T I* *f 
 
 u
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF
 
 ADAM & EVE 
 & PINCH ME
 
 
 
 
 
 NEW BORZOI NOVELS 
 
 SPRING, IQ22 
 
 Wanderers 
 
 Knut Hamsuti 
 Men of Affairs 
 
 Roland Per twee 
 The Fair Rewards 
 
 Thomas Beer 
 I Walked in Arden 
 
 Jack Crawford 
 Guest the One-Eyed 
 
 Gunnar Gunnarsson 
 The Longest Journey 
 
 E. M. Forster 
 Cytherea 
 
 Joseph Hergesheimer 
 Explorers of the Dawn 
 
 Mazo de la Roche 
 The White Kami 
 
 Edward Alden Jewell 
 
 
 

 
 ADAM & EVE 
 & PINCH ME 
 
 TALES BY A. E. COPPARD 
 
 new york ALFRED -A- KNOPF mcmxxii
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY 
 A. E. COPPARD 
 
 Published, May, 1922 
 
 Bet up and printed by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binahamton, N. Y. 
 Paper furnished by W. F. Etherington £ Co., New York, N. Y. 
 Bound by the II. Wolff Estate, New York, N. Y. 
 
 MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 
 / 
 
 
 
 DOS 
 
 To LILY ANNE 

 
 I record my acknowledgements to the Editors 
 of the following journals in which a few of 
 these tales first appeared : Westminster Ga- 
 zette, Pearson's Magazine, Voices, English 
 Review. A. E. C.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 
 MARCHING TO ZION 
 
 9 
 
 DUSKY RUTH 
 
 29 
 
 WEEP NOT MY WANTON 
 
 45 
 
 PIFFINGCAP 
 
 S3 
 
 THE KING OF THE WORLD 
 
 7i 
 
 ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME 
 
 83 
 
 THE PRINCESS OF KINGDOM GONE 
 
 101 
 
 COMMUNION 
 
 in 
 
 THE QUIET WOMAN 
 
 119 
 
 THE TRUMPETERS 
 
 141 
 
 THE ANGEL AND THE SWEEP 
 
 151 
 
 ARABESQUE 
 
 163 
 
 FELIX TINCLER 
 
 175 
 
 THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH 
 
 191 
 
 THE CHERRY TREE 
 
 207 
 
 CLORINDA WALKS IN HEAVEN 
 
 215 
 
 CRAVEN ARMS 
 
 225
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 
 COTTON 
 
 267 
 
 A BROADSHEET BALLAD 
 
 283 
 
 POMONA'S BABE 
 
 295 
 
 THE HURLY-BURLY 
 
 319
 
 MARCHING TO ZION
 
 MARCHING TO ZION 
 
 IN the great days that are gone I was walking the 
 Journey upon its easy smiling roads and came 
 one morning of windy spring to the side of a 
 wood. I had but just rested to eat my crusts and 
 suck a drink from the pool when a fat woman appeared 
 and sat down before me. I gave her the grace of the 
 morning. 
 
 "And how many miles is it now?" I asked of her. 
 
 "What!" said she, "you're not going the journey?" 
 
 "Sure, ma'am," said I, "I'm going, and you're going, 
 and we're all going . . . aren't we?" 
 
 "Not," said she, looking at me very archly, "not 
 while there are well-looking young fellers sitting in the 
 woods." 
 
 "Well, deliver me!" said I, "d'ye take me for the 
 Angel Gabriel or the duke of the world!" 
 
 "It's not anything I'm taking you to be, young man 
 . . . give me a chew of that bread." 
 
 She came and sat beside me and took it from my 
 hands. 
 
 "Little woman. . ." I began it to her; but at that 
 she flung the crust back in my face, laughing and 
 choking and screaming. 
 
 "Me . . . that's fat as a ewe in January !" 
 
 9
 
 IO MARCHING TO ZION 
 
 "Fat, woman !" says I, "you're no fat at all." 
 
 But, I declare it, she'd a bosom like a bolster. I lay 
 on my back beside her. She was a rag of a woman. 
 I looked up through the tree branches at the end of 
 the shaw; they were bare, spring was late that year. 
 The sky was that blue . . . there wasn't a cloud within 
 a million miles . . . but up through the boughs it 
 looked hard and steely like a storm sky. I took my 
 hat from her, for she had put it on her own head, and 
 I stood on my feet. 
 
 "Fat, ma'am !" says I . . . and she looked up at me, 
 grinning like a stuffed fox . . . "Oh no, ma'am, you're 
 slim as the queen of Egypt!" 
 
 At that she called out to another man who was pass- 
 ing us by, and I went to walk on with him. He had a 
 furuncle on one side of his chin; his garments were 
 very old, both in fashion and in use; he was lean as a 
 mountain cow. 
 
 I greeted him but he gave me glances that were 
 surly, like a man would be grinding scissors or set- 
 ting a saw — for you never met one of that kind that 
 didn't have the woe of the world upon him. 
 
 "How many miles is it now, sir?" I asked, very 
 respectful then. He did not heed me. He put his 
 hand to his ear signifying deafness. I shouted and 
 I shouted, so you could have heard me in the four 
 kingdoms, but I might just have been blowing in a 
 sack for all the reason I got from him. 
 
 I went on alone and in the course of the days I fell 
 in with many persons, stupid persons, great persons, 
 jaunty ones. An ass passes me by, its cart burdened
 
 MARCHING TO ZION II 
 
 with a few dead sprays of larch and a log for the fir- 
 ing. An old man toils at the side urging the ass on- 
 wards. They give me no direction and I wonder 
 whether I am at all like the ass, or the man, or the 
 cart, or the log for the firing. I cannot say. There 
 was the lad McGlosky, who had the fine hound that 
 would even catch birds; the philosopher who had two 
 minds; the widow with one leg; Slatterby Chough, the 
 pugfoot man, and Grafton. I passed a little time with 
 them all, and made poems about them that they did not 
 like, but I was ever for walking on from them. None 
 of them could give me a direction for the thing that 
 was urging me except that it was "away on, away 
 on. 
 
 Walk I did, and it was full summer when I met 
 Monk, the fat fellow as big as two men with but the 
 clothes of a small one squeezing the joints of him to- 
 gether. Would you look at the hair of him — it was 
 light as a stook of rye; or the face of him and the 
 neck of him — the hue of a new brick. He had the 
 mind of a grasshopper, the strength of a dray horse, 
 the tenderness of a bush of reeds, and was light on 
 his limbs as a deer. 
 
 "Look ye're," he said to me; he had a stiff sort of 
 talk, and fat thumbs like a mason that he jiggled in 
 the corners of his pockets; "look ye're, my friend, 
 my name is Monk." 
 
 "I am Michael Fionnguisa," said I. 
 
 "Well I never struck fist with a lad like you ; your 
 conversation is agreeable to me, you have a stride on 
 you would beat the world for greatness."
 
 12 MARCHING TO ZION 
 
 "I could beat you," said I, "even if you wore the 
 boots of Hercules that had wings on 'em." 
 
 "It is what I like," said he, and he made a great 
 mess of my boasting before we were through. "Look 
 ye're, my friend, we needn't brag our little eye-blink 
 of the world ; but take my general character and you'll 
 find I'm better than my . . . inferiors. I accomplish 
 my ridiculous destiny without any ridiculous effort. 
 I'm the man to go a-travelling with." 
 
 He had that stiff way of his talk, like a man lec- 
 turing on a stool, but my mercy, he'd a tongue of 
 silk that could twist a meal out of the pantry of Jews 
 and strange hard people; fat landladies, the wives of 
 the street, the widows in their villas, they would feed 
 him until he groaned, loving him for his blitheness and 
 his tales. He could not know the meaning of want 
 though he had never a coin in the world. Yet he did 
 not love towns; he would walk wide-eyed through 
 thera counting the seams in the pavements. He liked 
 most to be staring at the gallant fishes in the streams, 
 and gasping when he saw a great one. 
 
 I met him in the hills and we were gone together. 
 And it was not a great while before he was doing and 
 doing, for we came and saw a man committing a crime, 
 a grave crime to be done in a bad world leave alone 
 a good one like this, in a very lonely lovely place. 
 So Monk rose up and slew him, and the woman ran 
 blushing into the woods. 
 
 I looked at Mr. Monk, and the dead man on the 
 road, and then at Mr. Monk again.
 
 MARCHING TO ZION 13 
 
 "Well," I said, "we'd . . . we'd better bury this 
 feller." 
 
 But Monk went and sat upon a bank and wiped 
 his neck. The other lay upon his face as if he were 
 sniffing at the road; I could see his ear was full of 
 blood, it slipped over the lobe drip by drip as neat as 
 a clock would tick. 
 
 And Monk, he said : "Look ye're, my friend, there 
 are dirtier things than dirt, and I would not like to 
 mix this with the earth of our country." 
 
 So we slung him into an old well with a stone upon 
 his loins. 
 
 And a time after that we saw another man commit- 
 ting crime, a mean crime that you might do and wel- 
 come in America or some such region, but was not 
 fitting to be done in our country. 
 
 So Monk rose up and slew him. Awful it was to 
 see what Monk did to him. He was a great killer 
 and fighter; Hector himself was but a bit of a page 
 boy to Mr. Monk. 
 
