LIBRARY 
 
 UNFVEk$ITY OF 
 CAIIF^Rt^iA 
 
In Scarlet and Grey 
 
 STORIES OF SOLDIERS AND OTHERS BY 
 
 Florence Henniker 
 
 AND 
 
 THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL BY 
 
 Thomas Hardy and Florence Henniker 
 
 LONDON: JOHN LANE, VIGO ST 
 BOSTON: ROBERTS BROS., 1896 
 
Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty 
 
ft 
 
 (2% 
 
 TO MY HUSBAND 
 
 THESE STORIES 
 ARE DEDICATED 
 
 735 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 THE HEART OF THE COLOUR-SERGEANT, 
 BAD AND WORTHLESS, 
 
 A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION, 
 
 A PAGE FROM A VICAR'S HISTORY, . 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE STARTLED FAWN, 
 IN THE INFIRMARY, .... 
 THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL, 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 30 
 
 52 
 103 
 127 
 
 164 
 
THE HEART OF 
 THE COLOUR SERGEANT 
 
 If two lives join, there is oft a scar, 
 
 They are one and one, with a shadowy third ; 
 
 One near one is too far. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Miss Kitty Malone had tied up the last bunch 
 of carnations which smelt like ripe apricots newly- 
 gathered. She had arranged as a row of foot- 
 lights beneath her, many flower-pots holding 
 calceolarias and tufts of the little creeping plant 
 familiarly known as 'Creeping Jenny.' Above 
 Kitty's fair head a gigantic sunflower stood on a 
 shelf, with attendant satellites in the shape of, 
 golden and bronze dahlias and orange lilies. 
 Miss Malone shook some of the pollen that had 
 fallen from the last-named plants off the creamy 
 lace at her wrists ; and then, after pinning one 
 small nosegay of forget-me-nots among the pale 
 blue folds of her dress, she sat down, like a 
 Queen of the May among her garlands, and 
 waited for customers. 
 
 A 
 
2 THE HEART OF THE 
 
 The large hall was very empty, although the 
 church clock had rung out four half an hour ago. 
 A sense of disappointment weighed down the 
 spirits of some two dozen ladies, who, wearing 
 business-like muslin aprons and scissors fastened 
 at their waists, cast impatient eyes at the great 
 doorway, and over a few aimless strollers who 
 had passed through it. 
 
 * It's ten thousand pities,' said Miss O'Shaugh- 
 nessy, who presided over pincushions and 
 photograph frames under a canopy next to Miss 
 Malone, ' that the Lord Lieutenant found at the 
 last moment that he couldn't open the sale.' She 
 spoke with a suspicion of a brogue, and pro- 
 nounced her ens like uns. Then she looked 
 sideways and not altogether agreeably at Kitty. 
 
 Miss O'Shaughnessy had been a reigning 
 beauty in her beloved native city until the last 
 season, when Miss Malone had come over to stay 
 with a barrister uncle in Merrion Square, and 
 had calmly taken away most of Miss O'Shaugh- 
 nessy's favourite partners, and also her reputation 
 as the prettiest girl at many balls and the cheer- 
 ful race-meetings at Baldoyle and Fairyhouse. 
 It could not be said that Kitty seemed elated 
 overmuch after her triumphs : on the contrary, 
 she received all admiration with a placid sense 
 of its being no more than her due, and never 
 exerted herself to win either attention or praise. 
 Miss O'Shaughnessy's bitterness had reached its 
 
COLOUR-SERGEANT 3 
 
 height a month or two ago at a small dance, 
 when she had seen her rival led through a 
 quadrille by the Lord Lieutenant, and taken in 
 to supper by the Commander-in-Chief. 
 
 And just towards the close of that memorable 
 evening, slangy Colonel Haldane, who had 
 formerly been Miss O'Shaughnessy's most 
 devoted admirer, had lounged across the room, 
 and merely said, ' Heard the news ? ' 
 
 * No, what is it ? ' 
 
 * Well, the lovely Miss Malone has settled to 
 make some fellow happy at last. She's accepted 
 Vincent Pelham — thundering good marriage, 
 ain't it? Capital soldier, old Vincent, though 
 an awful dull dog. But his father ain't likely to 
 hang on long, and then he'll come into no end of 
 " oof" Are you surprised ? ' 
 
 Miss O'Shaughnessy was dressed in sea-green, 
 and her draperies just then were too much like 
 the colour of her skin to be becoming. She 
 spoke after a second, in a constrained and hoarse 
 voice : 
 
 * I wonder how Lord Ryde will like his son's 
 marriage. As he's so ill, I am afraid it may up- 
 set him a good deal. Because though dear Kitty 
 is of course charmmg, some of her relations are 
 not quite — quite, don't you know? And there 
 was that foolish rumour about her and an army 
 doctor, you remember ? ' 
 
 Miss Malone passed the pair just then or)^ her 
 
4 THE HEART OF THE 
 
 bethrothed's arm. He was a tall man, undeniably 
 handsome, in spite of a too-long neck and a head 
 of a sugarloaf shape. His moustache was grey, 
 and closely cropped, his eyes were prominent, 
 and a little unsympathetic. His smile, although 
 at first sight pleasant, expressed some conscious- 
 ness of his own personal uprightness, and of his 
 perfectly unblemished and prosperous career in 
 the past, together with the least shade of con- 
 tempt for other people who might happen to 
 have stumbled or fallen on less easy roads. Miss 
 Malone looked perfectly calm and undated. 
 Her soft cheeks were hardly flushed, her dark 
 lashes did not rest upon them with a newly 
 acquired sense of shyness ; she only gazed with 
 frank unconcern at her many friends and 
 acquaintances. Her full red underlip did not 
 quiver with emotion, but was merely parted 
 from the curling upper one in a quiet smile. 
 Kitty Malone was clever enough to ignore the 
 envious or admiring glances that ran like 
 lightnings over her slender figure — and apparently 
 all-untouched by them, she walked up the whole 
 length of the ball-room, with the confident and 
 erect Captain Pelham at her side. 
 
 Now, sitting behind her barrier of pincushions 
 and pen-wipers, of ponderous plush cushions and 
 futile woollen mats. Miss O'Shaughnessy thought 
 bitterly over this past scene. And the uncon- 
 scious object of her gloomy meditation went on 
 
COLOUR-SERGEANT 5 
 
 smiling amidst a tangle of ferns and blossoms, 
 and giving a little girl directions as to how she 
 was to take button-holes round the room and 
 try to sell them. Mrs. Dowse, who presided over 
 tea and buns, and weak claret and champagne 
 cups, crossed over to the flower-stall for a 
 minute. 
 
 *And are ye expectun Captain Pelham here 
 to-day, my dear ? ' 
 
 *No, Mrs. Dowse, he has had to go over to 
 England to see his father, who is ill. See, there 
 is some one looking at your stall ! They will 
 pass on if you don't hurry back.' 
 
 Mrs. Dowse, fat and smiling, was behind her 
 jugs and glasses in an instant. 
 
 * How I wish,' said Miss Kitty to one of her 
 helpers, ' that some one of slight interest would 
 come ! We are selling for such a good object. 
 Think of the poor soldiers having to leave their 
 wives in a few days, and probably nearly all to 
 be killed, or to die of fever in the horrible 
 deserts ! And those married without leave may 
 be almost starving ! Oh ! Jenny, there are some 
 soldiers coming in now ! They are stopping at 
 Nora O'Shaughnessy's stall. What use can an 
 antimacassar or an illuminated text be to a 
 soldier?' 
 
 * Well, they are not allowed to wear button- 
 holes, and as they sail in four or five days, plants 
 in pots won't be much use to them either.' 
 
6 THE HEART OF THE 
 
 * Perhaps not. What a good-looking man that 
 tall one is, with the three gold stripes on his 
 sleeve, and the crimson sash.' 
 
 *Yes, a sergeant. And the fair man is a 
 corporal. Oh ! Kitty, how sad to think they'll 
 probably be shot. How dreadful for you, dear, 
 that Captain Pelham was given that staff 
 appointment ! ' 
 
 ' Ah ! no, not quite that, I wish him to get on. 
 I am immoderately ambitious, my dear Jenny.' 
 
 The sergeant and Miss O'Shaughnessy seemed 
 meanwhile to be amused with one another. He 
 laughed, showing a row of very white teeth, as he 
 looked the young lady over from head to foot 
 with a pair of reckless dark eyes. A couple of 
 frugally-minded ladies came up just then to Miss 
 Malone's stall, and after five minutes' quibbling, 
 passed away in triumph with one little fern for 
 sixpence, and a bunch of pinks for a penny. 
 Kitty stood on a step, re-adjusting her flower- 
 pots, her slender arms raised above her head, 
 which was thrown a little backward. As she 
 turned round something scarlet caught her eye. 
 The young sergeant was standing facing her, 
 tapping the edge of the stall lightly with his cane. 
 His glance lingered on Kitty's slender form, tak- 
 ing in every detail of its grace and charm ; the 
 sky-blue dress with its broad sash, the shady 
 black hat resting on her light brown hair. In 
 the words of a far more famous sergeant he 
 
COLOUR-SERGEANT 7 
 
 might well have said — * Thank you for the sight 
 of such a beautiful face.' His eyes, however, 
 told her as much, and the faintest pink flush 
 overspread Miss Kitty's neck and her soft 
 cheeks. 
 
 ' I am afraid,' said the sergeant, taking up a 
 large bouquet of shaded carnations, * that you 
 have fewer people at your sale than you ex- 
 pected ? ' 
 
 It was a commonplace remark, but Miss 
 Malone started. The voice was that of a gentle- 
 man, and equally so the easy grace of his manner. 
 
 ' Yes, indeed,' she answered. * It's most dis- 
 appointing. And one would have thought just 
 now that so much sympathy would have been 
 felt with the wives and children of our soldiers 
 who are going to fight' 
 
 The sergeant was leaning forward on the 
 counter, his cane under one arm, his eyes fixed 
 on the young girl's fair face. She, for her part, 
 noted how exactly his uniform fitted his square 
 shoulders and thin waist, how well his cap with 
 its shining badge became him. 
 
 * Ah ! I am afraid the inhabitants of this town 
 don't feel any sorrow at our departure,' he said. 
 ' We are not very much beloved here. For my 
 part, I rejoice to get away.' 
 
 * Have you seen service before ? ' 
 
 * Oh, no. Now is my chance.' She fancied 
 that he sighed a little. 
 
S THE HEART OF THE 
 
 * It's no use my offering you any of my lovely 
 roses ? ' And the girl held up a large bunch on 
 which the dew seemed hardly dry. The sergeant 
 took them from her hand and smelt them. 
 
 ' Alas ! no. They are no good to me. I can't 
 carry a nosegay about in the streets. Ah ! there 
 are some people coming to buy flowers. I am 
 taking up your time ? ' 
 
 * Not in the least, I assure you.' And Kitty 
 Malone actually blushed as she met once more 
 the earnest gaze of those reckless dark eyes. 
 
 * The sale will go on this evening, won't it ? ' 
 
 * O, yes ; it will all look much prettier lighted 
 up. And there will be coloured lamps in the 
 little garden at the back, where the gipsy sits, 
 telling fortunes.' 
 
 * A fortune teller? — a genuine gipsy?' 
 
 * Well, no ; I'm afraid I must confess that she 
 is only a friend of mine dressed up. But she's 
 very clever all the same. Why don't you have 
 your coming fortune in this war foretold ? ' 
 
 *Ah!' — and he certainly did sigh this time, 
 there was no mistake about it — ' my fortune was 
 told ever so long ago.' 
 
 * But think of what may yet happen to you in 
 Egypt. O, I beg your pardon, Lady Celbridge. 
 Which would you like of these lilies — these 
 orange ones or the lovely variegated ones above?' 
 
 * Look at Kitty ! ' murmured Miss Nora 
 O'Shaughnessy to her sister. * What a flirt she is ! 
 
COLOUR -SERGEANT 9 
 
 She even allowed that sergeant to stand and 
 make eyes at her ! ' 
 
 * But we agreed just now that he was certainly 
 a gentleman.' 
 
 *Yes, but it is so often the most hopeless 
 scamps who enlist — men whose fathers will have 
 nothing more to say to them.' 
 
 A band at the far end of the room began to 
 play, and more people to troop in through the 
 heavy doors. Mrs. Dowse was becoming crimson 
 and hilarious over her urns and jugs of orange- 
 ade. The sergeant stopped at her stall and 
 drank some champagne-cup. Then he glanced 
 over his shoulder at the flower-stall and the little 
 blue figure among the blossoms, and began to 
 pace slowly round the great hall, until a counter 
 with some photographs attracted his attention. 
 The owner, a lady who was a great admirer of 
 Miss Malone, had fastened one of this young 
 lady's portraits in a frame. The sergeant 
 stopped. 
 
 * How much for this ? ' he asked carelessly. 
 
 * Oh, the photo of the lovely Miss Malone ? ' 
 
 * Exactly.' 
 
 * Well, ye can have ut for foive-and-six.' 
 
 The soldier paid the money, and the stall- 
 keeper tied up the parcel. 
 
 * Put into a raffle, please, sergeant ! ' said a 
 childish voice at his side. 
 
 He looked round and smiled pleasantly at a 
 
10 THE HEART OF THE 
 
 little girl carrying a large cushion repre- 
 senting, in brilliant woohvork, Black-eyed 
 Susan waving her lily hand to her departing 
 William. 
 
 The sergeant laughed. * I'll take two tickets, 
 if you like.' 
 
 * And where shall I send it if you win ? ' asked 
 the child. 
 
 * Colour-Sergeant Rhodes, . . . Barracks. 
 But no, stay — it's no use to me ; keep it for 
 yourself if I win.' 
 
 When he had arrived at the end of the room 
 the young soldier turned his head once more. 
 He fancied that those large blue eyes behind 
 the roses were actually watching him, and his 
 thin brown cheeks grew a shade redder. 
 
 Towards seven o'clock the hall was ablaze 
 with gas lamps, and, to the delight of the sellers, 
 was at last thronged with townspeople. Miss 
 Kitty had changed her blue dress for a cooler 
 one of white muslin, and wore a fresh bunch of 
 forget-me-nots pinned at her breast. By nine 
 o'clock her stall bore the appearance of a for- 
 saken garden. Only a few straggling plants, 
 which had been earlier in the day relegated to 
 the back rows, remained. Every bunch of car- 
 nations, and each neatly made button-hole, was 
 sold. And Kitty thought that, considering the 
 assiduous way in which she had worked, and 
 how stifling was now the atmosphere of the 
 
COLOUR-SERGEANT ii 
 
 room, she would allow herself a breath of fresh 
 air in the garden. A few groups of dark figures 
 stood on the gravel -path among the little 
 twinkling red and green lights. The air was 
 soft and cool, the sky of a dark velvety blue, 
 with pale stars coming out. Round the little 
 tent where the supposed gipsy sat, some dozen 
 people were standing, and among them Kitty 
 saw a tall, slight figure dressed in scarlet. One 
 of the fairy lights illuminated the three gold 
 stripes on his arm. As if owing to some mag- 
 netic influence the soldier turned his head 
 sharply round as she advanced, and once more 
 their eyes met, this time in a longer glance. 
 The soft, languorous air crept round Kitty, 
 rustling her white skirts, and lifting the curls on 
 her forehead. She trembled a little. The ser- 
 geant came towards her, his brilliant figure 
 standing out vividly against the sombre back- 
 ground of wall. 
 
 * So you've come back ! ' said Kitty Malone. 
 
 * It seems so. A few years ago I should not 
 have thought that a sale and a sham gipsy 
 would much amuse me ; but as I am so soon 
 leaving England — perhaps for always — I take 
 rather a less blase view of things.' 
 
 He came and stood beside her in the curious, 
 uncertain light. The pale stars were not sparkling 
 enough to lift the shadow off their faces ; the 
 fairy-lights threw odd little violet and green 
 
12 THE HEART OF THE 
 
 reflections upon her skirt and the red stripes on 
 his trousers. 
 
 * Have you had your fortune told ? * 
 
 * Not I. Nothing good is Hkely to happen to 
 me ever again.' 
 
 * Why not ? You might get a commission one 
 of these days, and end as a general/ 
 
 They moved a little farther into the shadow. 
 
 ' Only dreams ! * he said. ' But I loathe talk- 
 ing of myself. Are you interested in this 
 Egyptian business, or in anyone going out ? ' 
 
 They were almost in darkness now, so that if 
 Kitty Malone had blushed the young sergeant 
 would have been none the wiser. 
 
 'No.' 
 
 Kitty's thoughts travelled remorsefully for one 
 instant beyond her companion, and she seemed 
 to see a grave, commonplace face poised on an 
 ungainly neck. But although she was about to 
 make the most prosaic of marriages — to join her 
 lot to that of an entirely respectable elder son of 
 a rich peer — she had inherited with her Celtic 
 blood a foolish craving for romance. Anyone 
 as pretty as she was could have had no lack of 
 lovers, but one and all had failed to bring her 
 the excitement, the passionate desires, for which 
 she sometimes longed. Here, in this dimly- 
 lighted garden — so dully commonplace at the 
 noonday, but glorified for an hour or so by the 
 mysterious stars and the distant murmur of music 
 
COLOUR-SERGEANT 13 
 
 — she felt for once a strange thrill that was made 
 up of both pleasure and grief 
 
 * Miss Malone/ said the sergeant suddenly, 
 *you are extremely good to talk to me. For 
 four — yes, five years no lady has said a word to 
 me. I feel very much alone sometimes.' 
 
 ' Indeed, I can understand that. But there are 
 other men of your own class in your battalion 
 with whom you can make friends ? ' 
 
 * Yes, now and then. But I know I have gone 
 down hill. Not owing to the company of the 
 men — no, I don't mean that, they are far better 
 fellows, many of them, than I ; but if one never 
 sees a woman of one's own class one becomes 
 coarser in tastes and pleasures, harder also, and 
 more cynical. You have done me good, and 
 I thank you, even if we should never meet 
 again.' 
 
 ' But we may meet some day. Anyhow, I will 
 come and see your ship start' 
 
 * Will you ? ' And he drew a little nearer to 
 her. * You are very kind to me.* 
 
 * How did you know my name ? ' 
 
 * I found it out. And I have your — no, never 
 mind.' 
 
 ' You must tell me who you are in return.' 
 
 * Sergeant Rhodes.' He paused a minute. 
 * That is the name I shall always be known by. 
 Never by any other — never again.' His voice 
 sank into a whisper. 
 
14 THE HEART OF THE 
 
 * Shall we stroll round the gravel-walk, just 
 once, Miss Malone ? ' he said, after a silence that 
 seemed very painful to Kitty. 
 
 They walked slowly through the narrow 
 garden, the distant music sounding in their ears 
 — passionate, plaintive, tender. Then they came 
 to a wooden bench, under a stunted tree. For 
 an hour or more they sat there, learning so 
 much, and yet, alas ! so little about one another. 
 A church clock sounded. The music stopped, 
 and died away in a long-drawn sob. From a 
 neighbouring garden a white cat leapt over the 
 wall, the moon shining on its fur. The world 
 seemed to have grown sadder and very silent. 
 Kitty Malone sprang to her feet. 
 
 * O, how late it is ! What will my uncle say, 
 and my friends who were to have taken me 
 home ? Good-bye, Sergeant Rhodes.' She held 
 out her little hand. The moonshine quivered on 
 his pale handsome face — on the band of his cap 
 and the scarlet and gold of his uniform. He 
 looked at her long with the dark eyes which had 
 grown graver now, and less reckless. 
 
 * Will you give me the bunch of forget-me-nots 
 you wear in your dress ? ' 
 
 For a moment there flashed across Miss 
 Kitty's romantic mind a memory of the beau- 
 tiful American ballad telling of the lady who 
 flung a rose down from her balcony as the 
 column of war-worn men marched by. She 
 
COLOUR-SERGEANT 15 
 
 trembled a little, but she took out the flowers, 
 and he hid them away in his breast. 
 
 When Kitty came back alone, a few minutes 
 later, the great hall was nearly deserted. Mrs. 
 Dowse was yawning heavily over her emptied 
 urns, and the O'Shaughnesseys had gone home. 
 Miss Malone felt very much ashamed of herself 
 but, alas, more glad than penitent ! In her joy- 
 ous tremor she hardly realised that she had been 
 behaving in a foolish, and, to say the least of it, 
 a very unconventional way — in a manner which 
 Lady Celbridge, her future husband's ideal of all 
 that a lady should be, would have stigmatised as 
 * bad form ' ; she only knew that the triumphant 
 happiness of this strange short evening was 
 worth many an after hour of regret. 
 
 And perhaps into the heart of a man, reckless 
 and dissipated enough, but a gentleman still, now 
 lying awake in his narrow bed within blank 
 barrack walls, she had brought some short 
 glimpses of hope and retrieval — dim possibilities 
 of redemption which, even if they should never 
 blossom into flower, were yet as a handful of sparse 
 verdure springing up in the desert of his soul. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 * My dear Kitty, it is very foolish and emotional 
 of you to wish to see the troop-ship start. You 
 
i6 THE HEART OF THE 
 
 will probably be quite overcome, all the more 
 so ' — and here Captain Pelham patted his 
 bethrothed's curly head — * as we — we, my darling, 
 shall so soon also have to say good-bye to one 
 another.' 
 
 Vincent could never entirely divest himself of a 
 certain stiffness of manner, even when he was most 
 genuinely moved, and his gestures, as bending 
 over her, he stroked Kitty's hair, were, on this 
 occasion, provokingly stilted and self-conscious. 
 
 Miss Malone looked him straight in the face, 
 and smiled, half sadly. 
 
 * You needn't be afraid that I shall break down 
 or disgrace you on this or any other occasion, 
 Vincent. I really do wish to see the poor men 
 sail. Lady Celbridge is going also.' 
 
 * That is quite a different thing. She has a 
 young nephew bound for Egypt. Now there is 
 no one in whom you are interested. Therefore 
 I must continue to say I think it a little morbid 
 of you, my dear Kitty.' 
 
 Captain Pelham straightened himself, stroked 
 his moustache with both hands — a favourite 
 habit of his — and allowed the subject to drop. 
 
 But it came about that two days afterwards 
 Kitty Malone as usual got her way, and sitting 
 on an outside car, with Lady Celbridge as her 
 companion, drove to the station on a sunny, 
 cloudless morning. After half an hour in the 
 train, she sprang out, with flushed cheeks and 
 
COLOUR-SERGEAXT 17 
 
 shining eyes, and walked with her friend to the 
 wharf. 
 
 Her glance fell on scores of soldiers in helmets 
 and serge tunics, many of them with laughing, 
 boyish faces, almost all trying to look as if they 
 had at last attained the one desire of their hearts, 
 and here and there on a woman with swollen 
 eyes and lips tightly shut, to prevent any 
 expression of emotion. She observed endless 
 bales of luggage littered on the stones, horses 
 about to be slung on board, careless and inte- 
 rested spectators getting in each other's way, 
 talking, advising, gesticulating. Captain Vincent 
 was already on the wharf, erect, self-satisfied, 
 and well-dressed as usual. He advanced towards 
 the two ladies. 
 
 'Well, Lady Celbridge, shall I go now and 
 find your young man for you ? ' 
 
 ' I wish you would ! Dear boy, perhaps they 
 would allow him to come to the hotel with me for 
 a little while, and have a talk ? He is my poor 
 sister's only son, and I have been like a mother 
 to him. Can I leave you here, dear Kitty? I 
 thought I would go with kind Captain Pelham 
 and find the boy, to save time. You have lots of 
 friends, I know, here. Yes, there are the Staceys 
 and the Egertons, I see ; stay with them if you 
 like.' 
 
 Miss Malone became dazzled by the glare of 
 the sun, and by her constant efforts to discern a 
 B 
 
i8 THE HEART OF THE 
 
 figure that was familiar to her among the red 
 tunics. She knew that when the men were 
 embarked, all would be over, and her last chance 
 gone. She strained her eyes till the tears started 
 into them. She found it very difficult to recog- 
 nise people in the helmets that came so low over 
 their foreheads. Suddenly, almost at her elbow 
 two sergeants passed by. The taller one, with 
 the smart, upright figure, was he at last, and she 
 knew that he looked at her with the same 
 lingering gaze that had attracted her before. 
 But his glance left a different impression on her 
 now. It seemed to imply reproach — was it 
 even something stronger, disdain, contempt? 
 Kitty Malone's cheeks grew pale as white roses 
 when the young man, without making a sign of 
 recognition, strode on towards the landing-place. 
 Ah ! he was a gentleman still, and he had never 
 been introduced to her, she thought. He would 
 not of course think it right to speak to her. 
 But nevertheless her heart tightened strangely 
 as she walked restlessly away to join her friends. 
 Soon Vincent was back again, and at her side. 
 She hardly heard his rather tedious explanations 
 concerning the great ship lying as if asleep in 
 the sun. 
 
 'Would you like to come on board, Kitty?' 
 Yes, she would. And, her heart still aching, 
 she followed her betrothed across the gangway. 
 Under the blazing rays she stood impassive, 
 
COLOUR-SERGEANT 19 
 
 while Vincent introduced her to officers and 
 others of his acquaintance, a half-smile flitting 
 over her lips, as her eyes still wandered anxiously 
 over the herd of scarlet figures. She saw that 
 Sergeant Rhodes was standing some forty feet 
 away, looking at her again. Kitty's cheeks 
 burnt hotly, and her knees shook. She glanced 
 at Captain Pelham's kind vacuous face, as with 
 extended forefinger he laid down the law to a 
 young veterinary surgeon. In a second she had 
 approached the sergeant, and was holding out 
 her little cold hand. He hesitated, raised his 
 own to his helmet, hesitated again, and took it 
 in his. 
 
 ' I have come to say good-bye,' said Kitty in 
 the shaking voice of a child who expects to be 
 punished. 
 
 'Ah!' 
 
 ' It was really to see you I came. I wanted 
 to — O ! it's so horrid and conventional to say, 
 wish you luck, but you know what I mean ! ' 
 
 His eyes were merely reckless to-day. They 
 had lost the softer look that had come into them 
 a few evenings ago for just an hour. 
 
 ' Thank you, Miss Malone. And / wish you 
 all joy in the future, too. For myself, if you 
 ever think of me enough to form a desire for me, 
 let it only be this, that I may never come home 
 or see you more.' 
 
 *0! What have I done?' Her voice was 
 
20 THE HEART OF THE 
 
 drowned as the soldiers around her burst into a 
 song. She started at the volume of sound. 
 
 Should auld acquaintance be forgot — 
 
 The familiar and pathetic words sung by these 
 full, boyish voices cut her to the heart. 
 
 For auld lang syne, my dear, 
 For auld lang syne . . . 
 
 And when she turned her head, Sergeant Rhodes 
 was gone. 
 
 Again, as the dusk was closing in, and Kitty 
 and Lady Celbridge hurried down to the wharf 
 once more, she saw him. But he was not look- 
 ing at her this time. He was talking to a 
 comrade, and laughing so loud, that she could 
 see his white teeth through the dim light 
 
 When the moon came out, and the clouds 
 moved slowly, like great black birds, over the 
 funnels and masts, she saw him yet once again. 
 The silver light made his helmet almost dazzling, 
 and his face strange and blanched. As the 
 great ship got slowly under way, the soldiers 
 took their caps and helmets off, and cheered as 
 they waved them. The pitiless moon smiled 
 down upon the bare heads and boyish features, 
 with the same callous stare with which she 
 would watch them lying paler still in the deserts 
 far away across the sea ; where instead of 
 the black clouds drifting to-night every moment 
 farther off, evil winged creatures would then 
 
COLOUR -SERGE A NT 21 
 
 draw closer and closer to faces upturned and 
 still. One young man, with gold stripes upon 
 his sleeve, suddenly pressed forward and leant 
 over the side of the ship, and amid the noise of 
 deafening cheers and stifled sobs upon the shore, 
 his eyes flashed a last message to a woman who 
 watched him go, a message that could never 
 have been uttered in words, even had the rushing 
 seas not rolled between them. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Miss Kitty's enemies — but, to do her justice, 
 there were not many of these — acknowledged 
 that she had wonderfully improved since the 
 departure of Captain Pelham for Egypt. Lord 
 and Lady Ryde, her future parents-in-law, wrote 
 almost enthusiastically about her to other mem- 
 bers of their family. Lord Ryde, whose hobbies 
 were his own health and the results upon it of 
 various patent medicines, thought her kindly and 
 sympathetic. Lady Ryde had joined a strange 
 sect, whose members tried to persuade her that 
 her gout existed only in her own imagination, 
 so with a bandaged foot, and three chalk-stones 
 on one hand she sat meditating for hours, with 
 Kitty at her side, urging the latter to support 
 her in her strange belief; and her future daughter- 
 
22 THE HEART OF THE 
 
 in-law was always patient, and usually agreed 
 with her to avoid argument. 
 
 Kitty's father, who had lived in London for 
 years, and lost almost every characteristic of the 
 race from which he had sprung, excepting a 
 tendency to the display of outward emotion, had 
 always considered his daughter faultless. But 
 even he was sensible of her increased gentleness 
 of manner, her more fully developed powers of 
 sympathy, her patient consideration towards the 
 shortcomings of others. She was very sad and 
 silent sometimes, but that was of course only to 
 be expected during Vincent's absence. Mr 
 Malone was sincerely rejoiced to see how roman- 
 tically in love she was with her future husband. 
 
 Kitty and her father left London towards the 
 end of July, and installed themselves for a few 
 months in a little river-side house with a rose- 
 garden on one side and a tumble-down verandah 
 on the other. She never forgot the expression 
 that her father's face wore one evening after the 
 late newspapers had arrived. She came in to 
 find him standing by an open window, his hand 
 shaking so that the sheets crackled, the tears 
 running down his cheeks and the strangest 
 triumphant smile lighting up his eyes. 
 
 He moved a few steps towards her, trembling 
 still. 
 
 'Well, you're to marry a hero, Kitty, my 
 darling! God bless him! See here! He 
 
COLOUR-SERGEANT 23 
 
 handed the crumpled newspaper to his child, 
 and, sitting down, buried his head in his hands. 
 
 Her face grew stiff and white as she read an 
 enthusiastic account of the heroic conduct of a 
 Staff-officer, Captain the Hon. Vincent Pelham, 
 who, although himself wounded, had carried 
 away in his arms a sergeant who had been more 
 severely hit. The paragraph went on to say 
 that this gallant action had been accomplished 
 under a heavy fire, and that there was but little 
 doubt that Captain Pelham would be recom- 
 mended for the Victoria Cross which he had so 
 thoroughly deserved. 
 
 The following morning ' The Times ' brought 
 more news to the river-side cottage — fuller 
 details of the episode which was of so thrilling 
 an interest to its occupants — and this time the 
 name of the sergeant who had been dangerously 
 wounded, and only saved from death by the 
 valour of her lover, met Miss Malone's eyes. 
 She had known by some strange instinct what it 
 would be, and that evening, when she sat by her 
 open window inhaling the perfume of a thousand 
 roses, and listening to the gentle lapping of the 
 water against the banks, she wrung her hands 
 tightly together, and said, half aloud : 
 
 ' Oh, why is one man to have all, and the other 
 nothing — nothing till he dies ! O God ! Why 
 may not I go to him, and tell him that whatever 
 he is, whatever he has done — I care for him 
 
24 THE HEART OF THE 
 
 more than life itself! But he can never know, 
 never know 1 * 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 In the early spring Captain and Mrs Vincent 
 Pelham spent their honeymoon in a charming 
 gabled house looking over wide downs and noble 
 white cliffs in the Isle of Wight. This property 
 belonged to an uncle of the bridegroom, and 
 would in time, with many another good thing, 
 become Vincent's own. The fresh breeze from 
 the chalk slopes brought new roses to Kitty's 
 cheeks, and they had been a little pale for some 
 months past. People noted with admiration 
 how much affected she had been at the time 
 of her husband's illness, how proud she was of 
 his success. And, without doubt, she did strive 
 to make him happy. She struggled to overcome 
 the phases of melancholy to which she was 
 sometimes subject, to take an interest in many 
 matters, dull and futile as they seemed to her, 
 because they made up part of his life. And 
 Vincent, if at times in his inmost heart he was a 
 little mortified at her apparent indifference to 
 the extreme good fortune that was hers, could 
 not but acknowledge that she was sweeter and 
 gentler than when he had first won her, and that 
 
COLOUR-SERGEANT 25 
 
 she had for ever lost the sh'ght tinge of flippancy 
 that had sometimes annoyed him against his 
 will. The pair had come into the garden one 
 sunny evening after a long walk round a white 
 precipice standing stern and gigantic out of 
 a slate-coloured sea. Mr. Malone had arrived 
 the day before to pay a visit to his children, and 
 was in a sentimental and happy condition. He 
 sat in a low chair, and smilingly awaited them 
 as they came sauntering over the downs, their 
 figures silhouetted against the purple of the 
 western sky. At Mr. Malone's feet and all 
 around him were large flower-beds of dazzling 
 forget-me-nots, brighter than the distant sea, 
 and the faint azure patches still lingering above 
 to eastward. Kitty came up to her father, and, 
 throwing one slender arm about his neck, kissed 
 him lovingly. 
 
 ' It is very nice to have you with us, papa 
 dear.' 
 
