot tears. 
 Bab sits on a trunk, and rocks the forlorn doll to 
 her heart. She does not know what is the matter 
 with her life. Her griefs do not, indeed, last long. 
 But while they last they are very bitter. And 
 
THE CHILD 195 
 
 Tom's little button-up shoes patter up the stair- 
 case, and Tom, standing at the door in his insuffi- 
 cient frock, says — 
 
 'Don't cry, Bab. There's jam for tea, and 
 Nurse is going to take us to see the postman's 
 funeral.' 
 
 The prospect of jam or a funeral cheers Bab 
 considerably. But she is too little to remember, 
 when troubles come again the next day, or the 
 day after that, how soon and how simply they are 
 consoled. 
 
 It happens that Pollie and Bab go to stay one 
 summer with Mamma's sister-in-law. In-Law is 
 not quite so young or so pretty as Mamma herself. 
 Moreover, Mamma has married In-Law's favourite 
 brother. It will therefore be readily understood 
 that there is no love lost between the ladies. 
 
 In-Law takes to Bab very kindly. Bab, indeed, 
 though not pretty like Tolly, has a red, healthful 
 countenance and a comfortable person not unpre- 
 possessing. And In-Law has discovered that Bab 
 is not Mamma's favourite. Bab, lying awake in 
 her cot the first night and contemplating life 
 through its green bars, overhears In-Law, who 
 has come to kiss Bab in bed, say to a lady friend 
 who is with her — 
 
 o 2 
 
196 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 ' Dreadful injustice, you know. Lena's favourit- 
 ism makes one quite dislike her. This child — 
 nothing, I assure you, and the other brought 
 forward and indulged in every way.' 
 
 •Bab does not know what this speech means at 
 the time ; later she finds out. In-Law is always 
 giving Bab kisses and presents. Bab transfers the 
 giant's share of each to Pollie. 
 
 ' Auntie likes you best, Bab,' says Pollie, a little 
 cloud on her pretty face. 
 
 1 Does she ? ' says Bab wistfully, with a kind of 
 apology to Pollie in her small voice. 
 
 No one, it seems, has ever liked Bab best before. 
 Bab feels a little disturbed that it should be so 
 now. But In-Law's preference remains manifest. 
 In-Law asks Bab all about her home. They are 
 taking a walk together, and Bab has been very 
 conversational indeed. 
 
 ' Is Pollie kind ? ' Pollie is very kind indeed. 
 Pollie is clever too. She climbs trees and goes to 
 a dancing class. 
 
 * Who does Mamma like best — you or Pollie ? ' 
 Bab's fat face grows a little serious. Mamma likes 
 Pollie best. So does everybody. Pollie is pretty, 
 and her hair curls. * Mine is rats' tails,' adds 
 Bab regretfully. 
 
THE CHILD 197 
 
 ' Do you like Mamma, Bab ? ' Bab's red cheeks 
 grow redder. 
 
 1 1 like Mamma,' she answers sturdily. But 
 after that, for no reason of which she knows, she 
 likes In-Law less. 
 
 One day, in the garden, In-Law calls Bab to 
 her. Pollie has gone out for a walk with Nurse, 
 and Bab has been amusing herself with Matilda. 
 
 1 I've had a letter from Mamma,' says In-Law ; 
 1 she wants Pollie home. She does not want you. 
 What do you say to that, Bab ? ' 
 
 Bab does not say anything, because she cannot. 
 There is a large lump in her throat, and a great 
 slow tear falls on Matilda's staring face. 
 
 1 Mamma is cross to you, isn't she, Bab ? ' says 
 In-Law insinuatingly. 
 
 A second tear falls on Matilda, but Bab says, 
 1 No, she isn't,' with a red, passionate face, and 
 pushes away In-Law's arm which is round her. 
 
 'But you would rather stay here, Bab? 
 Mamma only loves Pollie, and is cross to you, you 
 know she is, and ' 
 
 And Bab, with a substantial boot, designed 
 expressly for muddy country lanes, inflicts a 
 fierce kick upon In-Law's ankle, and bursts into a 
 roar. 
 
198 CHAKACTEE NOTES 
 
 In-Law is laid up for three weeks. Bab has 
 disgraced herself for ever. She is whipped, re- 
 moved to the nursery, and allowed no jam. She 
 is severely reprimanded several times a day by 
 Nurse for her wicked conduct to her kind aunt. 
 Perhaps Bab has a private consolation in the 
 depths of her own loyal soul. She thrives, anyhow, 
 amazingly on jamless bread and butter. She 
 croons Matilda contentedly to sleep. She is a 
 little quieter than usual, but not unhappy. Then 
 she is taken home, with Pollie. Mamma is in the 
 hall, and Bab runs up to her. Bab's stout face is 
 quite red with pleasure. She is less afraid of 
 Mamma than she has been for a long time. Per- 
 haps there is a sense of faith and loyalty in her 
 heart which makes her bold. She knows In-Law 
 has told Mamma the story. But then In-Law's 
 version has been carefully revised. 
 
 * Bab, what a naughty girl you have been ! ' 
 says Mamma. ' I'm ashamed of you.' 
 
 Mamma is kissing Pollie as Bab falls back 
 blind with a sudden rush of tears. Pollie and the 
 fuss of the arrival of luggage and nurses keep 
 Mamma's attention. And Bab stumbles up un- 
 noticed with heavy steps to the old lumber-room. 
 
THE CHILD 199 
 
 She has not even the forlorn doll to clasp to her 
 heart. But she has come perhaps to a grief in 
 which even the dearest of her make-believe children 
 could not console her. She has been true, has 
 lied to keep faith, and her reward has missed her. 
 She has hurt In-Law — who has, after all, been 
 kind, and given her many sweets and kisses — for 
 Mamma, who is only angry with her after all. Bab 
 wipes away heavy tears with her black paw until 
 her round face has dismal streaks on it, and is 
 swollen and red. She traces blindly the worn 
 pattern on the carpet with a wet forefinger. Her 
 small figure is shaken by long-drawn sobs. Per- 
 haps her grief is very much like a grown-up grief, 
 after all, only she has not the reason and ex- 
 perience of age to help her in it. She has found 
 out— too early — that the world is hard, and that 
 love given does not mean love returned. And she 
 sobs hot miserable sobs until she is tired out. 
 Though everyone else has forgotten her, some 
 tender Providence remembers her still, for when 
 Nurse comes to fetch her to bed she is already 
 asleep in the darkness, with stained cheeks, tumbled 
 hair, and heavy breathing. 
 
 Who shall wonder that faith and love such as 
 
200 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 Bab's so seldom survive childhood ? And yet 
 there are some small loyal hearts in whom grownr 
 up wisdom and prudence cannot destroy those 
 better things which are revealed unto babes. 
 
 Perhaps Bab has such a heart as this. And 
 she is no longer a child. 
 