 "Shall we give him an interment?" I asked him. He 
 stood wiping his neck — he was always wiping his neck 
 — and Monk he said : 
 
 "Look ye're, my friend, he was a beast; a man 
 needn't live in a sty in order to become a pig, and we 
 won't give him an interment." So we heaved him 
 into a slag pit among rats and ravels of iron. 
 
 And would you believe it, again we saw a man com- 
 mitting crime, crime indeed and a very bad crime. 
 
 There was no withstanding Monk; he rose up and
 
 1 4 MARCHING TO ZION 
 
 slew the man as dead as the poor beast he had tor- 
 tured. 
 
 "God-a-mercy !" I said to him, "it's a lot of life 
 you're taking, Mr. Monk." 
 
 And Monk he said : "Life, Michael dear, is the thing 
 we perish by." He had the most terrible angers and 
 yet was kind, kind ; nothing could exceed the greatness 
 of his mind or the vigour of his limbs. 
 
 Those were the three combats of Monk, but he was 
 changed from that out. Whenever we came to any 
 habitations now he would not call at back doors, nor 
 go stravaiging in yards for odd pieces to eat, but he 
 would go gallantly into an inn and offer his payment 
 for the things we would like. I could not understand 
 it at all, but he was a great man and a kind. 
 
 "Where did you get that treasure?" said I to him 
 after days of it. "Has some noble person given you 
 a gift?" 
 
 He did not answer me so I asked him over again. 
 "Eh !" 
 
 And Monk he said, "Oh well then, there was a lot 
 of coin in the fob of that feller we chucked in the well." 
 
 I looked very straight at Mr. Monk, very straight at 
 that, but I could not speak the things my mind wanted 
 me to say, and he said very artfully : "Don't distress 
 yourself, Michael dear, over a little contest between 
 sense and sentiment." 
 
 "But that was the dirty man," said I. 
 
 "And why not?" said he. "If his deed was dirty, 
 his money was clean : don't be deethery, man." 
 
 " Tis not fitting nor honourable," said. I, "for men
 
 MARCHING TO ZION 1 5 
 
 the like of us to grow fat on his filth. It's grass I'd 
 be eating sooner." 
 
 "That's all bombazine, .Michael, bombazine ! I 
 got two dollars more from the feller we chucked in 
 the pit !" 
 
 "Mr. Monk, that was the pig!" said I. 
 
 "And why not?" said he. "If his life was bad then 
 his end must be good; don't be deethery." 
 
 "You can't touch pitch," I said. . . . 
 
 "Who's touching pitch?" he cried. "Amn't I en- 
 titled to the spoils of the valiant, the rewards of the 
 conqueror. . . ." 
 
 "Bombazine!" says I to him. 
 
 "O begod !" he says, "I never struck fist on a lad 
 the like of you, with your bombazine O! I grant you 
 it doesn't come affable like, but what costs you nothing 
 can't be dear; as for compunctions, you'll see, I fatten 
 on 'em!" 
 
 He laughed outright at me. 
 
 "Don't be deethery, Michael, there was a good purse 
 in the last man's trousers !" 
 
 I could no more complain to him ; how could I under 
 the Lord ! Dear me, it never was seen, a man with the 
 skin of that man; he'd the mind of a grasshopper, 
 but there was greatness in him, and Mary herself 
 loved him for a friend. 
 
 What do I say about Mar}- ! Ah, there was never 
 in anything that had the aspects of a world a girl with 
 her loveliness, I tell you, handsome as a lily, the jewel of 
 the world; and the thing that happened between us 
 was strange above all reckoning. We gave her the
 
 1 6 MARCHING TO ZION 
 
 good will of the evening in a place that would be as 
 grand as Eden itself, though the bushes had grown 
 dim on the hills and the sod was darkening beside the 
 white water of the streams. 
 
 "And are you going the Journey?" we asked of her. 
 
 "I am going," said she, "everybody is going, why 
 not me too ?" 
 
 "Will you go along with us ?" I asked of her. 
 
 She turned her eyes upon me like two sparks out 
 of the blowing dusk that was already upon us. 
 
 "Yes, I will go with you." 
 
 At that she rested her hand upon my arm and we 
 turned upon the road together. 
 
 She was barefooted and bareheaded, dressed in a 
 yellow gown that had buttons of ivory upon it. 
 
 And we asked her as we went along the streams: 
 Had she no fear of the night time? 
 
 "When the four ends of the world drop on you like 
 death?" says I. 
 
 ". . . and the fogs rise up on you like moving 
 grief?" says he. 
 
 ". . . and you hear the hoofs of the half god whisk- 
 ing behind the hedges," says I. 
 
 ". . . and there are bad things like bats troubling 
 the air !" says he. 
 
 ". . . or the twig of a tree comes and touches you 
 like a finger !" says I. 
 
 ". . . the finger of some meditating doom!" says 
 he. 
 
 "No, I am not," cried Mary, "but I am glad to be 
 going with you."
 
 MARCHING TO ZION IJ 
 
 Her hand was again resting upon my arm. 
 
 I lay down among the sheaves of wheat that night 
 with no sleep coming to me, for the stars were spilling 
 all out of the sky and it seemed the richness of heaven 
 was flowing down upon us all. 
 
 "Michael !" Monk whispered, "she's a holy-minded 
 girl: look, look, she's praying!" 
 
 Sure enough I could see her a little way off", standing 
 like a saint, as still as a monument. 
 
 Fresh as a bird was our gentle comrade in the dawn 
 and ready to be going. And we asked her as we went 
 by the roads together : What was it made her to come 
 the Journey alone? 
 
 "Sure there is no loneliness in the world," she said. 
 
 "Is there not?" asked Monk. 
 
 "I take my soul with me upon this Journey," said 
 Mary. 
 
 "Your what!" 
 
 "My soul," she said gravely, "it is what keeps lone- 
 liness from me." 
 
 He mused upon that a little. "Look ye're, Mary, 
 soul is just but the chain of eternal mortality, that is 
 what I think it ; but you speak as if it were something 
 you pick up and carry about with you, something made 
 of gutta-percha, like a tobacco pouch." 
 
 She smiled upon him : "It is what covers me from 
 loneliness . . . it's . . . it's the little garment which 
 sometime God will take upon him — being God." 
 
 Seven days only and seven little nights we were to- 
 gether and I made scores of poems about her that were 
 different from any poems that have come into the
 
 1 8 MARCHING TO ZION 
 
 world, but I could never sing them now. In the morn- 
 ings she would go wash herself in the pools, and Monk 
 and I would walk a little way off from her. Monk was 
 very delicate about that, but I would turn and see the 
 white-armed girl rolling up her dark hair, and her white 
 feet travelling to the water as she pulled the gown from 
 her beauty. She was made like the down of doves 
 and the bloom of bees. It's like enough she did love 
 me in a very frail and delicate sort of way, like a bush 
 of lavendie might love the wind that would be snaring 
 it from its root in the garden, but never won a petal of 
 it, nor a bloom, only a little of its kind kind air. 
 
 We asked her as we went upon the hills : Had she no 
 fear of getting her death? 
 
 "Not if I make a wise use of it." 
 
 "A use of your death — and how would you do that, 
 tell me," says I. 
 
 And she told us grand things about death, in her 
 soft wonderful voice; strange talk to be giving the 
 likes of him and me. 
 
 "I'd give the heart out of my skin," said I, "not to 
 be growing old — the sin and sorrow of the world, 
 with no hope of life and despair in its conclusion." 
 
 But Monk was full of laughter at me. 
 
 "Ha ! ha ! better a last hope than a hopeless conclu- 
 sion," says Mr. Monk; "so try hope with another loz- 
 enge, Michael, and give a free drink to despair." 
 
 "Have you no fear of death?" Mary asked of him. 
 
 And Monk, he said: "I have no unreasonable re- 
 gard for him; I may bow before the inevitable, but I
 
 MARCHING TO ZION 1 9 
 
 decline to grovel before it. and if I burn with the best 
 «if 'em — well, I'd rather be torrid than torpid." 
 
 "It would he well," said Mary, "to praise God for 
 such courage." 
 
 "Is that what you praise him for?" we asked her. 
 
 "I praise God for Jesus," Mary said to us: strange 
 talk to he giving the likes of him and me. 
 
 We found the finest sleeping nooks, and she could 
 nut have rested better if there had been acres of silk; 
 Monk, God-a-mercy, spent his money like a baron. 
 One night in the little darkness he said : 
 
 "Look ye're, Mary, tell us why you pray!" 
 
 "I pray because of a dream I had." 
 
 "A dream! That's strange, Mary; I could under- 
 stand a person dreaming because of a prayer she has 
 prayed, but not praying because of a dream she has 
 dreamed." 
 
 "Not even supposing," I said to him, "you had 
 dreamed you were praying prayers?" 
 
 "If I did," said he, "I might pray not to dream such 
 dreams." 
 
 "I pray," said Mary, "that my dream may come 
 true." 
 
 And Monk, he said, "So you build your life on a 
 prayer and a dream !" 
 
 "I do not build my life at all," said Mary; "it's my 
 death T am building, in a wonderful world of moun- 
 tains . . ." 
 
 ". . . that can never be climbed," cried Monk. 
 
 ". . . and grand rivers . . ."
 
 20 MARCHING TO ZION 
 
 that stand still and do not flow," says he. 
 . and bright shining fields. . . ." 
 . that will never come to the reaping," says he 
 again 
 
 . and if the climbing and the flowing and the 
 reaping are illusions here, they are real in the dreams 
 of God." 
 