 * And nicer still for me to be with my children. 
 My little girl and her hero. Do you know, 
 Vincent, dear boy, you have never shown 
 me that little cross of yours, yet! Think of 
 that ! ' 
 
 Captain Pclham began making holes in the 
 gravel with his walking-stick. He was more 
 refined in feeling than his father-in-law, and he 
 had an almost morbid dislike to hearing allusions 
 to his past acts of daring, especially when 
 
26 THE HEART OF THE 
 
 heralded by an exasperating smile of triumph 
 from Mr. Malone. The latter would have been 
 unable to appreciate such fine gradations of 
 sentiment. He, for his part, delighted in re- 
 curring again and again to the war and its 
 episodes, and in pestering Vincent with irrelevant 
 questions. After tea had been drunk out of 
 doors, the good old man wandered off to his 
 favourite topic. 
 
 * And what has happened now, Vincent, my 
 dear boy, to the sergeant, poor fellow, whose life 
 you were so nobly the means of saving ? ' 
 
 Kitty looked away at the glimmering white 
 cliffs and the expanse of placid sea. 
 
 * Oh, poor fellow, he's at Netley still ; just 
 across the water over there. I 'm afraid he's 
 done for. It's hard luck, because he's a gentle- 
 man, and might have got a commission one of 
 these days.' 
 
 There was a short silence; then a blackbird 
 chirped loudly and flew over the lawn into the 
 bushes, while the crescent moon came slowly 
 into view over the cliffs. Kitty spoke in a hard, 
 dry voice. 
 
 'Couldn't we go, Vincent, one day over to 
 Netley, and see that poor man ? ' 
 
 * My dear child, what earthly use would it be ? 
 I dzd see him once or twice, you know. And 
 he's thoroughly well looked after. You certainly 
 have a morbid taste for gloomy things/ 
 
COLOUR-SERGEANT 27 
 
 * But it might be kind ; don't you think so, 
 papa? I — I should so like to take him some 
 flowers.' 
 
 'Well, my dear, surely Vincent knows best 
 It would upset you, no doubt, to see all those 
 poor fellows, sick and wounded.' 
 
 The shadows crept silently over the garden, 
 while the stars stole out over the ghostly cliffs, 
 glimmering far away across the downs. Mr. 
 Malone lighted his pipe, and Vincent began 
 cheerfully to hum a few bars of an old song — 
 
 * When he who adores thee has left but the name 
 Of his fault and his sorrows behind.' 
 
 He sang more than a little out of tune, and 
 tapped the wooden bench cheerfully with his 
 stick. And Kitty, with tearless eyes, and a 
 drawn look about her mouth, listened as if in a 
 dream. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 The soldier at the end of the ward had not 
 spoken for twenty-four hours. 
 
 * Sinking fast,' snid the doctor to a Sister, who 
 wore a spotless white apron and scarlet cape 
 over her shoulders, and who had just left the 
 bedside. 
 
 * I fear so.' Sister MacDonald's sweet face 
 
28 THE HEART OF THE 
 
 grew sad, and she sighed. She had felt very 
 sorry for Colour-Sergeant Rhodes, and had 
 nursed him tenderly during many dreary 
 months of pain and discomfort. But she grieved 
 less now that the indescribable blue shade was 
 spreading at last over his face — that his eyes 
 were shut, and the perspiration lying cold on 
 his forehead. He was so lonely, and it was 
 better that he should go, thought Sister 
 MacDonald. Other men had friends to come 
 and sit beside them — old and young women 
 with tender and tearful eyes, and faithful hands 
 to grasp theirs ; but no one ever came to see 
 Colour-Sergeant Rhodes. 
 
 When the post arrived that evening, the 
 Sister found, rather to her surprise, that there 
 was one letter at last for her favourite sergeant. 
 She took it up to his bedside. He was breath- 
 ing heavily, and his hand, when she touched it, 
 was very clammy and cold. 
 
 * A letter for you,' she said in a low voice. 
 
 He Hfted his eyelids a little, but made no 
 other movement. 
 
 'Shall I open the cover and give you the 
 letter?' 
 
 His lips moved, and she tore open the flap. 
 It contained no writing after all — not a word of 
 greeting or good-bye — only a bunch of forget- 
 me-nots, so fresh and blue that they must have 
 been very lately gathered. A pair of dark eyes 
 
COLOUR-SERGEANT 29 
 
 opened wide, and were fixed earnestly upon the 
 Sister. The soldier raised his cold fingers, and 
 she put the little blue knot of flowers within 
 them ; and with quivering lips looked away 
 from the dying man. He tried to hide the 
 nosegay in the breast of his crumpled shirt. 
 But his arm dropped upon the coverlet. 
 
 And when the last low sunrays smote the 
 blank wall in front of Sergeant Rhodes' bed, he 
 had passed where time and space exist not, and 
 memory is, perhaps, by God's mercy, no longer 
 the twin-sister of pain. 
 
BAD AND WORTHLESS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 A GALE was blowing from the north-west. It 
 lashed a leaden sea into foam-crests, whistled 
 under doors, rattled windows, and threatened 
 lamp-posts and chimney-pots with destruction. 
 It was a disconcerting wind to the few pedes- 
 trians who had braved it, and who were now 
 mostly returning in a battered condition to their 
 firesides. Among these were General Groser, 
 and even he, stalwart and heavy as he was, 
 found some difficulty in preserving his usually 
 erect and pompous attitude as he walked. The 
 gusts blew small fragments of ice off the asphalt 
 into his eyes, — obliged him to hold on tightly to 
 his hat, and ruffled his temper even more than 
 his bristly white hair. The gale buffeted the 
 little birds too, and they flew as if they were 
 wounded. It certainly promised to be a wild 
 night. Towards the sea, the road shone wet 
 and white under a lurid dying sun. Over the 
 grim-looking watery expanse, on which the 
 outlines of a huge man-of-war were grayly de- 
 
BAD AND WORTHLESS 31 
 
 fined, the sky was entirely black, with an under 
 bar of orange, changing into lemon-colour. The 
 distant island shores seemed dim and vague, as 
 did the floating rack above them. General 
 Groser pulled up his coat-collar and quickened 
 his steps. 
 
 ' We shall hear of disasters to-morrow/ he 
 said aloud, looking at the ominous sea. Then 
 he turned off into a side road where the lights 
 of his substantial house glimmered a cheerful 
 welcome. He found Mrs. Groser in the drawing- 
 room, working at woollen comforters destined 
 for a bazaar for ' waifs and strays.' She was a 
 fat, colourless woman, whose red hair was begin- 
 ning to turn gray. Her double chin rested on a 
 large bow of magenta silk, and she wore easy 
 
 * spring-side ' shoes. 
 
 ' W^hat an awful evening, George ! ' she said 
 hardly looking up at him, intent on her crochet. 
 The General coughed, stamped his feet, walked 
 to the fire, whistled and blew on his cold fineers. 
 
 • There's a man outside,' pursued Mrs. Groser, 
 
 * in the back yard, waiting to see you. Madge 
 has been talking to him, but you forbade her to 
 give to beggars. He says he has been a soldier, 
 and was in Burmah, and I don't know what 
 besides.' 
 
 * There's simply no end to the scoundrels who 
 come to my back-door.' said the General, gruffly. 
 
 * I 'vc half a mind to give this one in charge to 
 
32 BAD AND WORTHLESS 
 
 the police. But the worst of the poHce in this 
 particular place is that you never by any chance 
 see them when you want them. Where's the 
 man ? I '11 just have a cup of hot tea, and then 
 I'll go and speak to him, and send him about 
 his business.' 
 
 The door opened to admit a maid of brow- 
 beaten aspect, bearing a smoking tray. The 
 General ate a muffin and a half and drank two 
 cups of tea. Just as he had finished, his niece 
 Madge came in. She was an ugly girl, with a 
 sweet and rather sad face. 
 
 * Uncle George ! ' she said, timidly. 
 ' Yes, what is it ? ' 
 
 ' Might I take a cup of tea to the poor man 
 standing now in the yard ? He looks so dread- 
 fully thin and cold. I — I thought as it was all 
 ready and hot, it wouldn't be any trouble ; but if 
 you don't like ' 
 
 The General looked furious. 
 
 * Tea be d — d ! ' he said. 
 
 * My dear George ! ' said Mrs. Groser, with her 
 mouth full of bread and butter. 
 
 ' You know my views, Madge ! ' pursued her 
 uncle, still fiercely. * I will not — be quiet, my dear 
 Jane — I will no^ have these infernal men pester- 
 ing me at the door of my house.' He seemed 
 to swell as he spoke. 'The workhouse is the 
 proper place for that sort of riff-raff. You know 
 what your Uncle David told you the other day ! ' 
 
BAD AND WORTHLESS 
 
 00 
 
 Madge's mouth twitched. * The workhouse is 
 a long way from here/ she said, a Httle bitterly. 
 'The man looks quite starved and worn out 
 already. I wish you would let me, just for OTice^ 
 give him my share of tea ? ' 
 
 * Hold your tongue ! ' said the General. ' I 
 don't want to listen either to your advice, or 
 your absurd wishes, my dear girl. Where's this 
 fellow ? I'll have a word with him ! ' 
 
 A shrunken figure was leaning up against the 
 wall, near the back door ; that of a rather under- 
 sized man, with a narrow chest and a hollow, 
 white face. 
 
 ' And what brings you here ? ' asked the 
 General, rather sarcastically. ' If you've been a 
 soldier, stand to attention, if you please ! ' 
 
 The man pulled himself together, and complied 
 with the order. 
 
 ' If you, sir, could just give me a copper, or a 
 cup of tea, I 'd be very grateful to you — I 've not 
 tasted a bit of breakfast or dinner.' 
 
 ' I daresay ! Where are your papers ? Let's 
 see what sort of character you bore when you 
 were in the army ! ' 
 
 * Beg pardon, sir, I lost my papers three years 
 since. But I can have a good character, sir, 
 from them as knows me.' 
 
 The man spoke in a tired, apathetic voice, 
 almost as if he were indifferent to the result of 
 
 his words, 
 
 c 
 
34 BAD AND WORTHLESS 
 
 * Ah ! that's what I thought ! Lost your 
 papers, have you ? Look here — nobody gets a 
 farthing or a crust from me if he can't give a 
 better account of himself than that. You' — 
 and the General here became almost eloquent — 
 ' you, and others like }'ou, are the men who bring 
 disgrace on Her Majesty's uniform. You're a 
 curse to the noble British army. You loaf about 
 the country, not even trying to get employment 
 — getting drunk with any chance copper you 
 may have, and pestering respectable people. 
 Now be off!' 
 
 And General Groser pointed with a fat fore- 
 finger to the yard door. Madge looked compas- 
 sionately at the man, although his aspect cer- 
 tainly was not prepossessing. His hair was 
 suspiciously short, his face haggard, with a 
 stubbly moustache ; his eyes vacant, his whole 
 bearing mean and despicable enough. But she 
 was very sorry for him : all the more so as she, 
 a poor relation whom the Grosers had adopted, 
 did not dare to disobey them by giving him a 
 penny. The man limped away through the 
 green door, which slammed in the wind, out 
 into the almost deserted road. For a minute he 
 clung to the railing, for he felt dizzy and weak, 
 and his feet were sore. Then he went slowly on. 
 
 General Groser, his face expressing the grati- 
 fied consciousness of duty performed, returned 
 to his drawing-room. 
 
BAD AND WORTHLESS 35 
 
 * You may be certain/ he said, rubbing his 
 hands, ' my dear Madge, in spite of all your foolish 
 would-be philanthropy, that that fellow's a real 
 scamp ! Discharged, I make no doubt, as a " bad 
 and worthless character." And his physique! I 
 ask you ! Look what the army's coming to ! Not 
 thirty-two inches round the chest — a wretched, 
 stooping, weak, deplorable object ! ' 
 
 The General threw his shoulders proudly back. 
 He himself measured forty-one round the chest, 
 and considerably more lower down. On one 
 point, at least, he had been right in his conjec- 
 tures. The character of the late Private O'Clery, 
 who was a Londoner in spite of his Irish name, 
 would not have borne minute inspection. He 
 had undoubtedly given a considerable amount of 
 trouble during his brief military career. 
 
 He had been frequently absent without leave, 
 many times insubordinate and drunken. He 
 had struck the Colour-Sergeant of his company 
 in the face, for which offence he had been given 
 one year's imprisonment with hard labour, and 
 had been discharged from the service, as a * bad 
 and worthless character.' 
 
 But as he once remarked to a chaplain, who 
 had vainly tried to influence him for good. ' Wot 
 chance 'ave I ever 'ad ? ' An illegitimate child, 
 cruelly treated by a drunken mother, brought up 
 in a slum, and breathing a poisonous atmosphere 
 of vice and degradation. A half-starved boy, 
 
36 BAD AND WORTHLESS 
 
 who had learnt to drink and swear at the age 
 when happier children are still under the care of 
 nurses and tutors. A man with scarcely any 
 education, no friends, no relations, no object in 
 life. And now he was merely a beggar, footsore, 
 and hungry, tramping along in the snow and the 
 wild wind. Sometimes he had regretted just a 
 little his complete failure to perform his duties 
 as a soldier — that was when he recalled the 
 warmth of the barrack-room, the hot dinners, the 
 cheerful public-houses, the jests and laughter of 
 his comrades. And it all seemed to him such 
 years ago ; though he was still a young man, 
 scarcely thirty yet. 
 
 The gale rose higher and higher, and a few 
 snowflakes fell. The air was so cold that O'Clery 
 felt as if a knife were being scraped over his face, 
 peeling off the skin. His hands were stiff, and 
 he could hardly keep his battered hat on his 
 head. He looked round to see if any one still 
 lingered out of doors in this weather. Yes, there 
 was an oldish lady with a long veil, carrying a 
 basket, and hurrying down a side road. O'Clery 
 followed her, and she shrank away from him, 
 frightened at his haggard face. Then two young 
 men, well dressed, with fur collars to their coats 
 and cigars in their mouths, came along, walking 
 very quickly. They belonged to a class of 
 society which does not think it incumbent upon 
 its members to respond to the remark of an 
 
BAD AND WORTHLESS Z7 
 
 unknown and inferior being, so they brushed 
 silently past him, with their heads very much in 
 the air. O'Clery rested for a few minutes by the 
 door of a villa. He heard snatches of laughter, 
 and bright young voices on the doorstep ; and 
 presently two girls, both young and pretty, came 
 running down the path. 
 
 The ex-soldier came forward. 
 
 * Can you kindly oblige me with a copper, 
 miss ? I am almost starving.' 
 
 * I never give to tramps ! ' said the elder girl, 
 looking at him suspiciously. Then O'Clery 
 stared at them, and said something more coarse 
 than flattering. His hollow, unmirthful laughter 
 rang out through the cold air after their retreating 
 footsteps. And he staggered wearily on again. 
 Coming along the pavement he saw two more 
 people, a man, neatly, but shabbily dressed, and 
 a thin woman, pushing a perambulator. O'Clery 
 stopped them. The woman looked sadly at his 
 forlorn aspect. 
 
 ' Pore fellow ! ' she said. And then she began 
 fumbling in her pocket. She pulled out an 
 orange, a bunch of keys, some sticking plaster, a 
 photograph of a hideous baby, an enormous red 
 handkerchief, and at last a halfpenny. 
 
 ' That's all I 've got with me ! ' she said. ' It's 
 a bitter night for you to be tramping about. 
 Where are you going to ? ' 
 
 * Gor-d knows ! ' said O'Clery, with a short 
 
38 BAD AND WORTHLESS 
 
 •bitter laugh. And pocketing the coin, he pur- 
 sued his way towards an outlying village. 
 Arrived there, completely exhausted, he entered 
 the public-house, spent his halfpenny in gin, and 
 sat down awhile to rest. The landlord spoke to 
 him. 
 
 * If you've been a soldier,' said he, ' I'd go up 
 to the Fort. It ain't above three mile from 
 here. Praps the hawficers there might give 
 you somethink.' 
 
 O'Clery thought the suggestion a hopeless one, 
 but then the whole of his existence was hopeless. 
 So he determined to walk up the hill to the Fort, 
 and to reach it before nightfall. As he passed 
 down the almost deserted village street, he met 
 an old woman and some children hurrying home, 
 and almost mechanically, he began to relate his 
 misfortunes to them. 
 
 ' Dear, dear ! ' said the old lady. * That is a 
 bad job ! Nowhere to go to ! And I 've got a 
 grandson in Burmah, a soldier, too, poor dear 
 boy. Now young man, here's threepence for 
 you — that's for Willie's sake. And mind you 
 don't go for to spend it in beer ! ' 
 
 * No fear. Granny,' laughed O'Clery. 
 
 At the end of the village was a smaller and 
 shabbier public-house. He staggered in through 
 its swing door, and asked for three pennyworth 
 of whisky. That would enable him, he thought, 
 rather confusedly, to reach the Fort. 
 
HAD AND WORTHLESS 39 
 
 * Lor ! wot a wind ! ' said the publican's wife, 
 as a sudden gust rattled the glasses on the 
 counter, and lifted the coloured prints from the 
 wall. ' It's snowing fast, too,' she said, going to 
 the window and looking out through the steam- 
 ing panes. 
 
 O'Clery began to feel much more cheerful and 
 stronger, and he did not notice the soreness of 
 his feet so much. He only thought, philosophi- 
 cally, that if he got a little more money he would 
 buy some boots that were not so hard and stiff 
 as his present ones. The landlord wished him 
 good-night, and he began his progress up the 
 hill. He was surprised to see how fast it was 
 snowing already. Some of the flakes were nearly 
 as big as the palm of his hand. The wind 
 was quite terrible. It came dashing down 
 from the chalk hills in a mad rush, whirling 
 the snow into his eyes, and whistling round his 
 head with a loud and dreary music. He felt 
 hopelessly tired, and the road grew every 
 moment steeper. And always this plaintive 
 rushing sound swelled higher and wilder. A 
 solitary lamp-post groaned and shook like a 
 figure of a man writhing in pain. Soon the air 
 seemed all white, made up of nothing but huge 
 feathers, drifting, flying, and whirling. Suddenly, 
 from the side of the road, came another noise — 
 unmistakably a human being weeping. O'Clery 
 stopped to listen. It grew louder, and he went 
 
40 BAD AND WORTHLESS 
 
 towards it Then his foot stumbled against 
 something and he fell forward. 
 
 ' S'elp me ! ' he cried. ' It's a kid ! ' 
 
 A very small child, with a mop of yellow hair, 
 had crept under the poor shelter given by a tall 
 heap of stones. His clothes were already white 
 with snow, and his little hands purple. Over his 
 sailor hat the wet dropped upon his curls. He 
 was sobbing bitterly. 
 
 'What's the matter, Johnny?' said O'Clery, 
 kneeling down beside the forlorn little figure. 
 But the child only cried louder. 
 
 ' Oh come, shut up now ! Lost yer mammy, 
 'ave yer ? ' 
 
 The child put his fragile arm round O'Clery's 
 neck and drew closer to him. 
 
 'Where's mamma gone? Lost yer way, is 
 that it?' 
 
 The child pointed vaguely down the hill. He 
 was scarcely more than two years old ; too 
 young to make himself clearly understood. The 
 darkness was coming on, not gradually, but as it 
 were by leaps and bounds. Night itself was 
 closing in, and ever the wicked wind blew more 
 fiercely, drifting the snow in pure smooth heaps 
 against the hedgerows. 
 
 ' I '11 tell you wot it is, Johnny, yer must come 
 along with me. Hold on ; put yer arms round 
 my neck — so. There yer are ! ' 
 
 And O'Clery began to ascend the hill again ; 
 
BAD AND WORTHLESS 41 
 
 very slowly and painfully this time, owing to his 
 new burden. He was more than ever bent upon 
 reaching the Fort before it should have become 
 quite pitch-dark. He had been there once 
 before, years ago, in the days when he too wore 
 a uniform, and he remembered a great archway. 
 He and the child would take shelter under that, 
 perhaps. No one could drive a dog away on 
 such a night. The child's yellow head was 
 beginning to shake up and down over O'Clery's 
 shoulder. He was fast asleep, and like the man 
 who carried him, very numb and weary. 
 
 ' Damn this hold Fort ! ' said the soldier. 
 
 * We don't seem to get no nearer. By .' He 
 
 had caught his foot in something, a large stone 
 probably, and uttering a variety of expletives it 
 were better not to record, he fell heavily down, 
 sinking into the snow. The child woke up and 
 screamed. 
 
 ' Stop that row ! ' said O'Clery, angrily, for he 
 was conscious of a sharp pain in his foot and 
 ankle. He struggled to rise, but vainly. And 
 the little boy began to whimper and moan 
 plaintively. Despairingly, O'Clery made one 
 more effort, unavailing, like the last. 
 
 'The blasted bone must 'ave got broke,' he 
 said. Then he crawled on his knees, still care- 
 fully holding the child. But he was beginning 
 to feel a deathly sickness stealing over him. It 
 was true that he had not tasted a mouthful of 
 
42 BAD AND WORTHLESS 
 
 solid food for many hours ; in fact, for days past 
 his poor shrunken body had been quite insuffi- 
 ciently nourished. His heart sank within him. 
 He knew that he could never reach the Fort 
 that night, and that not a soul would be out in 
 this cruel weather. He shouted, but his voice 
 sounded strange and weak. Then, from a long 
 way off a familiar sound fell on his ear. A 
 bugle. It was the call of the ' First Post.' 
 
 ' It's hard luck for the kid,' murmured 
 
 O'Clery. He sat down now in the snow, the 
 pain in his foot increasing till it became almost 
 agony. The child moved his arm, and said 
 something that sounded like ' To — de : 'ands 
 'urt!' 
 
 * I 'spect yer are cold, Johnny. Give us yer 
 'ands and I '11 rub 'em up a bit.' And the ex- 
 soldier tried to chafe the small icy fingers out of 
 their state of numbness. The moments seemed 
 to drag very slowly by. And the snow was 
 certainly getting thicker . . . and higher. . . . 
 Far off, over the dreary white landscape came 
 the echo of another bugle at last. A longer call. 
 The * Last Post' And the child was now sound 
 asleep. Then a really brilliant thought struck 
 the fuddled brain of O'Clery. With stiff fingers 
 he loosened the little boy's grasp, and laid him 
 down for a moment. After that he took off his 
 tattered coat and waistcoat, and carefully wrapped 
 them round the child. They completely enveloped 
 
BAD AND WORTHLESS 43 
 
 his tiny figure. Then, with a still greater effort, 
 for his foot was beginning to swell, O'Clery drew 
 off his ragged boots and stockings. His upper 
 garments had been filthy enough, but they were 
 clean when compared with his patched hose. 
 Mrs. Groser and her lady friends would have 
 withdrawn in horror from any contact with 
 garments in such a condition. But of this the 
 child knew nothing. And O'Clery drew the 
 dirty stockings right over his little shoes and 
 legs. Then he put on his own boots again. 
 The boy nestled closer into his arms, unknowing 
 now that the world was dark and cruelly cold. 
 Once again a bugle sounded. This time it was 
 * Lights out.' 
 
 And the ex-soldier's head dropped lower and 
 lower, till it rested motionless on his pillow of 
 snow. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The dawn, spreading a pure pink glow over the 
 landscape, had not long broken when two figures, 
 those of a man and a woman, came up the hill, 
 their feet leaving large patches upon the un- 
 trodden white surface. They looked anxiously 
 and inquiringly from side to side. 
 
 "E must have come all the way up from the 
 village, bless 'is 'cart,' said the woman. 
 
44 BAD AND WORTHLESS 
 
 * Well, 'e won't be alive if 'e come much more 
 fur than this/ answered the man, calmly. 
 
 Both speakers obviously belonged to the 
 vagrant class, who tramp from hamlet to hamlet, 
 mending kettles and pans, and living from hand 
 to mouth as they go. The woman had a not 
 unkindly face, and wore a crape hat lurching 
 over to one side. Both she and the man had 
 been dead drunk the evening before, and had 
 not discovered that they had left the child 
 behind until they were completely incapable of 
 going to seek him. 
 
 Suddenly Mr. Higgs — such was the travelling 
 tinker's name — stopped dead short, uttering a 
 succession of oaths. After which he shouted, 
 
 * See 'ere, Eliza ! ' 
 
 The lady who, temporarily at least, bore the 
 title of Mrs. Higgs, came up panting, very red in 
 the face. 
 
 * See 'ere ! ' cried Mr. Higgs, again. 
 
 The snow had drifted into a high, spotless 
 hillock against a five-barred gate and a tall 
 hedgerow. Below the ridge was seen the re- 
 cumbent figure of a man, or, to be more exact, 
 a portion of such a figure, embedded in snow. 
 Lying right across the man's body was what 
 appeared to be a bundle of rags and motley 
 garments, surmounted by a bush of golden hair. 
 
 * That's 'im, by — !' exclaimed Mrs. Higgs. 
 
 * My beauty ! 'ere's mamma ! ' 
 
BAD AND WORTHLESS 45 
 
 In a moment she was kneeling beside the 
 child, who was either asleep or insensible. 
 
 ' Eliza ! ' said the man, in a voice which showed 
 him to be not entirely unmoved. ' Don't yer go 
 on a-hollering and a-bellering ! It don't foller, 
 old girl, that 'e's 'opped the twig.' 
 
 And he took up the child and undid the 
 wrappings — filthy, ragged garments — that en- 
 veloped him. 
 
 ' I see 'im move ! ' said Mr. Higgs, trium- 
 phantly. ' 'E winked 'is hy ! We'll take 'im to 
 the pub at once, Eliza, and there ain't any 
 reason, as I can see, why these ere togs shouldn't 
 go with 'im. The late owner '11 never want them 
 no more.' And he glanced at the perfectly rigid 
 figure that lay in the snow. 
 
 'Pore chap, Ue'll not move again, or want 
 clothes, that's a sure thing,' said Eliza. And 
 she scraped away the snow and laid her red 
 hand on the motionless heart of that bad and 
 worthless character, the late Private O'Clery. 
 
 'Well, Billy, my man,' said Mr. Higgs, *so 
 we've found yer again. And a precious 'unt 
 we've 'ad of it. And yer shall keep yer new 
 trooso ! ' he added, with a grim laugh. 
 
 The yellow-haired boy opened his eyes, cried, 
 smiled, and rubbed his face with his little blue 
 fingers. 
 
 ' 'E shall have a drop of something warm 
 when we get to the next pub,' said Eliza, 
 
46 BAD AND WORTHLESS 
 
 encouragingly. And the tramps walked on, 
 more quickly this time, just turning back to 
 glance again at the figure lying so still by the 
 hedge. 
 
 A little* later on, when the village began to 
 wake into life, there was bustle and stir in the 
 Fort abo/e on the hill. Privates Varley and 
 Maddox were missing, absent all night without 
 leave. 
 
 The Adjutant looked grave. 
 
 * It's awful weather for men to have been out,* 
 he said. ' Especially when they've lately come 
 from such a hot climate as Mandalay.' 
 
 The sun rose higher, melting some of the 
 snow. Children, warmly wrapped up, got ready 
 for school. And a fatigue-party, consisting of a 
 corporal and six men, came with smart steps 
 past the hedgerow and the gate where O'Clery's 
 body lay. 
 
 * Hold hard there ! ' said the corporal, sharply. 
 The soldiers advanced towards the recumbent 
 
 figure. Its shabby boots — the man wore no 
 stockings — stuck out aimlessly. His head was 
 thrown backwards, displaying a scraggy neck, 
 rising out of a torn and dirty shirt. He wore 
 neither coat nor waistcoat. His stiff hands, 
 which looked quite yellow in the pure snow, 
 were tightly clenched. The corporal looked at 
 him with mingled compassion and disapproval. 
 He was a very smart, clean, respectable man 
 
BAD AND WORTHLESS 47 
 
 a credit to his regiment, but a little severe in his 
 judgments. 
 
 ' The man's been and pawned his clothes for 
 drink. That's clear ! ' said he, with decision. 
 ' And that's what many people — soldiers, too, 
 I'm sorry to say — come to. Lift him up, 
 Barnes, and see if anything can be done for 
 him ! ' 
 
 ' He's quite dead, corporal,' said Private 
 Barnes, looking rather scared. ' He's been a 
 soldier, too,' he added to one of his comrades. 
 ' See the tattooing up his arm.' 
 
 ' A soldier, and pawned his last clothes for 
 drink ! ' repeated the corporal, decisively. ' That 
 sort of man's a disgrace. But he's been the 
 sufferer, there's no doubt of that' 
 
 Then they lifted the ghastly body, and bore it 
 to the police-station. 
 
 That morning the bodies of Privates Varley 
 and Maddox were also found in their snow 
 graves — victims of the bitter night just passed. 
 And, as they, poor fellows, deserved, they were 
 buried surrounded by comrades, and the band 
 played a grand funeral march, which in its 
 earlier chords seems to tell of the throbbing of 
 pain and the voices of anguish, and in its close 
 to peal forth a rapture of triumphant joy. On 
 the following Sunday the chaplain preached, 
 in touching accents, of the unforeseen death 
 of these two gallant soldiers, and tears not 
 
48 BAD AND WORTHLESS 
 
 a few were shed for them in their far-away 
 homes. 
 
 But no one came to O'Clery's funeral, and not 
 a soul, excepting the gravedigger, remembered 
 the place where his half-starved body was laid. 
 
 * * * * •:Jf- 
 
 It was two days after the storm. There were 
 still a few scarlet geraniums left in General 
 Groser's front garden, dilapidated little blossoms, 
 but shining crimson above thin layers of snow. 
 Madge stood on the lower balcony feeding the 
 birds that looked abnormally large and black 
 against a white background. She came into the 
 dining-room just as the General and Mrs. 
 Groser, and the brother of the latter, had taken 
 their places at the table. The clergyman said 
 grace, in which he dwelt, at some length, on the 
 imperative duty of administering to the wants 
 of the poorer brethren. Then he helped himself 
 to a large and succulent mutton-chop. He wore 
 a rather frayed white tie and straggling whiskers. 
 It was his custom to walk up occasionally from 
 his vicarage to breakfast with his brother, saying 
 that early rising, and a brisk walk before 
 food, were good preventives of self indulgence. 
 Madge, for her part, wondered if the real induce- 
 ment was the superior quality of the cooking to 
 be found at the General's table, and then blamed 
 herself for judging uncharitably. 
 
 On this particular morning, the host was in a 
 
BAD AND WORTHLESS 49 
 
 very conversational mood. Spreading out a 
 damp copy of the daily paper, he read aloud 
 several extracts, interspersed with a running 
 commentary of platitudes and moral sentiments. 
 
 ' Dear, dear, a severe wreck on the Yorkshire 
 coast ! Shocking, David, is it not, to think of 
 all those poor creatures hurled into eternity at a 
 moment's notice ! ' 
 
 * Yes, and doubtless many totally unprepared 
 to go ! ' remarked Mrs. Groser, placidly, spearing 
 a sausage with her fork. 
 
 ' Ah ! truly a terrible thought ! ' remarked the 
 Rev. David with his mouth full. ' Our naval 
 and military men lead, I fear, not unfrequently 
 sadly reckless and immoral lives.' 
 
 ' But they have so often such good hearts, and 
 people do all they can to put temptations in 
 their way ! ' Madge said, speaking very quickly 
 and shyly. 
 
 The Rev. David looked at her with pity and 
 disapproval. He mentally divided the world 
 with a hard equatorial line into two hemispheres, 
 one thickly populated with an abundance of 
 goats, the other sparsely, containing but a few 
 sheep. He was not yet quite decided in mind 
 to which section Madge belonged. He feared 
 that it might be the former, but as he rather 
 disliked her, his uncertainty predominated over 
 his grief at the possibility. 
 
 *Ha!' said the General, spreading out his 
 D 
 
50 BAD AND WORTHLESS 
 
 newspaper, and tapping it. * Ha ! How right 
 I was, if this is the same fellow ! ' He read 
 aloud — * Among other casualties resulting from 
 the severe snowstorm, besides the many dis- 
 astrous ones already related, we may record the 
 discovery by some soldiers from Fort . . . , oi 
 the dead body of a man, presumably formerly in 
 the army, which was found embedded in the 
 drifts, not a mile from the above-mentioned fort. 
 Life had been extinct some hours, and it is 
 supposed that the unfortunate deceased had 
 pawned most of his garments for drink, 
 as he was found in a semi-nude condition. 
 He had doubtless fallen down in a heavy stupor, 
 owing to the influence of alcohol, and met his 
 death in the melancholy manner described.' 
 
 * I've a presentiment,' continued the General, 
 triumphantly, 'that this will prove to be the 
 same scoundrel who came to my back door! 
 For he took the road leading up towards the 
 Fort, you remember? Pawned his clothes for 
 drink ! What a deplorable and disgusting end!' 
 
 * But if ,' began Madge. 
 
 *My dear,' said Mrs. Groser, 'Do not, I beg 
 of you, argue with your uncle ! He must be the 
 best judge. He shows great insight into char- 
 acter by turning away the undeserving.' 
 
 * Exactly ! ' and the General rubbed his hands. 
 'They take the bread out of the mouths of 
 honest people.' 
 
BAD AND WORTHLESS 51 
 
 * Ah ! ' sighed the Rev. David. ' They are fit 
 neither for the land, nor for the dunghill, so men 
 cast them out.' 
 
 He was so pleased with this quotation that he 
 repeated it twice over. 
 
 Madge pushed back her chair, and went over 
 to the window. Through a mist that overspread 
 her eyes she saw the melting snow, the ragged 
 red blossoms, the hungry birds. The sun was 
 quite bright now, shining upon a glittering sea, 
 and the giant outlines of the ship that had been 
 unable as yet to leave her harbour owing to the 
 great gale. Cheerful people came out of their 
 houses, hurried down the asphalt walk towards 
 the town ; and the sound of a distant military 
 band fell upon Madge's ear. She thought the 
 while of the starving, shrunken man at the back 
 gate, and pictured him lying dead and lonely 
 up on the far white hills. 
 