201 
 
 THE BAD PENNY 
 
 1 On pardonne tant que Ton aime ' - 
 
 His parents, denizens of pompous and prosperous 
 Bloomsbury, decree him for Eton from his cradle. 
 Merchant Taylors' was good enough for his father, 
 who has been a business man all his life, is still 
 redolent of the City, from which he has retired, 
 honest, sober, and in middle life. But Dick must 
 go to Eton. Of course, says the mother. What 
 is the use of having money if one doesn't spend it 
 on Dick ? So he goes through a course of gover- 
 nesses, tutors, and preparatory schools — a varied 
 course, because none of them will keep him more 
 than three months at the most. It is not so much 
 that he is idle, though he is very idle ; it is not so 
 much that he is stupid, for he has some cunning 
 amid his dulness ; but he is bad — that is what one 
 of his masters says of him. Bloomsbury Square 
 has never liked that master — always knew there 
 
202 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 was something fishy about that man. When Mrs. 
 Bloomsbury hears that he has eloped with a house- 
 maid, that is just exactly what she would have ex- 
 pected of him — so unjust, and so prejudiced against 
 Dick. The Penny is one of those infinitely-to- 
 be-pitied people who are always exciting prejudice 
 in others. There is a prejudice against him at 
 Eton — a dreadful prejudice, which finally grows so 
 strong that the authorities decide that the only 
 way to remove it is to remove him. He is there- 
 fore removed. 
 
 He comes back to Bloomsbury Square with a 
 bluster. Eton, he says, is a beastly hole — not fit 
 for a gentleman. His mother tries to be fair, to 
 hear both sides of the case, to believe that Dick 
 has — in some very minor degree, of course — erred 
 as well as the masters ; but she cannot. It is to 
 be thought that she is as just as most women, but 
 to believe anything against her boy is not to be 
 expected of her — it is impossible. 
 
 Dick is removed to a private tutor's. His father 
 says that private coaching is the very thing for 
 a young man — beats Eton hollow. When Dick's 
 letters arrive — they are letters which, in point of 
 spelling and composition, w 7 ould disgrace a kitchen- 
 maid — his face reddens with pride. He puts them 
 
THE BAD PENNY 203 
 
 all away together in a desk where he keeps other 
 sacred possessions. 
 
 One fine morning Dick turns up again unex- 
 pectedly in Bloomsbury Square. The tutor, he 
 finds, is such a beastly cad ; he has therefore 
 renounced him. From a letter which arrives next 
 morning from the tutor it appears that the renun- 
 ciation is mutual. There is a garbled story of a 
 flirtation with a shopgirl ; but it is very garbled, 
 and, of course, entirely incorrect. Dick says that 
 he never saw such a liar as that coach — enough to 
 corrupt any fellow's morals. Therefore, of course, 
 it is only right and proper that Dick should leave 
 him. Some young men do not mind to what influ- 
 ences they subject themselves — not so the Penny. 
 Mr. and Mrs. Bloomsbury are quite hurt and an- 
 noyed when their son-in-law, an outspoken person, 
 condoles with them, and is sorry to hear the young 
 cub has been up to his tricks again. 
 
 The Penny manages to scrape through an En- 
 trance Examination, and goes to Cambridge. 
 
 * Not every young man, mind you, can pass 
 those Entrance Exams, nowadays,' says Papa, 
 sipping his glass of port with honest pride in the 
 Penny's extraordinary prowess. 'They tell me,' 
 Dick says himself, ' that it's a very different thing 
 
204 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 to what it was twenty years ago. The competition 
 is enormous — by J&ad ! sir, enormous ! ' 
 
 Mr. Jones, also of Bloomsbury Square, quite 
 believes you. Neither he nor the proud father has 
 ever been to the University himself ; but they 
 send their sons, and know as much about it, mind 
 you, as anyone. The mother colours with pleasure 
 at the other end of the table. It is indeed a privi- 
 lege, knowing how dreadfully idle some young men 
 are, to have a son like Dick. Bloomsbury Square 
 discovers, by degrees, that the privilege is a very 
 expensive one. It is so expensive, in fact, that 
 they find out it is very much more healthy, as well 
 as a great deal more enjoyable, to walk instead of 
 drive everywhere ; so they put down the carriage. 
 ' Only don't tell Dick,' says the mother. * It would 
 hurt his feelings so dreadfully to think we were 
 going without any little comfort on his account.' 
 
 So Dick's feelings are not harrowed, and when 
 he comes down for the first vacation a carriage is 
 jobbed. A young man finds a carriage so useful, 
 and Dick would naturally not like to be without 
 one. Very likely he will not notice the difference 
 between this one and our own. Perhaps he does 
 not notice the difference, or perhaps his tact is so 
 divine and beautiful that he does notice the differ- 
 
THE BAD PENNY 205 
 
 ence and says nothing. In appearance he has 
 grown larger, stouter, and redder — in fact, has 
 become so fine-looking. * I dare say you remember, 
 cook,' says the mother to that elderly domestic, 
 1 what a beautiful baby he was ! — such a dear 
 sturdy little fellow ! I must confess I should have 
 been a little disappointed if he had grown up pale 
 and puny and weakly- looking, as one sees so many 
 young men nowadays.' 
 
 In this contingency cook would have been dis- 
 appointed also. Now Jane says Mr. Dick is too 
 red-like for her, but cook always did hold with a 
 good fresh colour. Cook has a good fresh colour 
 herself — not unlike Mr. Dick's, in fact, only ple- 
 beian, of course, very plebeian. 
 
 Mr. Bloomsbury is anxious to know what books 
 Dick has been studying ; but, naturally, after a 
 hard term's work, the Penny does not wish to be 
 very communicative on the subject. 
 
 1 Oh ! Herodotus, and Livy, and all those chaps,' 
 he says, in a voice which might sound to persons 
 who do not know his idiosyncrasies a trifle surly. 
 
 Papa stretches up, with great inconvenience to 
 himself, for the Livy. He cuts the leaves with a 
 sort of reverence. He cannot read a word of it 
 himself. Education was not so much thought of 
 
206 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 in his day. But it's a fine thing, my boy, a fine 
 thing, and I wish I had had your advantages. The 
 Penny expresses a wish that the advantages may 
 be Mowed — only he uses a word much more em- 
 phatic than * bio wed.' Papa replaces the Livy, 
 with the same inconvenience to himself with which 
 he got it down, and with something which, if he 
 had not everything to be thankful for, might almost 
 be taken for a sigh. 
 
 In due time Dick returns to Cambridge. His 
 bills are heavier than ever next term; they are 
 so heavy that the mother begins to be afraid that 
 the butler must be dull without any companion of 
 his own sex, now that the coachman has gone. 
 Mr. Bloomsbury therefore tells the butler that he 
 cannot justify himself in keeping him — the situation 
 must be such a terribly lonely one. 
 
 1 Lor' ! sir/ says Thomson, with a tear and a 
 twinkle in his old eye at the same time, ' don't you 
 be a troublin' yourself to find no reasons for givin' 
 me notice. Thim colleges has ruined many of us 
 afore now' — with which remark Thomson retires 
 to the pantry and wipes his eyes on the plate- 
 leather. 
 