 And Monk, he said: "If God himself is the illusion, 
 Mary, there's little enough reward for a life of that 
 kind, or the death of it either. The recompense for 
 living is Life — not in the future or merely in the pres- 
 ent, but life in the past where all our intuitions had 
 their mould, and all our joys their eternal fountain." 
 
 "Yes, yes," I added to him, "beauty walks in the 
 track of the mortal world, and her light is behind you." 
 
 She was silent. "Mary," .said I, "won't you tell me 
 now that dream of yours?" 
 
 "I will not tell you yet, Michael," said she. 
 
 But on a day after that we came to a plain, in it a 
 great mountain; and we went away on to the moun- 
 tain and commenced to climb. Near the top it was as 
 if part of the cone of the mountain had been blown out 
 by the side and a sweet lake of water left winking in 
 the scoop. We came suddenly upon it; all the cloven 
 cliffs that hung round three sides of the lake were of 
 white marble, blazing with a lustre that crashed upon 
 our eyes ; the floor of the lake, easy to be seen, was of 
 white marble too, and the water was that clear you 
 could see the big black hole in the middle where it 
 bubbled from the abyss. There were beds of heather 
 around us with white quoins of marble, like chapels
 
 MARCHING TO ZION 21 
 
 or shrines, sunk amid them; this, and the great golden 
 plain rolling below, far from us, on every side, almost 
 as far away as the sky. When we came to this place 
 Monk touched my arm ; we both looked at Mary, walk- 
 ing beside the lake like a person who knew well the 
 marvel that we were but just seeing. She was speaking 
 strange words — we could not understand. 
 
 "Let us leave her to herself awhile," said Monk. 
 
 And we climbed round behind the white cliffs until 
 we left each other. I went back alone and found her 
 lying in the heather beside a stone shaped like an altar, 
 sleeping. I knelt down beside her with a love in my 
 heart that was greater than the mere life beating in it. 
 She lay very still and beautiful, and I put into her hand 
 a sprig of the red rowan which I had found. I 
 watched the wind just hoisting the strands of her hair 
 that was twisted in the heather. 
 
 The glister was gone from the cliffs, they were softly 
 white like magnolia flowers ; the lake water splashed its 
 little words in the quarries. Her lips were red as the 
 rowan buds, the balm of lilies was in the touch of them. 
 
 She opened her eyes on me kneeling beside her. 
 
 "Mary," said I, "I will tell you what I'm thinking. 
 There is a great doubt in my mind, Mary, and I'm in 
 fear that you'll be gone from me." 
 
 For answer she drew me down to her side until my 
 face was resting against her heart; I could hear its 
 little thunder in her breast. And I leaned up until I 
 was looking deeply in her eyes. 
 
 "You are like the dreaming dawn," I said, "beautiful 
 and silent. You're the daughter of all the dawns that
 
 22 MARCHING TO ZION 
 
 ever were, and I'd perish if you'd be gone from me." 
 "It's beautiful to be in the world with you, Michael, 
 and to feel your strength about me." 
 
 "It's lonely to be in the world with you, Mary, and 
 no hope in my heart, but doubt filling it." 
 "I will bring you into my heaven, Michael." 
 "Mary, it's in a little thicket of cedar I would sit 
 with you, hearing the wild bee's hymn; beautiful grapes 
 I would give you, and apples rich as the moon." 
 
 We were silent for a while and then she told me what 
 I have written here of her own fine words as I remem- 
 ber them. We were sitting against the white altar 
 stone, the sun was setting; there was one great gulf 
 of brightness in the west of the sky, and pieces of 
 fiery cloud, little flukes of flame shaped like fishes, 
 swimming there. In the hinder part of the sky a great 
 bush-tailed animal had sprung into its dying fields, a 
 purple fox. 
 
 "I dreamed," said Mary, " that I was in marriage 
 with a carpenter. His name was Joseph and he was 
 older than I by many years. He left me at the 
 marriage and went away to Liverpool ; there was a great 
 strike on in that place, but what he was to do there or 
 why he was gone I do not know. It was at Easter, 
 and when I woke in my bed on the first morning there 
 was bright wind blowing in the curtains, and sun upon 
 the bed linen. Some cattle were lowing and I heard 
 the very first cuckoo of the year. I can remember the 
 round looking glass with a brass frame upon the table, 
 and the queer little alabaster jar of scented oil. There 
 was a picture of some cranes flying on the wall, and a
 
 MARCHING TO ZION 23 
 
 china figure of a man called O'Connell on the shelf 
 above the fire-place. My white veil was blown from its 
 hook down on the floor, and it was strewed over with 
 daffodils 1 had carried to toy marriage. 
 
 "And at that a figure was in the room — I don't know 
 how — he just came, dressed in strange clothes a dark 
 handsome young man with black long hair and smiling 
 eyes, full of every grace, and I loved him on the mo- 
 ment. But he took up some of my daffodils only — 
 and vanished. Then I rememher getting up, and after 
 breakfast I walked about the fields very happy. There 
 was a letter at the post office from my husband : I took 
 it home and dropped it into the fire unopened. I put 
 the little house into its order and set the daffodils in a 
 bowl close upon the bedroom window. And at night 
 in the darkness, when I could not see him, the dark 
 man came to my bed, but was gone before the morning, 
 taking more of my daffodils with him. And this 
 happened night upon night until all my flowers were 
 gone, and then he came no more. 
 
 "It was a long time before my husband came home 
 from Liverpool but he came at last and we lived very 
 happily until Christmas when I had a little child." 
 
 "And did you have a child?" I asked her. 
 
 "No," she said, "this was all my dream. Michael, 
 O Michael, you are like that lover of the darkness." 
 
 And just then Monk came back among us roaring 
 for food. 
 
 I gave him the bag I had carried and he helped him- 
 self. 
 
 "I do not feel the need of it," said Mary.
 
 24 MARCHING TO ZION 
 
 "I do not feel the need of it," said I. 
 
 When he had told us his tales and the darkness was 
 come we went to rest among the heather. 
 
 The wild stars were flowing over the sky, for it was 
 the time of the year when they do fall. Three of them 
 dropped together into the plain near the foot of the 
 mountain, but I lay with the bride of dreams in my 
 arms and if the lake and the mountain itself had been 
 heaped with immortal stars I would not have stirred. 
 Yet in the morning when I awoke I was alone. There 
 was a new sprig of the rowan in my hand; the grand 
 sun was warm on the rocks and the heather. I stood 
 up and could hear a few birds in the thickets below, 
 little showers of faint music. Mary and Monk were 
 conversing on a ridge under the bank of the lake. I 
 went to them, and Monk touched my arm again as if 
 to give me a warning but I had no eyes for him, Mary 
 was speaking and pointing. 
 
 "Do you see, Michael, that green place at the foot of 
 the mountain?" 
 
 "I do, I see a fine green ring." 
 
 "Do you see what is in it?" 
 
 "Nothing is in it," I said, and indeed it was a bare 
 open spot in the ring of a fence, a green slant in the 
 stubbles. 
 
 She stared at me with strangely troubled eyes. 
 
 "It's a little green terrace, a little sacred terrace ; do 
 you not see what is on it?" she asked of Monk. 
 
 "There is nothing in it, Mary, but maybe a hare." 
 
 "O look again," she cried out quickly, "Michael,
 
 MARCHING TO ZION 25 
 
 there are three golden crosses there, the crosses of Cal- 
 vary, only they are empty now !" 
 
 "There are no crosses there?" I said to Monk. 
 
 "There are no crosses there," he said. 
 
 I turned to the girl ; she took me in her arms and 1 
 shall feel her cold cold lips till the fall of doom. 
 
 "Michael, dear, it has been so beautiful. . . ." 
 
 She seemed to be making a little farewell and grow- 
 ing vague like a ghost would be. 
 
 "O lovely lovely jewel of the world, my heart is 
 losing you ! . . . Monk ! Monk !" I screamed, but he 
 could not help us. She was gone in a twink, and left 
 me and Monk very lonely in the world.
 
 DUSKY RUTH
 
 DUSKY RUTH 
 
 AT the close of an April day, chilly and wet, 
 the traveller came to a country town. In the 
 Cotswolds, though the towns are small and 
 sweet and the inns snug, the general habit of the land 
 is bleak and bare. He had newly come upon upland 
 roads so void of human affairs, so lonely, that they 
 might have been made for some forgotten uses by de- 
 parted men, and left to the unwitting passage of such 
 strangers as himself. Even the unending walls, built 
 of old rough laminated rock, that detailed the far- 
 spreading fields, had grown very old again in their 
 courses ; there were dabs of darkness, buttons of moss, 
 and fossils on every stone. He had passed a few 
 neighbourhoods, sometimes at the crook of a stream, or 
 at the cross of debouching roads, where old habitations, 
 their gangrenated thatch riddled with bird holes, had 
 not been so much erected as just spattered about the 
 places. Beyond these signs an odd lark or blackbird, 
 the ruckle of partridges, or the nifty gallop of a hare, 
 had been the only mitigation of the living loneliness 
 that was almost as profound by day as by night. But 
 the traveller had a care for such times and places. 
 There are men who love to gaze with the mind at 
 
 29
 
 30 DUSKY RUTH 
 
 things that can never be seen, feel at least the throb of a 
 beauty that will never be known, and hear over im- 
 mense bleak reaches the echo of that which is not 
 celestial music, but only their own hearts' vain cries; 
 and though his garments clung to him like clay it was 
 with deliberate questing step that the traveller trod the 
 single street of the town, and at last entered the inn, 
 shuffling his shoes in the doorway for a moment and 
 striking the raindrops from his hat. Then he turned 
 into a small smoking-room. Leather-lined benches, 
 much worn, were fixed to the wall under the window 
 and in other odd corners and nooks behind mahogany 
 tables. One wall was furnished with all the congenial 
 gear of a bar, but without any intervening counter. 
 Opposite a bright fare was burning, and a neatly-dressed 
 young woman sat before it in a Windsor chair, star- 
 ing at the flames. There was no other inmate of the 
 room, and as he entered the girl rose up and greeted 
 him. He found that he could be accommodated for 
 the night, and in a few moments his hat and scarf were 
 removed and placed inside the fender, his wet over- 
 coat was taken to the kitchen, the landlord, an old 
 fellow, was lending him a roomy pair of slippers, and 
 a maid was setting supper in an adjoining room. 
 