 The General rose from his chair, walked to 
 the fire, and stretched his hands cheerfully over 
 the blaze. Then he rang the bell. The brow- 
 beaten maid responded to his summons. 
 
 * We are ready for prayers,' said he. 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Most people who have spent the 'mother of 
 months,' or a part ev^n of May, in Rome, must 
 look back with a tender regret to visions of blue 
 skies, to past hours of contin aal sunshine and 
 splendour. They will recall, as in a dazzling 
 dream, days when they left the rui:is and the 
 cool churches of the city to wander among 
 garlands of briar-roses and vetches, through 
 myriads of blossoms, gold and violet, pink and 
 snow-white. In the kingdom of fancy they 
 will travel onct more over the undulations 
 of the green Campagna, they will listen to the 
 quivering song of the lark at morning, and to 
 the vespers of the nightingale. They will even 
 smell rgain — so vivid is the remembrance of 
 these dead delights — the odours of the orange- 
 blossoms that made the breezes sv/eet on 
 those wonderful starlit nights of * delicate-footed 
 May,' long ago. 
 
 In one oi the dull, great Bayswater houses 
 that overlook Kensington Gardens, there sits 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 53 
 
 to-day a pale, sad-eyed little governess, who has 
 long passed her first youth, and who looks out 
 of her window sometimes on a warm spring 
 evening, dreaming somewhat in this fashion. The 
 visions pass, but they make a bright interlude 
 in her life spent among maps and inkstained 
 books, and varied only by monotonous walks 
 down dust-laden roads and drab-coloured streets. 
 
 A good many years ago, on one of the latter 
 days of April, a larger party than usual was 
 assembled at the six o'clock table d'hote, in the 
 dining-room of one of the most popular hotels in 
 Rome. It was unpleasantly hot even in this 
 lofty apartment, although the head waiter had 
 obligingly turned out some of the gas-burners at 
 the request of a heated English clergyman, who 
 wore spectacles and a limp collar and white tie. 
 There was as usual a jingle of knives and forks 
 and clatter of dishes, but at the end of the long 
 table, where the clergyman was sitting, there 
 was also a quite unwonted buzz of mirth and 
 cheerful conversation. Even the prim old maid 
 of the party, Miss Hertz, was shaken with un- 
 musical laughter, and a stern ecclesiastic — not 
 the one who wore spectacles, but an older and 
 much more severe person — was this evening 
 affable and unbending. 
 
 From the way that the guests at this end of 
 the table, who were, one and all, obviously 
 British, addressed each other jocosely across the 
 
54 A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 table, and exchanged amused glances, it was 
 obvious that they must be old acquaintances, for 
 it is well known that John Bull and his wife, 
 when on tour — to use the colloquial expression — 
 always keep themselves to themselves. This 
 pleasant gathering of worthy English men 
 and women had been all brought together to 
 see the sights of Rome, and other Italian cities, 
 under the protecting wing of the Rev. Andrew 
 Furber, the little clergyman in spectacles. Once 
 or twice a year he personally conducted some 
 such party as this to different parts of Europe. 
 To do him justice, it was no sordid love of gain 
 that had suggested to him the advantage of 
 arranging these little journeys. It was from a 
 most genuine and philanthropic desire to interest 
 and amuse his hard-worked brother clergy, their 
 female relations, and other humble people who 
 could not have afforded the luxury on less 
 economical principles. The Rev. Andrew, after 
 long experience and study, had become an adept 
 in the art of reducing all expenses to a mini- 
 mum, and as a larger number of travellers joined 
 his party every succeeding year, so much the 
 more moderate did the charges become. This 
 year saw the epoch of his greatest triumph, and 
 the good little man's face wore an almost un- 
 ceasing smile of gratification. No less than 
 eighteen precious souls had been all agog to join 
 him, and there they were, every mother's son 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 3D 
 
 and daughter of them, in good heaUh and 
 spirits, safely arrived at the crowning point of 
 the journey — the end and aim of their pilgrim- 
 age — the Eternal City itself 
 
 By Mr, Furber's scheme one fortnight was 
 to be devoted to the exploration of the glories 
 and beauties of Rome. In his circular, which 
 had been issued for months past throughout 
 the British Isles in halfpenny wrappers, he had 
 announced that one of the chief attractions of 
 the Italian tour would be the lectures, to be 
 given throughout its course by the Rev. 
 Augustine Gadsden, of Balliol College ; and 
 that another would be the opportunity of 
 learning sketching from the promising artist in 
 water-colours, Mr. MacClymont of Inverness. 
 
 On this particular hot evening the attention 
 of all the ladies, and of several of the men, who 
 belonged to Mr. Furber's party, was centred 
 round a stranger who, by some error, had been 
 piloted by Fritz, the head waiter, to a seat 
 adjoining Mrs. Gadsden's. That lady had at 
 first frowned, rustled her skirts, demurred a 
 little, coughed, and looked plaintively at Mr. 
 Furber and sternly at Fritz. But after a few 
 minutes a change stole over her face. The 
 stranger appeared so happily unconscious that 
 he was intruding where he was not wanted ; 
 his manners and voice were so irresistibly 
 charming, that they would have softened the 
 
56 A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 harshness of John Knox himself. And, more- 
 over, this young man's personal attractions 
 were as striking as were the grace and dignity 
 of his bearing. He had a tall figure and a 
 small head set upon broad shoulders, flashing 
 eyes which might have been either dark-brown 
 or deep-grey, hair which, in spite of being cut 
 as close as possible had an attractive wave 
 about it, a straight nose, and delicately-cut 
 lips. He was clean shaven, and beneath his 
 clear dark skin there was a tinge of red which 
 imparted an air of vigour and freshness to his 
 face. But it was when he smiled that Mrs. 
 Gadsden succumbed entirely to his fascinating 
 personality. Her husband, the Rev. Augustine, 
 had spent the whole proceeds of two elaborate 
 and learned articles upon the * Hall of the 
 Muses' in fees to an American dentist; but the 
 work of this scientist could by no means rival 
 what nature alone had done for this very 
 agreeable young man. 
 
 * It has just occurred to me,' he was saying, 
 'that you are all thinking that I have no 
 business here at all. Nay, I confess it — the 
 worthy Fritz did offer me a seat at the other 
 end of this table, but I am so solitary here, and 
 the sight of all your bright faces was a great 
 temptation to me ! I know Mr. Furber well 
 by reputation, and in fact have met some of 
 his relations in England, and I have often 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 57 
 
 heard of the success of his charming tours. I 
 can't say I wonder at it. This time he seems 
 to have been particularly happy in his choice 
 of friends and fellow-travellers.' 
 
 He had dropped his voice just a little, 
 and glanced, for a half-second only, at Mrs. 
 Gadsden's thin face — one which had been 
 pretty some ten years ago, and which bore 
 traces of good looks still, although her mouth 
 had a discontented expression, and her skin 
 was sallow by the light of day. 
 
 The old maid, Miss Hertz, upon whose fat 
 hands many rings sparkled, now turned her 
 attention to the newcomer. 
 
 'You are a stranger in Rome, I presume?' 
 she asked in a stuffy voice. Miss Hertz had 
 no need to join Mr. Furber's party for reasons 
 of economy ; but, like many other wealthy 
 people, she knew the value of a sixpence, and 
 generally got it. 
 
 'I only arrived yesterday. But I already 
 know Rome very well.' 
 
 ' What a delightful voice he has 1 ' murmured 
 Mrs. Furber to her neighbour, a girl with large 
 brown eyes, 'such a curiously attractive in- 
 tonation ! ' 
 
 The young lady addressed softly agreed, and 
 looked shyly at the stranger. Then she bent 
 her gaze downward upon her plate. 
 
 Miss Hertz had entered into a lively con- 
 
58 A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 versation with him across the table. She was 
 so engrossed that she had forgotten to keep a 
 tight hold upon her knife and fork, which were 
 now undergoing a perfunctory dab with a 
 napkin in an adjoining recess. 
 
 ' Ah, the late ambassador was a friend of 
 yours ! Of course it must be of great ad- 
 vantage to know the diplomatic circle here.' 
 
 * I have a letter to our present one,' said the 
 stranger, smiling, 'but I don't think I shall 
 avail myself of it. I don't care to go in for 
 society ; I shall merely wander a little about 
 my old haunts, and then turn my steps slowly 
 homewards.' 
 
 The Rev. Augustine Gadsden began talking 
 very loud. Perhaps he also wished to attract 
 the attention of this obviously distinguished 
 young man. 
 
 * We will make our way to some of the tombs 
 to-morrow,' said he. 'You, my dear Furber, 
 no doubt recall the lines, familiar to every 
 schoolboy — 
 
 '"Ouantos ille virum magnum Mavortis ad urbem 
 Campus agit genitus ..." * 
 
 *Ahem! — ah! Strange; I know it as well 
 as my own name ' 
 
 *" Vel qucBy Tiberine vidibis" etc., etc.,' in- 
 terrupted the dark-eyed stranger courteously, 
 with a smile. 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 59 
 
 * To be sure, to be sure ! — what was I thinking 
 of? Thank you, sir/ said the Rev. Augustine, 
 only half-pleased at the interruption. 
 
 * A classical scholar, too ! ' murmured Mrs. 
 Furber to the brown-eyed girl. 
 
 Mr. Gadsden resumed his monotonous lecture 
 upon the tombs, until gently but firmly checked 
 by Mr. Furber. 
 
 ' I propose,' said the latter deferentially, and 
 beaming at his friends through his spectacles, 
 'that we should make up two parties to-morrow 
 — one, the less learned one,' and Mr. Furber 
 smiled at the ladies, 'to see the Protestant 
 cemetery, the other to listen to Mr. Gadsden's 
 most interesting and instructive discourse in 
 the Catacombs. After dinner I will, if you are 
 so minded, take pencil and paper, and make a 
 list of the members of our respective parties. 
 What say you, Miss Routledge ? ' 
 
 The girl to whom he spoke lifted her lovely 
 eyes again. 
 
 She had a provoking way of keeping them 
 downbent, thought the stranger. 
 
 * I think it would be an excellent plan, Mr. 
 Furber. I am not one of the learned ones, 
 though, I am afraid,' she said. 
 
 As he was a middle-aged, married clergy- 
 man, Mr. Furber could, without any indiscre- 
 tion, playfully pat Miss Routledge on her 
 pretty little head. 
 
60 A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 *Well, my child, I've half a mind to join 
 you,' he said. * And I 'm sure my wife will. 
 And what says dear Mrs. Gadsden? and our 
 kind Miss Hertz ? Shall we go and mourn 
 over the remains of our two immortal poets, or 
 shall we ' 
 
 ' My love, dinner is over,' said Mrs. Furber. 
 
 'And good business too,' yawned the person, 
 who had been sitting on the other side of Miss 
 Routledge — an overgrown boy, with a muddy 
 complexion. He was the son of the Very 
 
 Rev. the Dean of , who had intrusted him 
 
 to Mr. Furber's care in the hope that he would 
 pick up more information on this tour than he 
 had ever gained from former studies. 
 
 ' This is the filthiest grub I ever swallowed,* 
 continued the young man, as he noisily pushed 
 back his chair. * And there isn't such a thing as 
 a clean fork inside these four blessed walls. 
 Look at old Hertz making eyes at that chap 
 with the clean-shaven face. What luck for 
 him ! She 's got fifteen thou, a year, if she 's 
 a penny. I suppose that's why she travels 
 with Furber third-class, and makes tea and 
 toast on the cheap in her bedroom.' 
 
 The party of English travellers entered the 
 salon, which contained polished floors, enormous 
 mirrors, in which Mrs. Furber thoughtfully 
 stared at her flushed face, a selection of 
 newspapers fastened on sticks, and carefully 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 6i 
 
 arranged bouquets of artificial flowers. The 
 young stranger who had joined them at dinner 
 followed them into the sitting-room, and intro- 
 duced himself to Mr. Furber. 
 
 *My name is Villiers Oswald,' he said, 'and 
 I have often heard of you from my aunt, Lady 
 Pitcairn.' 
 
 Mr. Furber looked puzzled. 
 
 ' O, you may have forgotten her ; but she was 
 at S. ]\Ioritz one year when you took the duty 
 there, and she was enormously struck by your 
 preaching. In fact, I remember hearingher quote 
 sentence after sentence from your sermons.' 
 
 Good Mr. Furber's face shone. 
 
 * It is very amiable of Lady Pitcairn to think 
 so well of me,» and of you, my dear sir, to tell 
 me,' he said simply. 
 
 * I wonder if I might, without appearing very 
 pushing, offer to join one of your parties to- 
 morrow?' said the young man, half shyly. ' I 
 am a little dull here just now, because my 
 friend, who was to have joined me, changed 
 his plans. And I cannot help being charmed 
 by the bojihomie of many of your travellers. 
 You all seem like one happy family, and I feel 
 I am the poor outcast at the gates.' 
 
 ' Nothing could please us more, I 'm sure, 
 than to have you as an addition to our little 
 party,' cried Mr. Furber with enthusiasm, 
 looking tov/ards the round table where Mr. 
 
62 A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 and Mrs. Gadsden and Miss Hertz sat, the 
 latter engrossed in the study of an old paper 
 of fashion-plates. The Rev. Augustine was 
 furtively fingering the outside only of a new 
 novel by Zola. 
 
 ' People should not leave such books as this 
 on the table of a respectable hotel,' he remarked, 
 with compressed lips. * One's wife or one's 
 daughter may in all innocence open it, and 
 their eyes may drink in pollution. This 
 realistic school ' 
 
 ' I, for one, fail to see why this branch of 
 literature alone should be called by that 
 epithet,' said Mr. Oswald. ' Must we only 
 apply that word to all the revolting things 
 in nature ? Surely it is as realistic to describe 
 a shining trout-stream as to dilate upon the 
 contents of a sewer ? But you are quite right. 
 Such books ought not to be left where ladies 
 can see them.' 
 
 Mr. Oswald took up the obnoxious volume 
 and put it under his arm. It is possible that 
 he may have sat up during part of the night 
 with the novel as a companion, but of this Mr. 
 Gadsden could know nothing. 
 
 Mr. Oswald bent over the wife of this gentle- 
 man, and admired the work with which she 
 seemed engrossed. 
 
 * It is for a bazaar for reformed inebriates/ 
 said that lady. 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 63 
 
 'What a good object!' cried Mr. Oswald. 
 * I am for giving everybody, however depraved, 
 a chance. My aunt, Lady Pitcairn, has taken 
 great interest in that question. Mrs. Gadsden, 
 I am only a useless man — I can't paint, I can't 
 do embroidery ; but may I give you my mite 
 towards such an excellent cause ? Now, before 
 I forget it.' 
 
 He looked earnestly at Mrs. Gadsden. 
 
 'It's too, too kind, but I don't like ' 
 
 she murmured. ' On such a short acquaint- 
 ance — ' 
 
 Mr. Oswald smiled, and produced a sovereign 
 from his pocket. 
 
 'You see, you can be very persuasive, 
 although you haven't begged in words, Mrs. 
 Gadsden,' he said ; but in such a low voice, 
 that the Rev. Augustine did not hear him. 
 
 Mrs. Gadsden actually blushed a little, and 
 the colour that came into her sallow cheeks 
 made her pretty for a moment. 
 
 Villiers Oswald looked at her with a long, 
 sympathetic gaze. He guessed that she was 
 rather sad, and misunderstood and lonely, for 
 he added very gently, and in a still more sub- 
 dued and gentle voice — 
 
 'I suppose you indulge in many dreams 
 over your work, Mrs. Gadsden, as we all of us 
 do when our hands move mechanically and our 
 brains are restless and weary?' 
 
64 A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 'Perhaps it is wiser not to dream,' said Mrs. 
 Gadsden darkly. And she fancied that Mr. 
 Oswald sighed. He rose, and moved slowly 
 across the shiny floor of the salon to where 
 little Miss Routledge was sitting, attended by 
 the Dean's unattractive son. 
 
 'Well, you are not at work, at any rate, 
 either of you,' said Mr. Oswald. * There is 
 nothing so really delicious in the world, let wise 
 people say what they like, as to sit perfectly 
 still, in a half-comatose state, and not even to 
 bother one's self to think.' 
 
 ' I should never be happy for a moment if I 
 were idle,' said Miss Simpson, a thin girl with 
 light eyes and a demure smile. Miss Simpson 
 was hemming a large under-garment by the 
 light of a lamp that stood on an adjoining 
 table. 
 
 'Well, anyhow my day for dawdling will 
 soon be over,' remarked Miss Routledge, 
 sighing, and stretching her slight arms over 
 her head. * Three weeks more, and I too shall 
 be numbered among the toilers of the earth, 
 Miss Simpson. You wouldn't grudge me my 
 present little spell of delightful laziness under 
 those circumstances, would you ? ' 
 
 Mr. Oswald drew up a spindle-legged chair 
 near to the one occupied by Miss Routledge, 
 and said in his most sympathetic tones — 
 
 'And what, Miss Routledge, if it is not 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 65 
 
 impertinent of me to ask, may be the par- 
 ticular branch of work that you have chosen 
 to take up? I should guess it to be art in 
 some form — music, perhaps, painting more 
 Hkely?' 
 
 Violet Routledge blushed. ' I do paint a 
 little, but not well enough to make a career of 
 it,' she answered, rather sadly. ' No, I am 
 going to be nothing more romantic than a 
 governess. I shall live in Bayswater, and teach 
 tiresome children for seven hours a day, and 
 walk out with them for two. Now and then I 
 shall be taken to a bazaar as a great treat ; 
 once or twice a year I may have a week's 
 holiday. And so on, and so on, till — till I grow 
 quite old, I suppose, and don't wish for treats 
 any more.' 
 
 ' You a governess ! ' said Mr. Oswald. Into 
 those three words he threw a vast amount of 
 meaning. They said as plainly as possible, 
 'The idea is unendurable. You are much too 
 young and lovely to throw yourself away like 
 that' 
 
 * Ah ! but what am I to do ? I have no 
 friends but one old uncle, and he has very 
 kindly sent me away on this tour, so that I 
 may have a last taste of liberty. It is very 
 dear of him, and I am sure his twenty 
 pounds could not have been more delightfully 
 spent' 
 
 E 
 
66 A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 ' It is marvellous how Mr. Furber can do 
 
 everything so well on such a small sum,' 
 observed Mr. Oswald thoughtfully. ' He told 
 me that you have been to Genoa and Pisa, and 
 I don't know where besides. But you must 
 really get him to prolong your stay in Rome 
 a little. I am sure that none of the party 
 could grudge a very trifling increase of cost to 
 see more of this divine place — a fortnight is 
 impossibly short for Rome.' 
 
 * I am g\a.df02i think Furber does things well/ 
 growled young Mr. Pepys, the dean's son, who 
 had no intention of being left out of the con- 
 versation. * If you happen to like dirty third- 
 class carriages, and greasy cooking, and sour 
 wine, and putrid syphons, / don't. That 's the 
 sort of thing we 've been having, on and off.' 
 
 ' O Mr. Pepys 1 ' expostulated the refined 
 Miss Simpson from her far corner. ' What 
 have we to complain of? Perhaps the eggs 
 yesterday were a IzUle ' 
 
 * Not exactly bad, but " eggs that had seen 
 trouble," as the Yankee observed?' said Mr. 
 Oswald, inquiringly. 
 
 ' That 's not a new joke ! ' said Mr. Pepys 
 with a snort. ' All / say is, that this is the 
 last time, and I shall tell my governor so, that 
 I come out of England on a fool's errand.' 
 
 '1 should have thought that the company 
 would have made up for any little drawbacks 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 67 
 
 such as those you mention,' and Mr. Oswald 
 glanced at Miss Routledge, with an innocent 
 air, from under his long eyelashes. ' Tell me 
 some more about your fellow-travellers,' he 
 continued, addressing himself entirely to the 
 pretty young lady. Young Pepys scowled at 
 them both, rose, and walked away to the other 
 side of the salon. Miss Simpson followed him, 
 waving her unfinished nightdress. 
 
 'Well,' said Violet Routledge, 'there are 
 the Gadsdens ! He is very learned and 
 clever, and gives lectures. He will do so to- 
 morrow.' 
 
 ' Oh ! Not at the Protestant cemetery ? ' 
 ' No, I think he will lecture for the other 
 party. Then there is a Miss Hertz. She is 
 enormously rich.' 
 
 * Oh, enormously rich, is she? I noticed that 
 her rings were lovely.' 
 
 * Yes, she keeps them under her pillow with 
 her money-box. She takes them all off when- 
 ever we go out, and then she wears grey cotton 
 gloves. Isn't it funny for anybody so rich to 
 wear grey cotton gloves ! ' 
 
 * And who is the young man with the stringy 
 hair and the projecting teeth who is talking to 
 her — is he economical too ? For I see that he 
 wears a flannel shirt, although the weather is 
 by no means chilly.' 
 
 'Oh, that is Sir Arthur Cracroft ! He is 
 
68 A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 stingy, I believe, because I have noticed that 
 he always fights about giving tips to the waiter. 
 He collects what he calls curios. He has got 
 all sorts of lovely boxes, and some old enamels 
 and watches and snuff-boxes, some of which 
 he has picked up since he has been on this 
 tour.' 
 
 * He doesn't keep them under his pillow, I 
 suppose ? ' 
 
 * No, in an old hair trunk. His luggage is 
 no smarter than his clothes. Well, let me see 
 — that is Miss Simpson's brother — he is going 
 to be a barrister.' 
 
 * Ah ! I see — the brother of that typical 
 English miss, qui fait la bouche en coeur! Mr. 
 Oswald spoke with a perfect French accent. 
 ' And that cheerful boy with the singularly 
 affable manners — who is he? He does not 
 seem to enjoy himself.' 
 
 * I think he would like — well — you see, a 
 more lively set of people. He wanted to play 
 cards in the train, but that old lady who belongs 
 to our party — the one with the grey curls — she 
 is a strict French Protestant, and she told Mr. 
 Furber that a pasteur ^vangelique should not 
 countenance such things.' 
 
 ' Ah ! the youth likes cards ? So do I, just 
 a quiet game of bezique — or piquet now and 
 then. But, of course, not for money. Ah ! there 
 is good Mr. Furber going round with his pencil 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 69 
 
 and paper. He is coming to ask whether you 
 will wander among the Catacombs with that 
 well-informed old parson, or whether you will 
 stay aboveground with — ' and he lowered his 
 voice a little — * myself, perhaps, amongst other 
 people ? For I too shall visit the cemetery, I 
 think, to-morrow.' 
 
 Mr. Furber, his face one broad smile, came 
 towards them. 
 
 * Well, my dear Miss Violet, — weather per- 
 mitting — and if we are all spared — where will 
 you go to-morrow ? ' 
 
 ' I think I should like to see the cemetery/ 
 said that young lady demurely. 
 
 'And I would also/ said Mr. Oswald, 'if you 
 will allow me. The poet Shelley, by the way, 
 was a distant connection of my family, on my 
 mother's side.' 
 
 Mrs. Gadsden joined the group, and Mr. 
 Furber beamed on her also through his 
 spectacles. 
 
 ' You, of course, my dear lady, would not 
 wish to miss your husband's most interesting 
 address in the Catacombs?' 
 
 Mrs. Gadsden's sallow face became flushed, 
 and she frowned a little. 
 
 * Thank you, I will go to the cemetery/ she 
 said ; and her voice was not exactly pleasant. 
 
70 A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Though the sun in the streets was scorching, 
 and there was hardly a breeze stirring, the quiet 
 graveyard lying below the great Roman walls 
 was fresh and green. Some ten people, most 
 of them wearing dusty clothes, and puggarees, 
 and carrying white umbrellas, green and blue 
 lined, were straying about among the flowers 
 and under the heavy cypresses. Odours of 
 roses and violets were wafted towards them 
 from those last sleeping-places as they walked. 
 Dark belts of shade were thrown from the 
 sombre trees upon white marble crosses, birds 
 sang loudly, unknowing of such things as death, 
 and tears, and decay. 
 
 Two people — a tall man, and a girl dressed 
 in grey — had wandered away a little from the 
 rest of the group. 
 
 ' Let us sit here, under the shadow of the 
 great pyramid tomb,' said Oswald. 
 
 * How heavenly the calm and silence is ! ' he 
 continued. 'We can't hear what the others 
 are saying. Only the voices of the birds reach 
 us, and what they talk of is much more in 
 harmony with the peace and pathos of the 
 place. Miss Routledge, do you know that you 
 seem to me like an old friend already ? I feel 
 as if we must have met somehow, somewhere, 
 before. It appears the most natural thing in 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 71 
 
 the world that you and I should be sitting here 
 alone together — for we are practically alone. 
 I can ramble on to you as I have not been able 
 to do to any one for a very long time ; longer 
 than I like to think/ 
 
 He looked at her sadly out of those wonder- 
 ful dark eyes of his, and her foolish little heart 
 gave a responsive throb under her grey dress. 
 
 ' We mustn't stay here too long,' she answered 
 nervously. * And you — you remember that you 
 told Mrs. Gadsden that you would yourself 
 show her Keats's and Shelley's tombs. She is 
 looking towards us now.' 
 
 *Yes, with those fleur-de-tete eyes fixed 
 fiercely upon you,' said Mr. Oswald. 
 
 ' I thought that you — that you rather ad- 
 mired Mrs. Gadsden?' said Miss Routledge 
 quietly. 'You asked her for her photograph 
 this morning when we were looking through 
 Mr. Furber's groups.' 
 
 * Impossible ! Did I ? Well, it must have 
 been in a momentary state of aberration. See, 
 Miss Routledge, that lovely little lizard ! Ah ! 
 there he goes — so quickly — past your shoe — 
 into a fissure in that stone. Do you know the 
 pretty legend of the lizard ? Well, it is said 
 that the Madonna — whose month it soon will 
 be — the month of May — asked the serpent if he 
 would be good to mankind ? But he refused, 
 and so he was told by her to crawl at the feet 
 
72 A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 of the human race, with a curse for ever upon 
 him. But the lizard, to whom she next turned, 
 and asked the same question, said, " Yes — I will 
 be good to the children of men." So Our Lady 
 said, " Then you shall have legs to run on, and 
 you shall be loved and cared for." And so 
 he is.' 
 
 *That is pretty,' said Violet. *I love all 
 stories and legends about animals and birds. 
 It seems to bring them nearer to us, to make 
 us all more like one great family. Nothing 
 can be more touching than the one telling us 
 how it was that the robin got his red breast.' 
 
 * I don't know that one,' said Oswald, looking 
 as if he thought the speaker much more in- 
 teresting than any legend, but wishful to hear 
 it so that he might prolong his tete-a-tete with 
 her. 
 
 * Oh, you must have heard it ! It is because 
 he brought dew to poor souls in torment in the 
 burning lake — and his feathers became red 
 from being scorched by the flames. It is so 
 pathetic an idea,' said Violet gently, 'that it 
 seems to soften a little the grimness of the 
 doctrine.' 
 
 Two or three figures came towards the pair 
 — Mrs. Gadsden with lips turned down at the 
 corners ; Mr. Pepys, munching chocolate out of 
 a paper bag ; and Mr. MacClymont, the artist 
 from Inverness. The latter was an admirer of 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 73 
 
 Miss Violet's, and not over pleased to see her 
 engrossed by such a striking person as Oswald. 
 
 ' I have brought out a sketching-block,' he 
 said, in a slow, harsh voice, breathing mild 
 reproof. ' If you would like to sit for an hour 
 or so under that cypress. Miss Routledgc, we 
 could do a pretty bit of work together before 
 we go home.' 
 
 Violet said that she did not feel inclined to 
 draw or paint to-day, but that she would walk 
 round the cemetery if Mr. MacClymont liked. 
 Mrs. Gadsden gazed reproachfully at Mr. Os- 
 wald, ' You have not yet shown me poor Keats's 
 and Shelley's graves,' she said. 'It's a great 
 pity, though, that the inscriptions on them 
 should be so heathenish, isn't it?' 
 
 Mr. Oswald shrugged his shoulders. ' I sup- 
 pose theirs was the religion of most men/ he 
 said coolly, but inwardly exasperated. 
 
 * You can't mean that,' cried Mrs. Gadsden, 
 trying to be at the same time arch and re- 
 proving. 'You know you said at breakfast 
 this morning, to Mr. Furber, that you always 
 go to church yourself on saints' days — and that 
 you had only given up fasting by the doctor's 
 orders. That shows,' continued Mrs. Gadsden 
 triumphantly, 'that some men have a great 
 deal more religion than these poor deluded 
 poets. Now, are you coming ? ' 
 
 Mr. Oswald stood watching the retreating 
 
74 A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 figures of Miss Routledge and the artist ; and 
 seeing that his pleasant tete-a-tete was doomed 
 to cease, he turned graciously to the lady who 
 lingered at his side. 
 
 ' Of course I am. I particularly wished to 
 stroll about with you, who are always so kind, 
 and to look at these things that touch me more 
 than I can say, in your sympathetic company. 
 You remember Shelley's own description of 
 this spot ? He calls it the " most beautiful and 
 solemn cemetery I ever beheld." Looking at 
 the graves at his feet, he says of those buried 
 here — " One might, if one were to die, desire the 
 sleep they seem to sleep ! " Curious, wasn't it, 
 his saying that?' 
 
 ' Most curious,' said Mrs. Gadsden, thinking 
 as she spoke much of Mr. Oswald's beautiful 
 voice, and but little of Shelley. 
 
 Another hour passed, and the party regret- 
 fully left the cool green slopes, the violet- 
 scented air, and the shadow of the ivy-covered 
 walls. Miss Routledge went upstairs to dress 
 for the table d'hote as if she were moving in a 
 dream. She did not know when she had felt so 
 buoyant — so full of strange hopes and tremulous 
 joy, as she did to-night. As she came down 
 the steps, loud noises of barking dogs — shrill 
 ejaculations, oaths in the Italian and French 
 languages, and a chorus of female shrieks, 
 reached her ear. These all came through the 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 75 
 
 entrance door. The reason was not far to 
 seek. In the courtyard of the house two dogs 
 were engaged in a ghastly tussle. The bigger 
 of the two, a black mongrel, seemed in a fair 
 way to demolish a beautiful little Roman dog, 
 golden-haired, with a magnificent ruff and 
 pointed nose. His owner, an old lady, who 
 had dropped her card-case, her fan, and her 
 handkerchief, was screaming, while the tears 
 ran down her cheeks. Her footman, a voluble 
 but helpless young man, wearing a brilliant 
 cockade in his hat, was also yelling and waving 
 foolish hands. The landlord gesticulated, the 
 waiters ran aimlessly to and fro. Suddenly a 
 tall Englishman rushed down the steps, through 
 the excited groups, brandishing a stout stick 
 in his hand. He ran towards the dogs, 
 and promptly struck the black mongrel two 
 heavy blows — one on his nose, and one on his 
 forepaws. Then he wrenched him off his 
 hapless little rival — how, no one seemed quite 
 to know, but he did it. The small orange dog 
 was bitten, but by no means fatally. And the 
 valorous Englishman who had saved him 
 appeared to the excited bystanders to be also 
 bleeding. Anyhow he wound a handkerchief 
 round his fingers, laughing as he did so. In a 
 few seconds of time the mongrel was driven off, 
 and the Roman dog clasped in his mistress's 
 arms. 
 
76 A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 *0 Monsieur, how can I thank you enough 
 for your noble conduct! The act of a hero! 
 Such self-devotion, such courage ! ' 
 
 The young man took off his hat and bowed 
 gracefully. He was in evening dress, and some 
 specks of blood disfigured his shirt-front. 
 
 ' Great God ! you are wounded ! ' cried the 
 old lady. 'What can we do for you ? Help! 
 a basin — warm water — brandy, for this brave 
 gentleman ! ' 
 
 Mr. Oswald only bowed again, and laughed. 
 He really was hardly touched, he said. And it 
 had been one of the greatest pleasures that he 
 had ever experienced to save such a beautiful 
 dog, and to gratify the distinguished lady whom 
 he was now addressing. He spoke in fluent 
 and graceful Italian. 
 
 * You will do me the kindness to call on me, 
 sir/ said the old lady, touched as much by the 
 extreme good looks of the dog's preserver as 
 by the heroism of his behaviour. She handed 
 him her card, on which was inscribed her name. 
 
 * The Princess ' 
 
 Mr. Oswald bowed low again. He would 
 assuredly do himself the honour to call on the 
 Princess to-morrow. And, after a further inter- 
 change of pleasing civilities, the old lady and 
 her dog were handed into her carriage. Mr. 
 Oswald went up to change his shirt, and 
 shortly afterwards returned to join the English 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION ']'] 
 
 party at dinner. His place was next to Mrs. 
 Gadsden's. He smiled most kindly at her; but 
 once, when she took up the bill of fare, he shot 
 a quick, half-despairing glance across the table 
 at Violet, who was sitting between the artist 
 and the baronet who collected curios. 
 
 'You are going to-morrow to see the Prin- 
 cess?' said Mrs. Gadsden presently. 
 
 * Yes, she was nice enough to ask me.' 
 
 * We shall all seem very dull and flat to you 
 if you take to going about in the best Roman 
 society, I fear.' 
 
 ' My dear Mrs. Gadsden, what can you mean? 
 If I once make a friend, and I think I may say 
 that I have made at least one here, no amount of 
 fresh faces would put hers out of my mind. Ah ! 
 it might perhaps be better for me if it did.' 
 