 Six months later the Penny turns up at Blooms- 
 bury Square unexpectedly, in the middle of a term 
 
THE BAD PENNY 207 
 
 and a hansom. The very small amount of gilding 
 with which he was gilt when he left the family 
 mint is nearly all worn off. He looks as if he 
 drank — only looks, of course. Many other per- 
 fectly innocent people do the same, and very 
 awkward it is for them. He has, he says, * come 
 down ' ; this is, indeed, perfectly obvious. It pre- 
 sently becomes obvious that he has been compelled 
 to ' come down.' To the old man there is a horror 
 in the very idea of such a thing. It takes a great 
 deal of explaining — and explaining things is Dick's 
 forte — to make him feel easy again. Lots of fel- 
 lows do it — it's nothing. There's Lord Noodle and 
 the Marquis of Foolington who have — well, left 
 with me. They were up to larks, if you like ; but 
 in my case it's been a most beastly swindle — that's 
 what it is, a beastly swindle. (The Penny's 
 language has long been noted for its richness and 
 elegance.) Why, any of the chaps '11 tell you it's 
 a swindle. None of the ' chaps ' step forward to 
 do this, however. Fortunately, Bloomsbury Square 
 does not need them. Dick is believed on his own 
 assertion — by two people only. 
 
 The Penny now thinks he would like to farm 
 in Canada. He says very frequently that he is 
 blowed if he can't make something out of that. 
 
208 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 So he has a fine outfit — flannel underclothing 
 sewed with tears, love, and devotion— and a fine 
 sum of money to put into the business he has 
 heard of out there. 
 
 After he has gone — only just after — Cambridge 
 bills and, alas ! promissory notes of very extensive 
 promise indeed begin to come in to Bloomsbury 
 Square ; and w T hen they once begin it is a long 
 time before they stop. It is about this period that 
 the mother discovers that the air of Bloomsbury is 
 very relaxing — is not sure, indeed, that it is a 
 wholesome place to live in ; hears that many doctors 
 consider the neighbourhood of Peckham excellent 
 for the rheumatism from which she suffers — when 
 convenient. And then this house is so large. Two 
 old people like you and me feel quite lost in a 
 wilderness of a place like this. Now, in a dear 
 
 comfortable little box So they go to a dear 
 
 comfortable little box in the refreshing neighbour- 
 hood of Albert Road, Peckham — just cook and 
 themselves — so nice and homely. But the old 
 man can look the world in the face. Dick's Cam- 
 bridge expenses — he speaks of them thus — have 
 been quite comfortably settled. 
 
 Dick does not write very often — indeed, has not 
 written at all. He is busy with his farm. Farm- 
 
THE BAD PENNY 209 
 
 ing is a very fine thing for young men ; an active, 
 open-air life makes something better of a young 
 fellow than your stuffy offices and your ledgers and 
 your account books. ' Make your boy a farmer, sir, 
 as I have made mine.' 
 
 And the farmer turns up in a year at Albert 
 Eoad, Peckham, in a condition which the brother- 
 in-law, full of uncharitableness, characterises as 
 disgraceful. The Penny looks more as if he drank 
 than ever— which is unfortunate, but of course 
 unavoidable. He is ill-dressed ; he is more surly 
 in manner. If he were not her son — her only son 
 — the mother, who has gentle blood in her perhaps, 
 and that refinement which comes of a pure mind 
 and a tender heart, might shudder to touch anything 
 so coarse and unclean. But she kisses and cries 
 over him like a fool, before she has heard his story, 
 which may be forgiven her, and afterwards, which 
 cannot. The farm was a beastly swindle, of course ; 
 the money which was sunk in it was lost, equally of 
 course ; but if his father can get him — say some 
 post of responsibility in a bank, or something like 
 that — he is blowed (again) if he doesn't make a 
 success. He is also blowed when his father tells 
 him something — not all, not half, for fear of hurt- 
 ing his feelings — of his Cambridge debts. He is of 
 
 p 
 
210 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 opinion his father has been swindled; a beastly 
 swindle, indeed, as usual. His father looks in the 
 fire meditatively. He says nothing ; there is, in 
 fact, nothing to be said. The Penny thinks that, 
 upon his soul, you've got wretched diggings here. 
 The father says quietly they are the best he can 
 now afford. It is his only reproach, and that does 
 not penetrate the target, the target being remark- 
 ably thick, tough, and invulnerable* 
 
 The position of trust is, through influence, pro- 
 cured. For three weeks Albert Eoad, Peckham, is 
 supremely happy. Everything is going on so well. 
 And then a story is whispered in the father's ear 
 which, if it gets abroad, means Dick's ruin. It is 
 not a pretty story. The mother does not know it. 
 It is not kept from her so much because it would 
 wound her, for she would not believe it, but because 
 it is not fit, as a story, for her hearing. The old 
 man denies it furiously. His son ! Dick ! It is 
 proved to him beyond reasonable doubt; and he 
 denies it again, like Peter, with an oath. The 
 evidence is damning ; and he turns and damns his 
 informant. The scandal is, however, hushed up. 
 Dick mentions it in a note to his father. It was 
 another fellow with an unfortunate resemblance to 
 himself. An old story ; but not so old that the 
 
THE BAD PENNY 211 
 
 father will not believe it from the lips of the son. 
 After this Dick's letters come fairly regularly ; 
 such nice letters— not, perhaps, very educated in 
 style or very correct in spelling, nor even very filial 
 in expression ; but all saying the same thing, that 
 he is getting on famously, and asking for the loan 
 of five or ten pounds in the postscript. The mother 
 thinks that Dick has really found his vocation. As 
 the weeks go by she becomes sure of it ; gets more 
 sure, and feels sometimes a little angry that her 
 husband is so quiet, moody, and unresponsive. He 
 does not believe that ugly story. God help him ! 
 no, but it haunts him ; or perhaps the shadow of 
 an evil to come hangs over him. He looks back on 
 this time, long after, wondering which it was, and 
 cannot determine. 
 
 Then Dick turns up again — at night this time, 
 and without a bluster. He looks sober ; and looks, 
 too, as if he were haunted by a ghost. It is the 
 old story, but with a new and engaging sequel. 
 Everything a beastly swindle, as usual. The 
 manager a cad, and Dick accused of forgery. The 
 mother goes white to her lips, then a flaming scarlet. 
 Her boy accused of that ! Her boy — the soul of 
 honour ! The soul of honour has something in his 
 appearance to-night suggestive of a cur expecting a 
 
 p 2 
 
212 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 whipping. This appearance is not lessened when 
 he says that he must get out of this damned 
 country before to-morrow. 
 
 ' Get out of the country ! ' shouts the old man, 
 with a heavy fist on the table which makes the 
 glas ses ring. ' My God ! if you're an honest man 
 you shall face the world and give it the lie.' 
 
 The son falls back a little, scared at his father's 
 gleaming eyes and ashen face ; and the mother, in 
 that old, fond, foolish w r ay, puts her arms round 
 her boy and says he must fight it out because it 
 will all come right. God takes care of such things ; 
 and the guilty are found out and punished. 
 