 He sat while this was doing and talked to the bar- 
 maid. She had a beautiful, but rather mournful, face 
 as it was lit by the firelight, and when her glance was 
 turned away from it her eyes had a piercing brightness. 
 Friendly and well-spoken as she was, the melancholy 
 in her aspect was noticeable — perhaps it was the dim
 
 DUSKY RUTH 31 
 
 room, or the wet day, or the long hours ministering a 
 multitude of cocktails to thirsty gallantry. 
 
 When he went to his supper he found cheering food 
 and drink, with pleasant garniture of silver and ma- 
 hogany. There were no other visitors, he was to he 
 alone; blinds were drawn, lamps lit, and the fire at 
 his back was comforting. So he sat long about his 
 meal until a white- faced maid came to clear the table, 
 discoursing to him of country things as she busied 
 about the room. It was a long narrow room, with a 
 sideboard and the door at one end and the fireplace at 
 the other. A bookshelf, almost devoid of books, con- 
 tained a number of plates; the long wall that faced the 
 windows was almost destitute of pictures, but there 
 were hung upon it, for some inscrutable but doubtless 
 sufficient reason, many dish-covers, solidly shaped, of 
 the kind held in such mysterious regard and known 
 as "willow pattern" ; one was even hung upon the face 
 of a map. Two musty prints were mixed with them, 
 presentments of horses having a stilted, extravagant 
 physique and bestridden by images of inhuman and 
 incommunicable dignity, clothed in whiskers, coloured 
 jackets, and tight white breeches. 
 
 He took down the books from the shelf, but his 
 interest was speedily exhausted, and the almanacs, the 
 county directory, and various guide-books were ex- 
 changed for the Cotswold Chronicle. With this, hav- 
 ing drawn the deep chair to the hearth, he whiled 
 away the time. The newspaper amused him with 
 its advertisements of stock shows, farm auctions,
 
 32 DUSKY RUTH 
 
 travelling quacks and conjurers, and there was a 
 lengthy account of the execution of a local felon, one 
 Timothy Bridger, who had murdered an infant in some 
 shameful circumstances. This dazzling crescendo 
 proved rather trying to the traveller; he threw down 
 the paper. 
 
 The town was all quiet as the hills, and he could 
 hear no sounds in the house. He got up and went 
 across the hall to the smoke-room. The door was shut, 
 but there was light within, and he entered. The girl 
 sat there much as he had seen her on his arrival, still 
 alone, with feet on fender. He shut the door behind 
 him, sat down, and crossing his legs puffed at his pipe, 
 admired the snug little room and the pretty figure of 
 the girl, which he could do without embarrassment as 
 her meditative head, slightly bowed, was turned away 
 from him. He could see something of her, too, in the 
 mirror at the bar, which repeated also the agreeable 
 contours of bottles of coloured wines and rich 
 liqueurs — so entrancing in form and aspect that they 
 seemed destined to charming histories, even in disuse — 
 and those of familiar outline containing mere spirits 
 or small beer, for which are reserved the harsher des- 
 tinies of base oils, horse medicines, disinfectants, and 
 cold tea. There were coloured glasses for bitter wines, 
 white glasses for sweet, a tiny leaden sink beneath 
 them, and the four black handles of the beer engine. 
 
 The girl wore a light blouse of silk, a short skirt of 
 black velvet, and a pair of very thin silk stockings 
 that showed the flesh of instep and shin so plainly that 
 he could see they were reddened by the warmth of the
 
 DUSKY RUTH 33 
 
 fire. She had on a pair of dainty cloth shoes with 
 high heels, but what was wonderful about her was the 
 heap of rich black hair piled at the back of her head and 
 shadowing the dusky neck. He sat puffing his pipe 
 and letting the loud tick of the clock fill the quiet room. 
 She did not stir and he could move no muscle. 
 It was as if he had been willed to come there and wait 
 silently. That, he felt now, had been his desire all the 
 evening; and here, in her presence, he was more 
 strangely stirred than by any event he could remember. 
 
 In youth he had viewed women as futile pitiable 
 things that grew long hair, wore stays and garters, and 
 prayed incomprehensible prayers. Viewing them in 
 the stalls of the theatre from his vantage-point in the 
 gallery, he always disliked the articulation of their 
 naked shoulders. But still, there was a god in the 
 sky, a god with flowing hair and exquisite eyes, whose 
 one stride with an ardour grandly rendered took him 
 across the whole round hemisphere to which his buoy- 
 ant limbs were bound like spokes to the eternal rim 
 and axle, his bright hair burning in the pity of the sun- 
 sets and tossing in the anger of the dawns. 
 
 Master traveller had indeed come into this room to 
 be with this woman : she as surely desired him, and 
 for all its accidental occasion it was as if he, walking 
 the ways of the world, had suddenly come upon . . . 
 what so imaginable with all permitted reverence as, 
 well, just a shrine; and he, admirably humble, bowed 
 the instant head. 
 
 Were there no other people within? The clock in- 
 dicated a few minutes to nine. He sat on, still as stone,
 
 34 DUSKY RUTH 
 
 and the woman might have been of wax for all the 
 movement or sound she made. There was allurement 
 in the air between them; he had forborne his smoking, 
 the pipe grew cold between his teeth. He waited for a 
 look from her, a movement to break the trance ot 
 silence. No footfall in street or house, no voice in 
 the inn but the clock beating away as if pronouncing a 
 doom. Suddenly it rasped out nine large notes, a bell 
 in the town repeated them dolefully, and a cuckoo no 
 further than the kitchen mocked them with three times 
 three. After that came the weak steps of the old land- 
 lord along the hall, the slam of doors, the clatter of 
 lock and bolt, and then the silence returning unendur- 
 ably upon them. 
 
 He arose and stood behind her ; he touched the black 
 hair. She made no movement or sign. He pulled out 
 two or three combs, and dropping them into her lap let 
 the whole mass tumble about his hands. It had a 
 curious harsh touch in the unravelling, but was so full 
 and shining; black as a rook's wings it was. He slid 
 his palms through it. His fingers searched it and 
 fought with its fine strangeness; into his mind there 
 travelled a serious thought, stilling his wayward fancy 
 — this was no wayward fancy, but a rite accomplish- 
 ing itself ! (Run, run, silly man, y'are lost) But hav- 
 ing got so far he burnt his boats, leaned over, and drew 
 her face back to him. And at that, seizing his wrists, 
 she gave him back ardour for ardour, pressing his hands 
 to her bosom, while the kiss was sealed and sealed 
 again. Then she sprang up and picking his hat and 
 scarf from the fender said:
 
 DUSKY RUTH 35 
 
 "I have been drying them for you, but the hat has 
 shrunk a bit, I'm sure — I tried it on." 
 
 He took them from her and put them behind him ; 
 he leaned lightly back upon the table, holding it with 
 both his hands behind him ; he could not speak. 
 
 "Aren't you going to thank me for drying them?" 
 she asked, picking her combs from the rug and repin- 
 ning her hair. 
 
 "I wonder why we did that?" he asked, shamedly. 
 
 "It is what I'm thinking too," she said. 
 
 "You were so beautiful about . . . about it, you 
 know." 
 
 She made no rejoinder, but continued to bind her 
 hair, looking brightly at him under her brows. When 
 she had finished she went close to him. 
 
 "Will that do?" 
 
 "I'll take it down again." 
 
 "No, no, the old man or the old woman will be 
 
 coming in." 
 
 "What of that?" he said, taking her into his arms, 
 "tell me your name." 
 
 She shook her head, but she returned his kisses and 
 stroked his hair and shoulders with beautifully melt- 
 ing gestures. 
 
 "What is your name, I want to call you by your 
 name?" he said; "I can't keep calling you Lovely 
 Woman, Lovely Woman." 
 
 Again she shook her head and was dumb. 
 
 "I'll call you Ruth then, Dusky Ruth, Ruth of the 
 black, beautiful hair." 
 
 "That is a nice-sounding name — I knew a deaf and
 
 36 DUSKY RUTH 
 
 dumb girl named Ruth; she went to Nottingham and 
 married an organ-grinder — but I should like it for my 
 
 name." 
 
 "Then I give it to you." 
 
 "Mine is so ugly." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 Again the shaken head and the burning caress. 
 