 Yes, thought Mrs. Gadsden, as she looked first 
 at her husband, now describing the Tiberine 
 Museum to Mrs. Furber, then at Mr. Oswald 
 — yes, there was no doubt about it, the latter 
 did sigh. He was evidently not happy. How 
 strange — he was so young, so gifted, so hand- 
 some ! Perhaps she alone could help him, and 
 prevail upon him to confide in her. Later on, 
 when she came back into the salon, wearing a 
 white burnous and new blue kid gloves, she 
 walked straight up to him, a blush spreading 
 over her sallow cheeks. 
 
 * My husband and I are going to a scientific 
 
7^ A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 conversazione,' she said. 'Will you join us? 
 I really think it may be pleasant.' 
 
 * Ah! why didn't you ask me sooner?' cried 
 the young man in despairing accents. ' It is 
 too tantalising and cruel of you ! Just this oite 
 evening I have promised young Pepys to take 
 him out to see a friend of mine, who expects 
 us. I am terribly vexed.' 
 
 Poor Mrs. Gadsden's face fell. And when 
 she went up to bed that night she noticed some 
 odd blue marks on her face, which had been 
 caused by an attempt to wipe away a few 
 foolish stray tears with her gloved fingers. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Mr. Oswald was successful in inducing Mr. 
 Furber to remain for a longer time in Rome 
 than was originally mapped out in his carefully- 
 arranged scheme. No one objected to spend 
 another paltry thirty shillings or two pounds 
 on such an unmixed pleasure. Perhaps the 
 young man who had originated the idea was 
 the means of adding a great part of the 
 enjoyment to more than one of the travellers. 
 Mr. Furber himself was impressed by his varied 
 information, his linguistic skill, his even temper 
 and boyish spirits. He was the most pleasant 
 of companions whenever — and that was not 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 79 
 
 now an unfrequent circumstance — he joined 
 the English group and their clerical bear- 
 leader. He often managed, so great was the 
 urbanity of his manner, to soften the asperity 
 of disobliging guides, and to make his way, 
 followed by his troop of admirers, where the 
 ordinary tourist was not allowed to enter. His 
 
 friendship with the Princess , who had 
 
 given him the run of her library and gardens, 
 did not in any way seem to elate him, or to 
 make him less cordial to humbler persons. He 
 listened with deference to Mr. Gadsden's dis- 
 courses, he took the greatest interest in Mrs. 
 Furber's charities, and he had discovered 
 different ways of amusing young Pepys, and of 
 keeping him in a good temper. Mrs. Gadsden 
 had of late become a little more out of spirits, 
 and Miss Routledge less cheerful, otherwise 
 most of the party were happy enough. Two 
 events had nevertheless occurred which, but 
 for the adroitness and ready tact of Mr. Oswald, 
 might have served to place him on a less 
 friendly footing with his compatriots. They 
 had happened in this wise. 
 
 One evening Violet Routledge, accompanied 
 by Miss Simpson and that lady's young brother, 
 was strolling through the popular and beautiful 
 gardens on the Pincian hill. The sublime view 
 from the terraces was bathed in a purple haze, 
 and hundreds of people were out enjoying the 
 
So A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 perfumed air, and the enchanting prospect at 
 their feet. But Violet was feeling melancholy. 
 She had hoped that Mr. Oswald would have 
 joined them in their walk, and she had not seen 
 him to talk to for a whole day and more, for Mrs. 
 Gadsden had absorbed his attentions during 
 the entire past evening. As she meditated, a 
 hired carriage passed by close to her and her 
 friends. Leaning lazily back in it, his hat a 
 little on one side, a cigarette in his hand, and 
 a laugh on his face that showed all his white 
 teeth, she suddenly saw the object of her 
 thoughts. Not alone. With some one evidently 
 as amusing and lively as himself — a lady with 
 the yellowest hair and the most scarlet lips 
 that Violet had ever seen, dressed in the 
 extreme of fashion, whose defiant eyes rested 
 admiringly upon her companion. 
 
 Violet started, and her knees trembled. 
 
 As if by some intuition, Oswald turned his 
 head sharply round, and changed colour ever 
 so little. He hesitated for one second, and 
 then took off his hat. The lady with the 
 vermilion lips laughed. 
 
 * What a horrid-looking woman that is with 
 Mr. Oswald !' exclaimed Miss Simpson. *I'm 
 sure she's painted up to her eyes. I can't 
 admire his taste.' 
 
 Young Simpson laughed in a tiresome, 
 enigmatical manner. 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 8i 
 
 * I don't suppose that Oswald has the mono- 
 poly of it,' he said. 
 
 Violet walked on a little ahead, her heart 
 sore and distressed. So it was for that vulgar 
 creature that he had deserted her ! 
 
 That evening at dinner she would not so 
 much as look at Mr. Oswald. But in the 
 evening he made his way to her side. 
 
 ' Are you tired, Miss Routledge ? ' he said, 
 ' or what is it ? You are surely not quite your- 
 self to-night ? ' 
 
 She turned her pretty head away. 
 
 ' Have I vexed you, my dear little friend ? ' 
 he said, very softly. Then she confronted him, 
 looking straight into his eyes with her velvety 
 brown ones. 
 
 ' It 's no compliment to me to be called a 
 friend of yours ! ' she cried hotly. 
 
 Her meaning was clear to Mr. Oswald. 
 
 'Good gracious!' he exclaimed, 'you don't 
 suppose that that silly little made-up Marchesa 
 with whom I was driving is a friendl O dear 
 no ! She is not my sort, thank Heaven. Her 
 husband is an old acquaintance of mine ; but 
 he is a delightful fellow, and she is not half 
 good enough for him.' 
 
 ' I am so sorry if I was cross,' said poor little 
 Violet, happy and penitent. ' But Mr. Simpson 
 said, you know, that ' 
 
 'Why attend to that gaping idiot? 11 vous 
 F 
 
S2 A SUCCESSFUL IxNTRUSION 
 
 en conte de belles ! You surely might trust vie^ 
 Vi — I beg your pardon, Miss Routledge.' 
 
 So she forgave him, and the matter was not 
 again referred to between them. The other 
 occasion upon which Mr. Oswald was nearly 
 making an unfavourable impression occurred 
 only a few days later on. 
 
 Mr. Furber had received a long letter from 
 
 the Dean of containing many messages, 
 
 and a small cheque for his dear son. Mr. Pepys 
 had been dining out, and must have gone 
 straight to his room on returning, the waiter 
 said. So the clergyman mounted the stairs and 
 hastened cheerfully to that young man's door. 
 
 'Who's there?' said a sulky voice from 
 within, in answer to his knock. 
 
 * It's a letter, my dear Pepys — and a pleasant 
 surprise for you from ' 
 
 Mr. Furber's spectacles and beaming red 
 face looked through the open door. The 
 surprise which he felt was probably greater 
 than that which young Pepys would have 
 enjoyed on receipt of his parent's cheque. 
 Sitting at a small round table, with glasses at 
 their elbow, and a half-emptied champagne 
 bottle on a chair beside them, were two men 
 playing cards. They were Mr. Galsworthy 
 Pepys and Mr. Villiers Oswald. The latter 
 rose, quite unembarrassed, with his usual bright 
 smile. 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION S3 
 
 *Well, my dear Mr. Furber,' said he, 'this 
 looks desperately wicked and dissipated, and as 
 if I were leading our young friend here into 
 trouble. But the honest fact is that I have 
 been suffering so awfully from sleeplessness, 
 that I have asked Pepys to take a hand at 
 piquet before I turn in, just to pass the time. 
 I am more likely to get a good night if I sit 
 up a little longer, you see. Moreover, it's only 
 a " love " game, I needn't tell you that. And as 
 to the champagne, I 've been such a martyr to 
 neuralgia since yesterday, that I thought I 
 must have something to deaden the almost 
 continuous and maddening pain.' 
 
 Mr. Furber no longer looked disconcerted. 
 He was not by any means narrow-minded or 
 prejudiced, but he was relieved to hear that the 
 dean's son, at any rate, was not playing for 
 money. He wished both men a cordial good- 
 night, and went creaking downstairs again in 
 his heavy boots. 
 
 When the sound of his footsteps had died 
 away, the younger of the players flung his cards 
 and his cheque down on the table with fury. 
 
 'You're a cool hand, Oswald!' said he. 
 'Much use this beggarly cheque '11 be to me 
 now, when you 've won twice as much from me 
 already! I never heard any one lie as well as 
 you do, however, I '11 do you that justice.' 
 
 Mr. Oswald rose, with an uncomfortable 
 
84 A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 glittering expression in his eye that frightened 
 poor Galsworthy Pepys, and would have sur- 
 prised Mrs. Gadsden and Miss Routledge still 
 more had they seen it. 
 
 ' I may tell you, once for all, my young 
 friend,' he said, in an icy, measured voice, * that I 
 do not tolerate that sort of observation from any 
 one, least of all from a hopeless lout just home 
 from school. I naturally thought it was to your 
 advantage ; it cannot matter a damn to me 
 that that worthy old Furber should not think 
 that you gambled. I shall now have the 
 pleasure of returning to you the beggarly stakes 
 that I have won ; and of recommending you 
 in the future not to play cards with men, but 
 to join in a friendly round of " old maids " with 
 Miss Hertz and Miss Simpson, or in a game of 
 " beggar my neighbour " with Mrs. Furber.' 
 
 Mr. Oswald sat down again, took out a silver 
 match-box, and lighted a cigarette. 
 
 * I 'm not such a cad as not to pay when I 've 
 lost,' growled the boy. 
 
 Mr. Oswald smiled. The cold glitter had 
 not quite died out of his eyes yet. 
 
 *Do you mind a cigarette?' he inquired 
 courteously. 'Most of the other old women 
 here kindly allow me to smoke in their presence, 
 but if it distresses you ' 
 
 The boy banged his fist down upon the table. 
 
 * You know I 'm no match for you in saying 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 85 
 
 nasty, cutting things,' he said with suppressed 
 wrath. 
 
 ' My dear boy, cheer up ; don't look so glum ! 
 But I do not play with you again, remember 
 that. And I am afraid I shall not be able to 
 introduce you to the fascinating Mademoiselle 
 Valerie, as I promised. For, no doubt, the 
 dean and the minor clergy would object.' 
 
 Pepys got up, still scowling, and went to the 
 window. He did not trust himself to speak. 
 
 Shortly afterwards Oswald tapped him gently 
 on the shoulder. 'Now don't sulk,' he said. 
 * I only wanted to show you that I don't stand 
 cheek. We'll find somewhere else to play if 
 you like, and I will introduce you to the 
 golden-haired siren to-morrow. But not a 
 word about all this to any one. Surely, my 
 dear Pepys, you must be sick of being treated 
 like a baby? It's time you saw life for 
 yourself 
 
 So the two made up their quarrel over the 
 rest of the champagne. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 A DAY or two afterwards Mr. Furber had the 
 pleasure of conveying his entire party on an 
 excursion into the Campagna. Violet's spirits 
 were again at high tide, for Mr. Oswald had of 
 late devoted himself to her unceasingly. They 
 
S6 A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 had spent a delightful morning in the villa 
 garden belonging to the old Princess, whose 
 dog Villiers had rescued. They had wandered 
 alone in the Colosseum by moonlight, and they 
 had triumphantly escaped from Mr. Gadsden 
 at the Baths of Caracalla, to enjoy a talk of 
 the deepest interest as they sat together beneath 
 a stretch of lichen-covered wall. But it must 
 not be imagined that all these things had 
 passed without comment and criticism. Poor 
 Mrs. Gadsden went about with a dull pain at 
 her heart, which surprised herself, and she had 
 become disagreeably irritable. On the morning 
 of the excursion to the Campagna, Miss Hertz 
 and Miss Simpson were alone in the smaller 
 reading-room of the hotel. The former began, 
 in snappish tones — 
 
 * In spite, dear Miss Simpson, of that little 
 Routledge girl's demure and cold manner' 
 (Miss Hertz pronounced the last adjective 
 ' code '), * I, for one, would not trust her far. 
 At Pisa, you remember, she got Sir Arthur 
 Cracroft to dance attendance ; and when he 
 was laid up at Genoa, there was that spotty 
 boy always running after her. Now, this 
 time ' 
 
 *Yes, indeed!' said Miss Simpson grimly. 
 'Walking away by moonlight — with a gentle- 
 man, too, Miss Hertz ! And, do you know, I 
 have discovered that Mr. Oswald goes early to 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION Sy 
 
 the markets, and brings her back flowers and 
 fruit as vvelk Such apricots I saw in her room ! 
 I must say, though, she had the grace to offer 
 me a few. Then there was a huge basket of 
 plums, and one of Httle green almonds. It's 
 really greedy and grasping, that's what I call it.' 
 'And flowers?' said Miss Hertz eagerly. 
 
 * I should thmk so ! Roses and acacia- 
 blossoms, and mimosa, and all sorts of yellow 
 and purple wild-flowers.' 
 
 * She is a minx,' remarked Miss Hertz gravely. 
 'Oh !' with a change of tone,'dear Mrs. Gadsden, 
 you 've got your hat on already ! I must go 
 and dress.' 
 
 Mrs. Gadsden came smiling into the room, 
 followed by a tall, graceful figure, wearing a 
 well-cut suit of light grey. He looked more 
 provokingly handsome than ever as he bent 
 over the clergyman's wife and said something 
 which evidently pleased her. 
 
 'You can't really want it?' said poor Mrs. 
 Gadsden, tremblingly drawing an envelope out 
 of the pocket of her creased gingham skirt. 
 'It's my last copy, remember, and I'm afraid 
 I look ever so much too young in it?' She 
 ended her sentence in a half-wistful tone, 
 hoping to be contradicted. 
 
 Mr. Oswald took the photograph in his hand 
 and gazed earnestly at it. He had only 
 yesterday remarked to Violet — 
 
8S A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 'Doesn't poor dear Mrs. Gadsden remind you 
 of a boiled haddock ? She has the sad and de- 
 precating expression and the fulness of eye that 
 we observe in that ever-popular fish.' So that 
 it was curious that he should have desired to 
 possess her portrait. But he had a keen sense 
 of humour ; and perhaps it amused him to see 
 the pathetic earnestness with which she gave 
 it to him. He put it carefully away in his 
 pocket. 
 
 ' I am dreadfully sorry that we have seen so 
 little of one another lately/ said Mr. Oswald. 
 ' How is it ? You have always been talking to 
 Sir Arthur or the Scotchman — or anybody, in 
 fact, but me.' 
 
 At that moment Mrs. Gadsden really looked 
 a pretty young woman. Her too prominent 
 grey eyes shone with a soft light, and there 
 was a brilliant flush upon her cheeks. She 
 seemed about to say something, hesitated, and 
 paused. 
 
 Mr. Oswald took her hand and pressed it to 
 his lips. She started, and trembled from head 
 to foot. So began and ended the first and last 
 romance of the poor lady's monotonous life. 
 It was doomed to be interrupted by the sound 
 of steps and voices ; and Mr. Furber, carrying 
 his felt hat with its flowing puggaree, Sir 
 Arthur, wearing a loose alpaca coat, which 
 looked as if it had been bought off a peg in a 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 89 
 
 second-hand shop, and MacClymont, with his 
 sketching-block, appeared. 
 
 ' We must make a start now, Mrs. Gadsden,' 
 said I\Ir. Furber cheerfully. 
 
 Violet Routledge still looks back to those 
 hours in the Campagna as belonging to one 
 of the red-letter days of her not too bright 
 existence. She shuts her aching eyes to pore 
 over a mental picture of that great green 
 panorama, with its background of mountains 
 — rose and violet and sun-streaked. She sees 
 the noble line of aqueducts touched with the 
 golden fingers of the sinking sun — the quivering 
 radiance lingering upon crumbling stones and 
 trembling grasses. She watches the herds of 
 patient dun-coloured cattle, marching slowly 
 by, beautiful beasts with wide-spreading horns 
 and velvet eyes. Here and there among them 
 she remembers to have noticed a few of the 
 melancholy and ugly buffaloes, ragged and 
 short-legged, snorting as they walked with 
 their heavy heads downbent. Then how lovely 
 were the flocks of snowy sheep, with their 
 picturesque shepherds in attendance — hand- 
 some, dark-eyed men and boys, with pointed 
 hats and red waistcoats ! There was one great 
 white dog who allowed her to pat him as he 
 walked alongside. What a day of delights it 
 was ! There were lovely goats, too, wandering 
 among the ruins — animals with silky long hair; 
 
90 A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 and she recalls one — for no detail of that day 
 is forgotten — who stood on top of a ruin and 
 peered down through a chink at herself and 
 her companion, with bright inquisitive eyes. 
 As usual, she and that one other person had 
 strayed away from the rest of the group. And 
 he said — she can hear the musical echoes of 
 his voice still — 
 
 ' One feels as if one ought hardly to speak 
 in prose here, in this divine place. Look at 
 that corner of the aqueduct, shining like a 
 fragment of a golden city. What a wonderful 
 study of colour it all is ! From the purple of 
 the sky, growing deeper every moment, down 
 to the masses of violet flowers at our feet.' 
 
 A group of peasants went by them a little 
 way off. And they two stood still, watching 
 the glories of sunset grow dim. Presently the 
 stars came peering out, one by one. Every- 
 thing was hushed into a tender silence. Then 
 the sound of a bell, the Ave Maria, rang out in 
 the perfumed air. A passing shepherd and his 
 boy paused, their figures silhouetted against 
 the peach-coloured sky, and reverently crossed 
 themselves as they went homeward. 
 
 *Let us go back to the others,' said poor 
 little Violet, feeling quite overcome by the 
 beauty and romance of the scene. 
 
 * Must we go ? Ah ! yes, this perfect day is 
 coming, or has come, to its end. I have some 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 91 
 
 lines now ringing in my head as I look at you. 
 Listen to them, dear — 
 
 "And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve 
 Smiles to leave 
 To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece 
 
 In such peace, 
 And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey 
 Melt away " 
 
 You know the poem ? ' 
 
 ' I am afraid I don't,' said Violet, looking 
 down at the long grasses and the purple flowers 
 hardly visible in the dusk. 
 
 ' Ah ! this is how it goes on,' and his voice 
 took a more emotional tone — 
 
 "That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair 
 Waits me there ..." 
 
 *We 77i2ist go back. Mr. Furber will be so 
 angry with us,' and Violet took two faltering 
 steps away from Villiers Oswald. 
 
 * No, stay, darling, hear the end.' He clasped 
 her passive hand in his, a little hand that was 
 very cold in spite of the warmth of this mellow 
 evening. 
 
 "When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand. 
 
 Either hand 
 On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace • 
 
 Of my face. 
 Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech 
 
 Each on each." 
 
 That is something like a love-song ! ' said Mr. 
 
93 A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 Oswald, and he drew Violet towards him as he 
 spoke. A change came over her. 
 
 ' No, no ! ' she cried ; * I must go ! We have 
 been here too long already.' She wrenched 
 her hand away and ran, rather than walked, 
 towards the distant ruin where she had left the 
 rest of the party. On arriving she was received 
 with marked coldness by the ladies of the party. 
 Even Mr. Furber, kind as he was, appeared 
 a little distressed. Mrs. Gadsden's dreary, un- 
 smiling face was bent upon her in gloomy dis- 
 approval. Miss Hertz and Miss Simpson spoke 
 to each other in lowered and mysterious tones. 
 But no one was vexed with Mr. Oswald. They 
 only thought that Miss Routledge, the minx, 
 pursued him. Back again in the hot, gas-lit 
 salon of the hotel, poor little Violet found her- 
 self treated as a pariah. Mr. Oswald, too, 
 purposely perhaps, avoided her, until as the 
 ladies prepared to mount the stairs to bed he 
 came up to her and said — 
 
 ' Don't you think, now we know each other 
 so well — I meant to ask you this before, but you 
 ran away — that we might be less formal ? Won't 
 you call me " Villiers " when we are alone ? ' 
 
 Violet looked at him with her simple, direct 
 gaze. 
 
 ' I don't think Uncle John would like it,' she 
 said. 
 
 Mr. Oswald smiled. 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 93 
 
 'What a conventional person you are, my 
 dear little friend ! But forgive me if I have 
 vexed you/ 
 
 She wished him a hurried good-night, and 
 sought the grateful loneliness of her own little 
 room, perplexed, anxious, but happy somehow 
 in spite of all. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 * Only a week more ! How sad it seems ! ' 
 
 The speaker was Miss Hertz, and she was 
 partaking of long rolls and cafe au lait at 
 breakfast in company with several friends. 
 
 ' We shall have, at any rate, a most agreeable 
 day for our excursion to Tivoli,' remarked Mr. 
 Gadsden in precise tones. * I purpose to give 
 a short address at the tomb of Plautius 
 Lucanus. We shall then walk leisurely towards 
 the Villa of Hadrian, which, as you know, is 
 now the property of the Government, with the 
 exception of the south portion. Thank you, 
 Mrs. Furber, a little more coffee, if you please. 
 I will trouble you, Miss Hertz, for the hot milk. 
 Nothing in Italy can compare, in my opinion, 
 with these ruins. There were in former days an 
 Hippodromus, lodgings for slaves, numerous 
 temples, a serapeon of Canopus, and — thank 
 you — I will take a little butter. Let me see — 
 ah ! yes. And there the Emperor was seized 
 
94 A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 with illness while residing in this glorious 
 
 What's the matter?' 
 
 For Mr. Furber had joined the party, his 
 face wearing a very lugubrious expression. 
 
 *I grieve to say/ he observed, 'that poor 
 Oswald has received bad — extremely bad — 
 news. His aunt — Lady Pitcairn ' 
 
 'Is dead?' 
 
 * No, but dangerously ill. He has to leave 
 Rome this very day. It is too unfortunate, for 
 he will miss Tivoli, and — and your delightful 
 lecture, my dear Gadsden. We shall all feel 
 quite lost without him, shall we not ? ' 
 
 *Yes, indeed,' said the ladies in chorus. And 
 Mrs. Gadsden found that her roll and butter 
 nearly choked her. 
 
 Mr. Furber cleared his throat. 
 
 * I had thought,' he said, ' that as this has 
 been a singularly delightful and successful 
 excursion to Rome, and as our kind young 
 friend, Mr. Oswald, has to a great degree con- 
 tributed to its success and pleasure, that it 
 would be very — ahem ! pleasant — hem ! grati- 
 fying to us all, if we could give him some small 
 token, some present, as a little souvenir — ahem ! 
 remembrance, of our very happy days together.' 
 
 Mrs. Gadsden blew her nose, and her husband 
 spoke. 
 
 * A very graceful suggestion, my dear Furber. 
 No doubt it is the idea, not the intrinsic cost 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 95 
 
 of the offering, that will render it acceptable to 
 our amiable friend ?' 
 
 ' 1 had thought of a Church Service, hand- 
 somely bound/ said Mr. Furber shyly. ' There 
 is just time to get it and to present it before \vc 
 start for Tivoli. It is only nine o'clock now.' 
 
 In an hour's time Mr. and Mrs. Furber re- 
 entered the small reading-room adjoining the 
 large salon, the former carrying a neatly done- 
 up parcel. He was followed by all the ladies 
 of the party and two or three of the men. 
 Last of all came Mr. Oswald, already dressed 
 for his journey, in a cool travelling suit, looking 
 particularly serious, and with a tinge of melaa- 
 choly in his beautiful eyes that was very 
 becoming to him. 
 
 Good Mr. Furber was perfectly crimson. He 
 wiped his forehead, coughed, removed his 
 spectacles, and spoke — 
 
 ' My dear friends — you will not expect — I 
 am sure — a speech from me. I only wish — ' 
 and here he turned to Mr. Oswald — ' to express 
 in my name, and in those of my fellow-travellers, 
 our warm gratitude to you for your indefatig- 
 able kindness in helping us all on — on many 
 occasions. We desire — we hope — that you will 
 accept this very — hem ! — triding memento of 
 our — of our — may I say, friendship? — and we 
 also trust that it may not be long before we 
 have the pleasure of renewing an acquaintance 
 
96 A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 that has been so — so — I may say — so delightful 
 — to us all.' 
 
 Mr. Furber rubbed his handkerchief all over 
 his face, came a step forward, and placed the 
 parcel in Mr. Oswald's hands. The latter 
 bowed. 
 
 * I am really too much touched,' he remarked, 
 'to do more than tender you all my deepest, 
 warmest thanks. To me the memory of these 
 weeks in Rome will ever have an inexhaustible 
 and indescribable charm. I thank you all from 
 
 my heart, and when ' here he raised his 
 
 voice and looked — first at Miss Routledge, then 
 at Mrs. Gadsden, lastly at the good clergyman 
 — ^ when I use this book, I shall think with 
 lasting gratitude of all the benefit and pleasure 
 that I have received from you here.' 
 
 It was unfortunate that, owing to the pro- 
 jected excursion, Mr. Oswald should have to go 
 alone to the station. But they saw the last of 
 him as he stood on the doorstep watching his 
 friends depart, giving a warm handshake to one, 
 an affectionate greeting and smile to another. 
 
 Poor little Violet, whose heart ached un- 
 endurably, had determined nevertheless that 
 she would not see him again alone. Some 
 instinct told her, honourable and loyal as she 
 was, that he had said too much, but yet not 
 quite enough. ' If he really cares for me, he 
 will write,' she said bravely to herself. So, 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 9; 
 
 although his eyes sought hers, and he tried to 
 persuade her to come into the garden with him 
 before she went to Tivoli, she shook her head. 
 She began to wonder now if he had meant all 
 or even a part of what he had said. She knew 
 that she was not lovely, as he had insinuated, 
 that she was only a nice-looking ordinary little 
 girl, with a pair of very pretty eyes. But if he 
 had spoken the truth, he would seek her and 
 her uncle out in London, and then. . . . How 
 idiotic it was of her heart to give such a wild 
 leap when a wonderful possibility dawned upon 
 her! Poor Mrs. Gadsden's face also appeared 
 white and drawn as she stood upon the door- 
 step, and Oswald took her hand in his. 
 
 ' I shall come and look you up in Lincoln- 
 shire,' he said, with a last sentimental gaze at 
 her out of his flashing eyes. 
 
 ' Oh ! will you really ? I think, somehow, 
 you '11 forget us all,' said she. 
 
 *My dear friend, could I ever ioxg<^\.you}^ 
 
 And on this last sentence the poor lady 
 meditated and lived during the whole of that 
 long, hot, silent excursion to Tivoli, which, 
 somehow or other, nobody much enjoyed. 
 
 It was very late when the party returned. 
 The ladies went up, rather cross and silent, 
 most of them, to their rooms to dress. Nearly 
 all the English guests occupied rooms in a long 
 passage on the second floor of the hotel. Miss 
 c; 
 
98 A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 Routledge, and one or two more, lived on a 
 higher landing. As the latter was putting the 
 finishing touches to her simple gown, she heard 
 voices, perturbed, angry, and excited, below her. 
 Surely Mr. Furber's was one? She ran out 
 and looked over the balustrade. Yes, there 
 was the clergyman, scarlet, gesticulating, his 
 hair unbrushed, and Mrs. Furber trembling and 
 voluble beside him. 
 
 * It 's gone, I tell you, it 's gone ! ' cried Mr. 
 Furber. * Fetch Fritz — the landlord — every- 
 body ! My pedometer — the good one that 
 Lord Conybeare gave me ! And my — my box 
 has been opened ! ' Here tears actually ran 
 down Mr. Furber's face. ' The notes — all that 
 I had put together for — for — for — the hotel bill 
 — gone ! ' Mrs. Furber burst into tears. 
 
 'What carelessness! It's disgraceful!' she 
 cried. * O Signor Castello ! it 's all gone ! 
 Some one 's been into Mr. Furber's room ! ' 
 
 Miss Hertz, wearing a dirty cashmere dress- 
 ing-gown, rushed out of an adjoining door. 
 
 * My rigs, my rigs ! ' she screamed, 
 
 *0 dear Miss Hertz, hsive j/ou too lost some- 
 thing ? ' cried Mrs. Furber. 
 
 * All my jools, my ruby rigs, and my diamond 
 
 rigs, and the brooches, and the ' Miss 
 
 Hertz's stuffy voice became quite inaudible 
 owing to her loud sobs. 
 
 Sir Arthur Cracroft, clad in a striped flannel 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 99 
 
 shirt, and wearing no coat, had joined the 
 group. He appeared too angry to speak. At 
 last, after many splutterings and incoherent 
 noises, he made himself understood. 
 
 * My enamels — my watch set in pearls — my 
 snuff-box with the miniature ! ' he shrieked. 
 * Where the devil are they ? You 've got thieves 
 in this damned hotel ! ' 
 
 By this time there was a large concourse on 
 the landing. Signor Castello, bowing, waving 
 his arms despairingly ; some dozen waiters, 
 sympathetic, excited, or amused, came out and 
 stared. Poor Miss Simpson was murmuring, 
 ' I 've lost my watch ; I didn't take it to Tivoli. 
 I wish I had.' But no one listened to her. 
 
 ' Ah ! le farqeur, le coqiim ! ' shrieked the old 
 French lady, who had had nothing to lose, 
 excepting a volume of sermons, which was still 
 safe in her room. 
 
 Young Pepys came out of his room with a 
 sort of grim mirth painted on his face. 
 
 ' He 's cleaned me out pretty well before,' he 
 said. 
 
 ' What do you mean ? ' screamed the ladies. 
 He ! Who ? O Mr. Pepys, you surely don't, 
 think ' 
 
 '/never thought him first chop,' pursued the 
 young man doggedly. 'You were all desperately 
 in love with him. I know how he laughed at 
 you all !' 
 
lOO A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 * It can't be — it can^t ! ' and Mrs. Gadsden 
 clutched hold of Mrs. Furber's arm. She seemed 
 about to faint 
 
 'We will inquire, we will search far and 
 wide, my dear ladies,' said the landlord amiably, 
 but vaguely. ' And, en passant^ there is a large 
 bill for wine left unpaid by the Signor Oswald. 
 He has gone off, no one knows by what train, 
 but he has gone.' 
 
 * O the villain ! the brute ! ' cried Miss Hertz. 
 
 * He 's one of your swell mob ! ' exclaimed 
 the budding lawyer, Mr. Simpson. 'But we 
 have as yet no proofs. Of course, taken to- 
 gether with the fact of his sudden departure, 
 the probabilities are that he is a man of that 
 stamp. But you can't at present prove it, and 
 you won't see your things or the gentleman 
 any more.' 
 
 'Pity you didn't scent all that out a little 
 earlier in the day,' growled young Pepys. 
 
 No one noticed that Violet Routledge had 
 gone back into her little room. She was absent 
 that night from dinner, and on the following 
 day was so ill with headache, and a touch of 
 fever, that she did not come downstairs. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 The Rev. Andrew Furber has taken other 
 parties of tourists under his wing to Switzerland 
 
A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION loi 
 
 and the Rhine and Sweden since the ill-fated 
 excursion to Rome, of which he never talks 
 very much. It is painful to him to think that 
 he and his friends ever became intimate with 
 such a depraved specimen of human nature as 
 the gentleman to whom they presented the 
 handsome Church Service. He no longer 
 flatters himself on his powers of discernment. 
 He has never recovered his pedometer, neither 
 have Miss Hertz's precious stones been traced 
 and restored to her, although some one, appar- 
 ently very much like Mr. Oswald in personal 
 appearance, has been taken up in Australia and 
 convicted for forgery. Within her rifled jewel- 
 case she found the following inscription scribbled 
 upon an envelope : ' Who can find a virtuous 
 woman ? Her price is far above rubies. 
 Although Miss Hertz's rubies are gone, her 
 virtue is still left to her.' 
 
 But she has kept this added insult to herself ; 
 and Mr. Furber has never even confessed to his 
 faithful wife that within his empty money-box 
 was a scrap of paper bearing these words : 
 'Trust not in uncertain riches. The love of 
 money is the root of all evil' 
 
 Mrs. Gadsden has not joined Mr. Furber's 
 parties again. She is thinner and sallower now 
 than ever, and she becomes tired — inexpressibly 
 tired sometimes — of the reiteration of school 
 treats and mothers' meetings, and of the sight 
 
I02 A SUCCESSFUL INTRUSION 
 
 of the flat and marshy landscape of the Lincoln- 
 shire home where her lot is cast. 
 
 And poor little Miss Routledge, who has not 
 much beauty left to her excepting her large, 
 sad eyes, teaches music and drawing and 
 history, and walks twice a day in Kensington 
 Gardens, with no gleam of romance to gild her 
 future, and only the most foolish of dead 
 dreams to occupy her past. Sometimes when 
 she sees a tall, dark man passing down a distant 
 path, she starts a little. Can it be he } But it 
 never is. Perhaps if it were, and if he came up 
 to her once more with the old smile, and the 
 voice that she sometimes thinks she still hears, 
 she might even now forgive him, treacherous, 
 unscrupulous, reckless as he was. But he is 
 never likely to give her the chance. And, 
 perhaps, all things considered, it is just as well. 
 
A PAGE FROM A VICAR'S 
 HISTORY 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 ' Better ends may be in prospect, 
 Deeper blisses (if you choose it) ; 
 But tiiis life's end, and this love-bliss, 
 Have been lost here.' 
 
 He stroked the head of his dog, and said good- 
 humouredly to a child who stood by, ' Would 
 you like to hear Oscar sing?' 
 
 ' Oh, please ! ' cried the little girl, round-eyed 
 with delight. 
 
 * Now, old boy, you 've got to sing us a song !' 
 In a sweet tenor voice, bearing but little 
 
 trace of age, the Reverend Charles Biddulph 
 hummed a few bars of * Auld Lang Syne/ 
 
 Curly black Oscar pricked up his ears^ 
 opened his wide jaws, caught the right note, 
 and raised a plaintive howl, to the unbounded 
 joy of the child. 
 