 ' That's it,' says her boy, thrusting her away ;■ 
 f that is ivhy Vm going ! ' 
 
 The Penny does not turn up any more — at 
 least, not in England. It is to be presumed that 
 abroad he turns up pretty constantly anywhere 
 where there is foolishness and money. 
 
 Albert Eoad, Peckham, has it's tragedy, though 
 it will be allowed that the locality is sordid rather 
 than tragic. His son-in-law thinks that his mis- 
 fortunes have made the old man very much more 
 of a gentleman than he used to be. Very likely it 
 is true. Misfortunes often have a refining effect. 
 The self-satisfaction of respectability must be con- 
 
THE BAD PENNY 213 
 
 siderably damped when one reflects that one is the 
 father of a forger. The pride and pomposity of 
 Bloomsbury must be extinguished for ever when 
 one knows of one's son that forgery is not the most 
 dishonourable of his failings. As for the mother, 
 when her belief in her boy went, so went hope also. 
 Father and mother have both been fools, but she 
 has been the greater fool of the two. Both, every- 
 one says so, have done their best to ruin the boy — 
 have ruined him. They might have seen what he 
 was years before, but they shut their eyes. They 
 might have learnt from their friends, long ago, that 
 he was a scamp, but they would not hear. It is 
 very sad for them, of course, and everyone has the 
 very greatest sympathy with them ; but it is their 
 own fault — entirely their own fault. It may be ; 
 but if it is, then surely the tragedies we make for 
 ourselves are grimmer than any which fate makes 
 for us. 
 
214 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 THE SPINSTER 
 
 ' II arrive quelquefois des accidents dans la vie d'ou il faut 
 etre un peu fou pour se bien tirer ■ 
 
 She enjoys a limited income, invested for her by 
 an officious relative in a Dock Company. The 
 income is very limited, and the Spinster spends 
 quite half of it in journeys to and from town to 
 look and see how the bonds are getting on in a 
 Safe Deposit. 
 
 She lives with her cousins. Their generosity is 
 most beautiful. Quite an example to mankind. 
 She pays them Nothing, absolutely Nothing. 
 Generosity, in the feminine, always mentions this, 
 quite casually, when she pays calls. 
 
 1 John and I are delighted to be able to give 
 her a home,' she says. 
 
 The stress upon the ' give ' is so slight that it 
 might almost be absent altogether. Tabitha does 
 nothing in return for this superhuman kindness. 
 That is, almost nothing. Pull of tact and thought- 
 
The Eldest Generosity girl bounces about a good deal on the music stool 
 and plays wrong notes maliciously 
 
THE SPINSTER 215 
 
 fulness, indeed, Generosity allows her to do a few 
 little things about the house, that she may not feel 
 so much under an obligation to dear John. 
 Tabitha is not at all accomplished. She belongs 
 to a period when a smattering of Italian, a know- 
 ledge of the use of the globes, and a running 
 spidery handwriting declared a young lady edu- 
 cated. But Generosity overlooks her deficiencies 
 and kindly allows her to help the children with 
 their lessons and superintend their practising. 
 The eldest Generosity girl bounces about a good 
 deal on the music-stool and plays wrong notes 
 maliciously. She doesn't really think, she says, 
 that it's the least use Tab hearing her practise. 
 Tab has not an atom of style. Which is very true ; 
 Tab's only recommendation being an infinite store 
 of patience and sweet temper. The Eldest further 
 complains of Tab that she is so awfully prim. 
 The Eldest suffers a good deal from this primness, 
 and is infinitely to be pitied. How annoying it is 
 to know, for instance, that Tab takes two hours 
 getting up every morning, and adheres to an hour's 
 hair-brushing every night as if it were a religion ! 
 Generosity herself never heard anything so ludi- 
 crous as the way in which Tab clings to the 
 traditions of her youth. Because at Cheltenham 
 
216 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 — Tab's papa was an effete old General — break- 
 fast was at half-past eight and the family put 
 on their clean clothing on Sunday, Tab can scarcely 
 believe in the morality of persons breakfasting at 
 nine and donning clean garments on Saturday. 
 She does not indeed express these outrageous 
 opinions, Generosity having given her to under- 
 stand that she cannot air her ridiculous notions 
 there. 
 
 Her bedroom is a perfect portrait gallery of 
 ancestors. She keeps an especial silk pocket- 
 handkerchief to dust them with, which is used for 
 no other purpose. The Eldest says she never saw 
 anything so hideous as the old things, and would 
 like to know why people's ancestors always have 
 great beaks of noses like that ; the Eldest's own 
 nose being an engaging little snub. Tab's family 
 are like the nightly hair-brushing to her — a 
 religion. No matter how disagreeable or how 
 impecunious, alive or dead, provided they are 
 relatives Tab is ready to take them to her heart. 
 When the ne'er-do-weels are shipped off in despair 
 by their friends to Buenos Ayres or California, 
 she writes them long letters full of affection — and 
 enclosing a Post-office Order. It is thought that 
 the relatives do not always read the letters. But 
 
THE SPINSTER 217 
 
 there is no occasion on record on which they have 
 not taken kindly to the Order. 
 
 Generosity, with the highest of motives, of 
 course, does her best to shake Tab's belief in her 
 family. 
 
 Generosity says, ' Isn't it absurd to see how 
 proud the Joneses are of their uncle because he is 
 a General ? Any one can be a General. Isn't it 
 ridiculous, Tab?' 
 
 A little colour rises in Tab's worn face. It is 
 to be feared that she is afraid of Generosity's back- 
 handed little stabs, and has not the courage to 
 make a spirited reply. She says feebly, ' Oh, 
 very ! ' 
 
 But her heart is as true as steel to that effete 
 old papa. 
 
 Generosity is extremely kind to Tab, of course. 
 Tab has all her meals with the family. And it is 
 by the merest chance that the legs of chickens and 
 the jamless tarts always fall to her share. Tab 
 herself always prefers the unpopular pudding. 
 Tab is lamentably weak. 
 
 She goes errands for Generosity twenty times 
 perhaps in an afternoon. Generosity's maligners 
 say she invents the errands to annoy Tab. But 
 even if that were true— which of course it is not — 
 
218 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 Generosity's aim is not attained. At the twentieth 
 errand there is a little more colour than usual 
 in Tab's face. But that is all. And that may 
 easily come from the exercise she has taken. 
 Generosity always prefaces her requests with * As 
 you have nothing to do, Tab.' 
 
 And Tab, of course, really has nothing to do. 
 Only the little things about the house to which 
 other people are superior, or can't waste their time 
 over, or find, by reason of their higher intelligence 
 and education, too much bother. 
 
 Someone once said Tab was a maid-of-all-work 
 without wages. But that must have been some- 
 one who knew nothing of the immense kindnesses 
 she receives from Generosity and John. Gene- 
 rosity, certainly, often reminds Tab, in a perfectly 
 indirect and ladylike manner, how fortunate 
 she is. 
 