 "Then you shall be Ruth ; will you keep that name ?" 
 
 "Yes, if you give me the name I will keep it for you." 
 
 Time had indeed taken them by the forelock, and 
 they looked upon a ruddled world. 
 
 "I stake my one talent," he said jestingly, "and be- 
 hold it returns me fortyfold; I feel like the boy who 
 catches three mice with one piece of cheese." 
 
 At ten o'clock the girl said: 
 
 "I must go and see how they are getting on," and she 
 went to the door. 
 
 "Are we keeping them up?" 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 "Are you tired?" 
 
 "No, I am not tired." 
 
 She looked at him doubtfully. 
 
 "We ought not to stay in here; go into the coffee- 
 room and I'll come there in a few minutes." 
 
 "Right," he whispered gaily, "we'll sit up all night." 
 
 She stood at the door for him to pass out, and he 
 crossed the hall to the other room. It was in darkness 
 except for the flash of the fire. Standing at the hearth 
 he lit a match for the lamp, but paused at the globe; 
 then he extinguished the match. 
 
 "No, it's better to sit in the firelight."
 
 DUSKY RUTH 37 
 
 He heard voices at the other end of the house that 
 seemed to have a chiding note in them. 
 
 "Lord," he thought, "she is getting into a row ?" 
 
 Then her steps came echoing over the stone floors of 
 the hall ; she opened the door and stood there with a 
 lighted candle in her hand ; he stood at the other end of 
 the room, smiling. 
 
 "Good night," she said. 
 
 "Oh no, no ! come along," he protested, but not mov- 
 ing from the hearth. 
 
 "Got to go to bed," she answered. 
 
 "Are they angry with you?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Well, then, come over here and sit down." 
 
 "Got to go to bed," she said again, but she had mean- 
 while put her candlestick upon the little sideboard and 
 was trimming the wick with a burnt match. 
 
 "Oh, come along, just half an hour," he protested. 
 She did not answer but went on prodding the wick of 
 the candle. 
 
 "Ten minutes, then," he said, still not going towards 
 her. 
 
 "Five minutes," he begged. 
 
 She shook her head, and picking up the candlestick 
 turned to the door. He did not move, he just called 
 her name : "Ruth !" 
 
 She came back then, put down the candlestick and 
 tiptoed across the room until he met her. The bliss of 
 the embrace was so poignant that he was almost glad 
 when she stood up again and said with affected steadi- 
 ness, though he heard the tremor in her voice :
 
 38 DUSKY RUTH 
 
 "I must get you your candle." 
 
 She brought one from the hall, set it on the table in 
 front of him, and struck the match. 
 
 "What is my number?" he asked. 
 
 "Number six room," she answered, prodding the 
 wick vaguely with her match, while a slip of white wax 
 dropped over the shoulder of the new candle. "Num- 
 ber six . . . next to mine." 
 
 The match burnt out; she said abruptly "Good- 
 night," took up her own candle and left him there. 
 
 In a few moments he ascended the stairs and went 
 into his room. He fastened the door, removed his 
 coat, collar, and slippers, but the rack of passion had 
 seized him and he moved about with no inclination to 
 sleep. He sat down, but there was no medium of dis- 
 traction. He tried to read the newspaper which he had 
 carried up with him, and without realizing a single 
 phrase he forced himself to read again the whole ac- 
 count of the execution of the miscreant Bridger. When 
 he had finished this he carefully folded the paper and 
 stood up, listening. He went to the parting wall and 
 tapped thereon with his finger tips. He waited half a 
 minute, one minute, two minutes ; there was no answer- 
 ing sign. He tapped again, more loudly, with his 
 knuckles, but there was no response, and he tapped 
 many times. He opened his door as noiselessly as 
 possible; along the dark passage there were slips of 
 light under the other doors, the one next his own, and 
 the one beyond that. He stood in the corridor listen- 
 ing to the rumble of old voices in the farther room, 
 the old man and his wife going to their rest. Holding
 
 DUSKY RUTH 39 
 
 his breath fearfully, he stepped to her door and tapped 
 gently upon it. There was no answer, but he could 
 somehow divine her awareness of him; he tapped 
 again; she moved to the door and whispered "No, no, 
 go away." He turned the handle, the door was locked. 
 
 "Let me in," he pleaded. He knew she was standing 
 there an inch or two beyond him. 
 
 "Hush," she called softly. "Go away, the old woman 
 has ears like a fox." 
 
 He stood silent for a moment. 
 
 "Unlock it," he urged; but he got no further reply, 
 and feeling foolish and baffled he moved back to his 
 own room, cast his clothes from him, doused the 
 candle and crept into the bed with soul as wild as a 
 storm-swept forest, his heart beating a vagrant sum- 
 mons. The room filled with strange heat, there was 
 no composure for mind or limb, nothing but flaming 
 visions and furious embraces. 
 
 "Morality . . . what is it but agreement with your 
 own soul?" 
 
 So he lay for two hours — the clocks chimed twelve 
 — listening with foolish persistency for her step along 
 the corridor, fancying every light sound — and the night 
 was full of them — was her hand upon the door. 
 
 Suddenly, — and then it seemed as if his very heart 
 would abash the house with its thunder — he could hear 
 distinctly someone knocking on the wall. He got 
 quickly from his bed and stood at the door, listening. 
 Again the knocking was heard, and having half-clothed 
 himself he crept into the passage, which was now in 
 utter darkness, trailing his hand along the wall until
 
 40 DUSKY RUTH 
 
 he felt her door; it was standing open. He entered 
 her room and closed the door behind him. There was 
 not the faintest gleam of light, he could see nothing. 
 He whispered "Ruth!" and she was standing there. 
 She touched him, but not speaking. He put out his 
 hands, and they met round her neck; her hair was 
 flowing in its great wave about her ; he put his lips to 
 her face and found that her eyes were streaming with 
 tears, salt and strange and disturbing. In the close 
 darkness he put his arms about her with no thought 
 but to comfort her; one hand had plunged through 
 the long harsh tresses and the other across her hips be- 
 fore he realized that she was ungowned; then he was 
 aware of the softness of her breasts and the cold naked 
 sleekness of her shoulders. But she was crying there, 
 crying silently with great tears, her strange sorrow 
 stifling his desire. 
 
 "Ruth, Ruth, my beautiful dear!" he murmured 
 soothingly. He felt for the bed with one hand, and 
 turning back the quilt and sheets he lifted her in as 
 easily as a mother does her child, replaced the bedding, 
 and, in his clothes, he lay stretched beside her comfort- 
 ing her. They lay so, innocent as children, for an 
 hour, when she seemed to have gone to sleep. He rose 
 then and went silently to his room, full of weariness. 
 
 In the morning he breakfasted without seeing her, 
 but as he had business in the world that gave him just 
 an hour longer at the Inn before he left it for good 
 and all, he went into the smoke-room and found her. 
 She greeted him with curious gaze, but merrily enough, 
 for there were other men there now, farmers, a butcher,
 
 DUSKY RUTH 4 1 
 
 a registrar, an old, old man. The hour passed, but 
 not these men, and at length he donned his coat, 
 took up his stick, and said good-bye. Her shining 
 glances followed him to the door, and from the window 
 as far as they could view him.
 
 WEEP NOT MY WANTON
 
 WEEP NOT MY WANTON 
 
 AIR and light on Sack Down at summer sun- 
 set were soft as ointment and sweet as milk ; 
 at least, that is the notion the down might give 
 to a mind that hloomed within its calm horizons, some 
 happy victim of romance it might be, watching the 
 silken barley moving in its lower fields with the slow 
 movement of summer sea, reaching no harbour, having 
 no end. The toilers had mostly given over; their 
 ploughs and harrows were left to the abandoned fields ; 
 they had taken their wages and gone, or were going, 
 home ; but at the crown of the hill a black barn stood 
 by the roadside, and in its yard, amid sounds of 
 anguish, a score of young boar pigs were being gelded 
 by two brown lads and a gipsy fellow. Not half a 
 mile of distance here could enclose you the compass of 
 their cries. If a man desired peace he would step 
 fast down the hill towards Arwall with finger in ear 
 until he came to quiet at a hank overlooking slopes of 
 barley, and could perceive the fogs of June being born 
 in the standing grass beyond. 
 
 Four figures, a labourer and his family, travelled 
 slowly up the road proceeding across the hill, a sound 
 mingling dully with their steps — the voice of the man. 
 
 45
 
 46 WEEP NOT MY WANTON 
 
 You could not tell if it were noise of voice or of foot- 
 steps that first came into your ear, but it could be de- 
 fined on their advance as the voice of a man upbraid- 
 ing his little son. 
 
 "You're a naughty, naughty — you're a vurry, vurry 
 naughty boy ! Oi can't think what's comen tyeh !" 
 
 The father towered above the tiny figure shuffling 
 under his elbow, and kept his eyes stupidly fixed up- 
 on him. He saw a thin boy, a spare boy, a very 
 shrunken boy of seven or eight years, crying quietly. 
 He let no grief out of his lips, but his white face was 
 streaming with dirty tears. He wore a man's cap, an 
 unclean sailor jacket, large knickerbockers that made 
 a mockery of his lean joints, a pair of women's button 
 boots, and he looked straight ahead. 
 