 * What a concert ! ' said another person at 
 the front door. And a tall young man came 
 through the house into the light which shone 
 
104 APAGEFROM 
 
 from the vicarage kitchen, towards the group 
 there, blinking his eyes and laughing. 
 ' Why, Algy ! You are a late visitor ! ' 
 
 * I know. And I Ve come to supper with 
 you instead of eating a solitary dinner at home, 
 Let 's have one of your excellent broiled bones, 
 Mrs. Morris.' 
 
 The new visitor had a very pleasant and 
 courteous manner. The cook smiled at him 
 and curtsied. 
 
 * Thank you, my lord ; I '11 see what I can do.' 
 'Good night, Kitty,' said the clergyman to 
 
 the child. 
 
 ' Good night, sir ; good night, your lordship.' 
 She gave a little dip, and turned to leave the 
 kitchen. 
 
 The young man who had just arrived laid 
 his hand on the small girl's shoulder. ' Here 's 
 half a crown, Kitty, to buy a doll with.' Lord 
 Kynoch was evidently in a very good temper. 
 
 'Now, Algy,' said the Vicar, as they went 
 towards the front room, 'I suppose you have 
 something to tell me.' 
 
 * How the dickens do you guess that ? ' 
 
 * My dear boy, from your manner. You are 
 smiling all over your face. Yes — and actually 
 blushing ! ' 
 
 The elder man threw his arm round the 
 shoulders of the younger. 
 
 *I have suspected something for a little 
 
A VICAR'S HISTORY 105 
 
 while/ he said. 'Ever since you were at 
 Monte Carlo, in fact' 
 
 Lord Kynoch seated himself in an armchair 
 in the study, under the rays of the Vicar's 
 lamp. Seen in the bright light, he was less 
 prepossessing than he had appeared in the hall. 
 His complexion was unhealthy, with a certain 
 redness round his eyes and nose ; his fair hair 
 was thin and lustreless ; his hand shook a good 
 deal as he adjusted the lamp-shade, which his 
 elbow had displaced. The Vicar looked at 
 him for one moment sharply out of his dark 
 eyes. Then he sighed. 
 
 * You are not looking very well to-night, Algy.' 
 The young man moved restlessly in his chair. 
 ' Oh, it 's nothing. I 'm rather jumpy, that 's 
 
 all. I sat up so late all last week.' 
 
 * I thought so.' 
 
 * And of course I 'm excited about what I 've 
 to tell you. You see' — and the young man 
 rose and took the Vicar's firm hand in his own 
 trembling one — ' you 're my very best and truest 
 friend, and I don't know how you '11 take it.' 
 
 * I want you to be very happy, Algy.' 
 'Well, so I am. I know — although, of 
 
 course, you're in favour of a celibate clergy 
 and all that — you want a man like me to marry. 
 And that 's what I 'm about to do ! ' 
 
 *I am rejoiced/ said the Vicar. 'Who is 
 she, Algy ? ' 
 
io6 A PAGE FROM 
 
 *Well, that's just it, you know/ Kynoch's 
 hand shook more than ever. *My relations 
 
 — and it's just Hke their d d interference 
 
 — I beg your pardon ; I mean they don't 
 seem to take any interest in me except when 
 they want to annoy. They don't approve 
 at all.' 
 
 The Vicar looked inquiringly at his friend. 
 
 * You 're not a Pharisee ; you 're not narrow,' 
 blurted out the young man. * So I '11 tell you 
 there were some stories about her years ago, 
 and she's older than me— a good bit. She's 
 always lived abroad, so really it's nobody's 
 business here but mine.' 
 
 ' I don't know that it is ; but I did want you, 
 Algy, to marry some one who — well — I 'm not 
 going to preach. You know your temptation, 
 and you've been giving way again, I see. I 
 wanted you to marry some one who'd help 
 you.' 
 
 *So she will, because I care for her so de- 
 sperately.' 
 
 And poor Kynoch's face became almost 
 transfigured. * She 's beautiful and clever, and 
 she likes me. And if that 's not enough, I 'd 
 like to know what, in God's name, is?' His 
 voice shook painfully. 
 
 * Have you known her long ? ' 
 
 *Not so very. Only abroad. She's not 
 been in London for years and years. What 
 
A VICAR'S HISTORY 107 
 
 does it matter whether she's forty or not, if 
 she looks young ? I don't care a hang ! ' 
 
 He hit the table violently with his clenched 
 fist. 
 
 'Come in to supper,' said the Vicar gently. 
 * You shall tell me more presently.' 
 
 The two men seated themselves at a small 
 round table. Kynoch looked rather forlornly 
 round the room. 
 
 * I say, couldn't you let me have a whisky- 
 and-soda ? ' 
 
 * I 'm afraid you must put up with my light 
 claret this evening. And now, what is the 
 lady's name? You are a sort of son to me, 
 Algy, you know ; ever since I gave you lessons 
 all those years ago, when you were a funny 
 little chap in a kilt ; and so she must be a 
 daughter.' 
 
 * Thank you ; upon my soul, you are a good 
 friend. Her name is Madame De Morel. 
 She 's a widow.' 
 
 * And when will the wedding be ? ' 
 
 * Well — she 's not sure about that — I suppose 
 because she thinks my relations don't want 
 her. She won't exactly promise me, you know. 
 But she is sure to — I hope quite soon. She's 
 coming here, with a connection of hers as 
 chaperon, on a visit next week.' 
 
 At eleven o'clock Lord Kynoch walked home 
 through the broad park towards his house. 
 
io8 APAGEFROM 
 
 Arrived there, he unlocked a case of bottles, 
 drank half a tumbler of whisky, and went to 
 sleep, still dressed, in a large armchair. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 About a week after Kynoch's visit, the Vicar 
 was returning from the house of a parishioner, 
 now lying seriously ill in. a distant farmstead. 
 Although frosty, the air was so still that Mr. 
 Biddulph did not quicken his pace as the 
 evening drew on. 
 
 A round scarlet November sun peered at him 
 with a face that seemed half-friendly, half- 
 mocking. The undulating fields, and a shining 
 stream visible here and there as it crossed them, 
 were dashed with crimson. The red glare 
 caught, too, an edge of the pyramidal spire of 
 the small church, of Norman date, standing 
 some two hundred yards away. One solitary 
 and giant yew waved protecting arms round 
 the massive tower, rising but little above the 
 roof. Ivy grew luxuriantly over the deep- 
 recessed doorway. The evening light became 
 momentarily rosier and more glowing, glori- 
 fying the grey stones and the curves of the 
 outspreading boughs. Mr. Biddulph watched 
 the sunset, as he had often done for some 
 twenty springs and autumns — from this same 
 tranquil spot; when the roses were blooming 
 
A VICAR'S HISTORY 109 
 
 over the silent graves, and when the icicles 
 hung upon the mouldings of the windows, and 
 the birds left forlorn and tiny footprints on the 
 snow-covered roof Oscar came and leant his 
 head against his master's knee. Lost in 
 thought the Vicar stood, the panorama in 
 front of his eyes growing sublimer as he gazed. 
 Low upon the horizon was a deep flaming gulf, 
 which might have been the waters turned into 
 blood by the prophet of old. Higher spread a 
 sea of tenderest blue, shading into primrose, 
 with a boundary of swarthy clouds that to the 
 Vicar's poetical fancy seemed a belt of perilous 
 cliffs. And right in the middle of the melting 
 yellow ocean shone one tiny star, hi. . a solitary 
 beacon seeming to light the clouds now moving 
 as ships across the trackless expanse. The red 
 glow illumined Mr. Biddulph's fine head and 
 thoughtful eyes. It was the face of a man who 
 had suffered and struggled, and found some- 
 thing of peace, if not exactly joy ; a type 
 oftener seen perhaps in an Italian ascetic than 
 in an Anglican clergyman. Closely cropped 
 iron-grey hair, and cheeks very much sunken, 
 lent character to the sensitive, delicately cut 
 lips and dark eyes deeply set. 
 
 Just below the hill from which he was gazing 
 was a hawthorn-tree, with bare brown twigs 
 drooping beneath the weight of a myriad 
 crimson berries, and shining in the evening 
 
no A PAGE FROM 
 
 light like clusters of coral. This beautiful tree 
 had evidently also attracted the admiration of 
 a lady in the road below the slope of the hill, for 
 she, too, stood still, looking up at the branches, 
 the sunset lustre turning her fair hair to dazzling 
 gold. She was a tall woman, richly dressed, with 
 a quantity of soft grey fur round her neck, and 
 wearing a hat adorned with the same trimming. 
 
 ' Ah ! ' thought the Vicar. ' That must be 
 Madame de Morel. Algy said she was to 
 arrive yesterday.' He observed that she was 
 graceful and slender as a girl, though possibly 
 she might have been over forty. * I will go and 
 introduce myself to her, as I am a sort of father 
 and guardian to her future husband. Yes, I 
 certainly think I may.' 
 
 He strode quickly forward. The lady heard 
 his step ringing on the frosty road, and turned 
 her head. 
 
 The Vicar stopped suddenly and breathed 
 hard, moved a foot's pace onward, and paused 
 again, as if enfeebled. 
 
 The lady grew very white beneath two 
 patches of unchangeable red on either cheek. 
 But she walked straight towards the Vicar, her 
 hands outstretched. 
 
 ' Oh, my God ! Charles ! ' 
 
 And he said, drawing near, and taking the 
 hands in his own, which had suddenly grown 
 icily cold — 
 
A VICAR'S HISTORY in 
 
 * Is it you — really you ? * 
 
 • • • • » 
 
 Mr. Biddulph and Madame de Morel did not 
 return straight to the village. Near the tree 
 with its load of berries a side lane branched off 
 — a solitary way where deep ruts were frozen 
 into hard little banks round the ice patches. 
 The red was dying away in the western sky ; 
 the church now looked a mere dark silhouette 
 in the midst of a dun landscape. 
 
 The woman was the first to speak. 
 
 *I wondered what had become of you — 
 whether you were dead or * 
 
 ' I only wish to God I were ! ' 
 
 The lines round the Vicar's face had become 
 profound furrows, and his mouth was contorted 
 into an expression of pain and unrest strangely 
 foreign to his face and to his usually devo- 
 tional repose, 
 
 * Let me try to collect my thoughts a little, 
 Adelaide,' he continued, in a broken hoarse 
 voice. ' After — after you went away — ah ! do 
 you remember the anniversary was last week ? 
 — I sta}-cd and worked on in London as well 
 as I could. It chanced that one Sunday a lady 
 was in my church who had had a very sad and 
 suffering life. Something I said in my sermon 
 came home to her. She asked to see me in 
 the vestry, and confided in me. She had been 
 married to a brutal and drunken husband, and 
 
112 A PAGE FROM 
 
 there were other troubles. She told me that 
 she was now alone with her little boy, and that 
 the living at her place was vacant. She made 
 but little doubt that I could have it, if I would 
 take it, for she knew something about the work 
 we had organised in London. I was sick at 
 heart in the old place — in the house where you 
 and I had been together, Adelaide — worn out, 
 disheartened, ill. Briefly, I came away, here, to 
 this quiet village. Lady Kynoch always re- 
 mained a very true and good friend to me, and 
 she never inquired into the details of my past. 
 I taught her boy Algy, and soon began to love 
 him as my own child. Poor fellow! he has 
 made a sad disaster of his life in some ways, 
 but I cannot think him altogether responsible. 
 Much of his temptation — you know what this 
 is ! — is doubtless an inherited one. He has 
 such good impulses, and in spite of his failings 
 he is a true gentleman at heart. What — what' 
 — and the Vicar turned his dark eyes upon his 
 companion — ' is to become of him, as well as of 
 you and me ? I haven't been able yet to grasp 
 all that this meeting means — the present agony 
 of it, the future misery and despair of it' 
 
 He lowered his voice, and his face was bent 
 upon the ground. 
 
 Madame de Morel gazed furtively at him, 
 at the noble outlines of his profile, the tortured 
 expression in his mouth. They had reached 
 
A VICAR'S HISTORY 113 
 
 the end of the lane, where a path branched 
 across the fields towards the Hall. 
 
 ' What can / do ? ' she said in imploring and 
 forlorn accents. ' You know I began this inno- 
 cently. It seemed a relaxation, a relief, Charles. 
 Of course, I did not mean to let it go far. I 
 dare say you won't believe me ? ' 
 
 A vision of poor Kynoch's transfigured face 
 as he had told the Vicar of his love flashed 
 across the latter's mind. 
 
 She continued — ' I suppose you — you knew, 
 you heard, and guessed something of what my 
 life has been — what it gradually became after I 
 left you ? But you don't know all the wretched- 
 ness and iniquity of it. I couldn't tell you — a 
 clergyman, a man whose life is spent in prayer 
 and meditation and doing good. I grew to 
 care only for money and luxury and the lowest 
 side of things. I went all over the world — no, 
 don't wince ; I am not going to say much more 
 to hurt you. Then my fate brought me to 
 Monte Carlo. I met Lord Kynoch, and he 
 liked me in a different way, somehow, from the 
 others. He believed in me. He seemed to see 
 me as I was when I was a girl, before I began 
 that cursed existence away from you. He 
 offered me real affection. I did feel sometimes 
 that I had no right to accept it ; but then, 
 again, I knew that he had been wild, that he 
 still drank, and I thought I could be of more 
 H 
 
114 A PAGE FROM 
 
 use to him than a woman who had seen less of 
 the rough side of life. So I could not bring 
 myself to dismiss him. For the same reason, 
 when he proposed to me, I could not say no all 
 at once ; and, having passed as a widow, it was 
 difficult to explain to him that you were pro- 
 bably living. So I allowed things to drift on. 
 You know the rest. And now — and now ' 
 
 Large tears gathered in her eyes, and fell 
 upon the grey fur round her neck. 
 
 ' I don't reproach you,' said the Vicar 
 slowly. 
 
 * I couldn't — I couldn't ask you to take me 
 back ! ' she moaned. Her tears began to choke 
 her. * Me — me in a country vicarage ! Me, the 
 wife of a clergyman like you ! It is an impossi- 
 bility, even \iyou wished it' 
 
 He lifted his eyes, shining with unshed tears. 
 He was thinking of her as she had looked 
 twenty years ago, when her head had rested on 
 his shoulder, and her arms had been flung 
 around his neck. Now the night and the day, 
 the dawn and the twilight, the stars and the 
 dim lights twinkling in the distant village, were 
 not farther apart than they two. 
 
 At last he took her shaking hand in his. 
 * Adelaide, my poor little girl.' It was the old 
 kind voice that she had not heard since she was 
 young, when he had loved her so blindly. ' I 
 don't want you to go away fancying that I have 
 
A VICAR'S HISTORY 115 
 
 one hard thought of you. Those have all gone 
 long ago. Every day I have prayed for you, 
 my wife, as I used to do when we were together, 
 and you cared just a little for me. Whether 
 you were living or dead I thought my prayers 
 might still, perhaps, not be all useless ; but I 
 don't think that I ever hoped or wished to see 
 you face to face here — not till ' — his voice sank 
 to a whisper — 'our hearts have been purified 
 by this suffering and our bodies gathered to 
 the dust. If you came under my roof, it could 
 not be as a wife. And the story of your past 
 would be whisp(|red about and be ever dogging 
 you and haunting you. I must say good-bye 
 to you, little girl — till the old things have passed 
 away and we begin a new existence elsewhere 
 — one quite unlike this ! ' He had dropped, un- 
 consciously, into his former way of speaking to 
 her — the gentle, caressing accents that sounded 
 like curious echoes of a dead past. 
 
 * Good-bye ! ' she said, her lips quivering. 
 Then she added : * And Algy ? ' 
 
 "• He must not know. It is cruel for him. 
 Poor Algy ! ' 
 
 ' I will say I have thought over his proposal 
 of marriage again and the unwisdom of it — or, 
 better still, I will go when he is out shooting 
 to-morrow, and write to him from London.' 
 
 The Vicar groanc:d. It was torture to him 
 to think of Kynoch's pain. 
 
ii6 APAGEFROM 
 
 * And it seemed the beginning of so much 
 better days for him,' he said below his breath. 
 
 The earth was lying in shadow now. The 
 distant church clock struck, and more lights 
 appeared over the fields in the Hall windows. 
 Silently the pair retraced their steps down the 
 road, which was growing every moment harder 
 and stiffer in the frost. Adelaide shrank from 
 crossing the dusky pastures alone, and the 
 Vicar felt that they could not be seen together 
 with such traces of emotion in their faces. 
 They reached the high-road again. Once more 
 he took her hand. 
 
 * God help you, poor little girl ! ' he said. 
 And she looked the while so unlike a girl, so 
 
 old and haggard, standing in a patch of wan 
 light from one disconsolate oil -lamp, that 
 seemed rather to increase than illuminate the 
 gloom around them. 
 
 *You have been very good to me, Charles,' 
 she whispered. They were quite alone in the 
 still, cold country road. Two or three labourers 
 were walking away from them a long way in 
 advance. 
 
 * Will you kiss me just once ? ' she said, and 
 then shrank away from him as if terrified. 
 
 He bent down and touched her forehead 
 with his lips, and she felt his tears falling on 
 her face as he gave her that one last kiss. 
 
A VICAR'S HISTORY 117 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 ' Is the Vicar at home ? ' 
 
 The question was asked in a strained, broken 
 voice, and the questioner, hardly waiting for a 
 reply, forced his way past the servant into the 
 study. 
 
 The clergyman rose from his writing-table, 
 turned round, and confronted Kynoch. The 
 faces of both were pale and haggard, as if 
 neither of them had slept. There were red 
 rims round Algy's eyes, and his mouth twitched 
 convulsively. It was evident from his aspect 
 that he was not entirely sober, and he seemed 
 to find a great difficulty in forming his words. 
 The result was that he uttered them at last 
 very loudly and slowly, and in husky tones. 
 
 * She has gone away ! . . . without a word of 
 good-bye, leaving me just this ! ' 
 
 The young man put a note into the Vicar's 
 hand. Then, without warning, he sat down 
 and broke into passionate weeping, terrible to 
 see. 
 
 *What — what the devil — I ask you — does 
 she mean ? We were going to be so — so 
 happy! I know I had a little too much of 
 that champagne — infernal strong stuff it is — 
 last night. But she 's seen me like that before. 
 She writes, you see — why, in God's name, don't 
 you read it, instead of staring at me ? I don't 
 
ii8 A PAGE FROM 
 
 want your pity, I tell you ! I 'm for action — I 
 must take a strong line, do something, go for 
 her — bring her back — fetch her . . .' 
 
 The pitiable contrast between his violent 
 words and his weak, shaken frame struck the 
 Vicar painfully. But the latter scarcely knew 
 as yet how to answer him. And poor Kynoch 
 went on raving the while and shedding tears, 
 swearing, walking round and round the little 
 room, appealing, imploring. 
 
 Mr. Biddulph tried to quiet him. 
 
 * We will think it over, Algy.' 
 
 * What the devil is the use of your thinking ? 
 Little interest people like you seem to take 
 when things don't affect themselves ! ' 
 
 Mr. Biddulph had become ashy white. 
 
 * I '11 tell you what,' said Kynoch, sinking 
 into a large chair and changing his tone. ' You 
 can do something for me ! You 're accustomed 
 to preach and give advice. You shall go to 
 London and see her, and tell her she must 
 come back ! I 'm going to reform, I won't 
 take a single glass of spirits. Upon my soul 
 I won't, if she comes back, I swear it to you ! ' 
 He laid his hand imploringly upon the Vicar's 
 shoulder. ' You '11 do this ? you '11 help me ? ' 
 
 Mr. Biddulph trembled. 
 
 * I am afraid — I very much fear — I cannot 
 take steps ' 
 
 Then Kynoch broke out into a torrent of 
 
A VICAR'S HISTORY 119 
 
 violent and profane words, for which, to do him 
 justice, he was but partially responsible just 
 then. He shook the Vicar by the shoulder, 
 clenched his fist, then turned suddenly, banged 
 the door, and strode away out of the house. 
 
 That same evening, like another transgressor 
 of old, he, too, poor fellow, came to himself 
 again, and then he retraced his steps towards the 
 Vicarage. Mr. Biddulph was out, the maid said. 
 * He has gone to see a woman who is dying, 
 right over there.' And she vaguely pointed 
 towards the chalky outline of the distant downs. 
 Poor Kynoch was bitterly disappointed ; he 
 was by this time heartily ashamed of himself, 
 and he thereupon sat down in the clergyman's 
 study and wrote him a note, in very shaky 
 characters : — 
 
 'My dear Vicar, — I spoke to you like a 
 blackguard this afternoon. Can you ever for- 
 give me? You have been so good to me all 
 through my wretched life, a life which has dis- 
 appointed you and everybody else who had any 
 hopes for me. It 's too late now to amend, I 
 fear, but I want you to believe I am more sorry 
 than I can ever tell you in words for my rude- 
 ness. I behaved like an absolute cad. As to 
 the other matter — I am simply heart-broken. 
 I will come again to-morrow evening and ask 
 your advice once more. — Ever yours, 
 
 * Algy.' 
 
120 A PAGE FROM 
 
 The following afternoon, Mr. Biddulph, who 
 had forgiven his former pupil long before he 
 found and read his letter, was preparing to walk 
 up to the Hall, when a groom with a horror- 
 stricken face appeared at the door. 
 
 'What is it? ' said the Vicar anxiously. 
 
 'Bad news, sir. His Lordship was driving 
 that there new mare of his with the nasty 
 temper towards Crofton Hill. She took fright 
 near the level crossing and smashed up the 
 trap, sir ; and Thomas, he 's knocked silly, and 
 his Lordship . . .' 
 
 The Vicar felt his heart stand still. 
 
 * They've carried his Lordship up to the 
 Hall, sir. That 's why I Ve come. He do 
 look awful bad, they tell me.' 
 
 ' Is he insensible ? ' Mr. Biddulph spoke in 
 a curiously calm voice, like a man who talks in 
 his sleep. 
 
 ' Oh yes, sir ! They 've sent for Dr. Barnes, 
 and I expect he 's there by now. I 've got a 
 dogcart, sir, if you'll come along with me at 
 once.' 
 
 When the Vicar's eye fell upon the bruised 
 face and battered form of his young friend he 
 knew that there could be little or no doubt of 
 the issue of this day's misfortune. If Lord 
 Kynoch had lived on, said the doctor, there 
 would be paralysis of the lower extremities. 
 But the other injuries were so severe that it was 
 
A VICAR'S HISTORY 121 
 
 a mercy to think, perhaps, that such a fate 
 could not be his. For a slow dragging space 
 the Vicar watched by the dying man, patient 
 as a father, tender as a woman who mourns by 
 her child's bedside. Two or three hours or so 
 before the end came Algy spoke to him. 
 
 * I 've got one wish, Vicar.' 
 
 * Yes, my boy ? ' 
 
 * I want to see her, if I could, just to tell her 
 I forgive, and understand. She was quite right 
 to give up such a brute as me ! ' 
 
 * Hush, hush ! don't talk. It will hurt you 
 so, my dear.' 
 
 ' Can you send for her ? ' 
 
 The Vicar trembled a little. *I could — if 
 you wished it very much,' he said, after a 
 moment's pause. 
 
 * Telegraph,' whispered Algy. 
 
 And a message was flashed to London. In 
 about forty minutes' time the answer to it 
 came — not from Madame de Morel — from a 
 doctor in London. It ran thus : — 
 
 'Grieved to say was called in to attend 
 Madame de Morel this morning. She was 
 suffering from severe headache last night, and 
 took chloroform upstairs with her. Unfortun- 
 ately, stopper came out of bottle. She was 
 found insensible, and I discovered life to be 
 already extinct.' 
 
 The Vicar felt a sudden faintness seize him. 
 
122 A PAGE FROM 
 
 There was brandy by Kynoch's bedside. Half 
 unconsciously, he drank some of it. For one 
 moment, in his new and desperate agony, he 
 half wished that the sick man's eyes would 
 never open again to inquire the result of the 
 message. He buried his haggard face in his 
 hands, and, after a few seconds of torturing 
 conflict, lifted it. Then it bore a changed 
 expression, sweet and spiritual. He was much 
 calmer now. God knew best, after all, he 
 thought. That truth seemed to him surer than 
 ever before. 
 
 Then Algy looked up at him. 
 
 'Will she come?' 
 
 ' Yes ; she will.' The clergyman spoke with 
 conviction. ' Shut your eyes, dear, and try to 
 sleep till then.' 
 
 The Vicar went across the room to the 
 writing-table, and wrote another message. So 
 the weary agonising minutes dragged on. Algy 
 moved his head restlessly. The clergyman 
 came up to the bedside. 
 
 ' She may be too late,' said Kynoch. * But if 
 it's true what you say about heaven, and all 
 that — will she— will she — belong to me there 
 perhaps, as I 'm so sorry ? . . / 
 
 A spasm of pain passed over Charles 
 Biddulph's face, and a feeling of revolt through 
 his heart. Could he bear to give her up, even 
 in some other new state of life ? Was she not 
 
A VICAR'S HISTORY 123 
 
 his own wife still, whom, God help him, he 
 loved, and had loved, and still must and would 
 love through all the eternities ? He knelt down 
 by the bedside. 
 
 'Algy, can you attend if I say one short 
 prayer ? ' 
 
 * I only want her^ said the dying man. ' Tell 
 me, is it true that she and I will be together in 
 heaven ? If I thought that, perhaps I might 
 pray.' 
 
 The Vicar bowed his head. 
 
 ' You will see her, I believe, Algy, in a state 
 of existence where there will be no more mis- 
 understandings, no cruel farewells, my dear, no 
 pain.' 
 
 Kynoch became very quiet. Once Mr. 
 Biddulph saw his lips move. He stooped to 
 catch the words. They seemed to him to 
 sound like ' Together ... no pain . . / 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 There were people who wondered at the self- 
 control and calm bearing of the Vicar of Sedge- 
 brook when he read the funeral service to a 
 crowded congregation standing solemnly by 
 the great yew-trees. Women sobbed, the men 
 brushed their eyes with their coat-sleeves as 
 two coffins were lowered side by side into the 
 dark vault where so many of the bones of poor 
 
124 A PAGE FROxM 
 
 Kynoch's ancestors already lay. On one brass 
 plate was inscribed the name — 
 
 * Algernon, eighth Viscount Kynoch.' 
 On the other, ' Adelaide de Morel' 
 So she had come back to him again. 
 
 As the last group left the churchyard the 
 agent's wife said to her husband — 
 
 'John, all this has made me feel quite ill. 
 To think of those two who were to have been 
 married, and so happy! How could Mr. 
 Biddulph possibly be able to stand up and 
 read without crying ? ' 
 
 * People sometimes feel most who don't cry.' 
 
 * True, and he does look awfully thin in the 
 face. I don't fancy either, John, that his hair 
 was so white when we saw him a week ago.' 
 
 * I don't think it was.' 
 
 Then the pair turned homewards. And 
 meanwhile a solitary man dressed in black, his 
 hand resting on his dog's head, stood at the 
 Vicarage window, looking blankly out at the 
 now deserted graveyard. 
 
 * So this is the end, Oscar ! ' he said. 
 
 • •••«• 
 
 When the spring came, other and new faces 
 and figures flitted through the Hall corridors, 
 over the green tennis-lawns, and down the 
 village street. Algy Kynoch was fast becoming 
 only a memory to everybody but one lonely 
 old friend. Men in London said — 
 
A VICAR'S HISTORY 125 
 
 *Yes, poor chap — nobody could go on at 
 that rate. I Ve seen him drink six or seven 
 whiskies-and-sodas in an afternoon.' 
 
 And others echoed : * Yes, he was a perfect 
 wreck ! Odd story about the Frenchwoman, 
 too, whom he was to have married. It really 
 was a mercy, perhaps, that he didn't live to 
 make such a fool of himself. She would have 
 kept poor old Algy alive though, if it's true 
 what one heard of her ! ' 
 
 Mr. Biddulph and Oscar, who was grow- 
 ing very old and feeble in his movements, lived 
 on quite alone together, as before. The new 
 people at the Hall, Algy's cousins, voted the 
 Vicar's sermons and conversation dull. 
 
 * And he 's really rather a depressing person, 
 dear,' said one of the girls to a friend. * I 
 suppose he thinks us all too noisy, and our 
 jokes vulgar, for he hardly spoke twice when 
 he came to dine last night. / don't believe — 
 though, of course, he does his duty by the poor, 
 and they 're very fond of him, I hear — that he 
 cares for any company but his own and that of 
 his old dog.' 
 
 Perhaps this last remark had a good deal of 
 truth in it. When a man has given all his love 
 and most of his thoughts to just two people for 
 twenty years and more, and these objects are 
 suddenly snatched away by some deadly blow, 
 as bitter as unforeseen, it is unlikely that he 
 
126 A VICAR'S HISTORY 
 
 will form new ties, especially if he happens to 
 have already passed five decades of life. 
 
 The Vicar works on still and waits. And no 
 one guesses the while how much of his heart is 
 buried with the two who lie side by side under 
 the shadow of the great yew-trees that he sees 
 so plainly from his windows. A weak and 
 dissolute man, a sinful, passionate woman, 
 resting so near him and yet so far, in a last 
 dreamless sleep. 
 
AT THE SIGN OF THE 
 STARTLED FAWN 
 
 ' The meadows are waving high, 
 With plumy grasses of grey, 
 And gold-eyed daisies are born ; 
 There 's a lark in the silvery sky, 
 And a thrush on the wild rose spray, 
 And poppies in the green corn.' 
 
 The old inn stands back some thirty yards 
 from the broad white road, from which the 
 hot dust flies to-day in blinding clouds. A 
 chestnut-tree on one side gives an oblong patch 
 of shade that overspreads a long deal table 
 flanked by two benches. A weeping willow 
 faces the chestnut, and under its no less grate- 
 ful shadow is a smaller table of iron, and also a 
 chair or two. Beneath the projecting gables 
 of the inn some one has hung baskets of differ- 
 ing sizes, all ablaze just now with a bewildering 
 mass of geraniums, pink, and scarlet, and 
 darkest crimson. These trail in graceful gar- 
 lands over the window cornices, and from below 
 no less dazzling festoons of roses, deep red and 
 apricot - coloured, climb up to meet them. 
 
128 AT THE SIGN OF 
 
 Although the house lies in shadow, it has an 
 illuminating glow all its own, emanating from 
 these flowers. As I stopped at the door, one 
 afternoon last June, a man led out a white 
 horse, and watered him at a trough by the 
 weeping willow. He went slowly away, singing 
 a verse of the last music-hall stave, while the 
 landlady's blackbird hanging hard by looked 
 out through his wicker bars, and chattered in 
 the peculiar agitated note of his race as a cat 
 stalked along the window ledge. It was only 
 for the sake of attracting attention ; he knew 
 that the tabby would not risk a single one of 
 his lives by touching a feather of Mrs. Dunlop's 
 pet. 
 
 A little breeze came soughing through the 
 chestnut leaves, and moved the faded signboard 
 ever so gently. The hinge creaked, and the 
 startled fawn, whose painted coat is very dingy 
 at the present day, quivered on his wooden 
 panel as if he were going to bound away into 
 the dusky thicket by which he stands. A 
 farmer pulled up his cart in front of the door, 
 helped his goodwife to clamber out, and called 
 for the barmaid. Then a man on foot joined 
 them, and the three ordered beer for the farmer 
 and ginger-ale for the lady, and sat peacefully 
 down within the cool shelter of the glossy 
 leaves. It was an ideal June day, one that I 
 could have wished to be prolonged into infinity; 
 
THE STARTLED FAWN 129 
 
 the sky all transparent blue, with only a single 
 cloud like a small white hand floating over my 
 head. When I descended at the inn door I 
 had already driven some eight miles along the 
 hard white road, and feeling hot and thirsty, I 
 asked for some wine and soda-water, and sat 
 down on the bench. 
 
 Throughout my drive my senses had been 
 revelling in the panorama of colours, the 
 bird-life in the fields, the air heavily sweet 
 with the odours of honeysuckle and hay and 
 elder - blooms. The roadside banks were 
 brilliant with the lilac of the tall mallows. 
 Among the waving green of the corn-sheaths 
 there were wide patches of blood-red, where the 
 poppies grew in their thousands, and the blue 
 cornflowers, now in full beauty, nodded their 
 heads beside them in glowing profusion. It was 
 a scene of brilliancy without gaudiness — flashes 
 of colour and light that passed me by, and left 
 no impression of over-garishness upon the brain. 
 
 Mr, Dunlop, the landlord, remarked that we 
 were having quite the finest June that he had 
 seen for some fifteen years past. 
 
 * And what a splendid Ascot it was too, sir ! 
 I and my good lady, we went as usual on the 
 Cup Day, and we had a grand view this time. 
 His lordship, sir, he looked quite pale when he 
 led his horse in. The people did cheer him 
 too. He's very popular, is Lord Eddington 
 I 
 
130 AT THE SIGN OF 
 
 in these parts. Always a nice civil word for 
 every one, and her ladyship the same.' 
 
 Mrs. Dunlop had joined her husband and 
 myself, and was blinking beneath her hand at 
 the white road. 
 
 ' There he comes ! ' said she, * and my lady 
 too, in his phaeton.' 
 
 A dust-cloud swirled round the chestnut 
 tree, powdered the scarlet geraniums, and made 
 Mr. Dunlop cough noisily. 
 