 * I hear,' she says, ' the Mortons are going to 
 have a cousin to live with them. Of course she is 
 to pay — two pounds a week, I believe. Very kind 
 of them to have her even on those terms, don't 
 you think? I believe someone suggested not 
 letting her pay anything. But, as Mr. Morton 
 says, that would be Quixotic generosity indeed.' 
 
 Tab says, * Yes, indeed/ meekly. 
 
THE SPINSTER 219 
 
 Her intelligence is not of a high order. Per- 
 haps she does not apply these stories as she ought. 
 But Generosity, thoughtful as ever, takes Tab's 
 want of sharpness into consideration, and generally 
 makes her meaning perfectly clear. 
 
 If Tab had any proper pride she would go. 
 But she does not go. Perhaps she can't afford 
 the luxury of proper pride. Her dividends from 
 the Dock Company are ridiculously small. Per- 
 haps, also, with a divine charity and an exquisite 
 foolishness, she believes that Generosity does not 
 mean to be unkind. She bears, therefore, with 
 an utter tameness and want of spirit, the thousand 
 little daily insults which her benefactress heaps on 
 her. It is possible that if she rose and fought 
 Generosity that lady might like her and treat her 
 better. But Tab's is the creed of meekness, for- 
 bearance, and gentleness. And she goes on toiling 
 for the children, nursing them when they are ill, 
 and doing odd jobs for Generosity with a patience 
 and good temper wholly reprehensible. One day 
 comes the news that the Dock Company has 
 stopped payment. 
 
 1 All the sensible shareholders,' says Generosity, 
 a trifle pointedly perhaps, * will, of course, get 
 some of their money back. But people who are 
 
220 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 so wealthy that they can sit at home and do 
 nothing to recover it will, I suppose, be swindled/ 
 
 Tab is understood to say that the Company 
 must already be in great trouble, and she could 
 not bear to give them extra worry on her account. 
 
 1 My dear Tab,' says Generosity, with consider- 
 able sharpness, 'how can you be so excessively 
 idiotic ? ' * 
 
 There is, alas! much truth in Generosity's 
 unvarnished words. Tab is a perfect godsend to 
 all the swindling persons and companies she 
 encounters. She believes what they say, and 
 follows their advice with a certain obstinacy which 
 is vastly irritating. She is, therefore, reduced 
 through the Dock Company to an annual income 
 of twelve pounds. And when she receives that 
 it is with fear and trembling, lest she has taken 
 from the poor creatures what they can ill afford to 
 pay her. 
 
 About this time the Eldest comes out. She is 
 not especially pretty. But she is audacious, which 
 perhaps does just as well. Generosity is very fond 
 of her, of course. Cannot bear the idea of ever 
 being separated from her — equally of course. But, 
 knowing that a girl is happier married, with 
 beautiful self-sacrifice Generosity sets about accom- 
 
THE SPINSTER 221 
 
 plishing this desirable end. Papa brings people 
 home to dinner. Papa always enjoyed the society 
 of young men. Once he brings home a veteran 
 from the War Office. The veteran is not less than 
 fifty. Still, he is a wonderfully young-looking 
 man ; and, quite casually of course, at an after- 
 noon call Generosity finds out from a friend that 
 he is really very comfortably off. By the merest 
 chance, when he dines with them, the Eldest has 
 on her prettiest dress and her most astounding 
 manners. 
 
 The War Office looks at her attentively through 
 his eyeglass. He has not seen much of feminine 
 society lately. In his young days — though he is, 
 of course, by no means old — feminine society was 
 perhaps less obtrusive. There can be no doubt, 
 from the way he studies the Eldest, that he is 
 immensely captivated by her frankness, dash, and 
 originality. 
 
 Tab is even quieter than usual during his 
 visits. When he addresses her she is fluttered 
 and agitated, and answers him with much per- 
 turbation, and, it is to be feared, not much 
 sense. 
 
 He addresses her, Generosity thinks, unneces- 
 sarily often. Perhaps he thinks she is a visitor ; 
 
222 CHAKACTEK NOTES 
 
 or perhaps that she pays. So Generosity men- 
 tions with the greatest possible delicacy of expres- 
 sion, and, as usual, quite casually, that dear Tab 
 is perfectly dependent upon us. The War Office 
 puts up his eyeglass and looks at Generosity a 
 little fixedly. 
 
 I Poor thing ! ■ he says ; ' poor thing ! ' 
 Generosity can't quite understand his tone. 
 
 But after all, it is not worth troubling about. 
 
 One evening Generosity comes to Tab's bed- 
 room to have a chat with her. She is quite conde- 
 scending and good-tempered and pleasant. 
 
 ' We shall have to part from dear Bertha soon, 
 I fear,' she says. 
 
 Tab says ' Why ? 'in an odd voice. 
 
 ' Why ! ! echoes Generosity impatiently ; ' I 
 should have thought even you would have seen 
 how devoted he is to her.' 
 
 Tab says ' Yes,' feebly, and does not raise her 
 foolish old face. 
 
 I I am perfectly certain of it/ continues Gene- 
 rosity. 
 
 Tab bends a little lower over her fine darning, 
 and says nothing. 
 
 And Generosity, aggravated at her unrespon- 
 siveness, observes, ! And very glad I am of it. I 
 
THE SPINSTER 223 
 
 always consider to be unmarried is in some degree 
 a slur upon a woman's character.' 
 
 With this Parthian shot she retires. 
 
 While Tab is singing that night in a ridiculous 
 old voice, which always breaks on the top notes, 
 the War Office bends to turn a page and says 
 something to her through the song. After that 
 Tab's quavers and trills are more ridiculous than 
 ever ; and when she takes down her music her 
 primly mittened hand shakes like a leaf. Gene- 
 rosity is particularly caustic that evening, and 
 Tab's answers are wider of the mark than usual ; 
 so much so that the Eldest says to the War Office 
 that she really believes Tab is in love with someone. 
 She has been so truly idiotic lately ; so frightfully 
 sentimental, you know. 
 
 The War Office says ' Indeed ! ' and looks at the 
 Eldest through his eyeglass, as usual, in a sort of 
 mild surprise. 
 
 That evening he has an interview with Gene- 
 rosity and John. Generosity's surprise is not mild, 
 nor her indignation ; and she is constrained to tell 
 Tab that she has behaved like a viper. 
 
 The War Office and Tab are believed to be 
 supremely happy ; so frightfully sentimental, you 
 know. Generosity after a time consents to visit 
 
224 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 them. As they have a delightful house for the 
 girls to stay in, and see a great deal of nice society 
 (masculine), she makes herself very affable and 
 affectionate. The War Office is occasionally a little 
 rude to her, and continues to stare at her through 
 his eyeglass in an extraordinary manner ; but Tab, 
 full of gratitude for all the kindness she has re- 
 ceived, is boundlessly tender, loving, and kind. 
 But then Tab was always a fool. 
 
225 
 
 THE NEW WOMAN 
 
 ' L'esprit de la plupart des femmes sert plus a fortifier leur folie 
 que leur raison' 
 
 She is young, of course. She looks older than she 
 really is. And she calls herself a woman. Her 
 mother is content to be called a lady, and is natu- 
 rally of small account. Novissima's chief charac- 
 teristic is her unbounded self-satisfaction. 
 