 "The idear ! To go and lose a sixpence like that then ! 
 Where d'ye think yer'll land yerself, ay? Where'd I 
 be if I kept on losing sixpences, ay? A creature like 
 you, ay !" and lifting his heavy hand the man struck 
 the boy a blow behind with shock enough to disturb 
 a heifer. They went on, the child with sobs that you 
 could feel rather than hear. As they passed the black 
 barn the gipsy bawled encouragingly: "S'elp me, 
 father, that's a good 'tin, wallop his trousers !" 
 
 But the man ignored him, as he ignored the yell of 
 the pig and the voice of the lark rioting above them 
 all ; he continued his litany : 
 
 "You're a naughty, naughty boy, an' I dunno what's 
 comen tyeh!" 
 
 The woman, a poor slip of a woman she was, walked 
 behind them with a smaller child: she seemed to have
 
 WEEP NOT MY WANTON 47 
 
 no desire to shield the boy or to placate the man. She 
 did hot >eem to notice them, and led the toddling babe, 
 to whom she gabbled, some paces in the rear of the man 
 of anger. I le was a great figure with a bronzed face; 
 his trousers were tied at the knee, his wicker bag was 
 slung over liis shoulder. With his free and massive 
 hand he held the band of the boy. Tie was slightly 
 drunk, and walked with bis legs somewhat wide, at the 
 beginning of each stride lifting his heel higher than 
 was required, and at the end of it placing his foot 
 firmly but obliquely inwards. There were two bright 
 medals on the breasl of his waistcoat, presumably for 
 valour; be was perhaps a man who would stand upon 
 his rights and his dignities, such as they were — but then 
 he was drunk. His language, oddly unprofane, gave 
 a subtle and mean point to his decline from the heroic 
 standard. He only ceased his complaining to gaze 
 swayingly at the boy; then he struck him. The boy, 
 crying quietly, made no effort to avoid or resist him. 
 
 "You understand me, you bad boy! As long as 
 you're with me you got to come under collar. And 
 wher'll you be next I dunno, a bad creature like you, 
 ay! An' then to turn roun' an' answer mel / diuuw! I 
 dunno what's comen tyeh. Ye know ye lost that six- 
 pence through glammering about. Wher* d'ye lose it, 
 ay? Wher' d'ye lose it, ay?" 
 
 At these finest ions he seized the boy by the neck and 
 shook him as a child does a bottle of water. The baby 
 behind them was taken with little gusts of laughter at 
 the sight, and the woman cooed back playfully at her. 
 
 "George, George !" yelled the woman.
 
 48 WEEP NOT MY WANTON 
 
 The man turned round. 
 
 "Look after Annie !" she yelled again. 
 
 "What's up?" he called. 
 
 Her only answer was a giggle of laughter as she 
 disappeared behind a hedge. The child toddled up to 
 its father and took his hand, while the quiet boy took 
 her other hand with relief. She laughed up into their 
 faces, and the man resumed his homily. 
 
 "He's a bad, bad boy. He's a vurry naughty bad 
 boy!" 
 
 By-and-by the woman came shuffling after them; 
 the boy looked furtively around and dropped his 
 sister's hand. 
 
 "Carm on, me beauty!" cried the man, lifting the 
 girl to his shoulder. "He's a bad boy ; you 'ave a ride 
 on your daddy." They went on alone, and the woman 
 joined the boy. He looked up at her with a sad face. 
 
 "O, my Christ, Johnny !" she said, putting her arms 
 round the boy, "what's 'e bin doin' to yeh? Yer face 
 is all blood!" 
 
 "It's only me nose, mother. Here," he whispered, 
 "here's the tanner." 
 
 They went together down the hill towards the inn, 
 which had already a light in its windows. The 
 screams from the barn had ceased, and a cart passed 
 them full of young pigs, bloody and subdued. The 
 hill began to resume its old dominion of soft sounds. 
 It was nearly nine o'clock, and one anxious farmer 
 still made hay although, on this side of the down, day 
 had declined, and with a greyness that came not from
 
 WEEP NOT MY WANTON 49 
 
 the sky, but crept up from the world. From the quiet 
 hill, as the last skein of cocks was carted to the stack, 
 you could hear dimly men's voices and the rattle of 
 their gear.
 
 PIFFINGCAP
 
 PIFFINGCAP 
 
 PIFFINGCAP had the cup from an old friend, a 
 queer-minded man. He had given it to him 
 just before he had gone out of this continent, 
 not for the first but for the last time — a cup of lead 
 with an inscription upon it in decent letters but strange 
 words. 
 
 "Here, Elmer," said his old friend to the barber of 
 Bagwood, "have this — there's the doom of half a mil- 
 lion beards in it!" 
 
 Piffingcap laughed, but without any joy, for his 
 heart was heavy to lose his friend. 
 
 "There is in it too," continued Grafton, offering the 
 pot and tapping it with his forefinger, "a true test of 
 virtue — a rare thing, as you know, in these parts. 
 Secondly, there is in it a choice of fortunes; and 
 thirdly, it may be, a triple calamity and — and — and 
 very serious, you know, but there you are." He gave 
 it into the barber's hand with a slight sigh. While 
 his friend duly admired the dull gift the traveller 
 picked up his walking stick and winked at himself in 
 the mirror. 
 
 And Elmer Piffingcap, the barber of Bagwood, took 
 his friend's cup, set it in a conspicuous place upon the 
 
 53
 
 54 PIFFINGCAP 
 
 shelf of his shop, and bade that friend good-bye, a 
 little knot rolling into his lungs as they shook their 
 two hands together. 
 
 "It is true then," said he, staring at the shining bald- 
 ness of his friend who stood with hat and stick in 
 hand — for as Piffingcap dared not look into his friend's 
 eyes, the gleam of the skull took his gaze, as a bright 
 thing will seize the mind of a gnat — "it is true, then, 
 I shall see you no more?" 
 
 "No more again," said the wanderer affably, re- 
 placing his hat — disliking that pliant will-less stare of 
 the barber's mournful eyes. This wandering man had 
 a heart full of bravery though he could not walk with 
 pride, for the corns and bunkles he suffered would 
 have crippled a creature of four feet, leave alone two. 
 But — would you believe it — he was going now to walk 
 himself for all his days round and round the world. 
 O, he was such a man as could put a deceit upon the 
 slyest, with his tall hat and his jokes, living as easy as 
 a bird in the softness and sweetness of the year. 
 
 "And if it rains, it rains," he declared to Polly, "and 
 I squat like a hare in the hedge and keep the blessed 
 bones of me dry and my feet warm — it's not three 
 weeks since it happened to me; my neck as damp as 
 the inside of an onion, and my curly locks caught in 
 blackberry bushes — stint your laughing, Polly! — the 
 end of my nose as cold as a piece of dead pork, and 
 the place very inconvenient with its sharp thorns and 
 nettles — and no dockleaf left in the whole parish. 
 But there was young barley wagging in the field, and 
 clover to be smelling, and rooks to be watching, and
 
 PIFFINGCAP 55 
 
 doves, and the rain heaving its long sigh in the grey- 
 ness — I declare to my God it was a fine handsome 
 day I had that day, Polly!" 
 
 In the winter he would be sleeping in decent nooks, 
 eating his food in quiet inns, drying his coat at the 
 forge; and so he goes now into the corners of the 
 world — the little husky fat man, with large spectacles 
 and fox-coloured beard and tough boots that had slits 
 and gouts in them — gone seeking the feathers out of 
 Priam's peacock. And let him go; we take no more 
 concern of him or his shining skull or his tra-la-la in 
 the highways. 
 
 The barber, who had a romantic drift of mind, went 
 into his saloon, and taking up the two cracked china 
 lather mugs he flung them from the open window into 
 his back garden, putting the fear of some evil into 
 the mind of his drowsy cat, and a great anticipation 
 in the brains of his two dusty hens, who were lurking 
 there for anything that could be devoured. Mr. 
 Fifrmgcap placed the pot made of lead upon his con- 
 venient shelf, laid therein his brush, lit the small gas 
 stove under the copper urn, and when Polly, the child 
 from the dairy, arrived with her small can for the 
 barber's large jug she found him engaged in shaving 
 the chin of Timmy James the butcher, what time Mr. 
 James was engaged in a somewhat stilted conversation 
 with Gregory Barnes about the carnal women of Bag- 
 wood. 
 
 Polly was a little lean girl, eight or nine years old, 
 with a face that was soft and rosy and fresh as the bud 
 of gum on the black branches of the orchard. She
 
 56 PIFFINGCAP 
 
 wore a pretty dimity frock and had gay flowers in her 
 hat. This was her last house of call, and, sitting down 
 to watch Mr. Piffingcap, the town's one barber, shaving 
 friends and enemies alike, she would be the butt of 
 their agreeable chaff because of her pleasant country 
 jargon — as rich as nutmeg in a homely cake — or her 
 yellow scattered hair, or her sweet eyes that were soft 
 as remembered twilight. 
 
 "Your razor is roaring, Mr. Piffingcap !" — peeping 
 round the chair at him. "Oh, it's that Mr. James!" 
 she would say in pretended surprise. Mr. James had 
 a gruff beard, and the act of removing it occasioned 
 a noise resembling that of her mother scraping the 
 new potatoes. 
 
 "What have you got this pot for?" she chattered; 
 "I don't like it, it's ugly." 
 