 ' It 's a funny world,' he said presently, when 
 his choking fit was over. Then he solemnly 
 continued — 
 
 * Times is changed — some says for the better, 
 some says for the worse. I 've no reason to be 
 down in the mouth, because our business always 
 pays pretty well alike. Has it struck you, sir, 
 that one don't hear of quite so many scandalous 
 things in these parts as used to go on ? Not but 
 what' — here Mr. Dunlop folded his arms over his 
 redundant figure — ' some of the nobs are shady 
 enough still. But in this particular place they've 
 taken a turn for the better. So it strikes me.' 
 
 * Indeed, yes, at Eddington especially, that 
 they have,' said Mrs. Dunlop, still straining her 
 admiring eyes after the dust-cloud. ' Do you 
 mind it, John — it was just this week as ever is, 
 the week after Ascot races, twenty years since, 
 when w^e had that unpleasantness here in this 
 house with the late lord ? ' 
 
THE STARTLED FAWN 131 
 
 I could hardly forbear smiling at this phrase 
 of the good woman's, for I knew something, 
 though but vaguely, of the tragedy which her 
 words recalled. 
 
 ' I 'm in no hurry, Mrs. Dunlop,' I said. ' I 
 am going back to London by quite a late train. 
 Why not tell me the story ? I Ve heard, of 
 course, just a little about it, but it would be 
 interesting to have all the details from one who 
 was on the spot' 
 
 ' Dear, dear ! ' and Mrs. Dunlop gave a fat 
 sigh of retrospection. ' It was a bad job. I 
 always say to everybody I know, Marry, I say, 
 in your own spear, whatever it may be, 'igh or 
 low, if you wish for 'appiness. But I like young 
 Tom Drax, too. He was a fine young man — 
 and on his way to the races he '11 often stop 
 now and have a chat. A perfect gentleman he 
 is, no doubt of that ! ' 
 
 ' Well, Mrs. D., just you get on with this 
 story of yours — or late train, or early train, the 
 gen'leman won't hear much of it ! ' said Mr. 
 Dunlop, preparing to light up his pipe. 
 
 I drew up an armchair close to the table, 
 and invited Mrs. Dunlop to take another beside 
 me. Her husband yawned, stretched himself, 
 and went lumbering off to talk to a local horse- 
 dealer, whose smart trap cast a shadow across 
 the doorstep. Then the landlady told me all 
 about some events that had happened at the 
 
132 AT THE SIGN OF 
 
 ' Startled Fawn ' twenty years ago. I will 
 give the substance of her narrative in my own 
 less graphic words, as hers were occasionally 
 breathless and incoherent, and I could not 
 possibly remember either the number or the 
 diversity of the ejaculations with which the 
 story was adorned. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 It was the week after the Ascot of 187 — , 
 and a day of warmth, sunlight, and colour. A 
 group of more or less heated men were sitting 
 outside the inn porch discussing the past races, 
 the coming harvest, and the doings of the neigh- 
 bourhood in general. The social qualities and 
 conduct of the greatest land-proprietor in the 
 district. Lord Eddington, were freely commented 
 upon, and in a strain that was hardly flattering. 
 
 * No one'd take 'im for a gen'leman,' said a 
 thin man in black, who followed the profession 
 of tax-collector. * His languidge, they all tell 
 yer, would lift the tiles quite off yer roof. And 
 what with his short neck, and that vulgar face of 
 his under his white hat that makes it look ever 
 so much redder — why, any one'd be astonished 
 to see 'im take a fust-class ticket to go racing.' 
 
 ' Of course, to give the devil his due, he 
 didn't have much of a time of it when he was 
 a little chap,' said Mr. Fuggle, who had sup- 
 plied Eddington Hall with lamp-oil ever since 
 the present owner was an infant, and could 
 
THE STARTLED FAWN 133 
 
 therefore speak with authority. ' The old lord 
 couldn't, usually speaking, walk steady after 
 five o'clock, and it 's a fact he never got out of 
 bed till just upon two. As to her ladyship, dook's 
 daughter or no dook, we all know the kind of 
 games she was up to. Eh ! she was a warm lot ! ' 
 ' Right enough,' said Mr. Dunlop, ' and I 've 
 no doubt that the present lady, though she 's 
 merely Old Brunner's daughter, is a pounds 
 better bred 'un than a lord like this husband 
 of hers. Still, as my good woman often says 
 to me, — " you should marry in your own spear ! " 
 And if old Brunner's an honest chap, he 's still 
 a bookmaker, though he may take a villa on 
 the river — and go puffing up and down it in 
 his swell steam launch.' 
 
 * He 's a highly respectable man, is Brunner.' 
 Mr. Fuggle spoke with conviction. ' You may 
 or may not 'old with his calling, that 's a matter 
 of taste, I say, but you can't deny he 's a good 
 sort for what he is.' 
 
 * Far be it from me to deny it,' remarked Mr. 
 Gamble, a fat farmer, pompously. ' As for 
 callings, Mr. Dunlop, Mr. Brunner lent his 
 dining-room for the Sunday-school when the 
 measles was in the real building. And those 
 two girls of his, Lady Eddington and her sister, 
 were always as quiet and nice as you 'd wish 
 to see. They don't go about on the river 
 hollering to young men, and sprawling about 
 
134 AT THE SIGN Of 
 
 in punts, like some of your smart ladies. I 'm 
 uncommon sorry for that poor soul, Lady 
 Eddington. I saw her at Ascot, when that 
 precious husband of hers was in one of his 
 towering rages. He'd have killed the horse, 
 or the boy who was up, and didn't win, or his 
 wife and anybody else handy, if he could have 
 done it.' 
 
 * I saw him too,' said another farmer. * His 
 face was red as a raw beefsteak. And there 
 he was swearing quite disgusting at that poor 
 wife of his. Before everybody, too, calling her 
 such terrible names. She went quite white 
 when she clambered up on the box-seat beside 
 him. Well, all I can say is, I wouldn't like 
 Mrs. Dunlop here to know the shameful things 
 he called that poor creature.' 
 
 The landlady had drawn close to the group, 
 and was listening with interest. * I 've never 
 seen Lady Eddington,' said she, Vbut she was 
 a foolish girl to marry as she did, I shall always 
 say. I knew her poor mother when she was 
 employed at the bar at the " Wheatsheaf." A 
 nice quiet young person. Mr. Brunner was a 
 great catch for her, of course.' 
 
 * Ah ! Miss Edith Brunner never did a sillier 
 thing than when she went to church with that 
 foul-mouthed young brute, lord or no lord,' said 
 Mr. Gamble. * Young Tom Drax is wild after 
 her still, I 'm told, and the Draxes, father and 
 
THE STARTLED FAWN 135 
 
 son, is, as you know, in the same line of 
 business, Mrs. Dunlop, as old Brunner, so it 
 would have been quite suitable. There ain't 
 a racecourse where you don't see Tom. He's 
 a head and shoulders taller than most chaps, 
 and a fine-looking feller all round.' 
 
 The barmaid came out of the porch and 
 whispered to the landlady — 
 
 ' There 's a young woman at the back door 
 asking for you, ma'am.' 
 
 'All right, all right,' said Mrs. Dunlop, a 
 little vexed at being interrupted. ' What does 
 she want ? ' 
 
 * She looks awful ill, ma'am. So I asked her 
 to take a seat in the back kitchen.' 
 
 ' You take a good deal on yourself, it seems 
 to me, Miss Parkin ! ' answered the landlady, 
 a little crossly. But she was a good soul, and 
 she hurried off, all the same, to speak with the 
 unknown invalid. 
 
 A girl, wearing a gown of tumbled print and 
 a straw hat, was standing half propped up 
 against the kitchen table. She was white, livid 
 almost, for her complexion was affected by the 
 heat in a different way from that of the rosy 
 Mrs. Dunlop. 
 
 'You're faint/ said the landlady kindly, 
 seeing that the girl breathed hard, and that 
 the perspiration stood on her forehead in large 
 drops. 
 
136 AT THE SIGN OF 
 
 *Yes — faint — and very, very ill/ murmured 
 the stranger. * I 've come such a long way in 
 the broiling sun, and I was feeling unwell when 
 I started.' 
 
 She spoke in quick gasps. Mrs. Dunlop 
 noticed that her skirts were torn, and that 
 pieces of briar, and here and there stems of 
 long grass, adhered to her petticoat. Her shoes 
 were white with dust, and jagged blades of 
 green were hanging to one of them. 
 
 *Can you let me rest here?' said the girl, 
 after she had drunk a glass of water, handed 
 to her by Mrs. Dunlop, now all compassionate. 
 ' I must get away to-night if I am better. I 
 was going on now to the station, but I came 
 across the fields and lost my way. All the 
 meadows are so alike ! ' 
 
 ' Have you come from far ? ' 
 
 * I hardly know — four, five miles, perhaps. 
 But I am weak and ill, and the sun was strong.' 
 She bowed her head down upon the wooden 
 settle, and Mrs. Dunlop saw tears falling slowly 
 through her fingers. 
 
 ' Poor soul, you 're in sad trouble ! ' she cried. 
 *You must rest here a bit, and John shall take 
 you to the station in the dogcart. Come, 
 cheer up, dear ! Can't I help you in any way? ' 
 
 The girl raised her head. She looked with 
 a long gaze into the landlady's benevolent 
 crimson face. * Will you send a note for me ? 
 
THE STARTLED FAWN 137 
 
 You must swear to me, though, that no one 
 else shall know where or to whom it has gone?' 
 She spoke quickly, and with great earnestness. 
 
 ' I '11 do what I can to oblige,' murmured 
 Mrs. Dunlop weakly. Whereupon the young 
 woman drew out a sealed letter from her 
 pocket. 
 
 ' Swear to me too that you will not mention 
 to any one that I ever took refuge here } ' 
 
 The landlady hesitated. Her eyes had sud- 
 denly fallen upon the girl's left hand. She 
 noticed a plain gold ring upon the slender third 
 finger. 
 
 ' I hardly know,' she began. 
 
 Then the young woman rose, half angrily, to 
 her feet, grew a shade paler, and sank de- 
 spairingly into her chair again. 
 
 * If I were not so ill, I 'd go on now,' she 
 whispered. * But I should only faint by the 
 roadside. You have a kind face — I throw 
 myself on your pity. I am married, yes, I am, 
 and I am flying from my husband. I put on 
 one of the maid's dresses ' — Mrs. Dunlop 
 started — 'and I came quickly away on foot. 
 I am afraid some one saw me, but I 'm not 
 sure. I think one of his grooms did. I didn't 
 take the main road, so I lost my way over those 
 hot, burning fields. I swear I '11 never go back 
 to him, for nothincr in this world or the next ! ' 
 
 * My dear, he 's your wedded husband,' mur- 
 
138 AT THE SIGN OF 
 
 mured Mrs. Dunlop feebly, thinking that some 
 such moral observation was incumbent upon her. 
 
 ' Yes, he is, God forgive him. But look here ! ' 
 She tore open her dress. Across her white 
 neck stretched a bruise, turning purple. Then 
 she pulled up her sleeve. There was a still 
 larger mark upon the white arm. 
 
 'Those are only some of the places where 
 he's struck me,' said the stranger piteously. 
 ' Now will you help me ? O God ! you must, 
 and surely will ? ' 
 
 The tears stood in Mrs. Dunlop's eyes. * I '11 
 do all you ask, ma'am,' she answered in a half- 
 extinguished voice. The girl handed her the 
 note. It was addressed — 'T. Drax, Esq., 
 Riverside Lodge.' Then Mrs. Dunlop got 
 redder than ever. An idea had flashed across 
 her brain, and she foresaw great trouble. 
 
 * I don't know, my dear ; I don't know what I 
 ought to do, I 'm sure ! ' she cried, in perplexity 
 and grief. 
 
 * Send it or I '11 kill myself before to-morrow !' 
 exclaimed the girl, turning still whiter. 'Yes, 
 you shall know who I am. Ah ! perhaps you 
 guessed ? My name is Edith Eddington, and 
 I've married the greatest blackguard in the 
 three kingdoms. O help me, as you are a good 
 woman ! Have pity on me ! You don't know 
 the things he 's done and said to me ! ' 
 
 Mrs. Dunlop rose, hurried through the back 
 
THE STARTLED FAWN 139 
 
 door, and, letter in hand, went out into the 
 garden. A heavy boy was at work there 
 gathering spinach. He was the deaf and dumb 
 son of the man who looked after Mr. Dunlop's 
 cows and horse. The landlady spoke to him 
 on her fingers, quickly, but with an impressive 
 air, and gave him the note. As she retraced 
 her steps, she kept on repeating aloud — 'God 
 forgive me if it's a sin! if it's a sin! But 
 everything's all so jumbled up in this world, the 
 rights and the wrongs are an awful puzzle. 
 And he struck her ! Perhaps she '11 suffer for 
 that all her life, poor soul, as it is ! I really 
 don't seem for the life of me to know whose sin 
 it may be.' 
 
 Edith Eddington was taken up the back 
 stairs. Arrived in a spare bedroom, she threw 
 herself upon a little sofa overlooking the corn- 
 fields, and a distant silvery glimmer of the 
 river. There was a stretch of common land 
 to be seen still further away, fringed by wide 
 pastures, in which clumps of ' lambs' tongues ' 
 and tufts of rosy clover were in bloom. Beyond 
 the river was the railway station. There is a 
 nearer one to-day ; but all this happened, you 
 must remember, some twenty years ago. It 
 might have been about two hours later, when 
 the sun was no longer scorching, and the green 
 corn began to wave gently in the cool breeze, 
 that a man drove up in a dogcart to the 
 
140 AT THE SIGN OF 
 
 * Startled Fawn.' A very tall, very handsome 
 young fellow, spruce and well dressed, and 
 wearing a straw hat that threw a deep shadow 
 over his eyes. 
 
 *Good evening, Mr. Drax,' said the ostler. 
 Tom was well known by every one whose busi- 
 ness led him among horses. The new-comer 
 flung him a silver coin. ' Take the pony out,' 
 he said, 'and don't let him bite you. He's a 
 nasty temper sometimes.' 
 
 Then Mr. Drax went in through the front 
 door. Mrs. Dunlop's red face peered cautiously 
 out from the door of a private sitting-room. 
 
 * You've come quickly, Mr. Drax,' she said, 
 and she noticed how pale his handsome face 
 was, now that he had taken his hat off. 
 
 * Where is she ? ' was all that he said, speak- 
 ing very slowly, as if he had great difficulty in 
 forming even these few words. The landlady 
 led the way up the creaking stairs. Then she 
 waited on the landing — not that she might 
 listen, she earnestly assured me, but only in 
 case that she might be wanted. Just a few 
 snatches of tremulous conversation, scattered 
 heartbroken utterances, came to her ears 
 through the closed doors. 
 
 * My darling, that it should come to this ! ' 
 said the man's voice. 
 
 *You told me that you would be always 
 ready, always waiting — you know that, Tom ? ' 
 
THE STARTLED FAWN 141 
 
 sobbed the woman. * And I don't deserve your 
 love for me. I did marry him believing all that 
 people said of him, and I cared for you, Tom, 
 my darling, all the time. I did, I did ! I am 
 the weakest and wickedest of women to have 
 treated you so, and then to come after all and 
 spoil your life ! ' 
 
 ' Whatever }-ou did, however you treated me, 
 you would for ever be my own dear little girl,' 
 the man said in a lowered, half-dogged voice. 
 ' Come to me now,' he said, raising his tones ; 
 ' be with me always, Edie, my own love ! I 
 will defend you, I will stay with you till the 
 end of everything. Neither he nor any else 
 shall part us any more.' 
 
 ' Yes, yes, I will come ! ' She was sobbing 
 upon his breast. ' O Tom, my dear, dear good 
 boy, how brave and honest you have always 
 been ! It will make poor old father very angry 
 and sad if I stay with you, I know it will, but 
 I feel I must. W^hat can I do? It's too great 
 a temptation for me to fight against! When 
 shall we go, Tom ? Now — now, at once ? ' 
 
 * At once,' said Tom Drax. ' Your husband 
 won't be back for some hours. We shall have 
 a long start of him, Edie dear.' 
 
 ' He is at Windsor Races, and it will be dark 
 before he is home,' she said. The lover bent 
 down and kissed her once again. Then he 
 opened the door. 
 
142 AT THE SIGN OF 
 
 'Mrs. Dunlop, send my cart round to the 
 back door. Hurry up the man, will you ? there 
 is no time to lose.' Tom Drax's voice shook a 
 little. 
 
 The landlady went down the front stairs 
 breathlessly enough. Through the porch a 
 heavy dust-cloud floated in, and the sound of 
 speech as well. A man's voice, loud and 
 coarse in tone, said, * So Drax is here ? damn 
 him. Ah ! I thought as much.' 
 
 Mrs. Dunlop turned very pale, and moved 
 forward to the front door. Her husband and 
 one or two others were standing with their 
 backs to her, confronting a tall figure, that of a 
 person whom she knew well by sight. A burly 
 young man, with a red, clean-shaven face, very 
 thick lips, and narrow grey eyes. His age was 
 about twenty-six, but he was already bald and 
 heavy for his years. He wore extremely tight 
 trousers, a tan-coloured coat with large buttons, 
 and a low-crowned white hat. In his hand he 
 held a heavy hunting crop. He was covered 
 with dust. 
 
 * And you are not quite sure whether my lady 
 is here or no too ? You don't say so ! ' He 
 smiled a little with those coarse lips of his, and 
 there were creases at the corners of his eyes 
 as the evil smile crept upwards. 'She means 
 to be back, I suppose, anyhow, for dinner? 
 Thought I was at the races, I imagine? But 
 
THE STARTLED FAWN 143 
 
 I can play my little g'ames too sometimes. 
 Good evening, Mrs. Dunlop. You 're looking 
 uncommonly fit. We 're having sultry weather, 
 ain't we ? Thanks, I '11 take a gin and ginger 
 beer, and would prefer it upstairs in a private 
 room.' 
 
 He pushed past the group, and slowly 
 mounted the stairway, which creaked more than 
 ever under his fifteen-stone weight. Arrived 
 at the top, he laughed aloud a harsh, metallic 
 laugh, and cracked his hunting crop still more 
 noisily. 
 
 * Hallo, my lady ! Hope you 're rested by 
 this time ? Won't you come and have a chat 
 and a whisky -and -soda with me before we 
 start home ? ' 
 
 There vv^as a faint cry from one of the rooms 
 that sounded like the scream of a startled and 
 wounded animal. Lord Eddington laughed 
 again, crossed the landing, and knocked loudly 
 at the door whence the sound proceeded. 
 There was no answer. He tried the door 
 handle. 
 
 ' Locked, by ,' said he, and he kicked at 
 
 the panels with his great boots. 
 
 There was a rustle within, and a woman's 
 voice said piteously — 
 
 * Tom, darling, don't go. Can't we get down 
 through the window? Better to die that way! * 
 
 *Go back, Edith, and stand in the corner,' 
 
144 AT THE SIGN OF 
 
 said Tom Drax. Then he flung open the door, 
 and stood with folded arms, his handsome face 
 quite pale, his dark eyes burning, his lips set 
 tight. Mr. and Mrs. Dunlop and the barmaid 
 and several guests, one and all scared and quite 
 silent, were standing down below listening and 
 terrified. 
 
 ' You damned blackguard ! ' said Lord Ed- 
 dington. ' I heard, you see, that the little bird 
 had flown from one of my faithful retainers. 
 But you 're just a little bit too late ! And I 've 
 
 come to give you the horsewhipping that 
 
 man ever had.' 
 
 * You 've come for your wife too, I suppose ? ' 
 said Tom Drax calmly, though his eyes blazed 
 what he felt, * and you won't get her ; no, not 
 if all the devils in hell were at your side. You 
 shan't take her from me again ! Do you hear, 
 you scoundrel ? You 've struck her, yes, you 
 did, you infernal brute, on her mouth and on 
 her neck ! You 've insulted her before your 
 servants and the curs you call your friends. 
 And, by God, you will not move a step further 
 towards her unless it 's over my body ! ' 
 
 *Take that, you cursed, swaggering fool!' said 
 the other man. And he struck Tom Drax with 
 the whip right across the mouth, till the blood 
 started out. The bookmaker was the stronger 
 man of the two, and in far better condition. 
 He returned the blow vigorously with his fist, 
 
THE STARTLED FAWN 145 
 
 and Lord Eddington reeled backward Then 
 the people below heard a shriek, and Edith 
 ran across the room, on to the landing, her 
 fragile arms outstretched, as she tried to 
 separate the men. Eddington caught one of 
 her little hands in his iron grasp, then the other, 
 and forced her down upon her knees, till Tom 
 Drax closed savagely with the husband of the 
 woman he loved, and tried to hurl him to the 
 ground. Mrs. Dunlop feebly screamed below. 
 At length Edith staggered to her feet, and 
 clutching Eddington round his waist, looked 
 up eloquently at him. He turned his purple 
 face loweringly towards her, and mumbling at 
 her some of the epithets of which he was a 
 master, he disengaged one of her hands and 
 roughly pushed her from him. The three had 
 unconsciously drawn near the head of the stair- 
 case in their movements, and when he hurled 
 her backwards she lost her balance. With one 
 loud cry of fear and anguish she fell down all 
 the first flight of oak steps, striking her head 
 sharply against an old iron-bound chest that 
 stood upon the landing. Then she lay still. 
 A narrow red stream trickled slowly from her 
 forehead over the polished boards. 
 
 ' You 've killed her,' said Tom Drax, quite in 
 a whisper, with clenched teeth, loosening his 
 hold as he spoke, * and you '11 go to hell for this 
 whether or no I send }-ou there.' 
 
146 AT THE SIGN OF 
 
 They lifted Edith's senseless body and bore 
 it into the bedroom overlooking the green corn 
 and the sweet clover- fields, shining all rosy 
 under the lowering sun. 
 
 * She did not die ! ' I said, for Mrs. Dunlop 
 had grown husky, and was mopping her eyes 
 and face. 
 
 * Die, sir ! Perhaps it would have been better 
 so. But how can we poor mortals tell ? Week 
 after week she lay in that room up above there, 
 till the poppies and corn-cockles faded, and the 
 wheat and barley grew golden, and was carried 
 in sheaves away. And of all that she knew 
 nothing. It was injury to the brain, and often 
 she used to scream out loud and cry, and wring 
 her hands, ' Don't hit me, Charlie ! You Ve 
 hurt my chest so ! I shall die of a cancer ! ' 
 she would say ; or, ' Tom, Tom, I am waiting, 
 darling ; I know I shan't live much longer if 
 you don't soon come.' For, dear soul, she 
 didn't know how often Mr. Drax really was 
 there, holding her poor hot hands in his, and 
 putting ice upon her head, and nursing her like 
 a mother would. Many's the race-meeting 
 where they must have missed his face, for he 
 wouldn't ever go away while she was in danger. 
 And he brought his sister to help to nurse her 
 too. Lord Eddington ! Oh no, he never once 
 came near her, but went right away, somewhere 
 
THE STARTLED FAWxN 147 
 
 abroad I 've heard tell. He didn't try, not he, 
 for a divorce, for he couldn't have got it; and 
 they say when he came back to England, he 
 was for ever living in low company, and drink- 
 ing, and cursing, and swearing, till he died some 
 ten years since. And his poor wife — why — ah, 
 dear me, no, her senses did not come back ever 
 again. It was a cruel thing, wasn 't it, to bear? 
 Tom Drax, he says to me, " I shall keep her 
 with me, Mrs. Dunlop, always, so long as I live. 
 She will come to my father's house, and we '11 
 all do what we can, but I fear it 's but little," so 
 he says. Poor young man ! His heart was 
 about broke. They do say, these many long 
 years, for all he 's such a handsome fellow still, 
 that he never so much as looks at a woman. 
 Strange, ain't it? You'd hardly believe that, 
 sir? He just waits on, and hopes, and hopes 
 that poor Lady Eddington will get well, and 
 then he says he '11 marry her. When her father, 
 old Brunner, died, the Draxes bought his house 
 on the river, that nice red one, sir, with the ivy 
 growing all over it ; you may see them often 
 of an evening out boating. Perhaps they '11 be 
 having a row to-night as you go back ; it 's quite 
 likely. There 's old Mr. Drax and his daughter, 
 and his two nieces, and Lady Eddington and 
 Tom all living there.' 
 
 The sun was low now, and the green corn- 
 sheaUis were bathed in an atmosphere of pale, 
 
148 AT THE SIGN OF 
 
 pure gold, these same quiet fields over which 
 a frightened woman had hurried despairingly 
 some twenty years ago to the sign of the 
 ' Startled Fawn.' I rose, thanked my hostess 
 heartily for her story, said good-night, and 
 drove away towards the station. As I passed 
 across the bridge, at the corner of which stands 
 an ivy-covered red house, I stopped for a 
 moment, and looked down at the clear river 
 in which every willow leaf was reflected, till 
 the stream appeared an expanse of luminous 
 green. I heard the plashing of sculls, and a 
 boat came towards the landing-place. A tall 
 man, of about forty-five years old, who I saw 
 had curly dark hair and broad shoulders, 
 pushed back his straw hat, and the evening 
 glow shone full upon his handsome face. It 
 was a familiar one to me, for I had often seen 
 Tom Drax before now at Newmarket, and 
 Epsom, and Doncaster. He shipped his sculls, 
 and his companions prepared to get out They 
 comprised two pretty girls dressed in white 
 flannel, and a middle-aged woman, wearing 
 rather creased blue serge. I noticed that her 
 hair was grey, and that it looked rough and 
 untidy under her shady hat. Tom Drax gave 
 her his hand, and one of the girls joined him in 
 helping her to leave the boat. All of a sudden 
 a fish jumped close to the group. The elder 
 grey-haired woman started, pointed with her 
 
THE STARTLED FAWN 149 
 
 finger to the bubbles in the river, and laughed 
 aloud in a foolish, wild way. And she went 
 on laughing still, and pointing at the water, as 
 she stood upon the steps of the landing-place. 
 I heard her curious, unmirthful tones ringing 
 out again and again as the party went slowly 
 up the slope towards the red house, Tom Drax 
 gently leading the afflicted woman by the arm. 
 When they reached the velvet sward of the 
 lawn they turned round once more. Tom's 
 kind, handsome face was downbent towards 
 his companion, who was still laughing, but 
 more quietly now, as if at some jest known 
 only to herself. I touched my pony lightly 
 with the whip, and drove on quickly, and I 
 found, as I drew near the station, that my 
 eyes were dim and wet, and that I saw the 
 waving green of the corn-fields, the lilac mallow 
 clusters in the hedgerows, and the smoke of my 
 approaching train, as a landscape darkened and 
 blurred by an overhanging mist. 
 
IN THE INFIRMARY 
 
 The nurse was moving slowly through the 
 dimly lighted ward. On one arm she carried 
 a huge bunch of shining holly. She paused at 
 every narrow bed, and fastened a cluster of the 
 glossy leaves and blood-red berries against the 
 yellow-washed wall, just over the head of the 
 recumbent patient. Some of these sick people 
 smiled up at her half-wearily, and thanked her. 
 Others again seemed hardly to notice her well- 
 intentioned effort at decoration. A few — these 
 had contorted features and drawn cheeks — lay 
 back moaning, as if in pain. When the nurse 
 came to where James Vincent lay, he was 
 looking as usual straight out in front of him, 
 wit-h a hopeless stare in his great dark eyes. 
 She stopped a moment longer than usual by 
 his bed. 
 
 'Are you feeling any worse this evening?' 
 she asked in a calm, conventional tone, that 
 was as far from being totally unfeeling as it 
 was from expressing real sympathy. 
 
 * Thank God, I believe I am,' said the man 
 sharply, still staring at the opposite wall. 
 
IN THE INFIRMARY 151 
 
 * Well, I must say, Vincent, you don't show 
 overmuch gratitude for kindness,' answered 
 the woman snappishly, passing on to the next 
 bed. Old Ben, who was its occupant, and 
 afflicted with softening of the brain, burst out 
 into a sort of prolonged chuckle as he touched 
 the glossy holly with his wrinkled hands. 
 
 ' This 'minds me,' he said confidentially, ' of 
 Christmas at the old place. * I used to stick 
 them branches, I did, into the corners of 
 Squire's pew, and over the parson's head, too, 
 that I did ! ' Benny looked round to see if any 
 one else was listening. But the other occupants 
 of the ward were tired of the Squire, and indeed 
 of most of Ben's reminiscences. Seeing that 
 no one was attending, the old man relapsed 
 into a mortified silence. 
 
 His neighbour, James Vincent, turned towards 
 him with a half-smile on his white face. 
 
 'Those must have been great days at the 
 Hall, Benny,' he said in a low, gasping voice. 
 
 * I should rayther think so ! The old Squire, 
 why, he used to send us all beef and a great 
 big slice of puddin' ; and me and my brothers, 
 'im as was killed at Inkerman and t'other who 
 was blown up in the mine, we went out singin' 
 with the waits. And one Christmas Eve — 'e 
 was a 'ot-tempered man, was Squire (though 
 he'd a grand voice, and read the lessons reg'lar), 
 'e got into a towering rage, and said 'e wouldn't 
 
152 IN THE INFIRMARY 
 
 stand this blasted row, and if 'e didn't fetch out 
 
 his gun, and by if 'e didn't pepper us pretty 
 
 smart on the legs ! Me and my brothers, we 
 did 'oiler ! ' This anecdote, having been related 
 on an average some three times a week, had 
 entirely ceased to thrill Ben's fellow-sufferers. 
 But he went on softly chuckling over it to him- 
 self, almost until the nurse had finished her 
 task. She stood in the middle of the room, 
 regarding the result of her efforts with some 
 pride. Her face wore a fixed expression of 
 self-righteous resignation on which she piqued 
 herself She had been deprived, owing to the 
 illness of another nurse, of her accustomed 
 Christmas holiday ; and although she honestly 
 intended to do her duty by the patients, she 
 was equally determined that they should be 
 aware that she found but little pleasure in per- 
 forming it. Doubtless this knowledge did not 
 tend towards creating a feeling of joviality in 
 her particular ward of the workhouse infirmary. 
 In spite of the row of gas-burners, and a 
 tolerable fire, the room felt damp and cold. 
 Outside a heavy fog hung over the sea, and 
 chilled the bodies of people who were doing 
 their Christmas shopping. Greasy layers of 
 mud clung to the petticoats of tired women 
 tramping along with heavy baskets on their 
 arms. Here and there a group of sailors, who 
 always, somehow, look cheerful on shore, passed 
 
IN THE INFIRMARY 153 
 
 along laughing and jesting. But the greater 
 part of the landsmen were blue and pinched, 
 and not overmuch disposed to merriment. 
 Heavy drops fell off the railings on to the 
 sticky pavement, and the shroud-like mist to 
 seaward seemed to grow every moment thicker 
 and greyer. On still evenings like this the 
 sound of the warning bell, hanging on a 
 treacherous rock out at sea, could be heard 
 very plainly in the workhouse. James Vincent 
 lay awake listening to its plaintive knell. He 
 liked the stormy nights far better, when the 
 windows rattled, and the great waves came 
 tearing and rushing towards the sea wall in a 
 furious phalanx. This stillness, broken only 
 by the melancholy clang of the bell, was 
 terribly dreary, and matched the unbroken, 
 monotonous pain of his own thoughts. He 
 was too weak to read, although there were 
 several books at his elbow. 
 
 The chaplain, an inexperienced but amiable 
 young man, had failed to make much of James 
 Vincent. He had started at the first sound of 
 the sick man's voice — at the pure intonation, 
 which showed him that the speaker was a man 
 as educated and refined as he himself, and he 
 had felt interested, and anxious to be of use, 
 but he could never get Vincent to talk, much 
 less to confide in him. 
 
 * Ah ! I see you have got Shelley's poem/ 
 
154 IN THE INFIRMARY 
 
 and James Thomson's. A terrible pessimist, 
 the latter/ said the clergyman tentatively. 
 
 * He was/ answered Vincent. 
 
 * Would you care for any other more — 
 more cheerful books, or some, perhaps, of 
 a — a religious tendency ? ' blurted out the 
 chaplain, with a slight blush. He felt that 
 those dark eyes that were fixed on him 
 shone with a half-sarcastic smile in their 
 depths. 
 
 * I have all the books I want, thanks ; and 
 I don't ever care to be read to,' answered 
 James Vincent, not uncivilly, in his calm, 
 well-modulated tones. 
 
 The chaplain made one more unsuccessful 
 effort. 
 
 ' I was wondering if — if you had any friends 
 
 who — who I meant if you would like me 
 
 to write or do anything, I — I should be so glad 
 if it were in my power, you know?' 
 
 * You are very kind,' said James Vincent, in 
 a harder voice. * I have no friends.' 
 
 The clergyman nervously fingered the little 
 volume of Shelley, coughed, and went on his 
 way to talk to the more forthcoming patient 
 with the bandaged head, and the old man with 
 the grey beard who groaned so much in one 
 corner, and whom the doctor said was never 
 quite out of pain ; and the boy with the hot 
 flush on his cheeks, and the disagreeable- 
 
IN THE INFIRMARY 155 
 
 looking person in the other corner bed with an 
 evil, sodden face, and red-rimmed eyes. 
 