 She dresses simply in close-fitting garments, 
 technically known as tailor-made. She wears her 
 elbows well away from her side. It has been hinted 
 that this habit serves to diminish the apparent 
 size of" the waist. This maybe so. Men do not 
 always understand such things. It certainly adds 
 to a somewhat aggressive air of independence which 
 finds its birth in the length of her stride. Novis- 
 sima strides in (from the hip) where men and 
 angels fear to tread. 
 
 In the evening simplicity again marks her 
 dress. Always close-fitting — always manly and 
 
 Q 
 
226 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 wholly simple. Very little jewellery, and close- 
 fitting hair. Which description is perhaps not 
 technical. Her hands are steady and somewhat 
 en evidence. Her attitudes are strong and inde- 
 pendent, indicative of a self-reliant spirit. 
 
 With mild young men she is apt to be crushing. 
 She directs her conversation and her glance above 
 their heads. She has a way of throwing scraps of 
 talk to them — crumbs from a well-stored intellectual 
 table — in return for their mild platitudes. 
 
 'Pictures — no, I do not care about pictures/ 
 she says. *■ They are all so pretty nowadays.' 
 
 She has a way of talking of noted men by their 
 surnames tout court, indicative of a familiarity with 
 them not enjoyed by her hearer. She has a cer- 
 tain number of celebrities whom she marks out for 
 special distinction — obscurity being usually one of 
 their merits. 
 
 Prettiness is one of her pet aversions. Novis- 
 sima is, by the way, not pretty herself. She is 
 white. Pink girls call her sallow. She has a long 
 face, with a discontented mouth, and a nose indi- 
 cative of intelligence, and too large for feminine 
 beauty as understood by men. Her equanimity, 
 like her complexion, is unassailable. One cannot 
 make her blush. It is the other way round. 
 
THE NEW WOMAN 227 
 
 In conversation she criticises men and books 
 freely. The military man is the object of her 
 deepest scorn. His intellect, she tell£ one, is ter- 
 ribly restricted. He never reads— Beads, that is, 
 with a capital. For curates she has a sneaking 
 fondness — a feminine weakness too deeply ingrained 
 to be stamped out in one generation of advance- 
 ment. 
 
 Literary men she tolerates. They have prob- 
 ably read some of the books selected out of the ruck 
 for her approval. But even to these she talks with 
 an air suggestive of the fact that she could tell 
 them a thing or two if she took the trouble. Which 
 no doubt she could. 
 
 Novissima's mother is wholly and meekly under 
 Novissima's steady thumb. That respectable lady's 
 attitude is best described as speechless. If she 
 opens her mouth, Novissima closes it for her with 
 a tolerant laugh or a reference to some fictional 
 character with whom the elder lady is fortunately 
 unacquainted. 
 
 1 Oh, Mother ! ' she will say, if that relative is 
 mentioned. ' Yes ; but she is hopelessly behind 
 the times, you know.' 
 
 That settles Novissima' s mother. As for her 
 father— a pleasant, square-built man, who is a little 
 
 q 2 
 
228 CHAKACTER NOTES 
 
 deaf — he is not either of much account. Novis- 
 sima is kind to him as to an animal ignorant of its 
 own strength, requiring management. She de- 
 scribes him as prim, and takes good care, in her 
 jaunty way, that no deleterious fiction comes be- 
 neath his gaze. 
 
 i He would not understand it, poor old thing ! ' 
 she explains. 
 
 And she is quite right. 
 
 Young Calamus, the critic, has had a better 
 education than Novissima's father. He knows 
 half a dozen countries, their language and their 
 literature. And he does not understand Novis- 
 sima's fiction. 
 
 The world is apt to take Novissima at her own 
 valuation. "When she makes a statement — and 
 statements are her strong point — half the people in 
 the room know better, but make the mistake of 
 believing that they must be wrong because she is 
 so positive. The other half know better also, but 
 are too wise or too lazy to argue. 
 
 While on a visit at a great country house 
 Novissima meets young Calamus, of whom she has 
 spoken with an off-hand familiarity for years. The 
 genial hostess, who knows Novissima's stand-point, 
 sends young Calamus down to dinner with her. He 
 
THE NEW WOMAN 229 
 
 is clever enough for anybody, reflects my lady. 
 And Novissima, who is delighted, is more than 
 usually off-hand for the sake of his vanity. Cala- 
 mus, as it happens, is perfectly indifferent as to 
 what she may be thinking of him. 
 
 He is good-natured, and entirely free from self- 
 consciousness. He is the real thing, and not the 
 young man who is going to do something some day. 
 He has begun doing it already. And there is a look 
 in his keen, fair face which suggests that he intends 
 going on. 
 
 Novissima's alertness of mind attracts him. 
 Being a man, he is not above the influence of a trim 
 figure and a pair of dark eyes. This is a study, 
 and an entirely pleasant one, for Calamus is about 
 to begin a new novel. He thinks that Novissima 
 will do well for a side character, which is precisely 
 that for which she serves in daily life. She is not 
 like the rest. But it is the rest that men fall in 
 love with and marry. 
 
 Novissima has for the moment forced herself to 
 the front of the stage ; but in a few years she will 
 only be a side character. Calamus knows this. 
 He remembers the grim verdict of Dr. Kudos, his 
 junior dean at Cambridge. 
 
 ' Modern young woman ! Yes ; interesting 
 
230 CHABACTEE NOTES 
 
 development of cheap education ; but she proves 
 nothing.' 
 
 Which is the worst of science. It looks upon 
 us all as specimens, and expects us to prove some- 
 thing. 
 
 Novissima is pleased to approve of my lady's 
 judgment in sending her down to dinner with 
 Calamus. She feels that the other girls are a long 
 way below his mental level — that they are wholly 
 unfitted to manufacture conversation of a quality 
 calculated to suit his literary taste. 
 
 Calamus happens to be rather a simple-minded 
 young man. He has been everywhere. He has 
 seen most things, and nothing seems to have 
 touched a certain strong purity of thought which 
 he probably acquired in the nursery. Men are 
 thus. They carry heavier moral armour. Outward 
 things affect them little. Novissima, on the other 
 hand, is a little the worse for her reading. 
 
 She thinks she knows the style of talk that will 
 suit him, and she is apparently wrong. For 
 Calamus stares about him with speculative grey 
 eyes. His replies are wholly commonplace and 
 somewhat frivolous. Novissima is intensely earnest, 
 and, in her desire to show him the depth of her 
 knowledge, is not always discreet. 
 
THE NEW WOMAN 231 
 
 She talks of the future of women, of coming 
 generations and woman's influence thereon. 
 
 ' They had better busy themselves with the 
 beginning of the future generation/ says Calamus, 
 in his half-listening way. 
 
 1 How do you mean ? ■ 
 
 1 Children,' explains Calamus in a single word. 
 
 Novissima mentions the name of one or two 
 foreign authors not usually discussed in polite 
 society in their own country, and Calamus frowns. 
 She approaches one or two topics which he refuses 
 to talk about with a simple bluntness. 
 