 "Don't say that now," said Mr. Piffingcap, pausing 
 with his hand on the butcher's throttle, "it was Mr. 
 Grafton's parting gift to me; I shall never see him 
 again, nor will you neither ; he's gone round the world 
 for ever more this time !" 
 
 "Oh!" gurgled the child in a manner that hung be- 
 tween pain and delight, "has he gone to Rinjigoffer 
 land?" 
 
 "Gone where?" roared Timothy James, lifting his 
 large red neck from the rest. 
 
 "He's told me all about it," said the child, ignoring 
 him. 
 
 "Well, he's not gone there," interrupted the barber. 
 
 And the child continued, "It's where the doves and
 
 PIFFINGCAP 57 
 
 the partridges are so fat that they break down the 
 branches of the trees where they roost. . . ." 
 
 "Gam with yer!" said Mr. James. 
 
 ". . . and the hares are as big as foxes. . ." 
 
 "God a mercy!" said Mr. James. 
 
 ". . . yes, and a fox was big and brown and white 
 like a skewbald donkey — he ! he ! he ! And oo yes,' 1 
 continued Polly, shrilling with excitement, "there was 
 a king badger as would stop your eyes from winking 
 if you met him walking in the dawn !" 
 
 "Lord, what should the man be doing telling you 
 them lies," ejaculated Timothy, now wiping his chin 
 on the napkin. "Did he give you that cup, Piff ?" 
 
 "Yes," replied the barber, "and if what he says is 
 true there's a power o' miracle in it." 
 
 The butcher surveyed it cautiously and read the in- 
 scription : 
 
 NE SAM BRA DIVORNAK 
 
 "That's a bit o' Roosian, I should say," he remarked 
 as he and Gregory left the saloon. 
 
 Polly picked up her empty can and looked at Mr. P. 
 
 "Won't he come back no more?" 
 
 "No, Polly, my pigeon, he won't come back." 
 
 "Didn't he like us?" asked the child. 
 
 The barber stood dumb before her bright searching 
 eyes. 
 
 "He was better than my father," said the child, "or 
 me uncle, or the schoolmaster." 
 
 "He's the goodest man alive, Polly," said Mr. P.
 
 58 PIFFINGCAP 
 
 "Didn't he like us ?" again she asked ; and as Mr. P. 
 could only look vaguely about the room she went out 
 and closed the latch of the door very softly behind her. 
 
 In the succeeding days the barber lathered and cut 
 or sat smoking meditatively in his saloon; the doom 
 began to work its will, and business, which for a quar- 
 ter of a century had flourished like a plant, as indeed 
 it was, of constant and assured growth, suddenly de- 
 clined. On weekdays the barber cleaned up the chins 
 of his fellow townsmen alone, but on Sunday morn- 
 ings he would seek the aid of a neighbour, a youngster 
 whom he called Charleyboy, when four men would 
 be seated at one time upon his shaving-chairs, towel 
 upon breast and neck bared for the sacrifice, while 
 Charleyboy dabbed and pounded their crops into 
 foam. Mr. Piffingcap would follow him, plying his 
 weapon like the genius he was, while Charleyboy again 
 in turn followed him, drying with linen, cooling with 
 rhum, or soothing with splendid unguent. "Next gent, 
 please !" he would cry out, and the last shorn man 
 would rise and turn away, dabbing his right hand into 
 the depths of his breeches pocket and elevating that 
 with his left before producing the customary tribute. 
 
 But the genius of Piffingcap and the neat hand of 
 Charley languished in distress. There was no gradual 
 cessation, the thing completely stopped, and Piffingcap 
 did not realize until too late, until, indeed, the truth 
 of it was current in the little town everywhere but in 
 his own shop, that the beards once shaven by him out 
 of Grafton's pot grew no more in Bagwood ; and there 
 came the space of a week or so when not a soul entered
 
 PIFFINGCAP 59 
 
 the saloon but two schoolboys for the cutting of hair, 
 <Mnl a little housemaid for a fringe net. 
 
 Then he knew, and one clay, having sat in the place 
 the whole morning like a beleaguered rat, with ruin 
 and damnation a hands-breath only from him, he 
 rushed from his shop across to the hardware mer- 
 chant's and bought two white china mugs, delicately 
 lined with gold and embossed with vague lumps, and 
 took them back to the saloon. 
 
 At dinner time he put the cup of lead into his coat 
 pocket and walked down the street in an anxious kind 
 of way until he came to the bridge at the end of the 
 town. It was an angular stone bridge, crossing a 
 deep and leisurely flowing river, along whose parapet 
 boys had dared a million times, wearing smooth, with 
 their adventuring feet, its soft yellow stone. He 
 stared at the water and saw the shining flank of a tench 
 as it turned over. All beyond the bridge were meads 
 thick with ripe unmown grass and sweet with scabious 
 bloom. But the barber's mind was harsh with the 
 rancour of noon heats and the misfortunes of life. 
 He stood with one hand resting upon the hot stone and 
 one upon the heavy evil thing in his pocket. The 
 bridge was deserted at this hour, its little traffic hav- 
 ing paused for the meal. He took, at length, the cup 
 from his pocket, and whispering to himself "God for- 
 give you, Grafton," he let it fall from his fingers into 
 the water; then he walked sharply home to his three 
 daughters and told them what he had done. 
 
 "You poor loon!" said Bersa. 
 
 "O man! man!" moaned Grue.
 
 60 PIFFINGCAP 
 
 "You're the ruin of us all !" cried Mavie. 
 
 Three fine women were Grue and Mavie and Bersa, 
 in spite of the clamour of the outlandish Pifnngcap 
 names, and their father had respect for them and ad- 
 mired their handsomeness. But they had for their 
 father, all three of them, the principal filial emotion 
 of compassion, and they showed that his action had 
 been a foolish action, that there were other towns in 
 the world besides Bagwood, and that thousands and 
 millions of men would pay a good price to be quit of 
 a beard, and be shaved from a pot that would com- 
 plete the destruction of all the unwanted hairiness of 
 the world. And they were very angry with him. 
 
 "Let us go and see to it . . . what is to be done now 
 . . . bring us to the place, father!" 
 
 He took them down to the river, and when they 
 peered over the side of the bridge they could see the 
 pot lying half sunk in some white sand in more than a 
 fathom of water. 
 
 "Let us instruct the waterman," they said, "he will 
 secure it for us." 
 
 In the afternoon Grue met the waterman, who was 
 a sly young fellow, and she instructed him, but at tea- 
 time word was brought to Pifnngcap that the young 
 waterman was fallen into the river and drowned. 
 Then there was grief in his mind, for he remembered 
 the calamity which Grafton had foretold, and he was 
 for giving up all notions of re-taking the cup ; but his 
 daughter Bersa went in a few days to a man was an 
 angler and instructed him ; and he took a crooked pole 
 and leaned over the bridge to probe for the cup. In
 
 PIFFINGCAP 6 1 
 
 the afternoon word was brought to Piffmgcap that the 
 parapet had given way, and the young angler in fall- 
 ing through had dashed out his brains on the abutment 
 of the bridge. And the young gaffer whom Mavie 
 instructed was took of a sunstroke and died on the 
 bank. 
 
 The barber was in great grief at these calamities; 
 he had tremors of guilt in his mind, no money in his 
 coffers, and the chins of the Bagwood men were still as 
 smooth as children's ; but it came to him one day that 
 he need not fear any more calamities, and that a thing 
 which had so much tricks in it should perhaps be cured 
 by trickery. 
 
 "I will go," he said, "to the Widow Buckland and 
 ask her to assist me." 
 
 The Widow Buckland was a wild strange woman 
 who lived on a heath a few miles away from Bagwood ; 
 so he went over one very hot day to the Widow and 
 found her cottage in the corner of the heath. There 
 was a caravan beside the cottage — it was a red caravan 
 with yellow wheels. A blackbird hung in a wicker 
 cage at the door, and on the side of the roof board was 
 painted 
 
 FEATS & GALIAS ATENDED 
 AGLAURA BUCKLAND 
 
 There was nobody in the caravan so he knocked at 
 the cottage door ; the Widow Buckland led him into her 
 dim little parlour. 
 
 "It 'ull cost you half a James I" says she when Mr. 
 Piffingcap had given her his requirements. 
 
 "Half a what?" cried he.
 
 62 PIFFINGCAP 
 
 "You are not," said the gipsy, "a man of a mean 
 heart, are you?" She said it very persuasively, and 
 he felt he could not annoy her for she was a very 
 large woman with sharp glances. 
 
 "No," said Piffingcap. 
 
 "And you'll believe what I'm telling you, won't 
 you?" 
 
 "Yes," said Piffingcap. 
 
 "It 'ull maybe some time before my words come 
 true, but come true they will, I can take my oath." 
 
 "Yes," again said Piffingcap. 
 
 "George!" she bawled to someone from the door- 
 way, "wher'd yer put my box?" 
 
 There was an indistinct reply but she bawled out 
 again, "Well, fetch it off the rabbit hutch." 
 
 "And a man like you," she continued, turning again 
 to the barber, "doesn't think twice about half a sover- 
 eign, and me putting you in the way of what you want 
 to know, I'm sure." 
 
 And Piffingcap mumbled dubiously "No," producing 
 with difficulty some shillings, some coppers, and a 
 postal order for one and threepence which a credulous 
 customer had that morning sent him for a bottle of 
 hairwash. 
 