 Just once before this particular Christmas 
 Eve, when the bells were ringing peals all 
 through the foggy town, and the mist hung so 
 heavily over the sea, James Vincent had seemed 
 to brighten up ever so little. It was after he 
 had been reading a local newspaper. He then 
 asked for pen and ink, and told the nurse that 
 he wished to write a letter. He was now far 
 too weak to guide a pen over the sheets ; on 
 that day he had acquired a sudden accession of 
 strength. He had written his first and last 
 letter since coming to the workhouse, and 
 smiled as he hunted in his box and found a 
 fragment of sealing wax, with which he had 
 fastened the shabby envelope. The letter was 
 addressed (the nurse noticed with some surprise) 
 to somebody living in the fashionable suburb of 
 the seaport. These were the words which it 
 contained — 
 
 ' I see in the list of visitors \hdXyou are actu- 
 ally here ! You whom I have thought of every 
 day, every hour almost, during these past years, 
 in spite of all my sins, all my folly. I don't 
 think, somehow, either, that you can have quite 
 forgotten, have you? You used to tell me in 
 chaff when we walked under the red and yellow 
 trees by the mere, and when we sat together in 
 
iS6 IN THE INFIRMARY 
 
 the firelight, that if I went on with the life I 
 was leading I should end in the workhouse. 
 Funny, wasn't it, your saying that ? Did you 
 believe, dear, that it was a true prophecy ? 
 For now I am actually here at last (for a very 
 little time more), in a grim infirmary ward, 
 surrounded with many other poor wrecks of 
 humanity, most of them far more blameless 
 than I, and none perhaps so despairing. The 
 doctor and the parson (a well-meaning ass that 
 last) would like to help me if they could ; but 
 what should they do for a man who has ceased 
 to hope, to believe, almost to wish? Yes, a 
 man who is dead to all desires but one, and 
 that is to look for a moment before he dies on 
 the face of a woman who once loved him. Yes, 
 who did care. You did? I know you must 
 have done so, or you would not have looked at 
 me with such tenderness and sweetness, and 
 talked as you used to do. And your voice ; I 
 can hear it now ever so plainly, echoing all 
 down this dreary room ; between the pauses of 
 the bell that rings out at sea your voice 
 trembles. . . . What a fool I am ! You have 
 most likely quite forgotten it all, or hate to 
 think of it ; and, of course, I do want you to 
 forget, my dear ; I do, indeed, and to be always 
 happy. But, you see, I am here only for such 
 a short time more, and if you were to be kind 
 and to come Oh, let me think that you 
 
IN THE INFIRMARY 15; 
 
 will, if only for a minute, and I swear to you 
 that I will never, never, after that, trouble you 
 again ! No . . . 
 
 " Dear, I look from my hiding-place. 
 
 Are you still so fair, have you still the eyes ? 
 
 I knew you once ; but in Paradise, 
 If we meet, I will pass, nor turn my face."' 
 
 The letter was signed with initials, but they 
 were not those of the name by which the writer 
 was known in the infirmary ward. 
 
 Christmas Eve was closing in. James Vin- 
 cent still looked blankly in front of him some- 
 times. Then he would shut his eyes. He 
 breathed all the time terribly quickly. The man 
 in the corner was tossing from side to side and 
 groaning, old Benny was fast asleep, dreaming 
 of past and more jocund Christmastides, and 
 the boy with the bright eyes coughed his hard, 
 dry cough at frequent intervals. 
 
 * There's a young person asking to see you, 
 Vincent,' said the nurse. 
 
 He heard her voice as if in a dream, but a 
 wild thrill — was it a pang of joy again i' — shook 
 his wasted body. Meanwhile, somebody, whose 
 boots creaked, drew near the bedside. It was 
 a short girl, obviously belonging to the class of 
 servants familiarly known as * generals.' She 
 was dressed in an ill-fitting black jacket, and 
 wore a necktie of crude magenta and a hat 
 
158 IN THE INFIRMARY 
 
 adorned with the brightest of blue feathers. 
 She tightly clutched several untidy parcels in 
 her bare, red hands. Her thin cheeks were 
 even more crimson than her cold fingers. 
 
 James Vincent felt a long stab of agony and 
 disappointment, and then as if an icy grasp 
 held him fast. At the same time, a sense of 
 the bitter irony of life almost made him smile. 
 He had half expected — what a damned 
 fool he was, he thought — some one richly 
 dressed, with a clear skin and great grey eyes. 
 A woman who used to speak in a low, musical 
 voice, and who would lay a little white hand 
 in his, while she smiled at him. And it was 
 only the poor, grotesque figure of Molly, the 
 servant-girl at his last lodgings, who stood 
 shyly in front of him, flaming more and more 
 under his gaze. 
 
 * I thought you wouldn't mind me coming ! ' 
 she gasped. ' Missis 'av kep' me pretty hard 
 at it ; but it 's Christmas Eve, and the children 
 are out, and they don't want no supper. 
 They've gone to see the old gentleman's 
 brother, and I thought, you being so ill, you 
 might like — I 've 'card they don't give you 
 much up 'ere — something nice for your tea. 
 So I — I brought these.' She trembled as she 
 undid her parcels, and laid a tin of potted 
 lobster, one of corned beef, and a bag of ginger- 
 bread upon the creased check-quilt. Some- 
 
IN THE INFIRMARY 159 
 
 thing with a bit of taste, you see,' said Molly, 
 half apologetically, but with a subdued sense 
 of pride within. 
 
 James Vincent had recovered his composure, 
 and smiled at her. ' You are a kind little girl, 
 my dear/ he said gently. 
 
 Something in the tone of his voice struck her 
 very painfully. 
 
 * Lor ! you do look bad ! P'raps you can't 
 even eat them things!' she cried, the tears 
 suddenly welling up into her eyes. ' I thought 
 you'd fancy the lobster. Do it hurt you so 
 much, then, to speak? Well, just you smell 
 these, Mr. Vincent. I brought them for you, 
 too. They're pretty, aren't they ? ' 
 
 She shyly pushed a bunch of half- withered 
 yellow chrysanthemums into his wasted hands. 
 A spasm that was made up of pain, and pity, 
 and gratitude shook the man a Httle as he 
 touched the flowers. 
 
 'You shouldn't spend so much on me,' he 
 whispered, for he knew that Molly's wages 
 were eighteenpence a week, and that she had 
 been in sore need of new boots, and of a warm 
 coat, when he had lodged at her master's. 
 
 * I wanted to come, you see,' said the girl, in 
 a choked voice, ' and bring you a bit of some- 
 thing to cheer you up just for Christmas. It 
 seems so lonely here in this bare old place, and 
 you used always to speak so nice and kind 
 
r6o IN THE INFIRMARY 
 
 to me, and you gave me that stuff for the 
 toothache and all.' 
 
 She was crying quite fast now. Vincent 
 held her chapped red hand in his long, white 
 ones for a moment. 
 
 'God bless you, my dear,' he said. *I am 
 not worth crying for. I am not really. Believe 
 me, I thank you more than I can tell you. It 
 isn't much use' — here he tried to smile — 
 ' wishing each other " A Merry Christmas," is it ? 
 But still it 's nice not to be quite forgotten. And 
 wherever I am going, Molly, I don't believe, if I 
 remember anything, that I shall forget you.' 
 
 She turned her head sharply away, and 
 walked quite slowly down the ward. The man 
 with the sodden face laughed a little as he 
 looked at her, and made a joke about her blue 
 feather. But she did not even hear him. Nor 
 did she know that a pair of large sad eyes 
 followed her grotesque little figure until it dis- 
 appeared through the door. Then they closed 
 again. That night was a bad one for James 
 Vincent. His dark head slipped lower and 
 lower down in his bed ; his breathing came 
 quicker and quicker, and in hard, painful gasps. 
 He scarcely knew that the doctor came in once 
 or twice, or that the nurse was yawning by 
 his side at intervals for long hours. Towards 
 morning, when the Christmas bells from all the 
 neighbouring churches jostled each other in 
 
IN THE INFIRMARY i6i 
 
 merry chimes, he seemed a little better. At 
 eleven o'clock the chaplain entered and read 
 a few prayers. These over, the nurse, in a 
 gloomy voice, for she was still feeling injured as 
 she thought of her absent home-circle, with its 
 attractions in the form of mince-pies and snap- 
 dragon, gave the patients the inappropriate and 
 conventional salutation that she considered 
 proper to the season. Merriment was repre- 
 sented by a plum-pudding and an extra allow- 
 ance of tough beef for dinner in the ward, 
 and by the man with the sodden face, who 
 was prompted to be facetious. But all these 
 things seemed blurred and unreal to James 
 Vincent. He did not notice that a servant in 
 livery came to the door and stood talking to 
 the nurse, or that the latter drew near him a 
 few minutes afterwards with her arms full of 
 white and blue parcels. Old Benny, however, 
 looked up, excited and curious. 
 
 ' See 'im there with the cockade in 'is 'at ! ' 
 he cried admiringly, pointing to the vanishing 
 form of the footman. * That 'minds me of our 
 Squire. He had three of them chaps, and when 
 Mr. Guy came of age they 'ad their 'eads all 
 whitened over with flour! I see 'em, I did, 
 when the Squire spoke to us and cracked 'is 
 jokes out on the steps. That I did.' 
 
 * Well, Vincent, just try and look up ! See 
 what 's here for you,' said the nurse, more softly 
 I- 
 
i62 IN THE INFIRMARY 
 
 than usual. For she knew that she would not 
 have many more opportunities of addressing 
 this unfriendly and refractory patient. ' It 's 
 some tea and sugar, and I don't know what 
 else. Oh ! yes, here 's some nice jelly and 
 beautiful Brand's extract for you from a lady.' 
 
 Vincent vainly tried to raise himself Then 
 he scowled at the nurse. 
 
 * From a lady ? ' he whispered. 
 
 * Yes, it looks as if there 's still some chanty 
 left in the world,' said the nurse, with more 
 conviction than tact. She glanced at the sick 
 man, and realised that his face was a complete 
 mystery. It wore an expression of bitter rage, 
 of loathing and despair. 
 
 * Damn her and her charity ! ' he said, in a 
 voice the clearness and firmness of which 
 astonished the nurse fully as much as that 
 terrible look in his eyes. ' Take them to Benny,' 
 he continued, still speaking quite loud, 'and 
 put those other things that came yesterday by 
 me. Ah ! you 've let the flowers die ! ' He 
 spoke fiercely, and tried to reach the withered 
 chrysanthemums. Then he turned his face 
 away and buried it in the tumbled pillow. 
 Towards evening the doctor came in again, 
 and looked gravely at Vincent. Then he spoke 
 low to the nurse. He went away, only to come 
 back presently with another and older physician. 
 They two and the nurse stood for some moments 
 
IN THE INFIRMARY i6 
 
 in silence by Vincent, whose breath came in 
 terribly laboured and painful gasps. As they 
 watched him, they heard the sound of laughter 
 and cheerful young voices floating in from the 
 distant door. 'Dear me, it's the ladies who 
 was to have come and sung carols to the 
 patients, sir,' said the nurse. 
 
 * Not now, it 's impossible,' answered the 
 doctor sharply. He walked towards the 
 entrance, and spoke to a group of smiling girls 
 who were passing in. 
 
 ' I am afraid we must put off the singing,' he 
 said, * until to-morrow perhaps.' 
 
 The sodden-faced man looked up with curio- 
 sity and a disagreeable grin. Old Benny 
 murmured something in a loud whisper to his 
 neighbour. 
 
 A few of the patients seemed interested, one 
 or two a little sorry, some indifferent. They 
 were accustomed enough to episodes of this 
 kind. They thought that they would have 
 liked to hear the carols. It would have been a 
 change, and the days were very long. 
 
 ' Shall I tell the chaplain to come to him ? ' 
 said the young doctor. 
 
 ' What 's the use ? ' said the older man. * You 
 can see for yourself that he wouldn't under- 
 stand a word now.' 
 
 And the three drew a large screen round 
 James Vincent's bed. 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 
 
 By THOMAS HARDY and FLORENCE HENNIKER 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 A CERTAIN March night of this present 'waning 
 age ' had settled down upon the woods and the 
 park and the parapets of Ambrose Towers. 
 The harsh stable-clock struck a quarter to ten. 
 Thereupon a girl in light evening attire and 
 wraps came through the entrance-hall, opened 
 the front door and the small wrought-iron gate 
 beyond it which led to the terrace, and stepped 
 into the moonlight. Such a person, such a 
 night, and such a place were unexceptionable 
 materials for a scene in that poetical drama of 
 two which the world has often beheld, which 
 leads up to a contract that causes a slight 
 sinking in the poetry, and a perceptible lack of 
 interest in the play. 
 
 She moved so quietly that the alert birds 
 resting in the great cedar-tree never stirred. 
 Gliding across its funereal shadow over a 
 smooth plush of turf, as far as to the Grand 
 Walk whose pebbles shone like the floor-stones 
 of the Apocalyptic City, she paused and looked 
 back at the old brick walls — red in the day- 
 
 184 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 165 
 
 time, sable now — at the shrouded mullions, the 
 silhouette of the tower, though listening rather 
 than seeing seemed her object in coming to the 
 pause. The clammy wings of a bat brushed 
 past her face, startling her and making her 
 shiver a little. The stamping of one or two 
 horses in their stalls surprised her by its dis- 
 tinctness and isolation. The servants' offices 
 were on the other side of the house, and the 
 lady who, with the exception of the girl on the 
 terrace, was its sole occupant, was resting on a 
 sofa behind one of the curtained windows. So 
 Rosalys went on her way unseen, trod the 
 margin of the lake, and plunged into the distant 
 shrubberies. 
 
 The clock had reached ten. As the last 
 stroke of the hour rang out a young man 
 scrambled down the sunk fence bordering the 
 pleasure-ground, leapt the iron railing within, 
 and joined the girl who stood awaiting him. 
 In the half-light he could not see how her full 
 underlip trembled, or the fire of joy that 
 kindled in her eyes. But perhaps he guessed 
 from daylight experiences, since he passed his 
 arm round her shoulders with assurance, and 
 kissed her ready mouth many times. Her 
 head still resting against his arm, they walked 
 towards a bench, the rough outlines of which 
 were touched at one end only by the moon- 
 rays. At the dark end the pair sat down. 
 
i66 THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 
 
 * I cannot come again/ said the girl. 
 
 * Oh ? ' he vaguely returned. * This is new. 
 What has happened ? I thought you said your 
 mother supposed you to be working at your 
 Harmony, and would never imagine our meeting 
 here?' The voice sounded just a trifle hard 
 for a lover's. 
 
 'No, she would not. And I still detest 
 deceiving her. I would do it for no one but 
 you, Jim. But what I meant was this : I feel 
 that it can all lead to nothing. Mother is not 
 a bit more worldly than most people, but she 
 naturally does not want her only child to marry 
 a man who has nothing but the pay of an 
 officer in the Line to live upon. At her death 
 (you know she has only a life-interest here) I 
 should have to go away unless my uncle, who 
 succeeds, chose to take me to stay with him. 
 I have no fortune of my own beyond a mere 
 pittance. Two hundred a year.' 
 
 Jim's reply was something like a sneer at the 
 absent lady : ' You may as well add to the 
 practical objection the sentimental one — that 
 she wouldn't allow you to change your fine old 
 crusted name for mine, which is merely the 
 older one of the little freeholder turned out of 
 this spot by your ancestor when he came.' 
 
 'Dear, dear Jim, don't say those horrid 
 things ! As if / had ever even thought of that 
 for a moment ! ' 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 167 
 
 He shook her hand off impatiently, and 
 walked out into the moonlight. Certainly, as 
 far as physical outline went, he might have 
 been the direct product of a line of Paladins or 
 hereditary Crusaders. He was tall, straight of 
 limb, with an aquiline nose, and a mouth 
 fitfully scornful. Rosalys sat almost motionless 
 watching him. There was no mistaking the 
 ardour of her feelings ; her power over him 
 seemed to be lessened by his consciousness of 
 his influence upon the lower and weaker side 
 of her nature. It gratified him as a man to 
 feel it ; and though she was beautiful enough 
 to satisfy the senses of the critical, there was 
 perhaps something of contempt interwoven 
 with his love. His victory had been too easy, 
 too complete. 
 
 * Dear Jim, you are not going to be vexed ? 
 It really isn't my fault that I can't come out 
 here again ! Mother will be downstairs to- 
 morrow, and then she might take it into her 
 head to look at any time into the schoolroom 
 and see how the Harmony gets on.' 
 
 'And you are going off to London soon?' 
 said Jim, still speaking gloomily. 
 
 * I am afraid so. But couldn't you come 
 there too ? I know your leave is not up for a 
 great many weeks ? ' 
 
 He was silent for longer than she had ever 
 known him at these times Rosalys left hej 
 
i68 THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 
 
 seat on the bench and threw her arms im- 
 pulsively round him. 
 
 ' I can't go away unless you will come to 
 London when we do, Jim ! ' 
 
 * I will ; but on one condition.* 
 
 * What condition ? You frighten me ! * 
 
 * That you will marry me when I do join you 
 there.' 
 
 The quick breath that heaved in Rosalys 
 ebbed silently, and she leant on the rustic 
 bench with one hand, a trembling being appar- 
 ent in her garments. 
 
 'You really — mean it, Jim, darling?' 
 He swore that he did ; that life was quite 
 unendurable to him as he then experienced it. 
 When she was once his wife, nothing would 
 come between them ; but, of course, the marriage 
 need not be known for a time — indeed, must 
 not. He could not take her abroad. The 
 climate of Burmah would be too trying for her ; 
 and, besides, they really would not have enough 
 to live upon. 
 
 * Couldn't we get on as other people do?' 
 said Rosalys, trying not to cry at these argu- 
 ments. * I am so tired of concealment, and I 
 don't like to marry privately ! It seems to me, 
 much as I love being with you, that there is a 
 sort of — well — vulgarity in our clandestine 
 meetings as we now enjoy them. Therefore, 
 how should I ever have strength enough to 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 169 
 
 hide the fact of my being your wife, to face my 
 mother day after day with the shadow of this 
 secret between us ? ' 
 
 For all answer Jim kissed her, and stroked 
 her silky, brown curls. 
 
 ' I suppose I shall end in agreeing with you 
 — I always do ! ' she said, her mouth quivering. 
 'Though I can be very dogged and obstinate 
 too, Jim ! Do you know that all my governesses 
 have said I was the most stubborn child they 
 ever came across ? But then, in that case, my 
 temper must be really aroused. You have 
 never seen me as I am when angry. Perhaps, 
 Jim, you would get to hate me?' 
 
 She looked at him wistfully with her wet eyes. 
 
 ' I shall never cease to love you desperately, 
 as I do now ! ' declared the young man. * How 
 lovely you look, little Rosalys, with that one 
 moonbeam making your forehead like pure 
 white marble. But time is passing. You 
 must go back, my darling, I 'm afraid. And 
 you won't fail me in London? I shall make 
 all the plans. Good-bye — good-bye ! ' 
 
 One clinging, intermittent kiss ; and then from 
 the shadow in which he stood Jim watched her 
 light figure passing the lake, and hurrying 
 along in the shelter of the yew hedges towards 
 the great house, asleep under reaching deeps of 
 sky, and the vacant gaze of the round white 
 moon. 
 
I70 THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 When clouds are iron-grey above the prim 
 drab houses, and a hard east wind blows flakes 
 of dust, stable-straws, scraps of soiled news- 
 paper, and sharp pieces of grit into the eyes of 
 foot-passengers, a less inviting and romantic 
 dwelling-spot than Belgrave Road can hardly 
 be experienced. 
 
 But the Prince's daughter of the Canticles, 
 emerging from her palace to see the vine 
 flourish and the pomegranates bud forth with 
 her Beloved, could not have looked more un- 
 conscious of grime than Rosalys Ambrose as 
 she came down the steps of one of the tall 
 houses in the aforesaid respectable place of 
 residence. Her cheeks were hotly pink, her 
 eyes shining, her lips parted. Having once 
 made up her mind, * qualms of prudence, pride 
 and pelf,' had died within her passionate little 
 heart. After to-day she would belong absolutely 
 to Jim, be his alone, through all the eternities, 
 as it seemed ; and of what account was any- 
 thing else in the world ? The entirely physical 
 character of his affection for her, and perhaps 
 of hers for him, was an un conjectured element 
 herein which might not render less transitory 
 the most transitory of sweet things. Thus 
 hopefully she stepped out of the commonplace 
 home that would, in one sense, be hers no more 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 171 
 
 The raw wind whistled up the street, and 
 deepened the colour on her face. She was 
 plainly dressed in grey, and wore a rather thick 
 veil, natural to the dusty day ; it could not 
 however conceal the sparkle of her eyes ; veils, 
 even thick ones, happily, never do. Hailing a 
 hansom, she told the driver to take her to the 
 corner of the Embankment. 
 
 In the midst of her preoccupation she noticed 
 as the cab turned the corner out of Belgrave 
 Road that the bony chestnut-horse went lame. 
 Rosalys was superstitious as well as tender- 
 hearted, and she deemed that some stroke of 
 ill-luck might befall if she drove to be married 
 behind a suffering animal. She alighted and 
 paid off the man, and in her excitement gave 
 him three times his fare. Hurrying forward on 
 foot, she heard her name called, and received 
 a cordial greeting from a tall man with grey 
 whiskers, in whom she recognised Mr. Durrant, 
 Jim's father. It occurred to her for a second 
 that he might have discovered the plot and 
 have lain in wait to prevent it. However, he 
 spoke in his usual half-respectful, half-friendly 
 tones, not noticing her frightened face. Mr 
 Durrant was a busy man. Besides holding 
 several very important land-agencies in the 
 county where Rosalys lived, he had business in 
 the City to transact at times. He explained to 
 Miss Ambrose that some urgent affairs he was 
 
i;2 THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 
 
 supervising for aclient of his, Lord Parkhurst, had 
 now brought him up to London for a few weeks. 
 
 * Lord Parkhurst is away ? ' she asked, to say 
 something. * I hear of him sometimes through 
 his uncle Colonel Lacy.' 
 
 *Yes. A thorough sailor. Mostly afloat,' 
 Mr. Durrant replied. ' Well — we 're rather out 
 of the way in Porchester Terrace. Otherwise 
 my wife would be so pleased if you would 
 come to tea, Miss Ambrose ! My son Jim, lazy 
 young beggar, is up here now too — going to 
 plays and parties. Well, well, it's natural he 
 should like to amuse himself before he leaves 
 for Burmah, poor boy. Are you looking for a 
 hansom ? Yes ! Hi ! ' and he waved his stick. 
 
 'Thank you so much,' said Miss Ambrose. 
 'And I will tell mamma where you and Mrs, 
 Durrant are staying.' 
 
 She was surprised at her own composure. 
 Her unconscious father-in-law elect helped her 
 into the cab, took off his hat, and walked 
 rapidly away. Rosalys felt her heart stand 
 still when she drew up at the place of meeting. 
 She saw Jim, very blooming, and very well 
 dressed, awaiting her, outwardly calm, at any 
 rate. He jumped into her vehicle, and they 
 drove on City-wards. 
 
 * You are only ten minutes late, dearest,' he 
 said. ' Do you know, I was half afraid you 
 might have failed me at the last moment ? ' 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 173 
 
 'You don't believe it, Jim ! ' 
 
 'Well, I sometimes think I ought not to 
 expect you to keep engagements with me 
 so honestly as you do. Good, brave little 
 Rosalys ! ' 
 
 They moved on through the press of strug- 
 gling omnibuses, gigantic vans, covered carts, 
 and foot-passengers who darted at imminent 
 risk of their lives amid the medley of wheels, 
 horses, and shouting drivers. The noise jarred 
 Rosalys' head, and she began to be feverishly 
 anxious. 
 
 The church stood in the neighbourhood of a 
 great meat-market, and the pavement was 
 crowded by men in blue linen blouses, their 
 clothes sprinkled with crimson stains. The 
 young girl gave a shiver of disgust. 
 
 ' How revolting it must be to have a butcher 
 for a husband ! They can't have hearts like 
 other men. . . . What a gloomy part of London 
 this is to be married in, Jim ! ' 
 
 * Ah — yes ! Everything looks gloomy with 
 the east wind blowing. Now, here we are! 
 Jump out, little woman ! ' 
 
 He handed money to the driver, who went 
 off with the most cursory thoughts of the part 
 that he had played in this little excursion of a 
 palpitating pair into the unknown. 
 
 'Jimmy, darling; oughtn't you, or one of us, 
 to have lived here for fifteen days ? ' she said, 
 
174 THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 
 
 as they entered the fine old Norman porch, to 
 which she was quite blind in her preoccupa- 
 tion. 
 
 Durrant laughed. *I have declared that I 
 did,' he answered coolly. *I hope in the cir- 
 cumstances that it's a forgivable lie. Cheer 
 up, Rosalys ; don't all of a sudden look so 
 solemn ! ' 
 
 There were tears in her eyes. The gravity 
 of the step she was about to take had begun to 
 frighten her. 
 
 They had some time to wait before the 
 clergyman condescended to come out of the 
 vestry and perform the ceremony which was 
 to unite her to Jim. Two or three other 
 couples were also in the church on the same 
 errand: a haggard woman in a tawdry white 
 bonnet, hanging on to the arm of a short, 
 crimson-faced man, who had evidently been 
 replenishing his inside with gin to nerve him- 
 self to the required pitch for the ordeal ; a girl 
 with a coarse, hard face, accompanied by a 
 slender youth in shabby black ; a tall man of 
 refined aspect, in very poor clothes, whose 
 hollow cough shook his thin shoulders and 
 chest, and told his bride that her happiness, 
 such as it was, would probably last but the 
 briefest space. 
 
 Rosalys glanced absently at the beautiful 
 building, with its Norman apse and transverse 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 175 
 
 arches of horse-shoe form, and the massive 
 curves and cushion-capitals that supported the 
 tower-end ; the whole impression left by the 
 church being one of singular harmony, loveli- 
 ness, and above all, repose — which struck even 
 her by its great contrast with her experiences 
 just then. As the clergyman emerged from 
 the vestry a shaft of sunlight smote the altar, 
 touched the quaint tomb where the founder of 
 the building lay in his dreamless sleep, and 
 quivered on the darned clothes of the con- 
 sumptive bridegroom. 
 
 Jim and Rosalys moved forward, and then the 
 light shone for a moment too upon his yellow^ 
 hair and handsome face. To the woman who 
 loved him it seemed that 'from the crown of 
 his head even to the sole of his foot there was 
 no blemish in him.' 
 
 The curate looked sharply at the four couples; 
 angrily, Rosalys fancied, at her. But it was 
 only because the east wind had given him an 
 acute toothache that his gaze was severe, and 
 his reading spiritless. 
 
 The four couples having duly contracted their 
 inviolable unities, and slowly gone their ways 
 through the porch, Jim and Rosalys adjourned 
 to a fashionable hotel on the Embankment, 
 where in a room all to themselves they had 
 luncheon, over which Rosalys presided with 
 quite a housewifely air. 
 
176 THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 
 
 ' When shall I see you again ? ' he said, as he 
 put her into a cab two or three hours later on 
 in the afternoon. 
 
 ' You must arrange all that, Jim. Somehow 
 I feel so depressed, so dreadfully sad now, all 
 of a sudden ! Have I been wicked ? I don't 
 know ! ' 
 
 Her tone changed, as she met his passionate 
 gaze, and she said very low with a lump in her 
 throat — 
 
 * O my dear darling ! I care for nothing 
 in the whole wide world, now that I belong to 
 you ! ' . • . 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 The London weeks went by with all their 
 commonplaces, all their novelties. Mr. Durrant, 
 senior, had finished his urgent business, and 
 returned to his square and uninteresting country 
 house. But Jim lingered on in town, although 
 conscious of some subtle change in himself 
 and his view of things. He and Rosalys met 
 whenever it was possible, which was pretty 
 frequently. Often they contrived to do so at 
 hastily arranged luncheons and teas at hotels 
 or restaurants ; sometimes, when Mrs. Ambrose 
 was suddenly called away, at Jim's own rooms. 
 Sometimes they adventured to queer suburban 
 coffee-houses. 
 
TFIE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 177 
 
 In the lapse of these weeks the twain began 
 somehow to lose a little of their zest for each 
 other's society. Jim himself was aware of it 
 before he had yet discovered that something of 
 the same disappointment was dulling her heart 
 too. On his own side it was the usual lowering 
 of the fire — the slackening of a man's passion 
 for a woman when she becomes his property. 
 On hers it was a more mixed feeling. No 
 doubt her love for Jim had been of but little 
 higher quality than his for her. She had 
 thoroughly abandoned herself to his good looks, 
 his recklessness, his eagerness ; and, now that 
 the novelty of wifedom was past, her fervour 
 also began to burn itself down. But beyond, 
 above, this, the concealment of her marriage 
 was repugnant to Rosalys. When the rapture 
 of the early meetings had died away she began 
 to loathe the sordid deceit which these involved ; 
 the secretly despatched letters, the unavoidably 
 brazen lies to her mother, who, if she attached 
 overmuch importance to money and birth, yet 
 loved her daughter in all good faith and 
 simplicity. Then once or twice Jim was late 
 at their interviews. He seemed indifferent and 
 preoccupied. His manner stung Rosalys into 
 impatient utterance at the end of a particular 
 meeting in which this mood was unduly pro- 
 minent. 
 
 ' You forget all I have given up for you ! ' 
 M 
 
178 THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 
 
 she cried. ' You make a fool of me in allowing 
 me to wait here for you. It is humiliating and 
 vulgar. I hate myself for behaving as I do ! ' 
 
 * The renunciations are not all on your side/ 
 he answered caustically. * You forget all that 
 the loss of his freedom means to a man ! ' 
 
 Her heart swelled, and she had great difficulty 
 in keeping back her tears. But she took refuge 
 in sullenness. 
 
 * Unfortunately we can't undo our folly ! ' she 
 murmured. * You will have to make the best 
 of it as well as I. I suppose the awakening to 
 a sense of our idiocy was bound to come sooner 
 or later. But — I didn't think it would come so 
 soon. Jim, look at me ! Are you really angry. 
 Don't, for God's sake, go and leave me like 
 this!' 
 
 He was walking slowly towards the great 
 iron gate leading out of Kensington Gardens, 
 a dogged cast on his now familiar counten- 
 ance. 
 
 * Don't make a scene in public, for Heaven's 
 sake, Rosalys ! ' 
 
 Feeling that he had spoken too brutally, he 
 suddenly paused and changed. 
 
 * I am sorry, little woman, if I was cross ! 
 But things have combined to harass me lately. 
 Of course we won't part from one another in 
 anger.' 
 
 Jim glanced at her straight profile with its 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 179 
 
 full underlip and firmly curved chin, at the 
 lashes on either lid, and the glossy brown hair 
 twisted in coils under her hat. But the sight 
 of this loveliness, now all his own, failed to 
 arouse the old emotions. He simply contem- 
 plated her approvingly from an artistic point 
 of view. 
 
 They had reached the gateway, and she 
 placed her hand on his arm. 
 
 ' Good-bye. When shall we next meet ? To- 
 day is Tuesday. Shall it be Friday ? ' 
 
 ' I am afraid I must go out of London on 
 Thursday for a day or two. I '11 write, dear. 
 Let me call a hansom.' 
 
 She thanked him in a cold voice again, and 
 with a last handshake, and a smile that hovered 
 on sorrow, left him and drove away towards 
 Belgravia. 
 
 Once or twice later on they met ; the next 
 interview being shorter and sadder perhaps 
 than the last. The one that followed it ended 
 in bitterness. 
 
 'This had better be our long good-bye, I 
 suppose ? ' said she. 
 
 * Perhaps it had. . . . You seem to be always 
 looking out for causes of reproach, Rosalys. I 
 don't know what has come over you.' 
 
 'It is yo7i who have changed ! ' she cried, 
 with a little stamp. * And you are by far the 
 most to blame of us two. You forget that I 
 
i8o THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 
 
 should never have contemplated marriage as a 
 possibility! You have made me lie to my 
 mother, do things of which I am desperately 
 ashamed, and now you don't attempt to dis- 
 guise your weariness of me ! ' 
 
 It was Jim's turn to lose his temper now. 
 ' You forget that you gave me considerable en 
 couragement ! Most girls would not have come 
 out again and again to surreptitious meetings 
 with a man who was in love with them — girls 
 brought up as you have been ! ' 
 
 She started as in a spasm. A momentary 
 remorse seized him. He realised that he had 
 been betrayed into speaking as no man of 
 kindly good-feeling could speak. He made a 
 tardy, scarcely gracious apology, and they 
 parted. A few days afterwards he wrote a 
 letter full of penitence for having hurt her, and 
 she answered almost affectionately. But each 
 knew that their short-lived romance was dead 
 as the wind-flowers that had blossomed at its 
 untimely birth. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 In August this pair of disappointed people 
 met once more amid their old surroundings. 
 Perhaps their enforced absence from one another 
 gave at first some zest to their reunion. Jim 
 was at times tender, and like his former self; 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL i8i 
 
 Rosalys, if sad and subdued, less sullen and 
 reproachful than she had been in London. 
 
 Mrs. Ambrose had fallen into delicate health, 
 and her daughter was in consequence able to 
 dispose of her time outside the house as she 
 wished. The moonlight meetings with Jim 
 were discontinued ; but husband and wife went 
 for long strolls sometimes in the remoter nooks 
 of the park, through winding walks in the distant 
 shrubberies, and down paths hidden by high yew 
 hedges from intruding eyes that might look with 
 suspicion on their being together. 
 
 On one especially beautiful August day they 
 paced side by side, talking at moments with 
 something of their old tenderness. The sky 
 above the dark-green barriers on either hand 
 was a bottomless deep of blue. The yew- 
 boughs were covered in curious profusion by 
 the handiwork of energetic spiders, who had 
 woven their glistening webs in every variety of 
 barbaric pattern. In shape some resembled 
 hammocks, others purses, others deep bags, in 
 the middle of which a large yellow insect 
 remained motionless and watchful. 
 