 He is hungry, having been among the turnips 
 all day. He has no intention of treating Novissima 
 to any of those delightfully original ideas which he 
 sells to a foolish public at so much a line. 
 
 During the whole visit Novissima and Calamus 
 are considerably thrown together. Gossips say that 
 she runs after him. He is superficially shallow, 
 and refuses to be deep. She is superficially deep, 
 and betrays her shallowness at every turn. He 
 remembers Dr. Kudos, and makes himself very 
 agreeable. She is only a side character. She 
 proves nothing. 
 
 Then Calamus packs up his bag and goes back 
 to town. There he presently marries Edith, accord- 
 
232 CHAKACTER NOTES 
 
 ing to a long-standing arrangement kept strictly to 
 themselves. 
 
 Novissima is rather shocked. She feels, and 
 says, that it is a pity. Edith is a tall girl with 
 motherly eyes and a clear laugh. She has no 
 notion how clever Calamus is, and would probably 
 care as much for him if he were a fool. 
 
 Novissima says that Mr. Calamus has simply 
 thrown away his chance of becoming a great man. 
 She says it. moreover, with all her customary 
 assurance, from the high stand-point of critical dis- 
 approval that is hers. And Calamus proceeds to 
 turn out the best work of his lifetime, while Edith 
 busies herself with mere household matters, and 
 laughs her clear laugh over a cradle. 
 
 There is something wrong somewhere. It can- 
 not, of course, be Novissima, for she is so perfectly 
 sure of herself. Possibly it is Calamus who is 
 wrong. But he is quite happy, and Edith is the 
 same. 
 
 It is only Novissima who is not content. Dr. 
 Kudos was right. She proves nothing. She has 
 tried to prove that woman's mission is something 
 higher than the bearing of children and bringing 
 them up. And she has failed. 
 
3 
 

 
 
 
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 JL 
 
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 Wl 
 
 
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 ' \ " 
 
 HF 
 
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 V I 
 
 " '' .■* 
 
 MHr' IS?/ 
 
 mi 
 
 Yet when Mary mentions his name ... he turns upon her furiously 
 
233 
 
 THE FARMER 
 
 1 Quand Phomme commence a raisonner il cesse de sentir ' 
 
 He lives and has lived all his life, as his fathers 
 before him, in an old farmhouse beautiful with 
 rare carvings, substantial, comfortable and honest. 
 
 The Farmer is himself substantial, honest, and 
 hot-tempered. 'A peppery old chap, you know/ 
 says his son, with a filial candour quite modern and 
 disrespectful. 
 
 The Farmer indeed justifies such a description 
 to perfection. 
 
 There is perhaps no more soft-hearted, impetu- 
 ous, obstinate, wrong-headed old fellow in the 
 county. 
 
 He has been in the habit of swearing all his life 
 quite freely at everybody. At his son, for his fine 
 gentlemanly airs and his fine gentlemanly appear- 
 ance. At his wife, who is blue-eyed and somewhat 
 overpowered by a perfectly good-tempered stoutness. 
 At his servants. At his farm-labourers. 
 
234 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 * Lor' ! he do cus, bless 'im ! ' says one of them. 
 Perhaps the other people who have to deal with 
 him regard him in a like tolerant spirit. His wife, 
 for instance, who has been brought up piously in a 
 Dissenting book shop in the county town, accepts 
 his failings with a fat, simple kindness. 'They 
 speak harsh to you,' she says, embracing the whole 
 sex in the description. ' And they like their glass, 
 and there's no pleasing 'em with their meals, but I 
 dunno that we'd have 'em different if we could.' 
 
 The two are married as very young people in 
 that unpractical age when it seems better to be 
 poor together than to be rich apart. Mary is very 
 ill soon afterwards — an illness which she bears 
 with the simple patience and sweetness which are 
 indeed still characteristic of her when she has long 
 ceased to be slim and girlish. The fidelity and 
 devotion with which her husband, who is a fine, 
 vigorous young fellow in those days, nurses her is 
 still on record. It is remembered how, when their 
 little daughter is born to them — dead — he puts 
 down his honest impetuous head on the pillow by 
 Mary and cries like a child. Though a son comes 
 to them a few years later, the little girl who never 
 saw the light is still beloved and unforgotten ; and 
 when the chapter wherein David loses his child is 
 
THE FARMER 235 
 
 read in church, the Farmer's eyes are so dim that 
 he cannot see. 
 
 He is believed to be all his life under the illusion 
 that Mary still wears her girlish charms. Though 
 he speaks to her often roughly himself, he is ready 
 to defend her a great deal more roughly, if need be, 
 against all the world. When the well-bred son 
 suggests, without indeed intending to offend the 
 ' peppery old chap ' the least in the world, that it 
 would be more convenient if my mother were slim 
 and active enough to look after the pigs and 
 chickens herself, the ' peppery old chap ' turns on 
 his son with his honest old face quite savage and 
 apoplectic. ' Darn you/ he says, ' and darn the 
 pigs and chickens too, afore I'd have a whipping- 
 post of a wife like yours.' And the gentlemanly 
 Jack turns his back upon his father's ill-bred 
 wrath and retires, humming an air with a great 
 deal of nonchalance and a smile. 
 
 With his farm people old John is particularly 
 hasty and kind. They understand his ways per- 
 fectly perhaps. * He do cus, bless 'im,' when the 
 cottages want repairing, but he repairs them not 
 the less. He loses his hot old temper to a degree 
 quite alarming when they neglect their duty. 
 But he never turns them off with a sarcastic 
 
236 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 urbanity, as does his brother farmer in the next 
 parish. 
 
 He is perhaps worse served and more beloved 
 than any agriculturist in the district. When times 
 are bad the people come to him readily enough 
 for relief, and, though he gives them plenty of 
 grumbling and strong language, these are never 
 the only memories of him they carry away. 
 
 John is people's churchwarden. He is not 
 perhaps entirely successful in this capacity. A 
 person whose mildest conversation is interlarded, 
 quite unconsciously and from long habit, with un- 
 commonly expressive flowers of speech, must be 
 allowed to have his drawbacks as an officer of 
 religion. Upon matters of Church doctrine, more- 
 over, the farmer is as ignorant, as obstinate, as 
 conservative, and as pig-headed as any man in the 
 kingdom. A place of worship mouldy, moth-eaten, 
 and principally ornamented with a huge three- 
 decker pulpit, was good enough for his fathers, and 
 he would like to know, with an ominous red coming 
 into his honest old face, why it shouldn't be good 
 enough for him ? When the parson, who indeed 
 is not injudicious, and has a very kindly liking and 
 respect for his hot-headed parishioner, first preaches 
 in a surplice, John disseminates awful reports in 
 
THE FARMER 237 
 
 the parish in which the Scarlet Lady and the Pope 
 of Eome figure largely. He absents himself from 
 church for a Sunday or two. But he finds that he gets 
 on very badly without what he calls his ( religion/ 
 and comes back pretty soon to the seat which he 
 has occupied every Sunday since he was a child. 
 He continues, it is true, to sniff at the parson's 
 Eomish abominations, but he says his prayers in a 
 fine, fervent old voice, and with his rough face 
 very pious and absorbed. 
 
 The great love of the old man's life is the 
 gentlemanly Jack. At a time when money was a 
 great deal scarcer with him than it is now he gave 
 Jack an excellent education. The result of that 
 education is not perhaps unprecedented. The 
 slow, old-fashioned ways of his father are not quite 
 good enough for the fin-de-siecle son. Jack is 
 indeed fond of the ' old chap ' in a slightly con- 
 descending manner, and the father is devoted with 
 all the passion of his hot, faithful heart to the boy 
 to whom he can scarcely talk for an hour with- 
 out quarrelling. There are a thousand subjects of 
 dispute between the two. There is Jack's wife, 
 the genteel whipping-post brought up in black silk 
 in a fashionable milliner's in London. There is 
 a certain easy, bored, indolent air the son has 
 
238 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 with him, vastly irritating. There is his con- 
 founded fiddle-faddle taste for literature, which 
 has been known to lead him to lie full length on 
 the parlour sofa on a Sunday morning, smoking 
 perpetual pipes and reading 'East Lynne.' 
 
 There is his desire — curse him — to introduce 
 the steam plough and other new-fangled arrange- 
 ments into the sleepy, tranquil, behind-the-times 
 old farm, and his appearance on high days and 
 holidays in a suit of clothes fit for a gentleman, 
 and a pair of the finest, dandy, most exasperating 
 patent leather boots. 
 
 Mary, the fat, tranquil Mary, tries her best to 
 keep the peace between the two. 
 
 ' I'm sorry to annoy my father/ says Jack ; 
 ' but he's so deuced peppery, you know.' 
 
 Is he? Perhaps. Mary at least acquiesces, 
 or seems to acquiesce, in the dictum with a stout 
 sigh. Yet he has been good to her — very good — 
 very faithful, devoted and honest. He has the 
 tenderest heart and bravest spirit, she thinks, of 
 any man in the world. Perhaps, like a true woman, 
 she loves him none the less because he often gives 
 her pain. 
 
 The cause of the quarrel which parts the father 
 and son for ever is not precisely known. 
 
TIIE FARMER 239 
 
 Perhaps it rises in Jack's patent leather boots ; 
 in the steam plough, or his desecration of the 
 Sabbath. It is at least certain that the old man is 
 the more in the wrong. He loses his hot old tem- 
 per from the first. He turns and curses the boy 
 whom he loves from the depth of his honest heart, 
 and reproaches him in bitter words which can 
 never be forgotten. 
 
 Jack is self-possessed enough. The superior 
 education he has received enables him to control 
 his feelings pretty easily while the infuriated old 
 man, with his face aflame, is shouting at him across 
 the table. 
 
 ' Curse you ! ' says the Farmer breathlessly. 
 * And gqxsg me if I ever see your face again ! ' 
 
 'As you like, sir/ replies the gentlemanly 
 Jack, cool, urbane, and courteous to the last. And 
 he turns on his heel and leaves his father alone. 
 
 The two do not meet for many years. Until 
 Jack goes away the Farmer has never known, per- 
 haps, how dear the boy has been to him. 
 
 Yet when Mary mentions his name, and lays 
 her plump hand with the worn wedding ring on it 
 pleadingly on her husband's arm, he turns upon 
 her furiously, and bids her be quiet with an 
 oath. 
 
240 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 He has loved the boy too well to forgive him 
 easily. 
 
 One day the news comes that Jack has a little 
 son of his own. 
 
 1 You'll let bygones be bygones now, won't you, 
 my dear ? ' says Mary. She has a great want to 
 take that baby in her warm, motherly arms, to 
 renew the feelings with which she bent over her 
 own son, little, innocent, and good. And the 
 Farmer says ' No ' in a great voice. And Mary 
 dares ask no more. 
 
 The trouble preys on her health at last. 
 
 She dies very quietly one night in her sleep. 
 The old man's agony of grief at her going is 
 terrible to see. Now she has left him he is quite 
 alone. 
 
 He is so far softened by her death that in the 
 early days of his grief he makes a resolution 
 concerning the boy. He puts off its fulfilment 
 indeed for many weeks. And at last, before 
 he has carried it into action, is taken ill him- 
 self. 
 
 He has kindly people about him. The parson 
 and the parson's gentle wife come every day to see 
 him. A portly milkmaid, of indefinite age, who 
 has been in his service since she was sixteen, and 
 
THE FARMER 241 
 
 hopes to die in his service, a milkmaid still, nurses 
 him faithfully. 
 
 'He's got summut on his mind/ she says to 
 the Doctor. ' He's that restless as he's been hay- 
 making with the bed-clothes all night. Maybe 
 when he can speak he'll tell us what it is.' 
 
 He recovers his speech in a day or two, but he 
 makes no further use of it than to say, in a weari- 
 some repetition, one word — the name of his son. 
 They are not sure if he is wholly sensible. He 
 takes the food and medicine they give him with 
 a meekness foreign to his character. But he says 
 nothing except Jack, Jack, Jack, over and over 
 again, and in a heart-rending voice. 
 
 Through a moaning and troublesome night he 
 asks for the boy repeatedly. Through the hot 
 August day — in the sultry afternoon. He wakes 
 at last from an uneasy sleep to see his son sitting 
 quietly by his side. ' Why, Jacky ! ' says the 
 Farmer, with a sudden cry of joy, ' I'm darned if 
 I haven't been dreaming that we had a quarrel, 
 and I sent you away. That was a rare mistake 
 to make, Jacky, wasn't it ? ' 
 
 1 A rare mistake,' says gentleman Jack in a 
 deep voice. 
 
 John lies quietly after this for many hours. 
 
 B 
 
242 CHARACTER NOTES 
 
 His brave old face, tanned with the broad winds 
 of heaven, is scarcely, even now, like the face 
 of a dying man. He fancies that Mary is down- 
 stairs minding the grandson he has never seen. 
 ' She's so fond of the childer, is the old woman/ 
 he says. 
 
 Towards night, while Jack is still sitting by 
 his side in the darkening room, a drowsiness falls 
 on him. But there is, or seems to be, some 
 uneasiness in his mind which will not let him 
 sleep. 
 
 'It's the dream, Jacky,' he says in a troubled 
 voice. * Some one— the old fool, God bless her, 
 who waits on me— said that it was true.' 
 
 ' There is nothing true,' answers gentleman 
 Jack huskily, ■ except that we've been — deuced 
 fond of each other all the time.' 
 
 And the Farmer passes from a sleep in which 
 all the dreams are tranquil to that sleep in which 
 there are none. 
 
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 MRS. DYMOND. By Miss Thackeray. 
 
 LLANALY REEFS. By Lady Vernby, 
 
 Author of 4 Stone Edge' &c. . 
 LETTICE LISLE. By Lady Vernby. 
 
 With 3 Illustrations. 
 
 London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place. 
 
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