 ' Shall we sit for a little while in the summer- 
 house ? ' said Rosalys at last, in flat accents, for 
 a tete-d-tete with Jim had long ceased to give 
 her any really strong beats of pleasure. * I 
 want to talk to you further about plans ; how 
 often we had better write, and so on.* 
 
i82 THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 
 
 They sat down in an arbour made of rustic 
 logs which overlooked the mere. The wood- 
 work had been left rough within, and dusty 
 spider-webs hung in the crevices ; here and 
 there the bark had fallen away in strips ; 
 above, on the roof, there were clumps of fungi, 
 looking like tufts of white fur. 
 
 'This is a sunless, queer sort of place you 
 have chosen,' he said, looking round critically. 
 
 The boughs had grown so thickly in the 
 foreground that the glittering margin of water 
 was hardly perceptible between their interlacing 
 twigs, and no visible hint of a human habitation 
 was given, though the rustic shelter had been 
 originally built with the view of affording a 
 picturesque glimpse of the handsome old brick 
 house, wherein the Ambroses had lived for 
 some three centuries. 
 
 * You might have found a more lively scene 
 for what will be, perhaps, our last interview for 
 years,' Jim went on. 
 
 ' Are you really going so soon ? ' she asked, 
 passing over the complaint. 
 
 *Next week. And my father has made all 
 sorts of arrangements for me. Besides, he is 
 beginning to suspect that you and I are rather 
 too intimate. And your mother knows, some- 
 how or other, that I have been up several times 
 of late. We must be careful.' 
 
 * I suppose so,' she answered absently, looking 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 183 
 
 out under the log-roof at a chaffinch swinging 
 himself backwards and forwards on a large 
 bough. A sort of dreary indifference to her 
 surroundings ; a sense of being caged and 
 trapped had begun to take possession of 
 Rosalys. The present was full of perplexity, 
 the future objectless. Now and then, when 
 she looked at Jim's lithe figure, and healthy, 
 virile face, she felt that perhaps she might have 
 been able to love him still if only he had cared 
 for her with a remnant of his former passionate 
 devotion. But his indifference was even more 
 palpable than her own. They sat and talked 
 on within the dim arbour for a little while. 
 Then Jim made one of the unfortunate remarks 
 that always galled her to the quick. She rose 
 in anger, answered him with cold sarcasm, and 
 hastened away down the little wood. He 
 followed her, a rather ominous light shining in 
 his eyes. 
 
 * Your temper is really growing insufferable, 
 Rosalys ! ' he cried, and clenched his hand 
 roughly on her arm to detain her. 
 
 'How dare you!' said the girl. * For God's 
 sake leave me, and don't come back again ! 
 I rejoice to think that in a few days it will 
 not be in your power to insult me any more ! ' 
 
 'Damn it — I am going to leave you, am I 
 not? I only want to keep you here for a 
 moment to come to some understanding ! In- 
 
i84 THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 
 
 deed, you'll be surprised to find how very 
 much I am going to leave you, when you hear 
 what I mean ! My ideas have grown consider- 
 ably emancipated of late, and therefore I tell 
 you there is no reason on earth why any soul 
 should ever know of that miserable mistake we 
 made in the spring.' 
 
 She winced a little; it was an unexpected 
 move ; and her eyes lingered uneasily on a 
 copper-coloured butterfly playing a game of 
 hide-and-seek with a little blue companion. 
 
 * Who,' he continued, ' is ever going to search 
 the register of that old East- London church? 
 We must philosophically look on the marriage 
 as an awkward fact in our lives, which won't 
 prevent our loving anybody else when we feel 
 inclined. In my opinion this early error will 
 carry one advantage with it — that we shall be 
 unable to extinguish any love we may feel for 
 another person by a sordid matrimonial knot — 
 unless, indeed, after seven years of oblivious- 
 ness to one another's existence.' 
 
 * I '11 — try to — emancipate myself likewise,' 
 she said slowly. * It will be well to forget this 
 tragedy of our lives ! And the most tragic 
 part of it is — that we are not even sorry that 
 we don't love each other any more ! ' 
 
 * The truest words you ever spoke ! * 
 
 * And the surest event that was ever to come, 
 given your nature.' 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 185 
 
 * And yours ! ' 
 
 She hastened on down the grass walk into 
 the broad gravelled path leading to the house. 
 At the corner stood Mrs. Ambrose, who was 
 better, and had come out for a stroll — assuming 
 as an invalid the privilege of wearing a singular 
 scarlet gown, and a hat in which a number of 
 black quills stood startlingly erect. 
 
 * Ah— Rosy!' she cried. 'Oh, and Mr. 
 Durrant? What a colour you have got, child!' 
 
 ' Yes. Mr. Durrant and I have been having 
 a furious political discussion, mamma. I have 
 grown quite hot over it. He is more unreason- 
 able than ever. But when he gets abroad he 
 won't be as he is now. A few years of India 
 will change all that.' And to carry on the 
 idea of her unconcern she turned to whistle to 
 a bold robin that had flitted down from a larch- 
 tree, perched on the yew hedge, and looked 
 inquiringly at her, answering her whistle with 
 his pathetic little pipe. 
 
 Durrant had come up behind. *Yes/ he 
 said cynically. ' One never knows how an 
 enervating country may soften one's brains.' 
 
 He bade them a cool good-bye and left. She 
 watched his retreating figure, the figure of the 
 active, the strong, the handsome animal, who had 
 scarcely won the better side of her nature at all. 
 He never turned his head. So this was the end I 
 
 The bewildering bitterness of it well-nigh 
 
i86 THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 
 
 paralysed Rosalys for a few moments. Why 
 had they been allowed — he and she — to love 
 one another with that eager, resistless passion, 
 and then to part with less interest in each other 
 than ordinary friends? She felt ashamed of 
 having ceded herself to him. If her mother had 
 not been beside her she would have screamed 
 out aloud in her exasperating pain. 
 
 Mrs. Ambrose lifted up her voice. 'What 
 are you looking at, child ? . . . My dear, I 
 want a little word with you. Are you sure you 
 are attending ? When you pout your lip like 
 that, Rosalys, I always know that you are in a 
 bad frame of mind. . . . The vicar has been 
 here ; and he has made me a little unhappy.' 
 
 * I should have thought he was too stupid to 
 give any one a pang ! Why do they put such 
 simpletons into the churches ? ' 
 
 ' Well — he says that people are chattering 
 about you and that young Durrant. And I 
 must tell you that — that, from a marrying 
 point of view, he is impossible. You know 
 that. And I don't want him to make up to 
 you. Now, Rosalys, my darling, tell me 
 honestly — I feel I have not looked after you 
 lately as I ought to have done — tell me 
 honestly : Is he in love with you ? ' 
 
 * He is not, mother, to my certain knowledge/ 
 
 * Are you with him ? ' 
 
 * No. That I swear.' 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL iS; 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Seven years and some months had passed 
 since Rosalys spoke as above-written. And 
 never a sound of Jim. 
 
 As she had mentally matured under the 
 touch of the gliding seasons, Miss Ambrose 
 had determined to act upon the hint Jim had 
 thrown out to her as to the practical nullity 
 of their marriage contract if they simply kept 
 in different hemispheres without a word. She 
 had never written to him a line ; and he had 
 never written a line to her. 
 
 He might be dead for all that she knew ; he 
 possibly was dead. She had taken no steps to 
 ascertain anything about him, though she had 
 been aware for years that his name was no 
 longer in the Army List. Dead or alive he was 
 completely cut off from the county in which 
 he and she had lived, for his father had died a 
 long time before this, his house and properties 
 had been sold, and not a scion of the house of 
 Durrant remained in that part of England. 
 
 Rosalys had readily imbibed his ideas of 
 their mutual independence ; and now, after the 
 lapse of all these years, had acted upon them 
 with the surprising literalness of her sex when 
 they act upon advice at all. 
 
 Mrs. Ambrose, who had distinguished herself 
 
188 THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 
 
 In no whit during her fifty years of life saving 
 by the fact of having brought a singularly 
 beautiful girl into the world, had passed quietly 
 out of it. Rosalys's uncle had succeeded his 
 sister-in-law in the possession of the old house 
 with its red tower, and the broad paths and 
 garden-lands ; he had been followed by an 
 unsatisfactory son of his, last in the entail, and 
 thus unexpectedly Rosalys Ambrose found 
 herself sole mistress of the spot of her birth. 
 
 People marvelled somewhat that she con- 
 tinued to call herself Miss Ambrose. Though 
 a woman now getting on for thirty, sne was 
 remarkably attractive both in face and in figure, 
 and could confront the sunlight as well as the 
 moonbeams still. In the manner of women 
 who are yet sure of their charms she was fond 
 of representing herself as much older than she 
 really was. Perhaps she would have been 
 disappointed if her friends had not laughed 
 and contradicted her, and told her that she was 
 still lovely and looked like a young girl. Lord 
 Parkhurst, anyhow, was firmly of that contra- 
 dictory opinion ; and perhaps she cared more 
 for his views than for any one else's at the 
 present time. 
 
 That distinguished sailor had been but one 
 of many suitors ; but he had stirred her heart 
 as none of the others could do. It was not 
 merely that he was brave, and pleasing, and 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 189 
 
 had returned from a campaign in Egypt with 
 a hero's reputation ; but that his chivalrous 
 feelings towards women, originating perhaps in 
 the fact that he knew very little about them, 
 were sufficient to gratify the most exacting of 
 the sex. 
 
 His rigid notions of duty and honour, both 
 towards them and from them, made the blood 
 of Rosalys run cold when she thought of a 
 certain little episode of her past life, notwith- 
 standing that, or perhaps because, she loved 
 him dearly. 
 
 * He is not the least bit of a flirt, like most 
 sailors,' said Miss Ambrose to her cousin and 
 companion. Miss Jennings, on a particular 
 afternoon in the eighth year of Jim Durrant's 
 obliteration from her life. It was an afternoon 
 with an immense event immediately ahead of 
 it ; no less an event than Rosalys's marriage 
 with Lord Parkhurst, which was to take place 
 on the very next day. 
 
 The local newspaper had duly announced 
 the coming wedding in proper terms as 'the 
 approaching nuptials of the beautiful and 
 wealthy Miss Ambrose, of Ambrose Towers, 
 with a distinguished naval officer. Lord Park- 
 hurst.' There followed an ornamental account 
 of the future bridegroom's heroic conduct dur- 
 ing the late war. ' The handsome face and 
 figure of Lord Parkhurst,' wound up the honest 
 
igo THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 
 
 paragraphist, *are not altogether unknown to 
 us in this vicinity, as he has recently been 
 visiting his uncle, Colonel Lacy, High Sheriff 
 of the county. We wish all prosperity to the 
 happy couple, who have doubtless a brilliant 
 and cloudless future before them.' 
 
 This was the way in which her acceptance of 
 Durrant's views had worked themselves out. 
 He had said : * After seven years of mutual 
 oblivion we can marry again if we choose/ 
 
 And she had chosen. 
 
 Rosalys almost wished that Lord Parkhurst 
 had been a flirt, or at least had won experience 
 as the victim of one, or many, of those precious 
 creatures, and had not so implicitly trusted her. 
 It would have brought things more nearly to 
 a level. 
 
 ' A flirt ! I should think not/ said Jane 
 Jennings. * In fact, Rosalys, he is almost 
 alarmingly strict in his ideas. It is a mistake 
 to believe that so many women are angels, as 
 he does. He is too simple. He is bound to 
 be disappointed some day.' 
 
 Miss Ambrose sighed nervously. *Yes,' she 
 said. 
 
 *I don't mean by you to-morrow! God 
 forbid!' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 Miss Ambrose sighed again, and a silence 
 followed, during which, while recalling un- 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 191 
 
 utterable things of the past, Rosalys gazed 
 absently out of the window at the lake, that 
 some men were dredging ; the mud, left bare 
 by draining down the water, being imprinted 
 with hundreds of little footmarks of plovers 
 feeding there. Eight or nine herons stood 
 further away, one or two composedly fishing, 
 their grey figures reflected with unblurred 
 clearness in the mirror of the pool. Some little 
 water-hens waddled with a fussy gait across 
 the sodden ground in front of them, and a 
 procession of wild geese came through the 
 sky, and passed on till they faded away into a 
 row of black dots. 
 
 Suddenly the plovers rose into the air, 
 uttering their customary wails, and dispersing 
 like a group of stars from a rocket ; and the 
 herons drew up their flail-like legs, and flapped 
 themselves away. 
 
 Something had disturbed them ; a carriage 
 sweeping round to the other side of the house. 
 
 ' There 's the door-bell ! ' Rosalys exclaimed, 
 with a start. ' That 's he, it must be ! Is my 
 hair untidy, Jane? I've been rumpling it 
 awfully, leaning back on the cushions. And 
 do see if my gown is all right at the back — it 
 never did fit well.' 
 
 The butler flung open the folding doors, and 
 announced in the voice of a man who felt that 
 it was quite time for this nonsense of calling to 
 
192 THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 
 
 be put an end to by the more compact arrange- 
 ment of the morrow — 
 
 ' Lord Parkhurst ! ' 
 
 A man of middle size, with a fair and pleas- 
 ant face, and a short beard, entered the room. 
 His blue eyes smiled rather more than his lips 
 as he took the little hand of his hostess in his 
 own with the air of one verging on proprietor- 
 ship of the same, and said : ' Now, darling ; 
 about what we have to settle before the 
 morning ! I have come entirely on business, 
 as you perceive.' 
 
 Rosalys tenderly smiled up at him. Miss 
 Jennings left the room, and Rosalys's sailor 
 silently kissed and admired his betrothed, till 
 he continued — 
 
 * Ah — my beautiful one ! I have nothing to 
 give you in return for the immeasurable gift 
 you are about to bestow on me — excepting 
 such love as no man ever felt before ! I almost 
 wish you were not quite so good, and perfect, 
 and innocent as you are! And I wish you 
 were a poorer woman — as poor as I — and had 
 no lovely home such as this. To think you 
 have rejected all other men for such an unworthy 
 fellow as me ! ' 
 
 Rosalys looked away from him along the 
 green vistas of chestnuts and beeches stretch- 
 ing far down outside the windows. 
 
 * Oswald — I know how much yo^ care for 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 193 
 
 me ; and that Is why I — hope you won't be 
 disappointed — after you have taken me to- 
 morrow for good and all ! I wonder if I shall 
 hinder and hamper you in your profession? 
 Perhaps you ought to marry a girl much 
 younger than yourself — your nature is so 
 young — not a maturing woman like me.' 
 
 For all answer he smiled at her with the 
 confiding, fearless gaze that she loved. 
 
 Lord Parkhurst stayed on through a para- 
 disiacal hour till Miss Jennings came to tell 
 them that tea was in the library. Presently 
 they were reminded by the same faithful 
 relative and dependant that on that evening 
 of all evenings they had promised to drive 
 across to the house of Colonel Lacy, Lord 
 Parkhurst's uncle, and one of Rosalys's near 
 neighbours, and dine there quietly with two or 
 three intimate friends. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 When Rosalys entered Colonel Lacy's draw- 
 ing-room before dinner, the eyes of the few 
 guests assembled there were naturally enough 
 fixed upon her. 
 
 * By Jove, she 's better looking than ever — 
 though she's not more than a year or two 
 under thirty ! ' whispered young Lacy to a man 
 standing in the shadow behind a high lamp. 
 
 N 
 
194 THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 
 
 The person addressed started, and did not 
 answer for a moment. Then he laughed and 
 said forcedly — 
 
 *Yes, wonderfully handsome she certainly 
 is/ 
 
 As he spoke his hostess, a fat and genial 
 lady, came blandly towards him. 
 
 * Mr. Durrant, I 'm so sorry we Ve no lady 
 for you to take in to-night. One or two 
 people have thrown us over. I want to intro- 
 duce you to Miss Ambrose. Isn't she lovely ? 
 Oh, how stupid I am ! Of course you grew up 
 in this neighbourhood, and must have known 
 all about her as a girl.' 
 
 Jim Durrant it was, in the flesh ; once the 
 soldier, now the * traveller and explorer ' of the 
 little-known interior of Asiatic countries, to 
 use the words in which he described himself. 
 His foreign-looking and sun-dried face was 
 rather pale and set as he walked last into the 
 dining-room with young Lacy. He had only 
 arrived on that day at an hotel in the nearest 
 town, where he had been accidentally met and 
 recognised by that young man, and asked to 
 dinner offhand. 
 
 Smiling, and apparently unconscious, he sat 
 down on the left side of his hostess, talking 
 calmly to her and across the table to the one 
 or two whom he knew. Rosalys heard his voice 
 as the phantom of a dead sound mingling with 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 195 
 
 the usual trivial words and light laughter of 
 the rest — Lord Parkhurst's conversation about 
 Egyptian finance, and Mrs. Lacy's platitudes 
 about the Home Rule question — as if she 
 were living through a curiously incoherent 
 dream. 
 
 Suddenly during the progress of dinner Mrs. 
 Lacy looked across with a glance of solicitude 
 towards the other end of the table, and said in 
 a low voice — 
 
 'I am afraid Miss Ambrose is rather over- 
 strained — as she may naturally be ? She looks 
 so white and tired. Do you think, Parkhurst, 
 that she finds this room too hot ? I will have 
 the window opened at the top.' 
 
 *She does look pale,* Lord Parkhurst mur- 
 mured, and as he spoke glanced anxiously and 
 tenderly towards his betrothed. * I think, too, 
 she has a little overtaxed herself — she doesn't 
 usually get so white as this.' 
 
 Rosalys felt his eyes upon her, looked across 
 at him, and smiled strangely. 
 
 When dinner was ended Rosalys still seemed 
 not quite herself, whereupon she was taken in 
 hand by her good and fussy hostess ; sal- 
 volatile was brought, and she was given the 
 most comfortable chair and the largest cushions 
 the house afforded. It seemed to Rosalys as 
 if hours had elapsed before the men joined the 
 ladies, and there came that general moving of 
 
196 THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 
 
 places like the shuffling of a . pack of cards. 
 She heard Jim's voice speaking close to her 
 ear — 
 
 * I want to have a word with you.' 
 
 * I can't ! ' she faltered. 
 
 * Did you get my letter ? * 
 
 * No/ said she. 
 
 * I wonder how that was ! Well — I '11 be at 
 the door of Ambrose Towers while the stable- 
 clock is striking twelve to-night. Be there to 
 meet me. I '11 not detain you long. We must 
 have an understanding.' 
 
 * For God's sake how do you come here } ' 
 
 ' I saw in the newspapers that you were 
 going to marry. What could I do otherwise 
 than let you know I was alive ? ' 
 
 * Oh, you might have done it less cruelly ! ' 
 
 * Will you be at the door ? ' 
 
 * I must, I suppose ! . . . Don't tell him here 
 — before these people ! It will be such an 
 agonising disturbance that * 
 
 Of course I shan't. Be there.' 
 
 This was all they could say. Lord Park- 
 hurst came forward, and observing to Durrant 
 ^ They are wanting you for bezique,' sat down 
 beside Rosalys. 
 
 She had intended to go home early, and 
 went even earlier than she had planned. At 
 half-past ten she found herself in her own hall, 
 not knowing how she had got there, or when 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 197 
 
 she had bidden adieu to Lord Parkhurst, or 
 what she had said to him. 
 
 Jim's letter was lying on the table awaiting 
 her. 
 
 As soon as she had got upstairs and slipped 
 into her dressing-gown, had despatched her 
 maid, and ascertained that all the household 
 had retired, she read her husband's note, which 
 briefly informed her that he had led an adven- 
 turous life since they had parted, and had 
 come back to see if she were living, when he 
 suddenly heard that she was going to be 
 married. Then Rosalys sat down at her writ- 
 ing-table to begin somehow a letter to Lord 
 Parkhurst. To write that was an imperative 
 duty, before she slept. It need not be said 
 that awful indeed to her was its object — the 
 letting Lord Parkhurst know that she had a 
 husband, and had seen him that day. But she 
 could not shape a single line ; and the visioned 
 aspect that she would wear in his eyes as soon 
 as he discovered the truth of her history was 
 so terrible to her that she burst into hysterical 
 sobbing over the paper as she sat. 
 
 The clock crept on to twelve before Rosalys 
 had written a word. The labour seemed 
 Herculean — insuperable. Why had she not 
 told him face to face? 
 
 Twelve o'clock it was, and nothing done ; 
 and controlling herself as women can when 
 
198 THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 
 
 they must, she went down to the door. Softly 
 opening it a little way she saw against the iron 
 gate immediately without it the form of her 
 husband, Jim Durrant — upon the whole much 
 the same form she had known eight years ago. 
 
 * Here I am,' said he. 
 
 * Yes,' said she. 
 
 * Open this iron thing.' 
 
 A momentary feeling of aversion caused her 
 to hesitate. 
 
 'Do you hear — do you mean to say — 
 Rosalys ! * he began. 
 
 ' No— no. Of course I will ! ' She opened 
 the grille and he came up and touched her 
 hand lightly. 
 
 *A kiss is not allowed, I suppose,' he ob- 
 served, with a mock solemnity, ' in view of the 
 fact that you are to be married to-morrow ? ' 
 
 ' You know better,' she said, ' Of course I 'm 
 not going to commit bigamy! The wedding 
 is not to be.* 
 
 * Have you explained it to him ? ' 
 
 *N — no — not yet. I was just writing it 
 when ' 
 
 ' Ha — you haven't ! Good. Woman's way. 
 Shall I give him a friendly call to-morrow 
 morning ? ' 
 
 *0h, no, no— let me do it!' she implored. 
 I love him so well, and it will break his 
 heart if it is not done gently ! O God — if I 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 199 
 
 could only die to-night, while he still believes 
 in me ! You don't know what affection I have 
 felt for him ! ' she continued miserably, not 
 caring what Jim thought. ' He has been my 
 whole world ! And he — he believes me to be 
 so good ! He has all the old-fashioned ideas 
 of marriage that people of your fast set smile 
 at ! He knows nothing of any kind of former 
 acquaintance between you and me. I ought 
 not to have done it — kept him in the dark ! I 
 tried not to. But I was so fearfully lonely! 
 And now I 've lost him ! ... If I could only 
 have got at that register in that City church, 
 how I would have torn out the leaf!' she added 
 vehemently. 
 
 'That's a pleasant remark to make to a 
 husband ! ' 
 
 * Well — that was my feeling ; I may as well 
 be honest ! I didn't know you were coming 
 back any more ; and you yourself suggested 
 that I might be able to re-marry ! ' 
 
 'You'd better do it— I shan't tell. And if 
 anybody else did, the punishment is not heavy 
 nowadays. The judges are beginning to dis- 
 countenance informers on previous marriages, 
 if the new-assorted couples themselves are 
 satisfied to forget them.' 
 
 * Don't insult me so. You 've not forgotten 
 how to do that in all these years ! * 
 
 There was a silence, in which she with 
 
200 THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 
 
 passive gloom regarded the familiar scene 
 before her. The inquisitive jays, the pensive 
 wood-doves, that lodged at their ease there- 
 abouts, as if knowing that their proprietor was 
 a gunless woman, all slept calmly, and not a 
 creature was conscious of the presence of these 
 two but a little squirrel they had disturbed in 
 a beech near the shady wall. Durrant re- 
 mained gazing at her; then he spoke, in a 
 changed and richer voice — 
 
 ' Rosalys ! ' 
 
 She looked vaguely at his face without 
 answering. 
 
 ' How pretty you look in this starlight — 
 much as you did when we used to meet here 
 nine or ten years ago ! ' 
 
 *Ah! But ' 
 
 * . . . Let me sit down in your hall, or some- 
 where, Rosalys ! I Ve come a long way to-day, 
 and I 'm tired. And after eight years ! ' 
 
 * I don't know what to say to it — there 's no 
 light downstairs! The servants may hear us, 
 too — it is not so very late.' 
 
 *We can whisper. And suppose they do? 
 They must know to-morrow.' 
 
 She gasped a sigh and preceded him in 
 through the door. 
 
 * Yes, they must ! ' she said. 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 201 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 When they re-appeared the lawn was as silent 
 as when they had left it, though the sleep of 
 things had weakened down to a certain pre- 
 carious slightness, and round the corner of 
 the house a low line of light showed the dawn. 
 
 'Now, good-bye, dear,' said her husband 
 lightly. * You '11 let him know at once ? ' 
 
 ' Of course.' 
 
 * And send to me directly after ? ' 
 'Yes.' 
 
 *And now for my walk across the fields to 
 the hotel. These boots are thin, but I know 
 the old way well enough. By Jove, I wonder 
 what Melanie * 
 
 'Who?' 
 
 ' Oh — what Melanie will think, I was going to 
 say. It slipped out. I didn't mean to hurt 
 your feelings at all' 
 
 * M(31anie — who is she ? ' 
 
 *Well — she's a French lady. You know, of 
 course, Rosalys, that I thought you were 
 perhaps dead — and — so this lady passes as 
 Mrs. Durrant.' 
 
 Rosalys started. 
 
 * In fact I found her in the East, and took 
 pity upon her — that's all. Though if it had 
 happened that you had not been living now I 
 
202 THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 
 
 have got back, I should have married her at 
 once, of course.' 
 
 « Is— she, then, here with you at the hotel ? ' 
 
 * Oh no — I wouldn't bring her on here till I 
 knew how things were.* 
 
 ' Then where is she ? * 
 
 * I left her at my rooms in London. Oh, it 
 will be all right. — I shall see her safely back to 
 Paris, and make a little provision for her. 
 Nobody in England knows anything of her 
 existence.* 
 
 ' When — did you part from her ? ' 
 
 * Well, of course, at breakfast-time.' 
 Rosalys bowed herself against the doorway, 
 
 and Jim was almost distressed when he saw 
 the distortion of her agonised face. 
 
 * Now why should you take on like this ! 
 There 's nothing in it. People do these things. 
 Living in a prim society here you don't know 
 how the world goes on ! ' 
 
 ' Oh, but to think it didn't occur to me that 
 the sort of man * 
 
 Jim, though anxious, seemed to awaken to 
 something humorous in the situation, and 
 vented a momentary chuckle. 'Well, it is 
 rather funny that I should have let it out. But 
 still * 
 
 ' Don't make a deep wrong deeper by cruel 
 levity. Go away ! ' 
 
 * You '11 be in a better mood to-morrow, 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 203 
 
 mark me ; and then I '11 tell you all my history. 
 There — I 'm gone ! Au revoir ! * 
 
 He disappeared under the trees. Rosalys, 
 rousing herself, closed the gate and fastened 
 the door, and sat down in one of the hall chairs, 
 her teeth shut tight, and her little hands 
 clenched. When she had passed this mood, 
 and returned upstairs, she bent again over her 
 writing-table and wept. 
 
 But in a few minutes she found herself nerved 
 to an unexpected and passionate vigour of 
 action, and began writing her letter to Lord 
 Parkhurst with great rapidity. Sheet after 
 sheet she filled, and having read them over, she 
 sealed up the letter and placed it on the mantel- 
 piece to be given to a groom and despatched 
 by hand as soon as the morning was a little 
 further advanced. 
 
 With cold feet and a burning head she flung 
 herself upon the bed just as she was, and waited 
 for the day without the power to sleep. When 
 she had lain nearly two hours, and the morn- 
 ing had crept in and she could hear from the 
 direction of the stables that the men were astir, 
 she rang for her maid, and, taking the letter in 
 her hand, stood with it in an attitude of sus- 
 pense as the woman entered. The latter looked 
 full of intelligence. 
 
 * Are any of the men about ? ' asked Rosalys. 
 
 'Yes. ma'am. There have been such an 
 
204 THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 
 
 accident in the Meads this past night — about 
 half a mile down the river — and Jones ran up 
 from the lodge to call for help quite early ; and 
 Benton and Peters went as soon as they were 
 dressed. A gentleman drowned — yes — it's 
 Mr. James Durrant — the son of Mr. Durrant 
 who died some years ago. He came home 
 only yesterday, after having been heard nothing 
 of for years and years. He left Mrs. Durrant, 
 who they say is a French lady, somewhere in 
 London, but they have telegraphed and found 
 her, and she 's coming. They say she 's quite 
 distracted. The poor gentleman left the Three 
 Lions last night and went out to dinner, saying 
 he would walk home, as it was a fine night and 
 not very far ; and it is supposed he took the 
 old short cut across the moor where there used 
 to be a path when he was a lad at home, cross- 
 ing the big river by a plank. There is only a 
 rail now, and he must have tried to get across 
 upon it, for it was broken in two, and his body 
 found in the water-weeds just below.' 
 
 * Is he— dead?' 
 
 *0h yes. They had a great trouble to get 
 him out. The men have just come from carry- 
 ing him to the hotel. It will be sad for his 
 poor wife when she gets there.' 
 
 * His poor wife — yes.* 
 
 * Travelling all the way from London on such 
 an errand ! ' 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 205 
 
 Rosalys had allowed the hand in which she 
 held the letter to Lord Parkhurst to drop to 
 her side ; she now put it in the pocket of her 
 dressing-gown. 
 
 * I was wishing to send somewhere,' she said. 
 ' But I think I shall wait till later.* 
 
 The house was astir betimes on account of 
 the wedding, and Rosalys's companion in par- 
 ticular, who was not sad because she was going 
 to live on with the bride. When Miss Jennings 
 saw her cousin's agitation she said she looked 
 ill, and insisted upon sending for the doctor. 
 He, who was the local practitioner, arrived at 
 breakfast-time ; very proud to attend such an 
 important lady, who usually got doctored in 
 London. He said that Rosalys was not quite in 
 her ordinary state of health, prescribed a tonic, 
 and declared that she would be all right in an 
 hour or two. He then informed her that he 
 had been suddenly called up that morning about 
 the case of which they had possibly heard — the 
 drowning of Mr. Durrant. 
 
 And you could do nothing ?' asked Rosalys. 
 Oh no. He 'd been under water too long for 
 any human aid. Dead and stiff. ... It was 
 not so very far down from here. . . . Yes, I 
 remember him quite as a boy. But he has had 
 no relations hereabout for years past — old 
 Durrant's property was sold to pay his debts, 
 if you recollect ; and nobody expected to see 
 
 
2o6 THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 
 
 the son again. I think he has lived in the 
 East Indies a good deal. Much better for him 
 if he had not come — poor fellow.' 
 
 When the doctor had left, Rosalys went to 
 the window, and remained for some time think- 
 ing. There was the lake from which the water 
 had flowed down to the river that had drowned 
 Jim after visiting her last night — as a mere 
 interlude in his life with the Frenchwoman 
 Melanie. She turned, took from her dressing- 
 gown pocket the renunciatory letter to her 
 intended husband, Lord Parkhurst, thrust it 
 through the bars of the grate, and watched 
 it till it was entirely consumed. 
 
 The wedding had been fixed for an early 
 hour in the afternoon, and as the morning wore 
 on Rosalys felt increasing strength, mental and 
 physical. The doctor's dose had been a 
 powerful one; the image of Melanie, too, had 
 much to do with her recuperative mood ; more 
 still Rosalys's innate qualities, the nerve of the 
 woman who nine years earlier had gone to the 
 city to be married as if it were a mere shop- 
 ping expedition ; most of all, she loved Lord 
 Parkhurst ; he was the man among all men she 
 desired. Rosalys allowed things to take their 
 course. 
 
 Soon the dressing began ; and she sat 
 through it quite calmly. When Lord Park- 
 hurst rode across for a short visit that day he 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 207 
 
 only noticed that she seemed strung-up, nerv- 
 ous, and that the flush of love which mantled 
 her cheek died away to pale rather quickly. 
 
 On the way to church the road skirted the 
 low-lying ground where the river was, and 
 about a dozen men were seen in the bright- 
 green meadow, standing beside the deep central 
 stream, and looking intently at a broken rail. 
 
 ' Who are those men ? ' said the bride. 
 
 *0h — they are the coroner's jury, I think,' said 
 Miss Jennings, ' come to view the place where 
 the unfortunate Mr. Durrant lost his life last 
 night. It was curious that, by the merest 
 accident, he should have been at Mrs. Lacy's 
 dinner — since they hardly knew him at all.' 
 
 * It was — I saw him there,' said Rosalys. 
 
 Ten minutes later she was kneeling against 
 the altar railings, with Lord Parkhurst on her 
 right hand. 
 
 The wedding was by no means a gay one, 
 and there were few people invited, Rosalys, for 
 one thing, having hardly any relations. The 
 newly united pair got away from the house 
 very soon after the ceremony. When they 
 drove off there was a group of people round 
 the door, and some among the bystanders 
 asked how far they were going that day. 
 
 'To Dover. They cross the Channel to- 
 morrow, I believe.' 
 
 To-morrow came, and those who had gathered 
 
208 THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL 
 
 together at the wedding went about their 
 usual duties and amusements, Colonel Lacy 
 among the rest. As he and his wife were 
 returning home by the late afternoon train 
 after a short journey up the line, he bought a 
 copy of an evening paper, and glanced at the 
 latest telegrams. 
 
 * My good God ! ' he cried. 
 
 * What ? ' said she, starting towards him. 
 
 He tried to read — then handed the paper; 
 and she read for herself — 
 
 *DovER. — Death of Lord Parkhurst, R.N. 
 
 * We regret to announce that this distinguished 
 nobleman and heroic naval officer, who arrived 
 with Lady Parkhurst last evening at the Lord 
 Chamberlain Hotel in this town, preparatory 
 to starting on their wedding-tour, entered his 
 dressing-room very early this morning, and 
 shot himself through the head with a revolver. 
 The report was heard shortly after dawn, none 
 of the inmates of the hotel being astir at the 
 time. No reason can be assigned for the rash 
 act' 
 
 THE END. 
 
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