 "Let's look at your 'and," she said ; taking it she 
 reflected gravely : 
 
 "You're a man that's 'ad your share o' trouble, aint 
 you ?" 
 
 Piffingcap bowed meekly. 
 
 "And you've 'ad your 'appy days, aint you?" 
 
 A nod.
 
 PIFFINGCAP 63 
 
 "Well listen to me; you've got more fortune in store 
 for you if you know how to pluck it . . . you under- 
 stand my meaning, don't you? . . . than any man in 
 the town this bleedun minute. Ivight, George," she 
 exclaimed, turning to a very ugly little hunchbacked 
 fellow — truly he was a mere squint of a man, there 
 was such a little hit of him for so much uncomeliness. 
 The Widow Buckland took the hox from the hunch- 
 hack and, thrusting him out of the room, she shut 
 fast the door and turned the key in the lock. Then 
 she drew up a bit of a table to the window, and tak- 
 ing out of the box a small brass vessel and two bottles 
 she set them before her. 
 
 "Sit down there, young feller," she said, and Piffing- 
 cap sat down at the end of the table facing the window. 
 The Widow turned to the window, which was a small 
 square, the only one in the room, and closed over it a 
 shutter. The room was clapped in darkness except 
 for a small ray in the middle of the shutter, coming 
 through a round hole about as large as a guinea. She 
 pulled Mr. Piffingcap's shoulder until the ray was shin- 
 ing on the middle of his forehead; she took up the 
 brass vessel, and holding it in the light of the ray pol- 
 ished it for some time with her forefinger. All her 
 fingers, even her thumbs, were covered with rich 
 sinister rings, but there were no good looks in those 
 fingers for the nails had been munched almost away, 
 and dirty skin hid up the whites. The polished vessel 
 was then placed on the table directly beneath the ray; 
 drops from the two phials were poured into it, a green 
 liquid and a black liquid; mixing together they melted
 
 64 PIFFINGCAP 
 
 into a pillar of smoke which rose and was seen only 
 as it flowed through the beam of light, twisting and 
 veering and spinning in strange waves. 
 
 The Widow Buckland said not a word for a time, 
 but contemplated the twisting shapes as they poured 
 through the ray, breathing heavily all the while or suf- 
 fering a slight sigh to pass out of her breast. But 
 shortly the smoke played the barber a trick in his nose 
 and heaving up his chin he rent the room with a great 
 sneeze. When he recovered himself she was speak- 
 ing certain words : 
 
 "Fire and water I see and a white virgin's skin. 
 The triple gouts of blood I see and the doom given 
 over. Fire and water I see and a white virgin's skin." 
 
 She threw open the shutter, letting in the light; 
 smoke had ceased to rise but it filled the parlour with 
 a sweet smell. 
 
 "Well . . ." said Mr. Piffingcap dubiously. 
 
 And the Widow Buckland spoke over to him plainly 
 and slowly, patting his shoulder at each syllable, 
 
 "Fire and water and a white virgin's skin." 
 
 Unlatching the door she thrust him out of the house 
 into the sunlight. He tramped away across the heath 
 meditating her words, and coming to the end of it he 
 sat down in the shade of a bush by the side of the road, 
 for he felt sure he was about to capture the full mean- 
 ing of her words. But just then he heard a strange 
 voice speaking, and speaking very vigorously. He 
 looked up and observed a man on a bicycle, riding 
 along towards him, talking to himself in a great way.
 
 PIFFINGCAP 65 
 
 "He is a political fellow rehearsing a speech," said 
 Mr. Piffingcap to himself, "or perhaps he is some 
 holy-minded person devising a sermon." 
 
 It was a very bald man and he had a long face hung 
 with glasses ; he had no coat and rode in his shirt and 
 knickerbockers, with hot thick stockings and white 
 shoes. The barber watched him after he had passed 
 and noted how his knees turned angularly outwards 
 at each upward movement, and how his saddle bag 
 hunjr at the bottom of his back like some ironical label. 
 
 "Fool!" exclaimed Mr. Piffingcap, rising angrily, for 
 the man's chatter had driven his mind clean away from 
 the Widow Buckland's meaning. But it was only for 
 a short while, and when he got home he called one of 
 his daughters into the saloon. 
 
 "My child," said Piffingcap, "you know the great 
 trouble which is come on me?" and he told Bersa his 
 difficulty and requested her aid, that is to say: would 
 she go down in the early morning in her skin only and 
 recover the pot? 
 
 "Indeed no, father!" said his daughter Bersa, "it 
 is a very evil thing and I will not do your request." 
 
 "You will not?" says he. 
 
 "No!" says she, but it was not in the fear of her 
 getting her death that she refused him. 
 
 So he called to another of his daughters. 
 
 "My child," said he, "you know the great trouble 
 that is come on me," and he told Mavie his desire and 
 asked for her aid. 
 
 "Why, my father," says she, "this is a thing which
 
 66 PIFFINGCAP 
 
 a black hag has put on us all and I will get my death. 
 I love you as I love my life, father, but I won't do 
 this !" 
 
 "You will not?" says he. 
 
 "No !" says she, but it was not for fear of her death 
 she refused him. 
 
 And he went to his third daughter Grue and tried 
 her with the same thing. "My child, you know the 
 trouble that's come on me ?" 
 
 "Oh, will you let me alone!" she says, "I've a 
 greater trouble on me than your mouldy pot." And 
 it is true what she said of her trouble, for she was a 
 girl of a loose habit. So the barber said no more to 
 them and went to his bed. 
 
 Two days later, it being Saturday, he opened in the 
 morning his saloon and sat down there. And while 
 he read his newspaper in the empty place footsteps 
 scampered into his doorway, and the door itself was 
 pushed open just an inch or two. 
 
 "Come in," he said, rising. 
 
 The door opened fully. 
 
 "Zennybody here?" whispered Polly walking in very 
 mysteriously, out of breath, and dressed in a long 
 mackintosh. 
 
 "What is the matter, my little one?" he asked, put- 
 ting his arm around her shoulders, for he had a fond- 
 ness for her. "Ach, your hair's all wet, what's the 
 matter ?" 
 
 The little girl put her hand under the macintosh 
 and drew out the leaden pot, handing it to the barber
 
 PIFFINGCAP 67 
 
 and smiling at him with inarticulate but intense happi- 
 ness. She said nol a word as he stared his surprise 
 
 and joy. 
 
 "Why Polly, my dear, how did you get it?"' 
 
 "I (lived in and got it." 
 
 "You never . . . you princess . . . you!" 
 
 "1 just bin and come straight here with it." 
 
 She opened and shut the mackintosh quickly, dis- 
 playing for a brief glance her little white naked figure 
 with the slightest tremulous crook at the sharp knei . 
 
 "Ah, my darling," exclaimed the enraptured barber, 
 "and you're shivering with not a rag on you but them 
 shoes . . . run away home. Tolly, and get some things 
 on, Polly . . . and . . . Tolly, Polly!" as she darted 
 away, "come back quick, won't you?" 
 
 She nodded brightly back at him as she sprang 
 through the doorway. He went to the entrance and 
 watched her taking her twinkling leaps, as bonny as 
 a young foal, along the pavement. 
 
 And there came into the barber's mind the notion 
 that this was all again a piece of fancy tricks; but 
 there was the dark pot, and he examined it. Thought- 
 fully he took it into his backyard and busied him- 
 there for a while, not telling his daughters of its re- 
 covery. When, later, Polly joined him in the garden 
 he had already raised a big lire in an old iron brazier 
 which had lain there. 
 
 "Ah, Polly my dear, I'm overjoyed to get it back, 
 but I dasn't keep it . . . it's a bad thing. Take it in 
 your fingers now. my dear little girl, and just chuck
 
 68 PIFFINGCAP 
 
 it in that fire. Ah, we must melt the wickedness out 
 of it," he said, observing her disappointment, "it's been 
 the death of three men and we dasn't keep it." 
 
 They watched it among the coals until it had begun 
 to perish drop by drop through the grating of the 
 brazier. 
 
 Later in the day Mr. Piffingcap drove Polly in a 
 little trap to a neighbouring town to see a circus, and 
 the pair of them had a roaring dinner at the Green 
 Dragon. Next morning when Polly brought the milk 
 to the saloon there were Timmy James and Gregory 
 Barnes being shaved, for beards had grown again in 
 Bagwood.
 
 THE KING OF THE WORLD
 
 THE KING OF THE WORLD 
 
 OXCE upon a time, yes, in the clays of King 
 Sennacherib, a young Assyrian captain, val- 
 iant and desirable, but more hapless than 
 either, fleeing in that strange rout of the armies against 
 Judah, was driven into the desert. Daily his company 
 perished from him until he alone, astride a camel, was 
 left searching desperately through a boundless desert 
 for the loved plains of Shinar, sweet with flocks and 
 rich with glittering cities. The desolation of ironic hor- 
 izons that he could never live to pierce hung hopelessly 
 in remote unattainable distances, endless as the blue sky. 
 The fate of his comrades had left upon him a small 
 pack of figs and wine, but in that uncharted wilder- 
 ness it was but a pitiable parrying of death's last keen 
 stroke. There was no balm or succour in that empty 
 sky ; bine it was as sapphires, but savage with rays that 
 scourged like flaming brass. Earth itself was not less 
 empty, and the loneliness of his days was an increasing 
 bitterness. He was so deeply forgotten of men, and so 
 removed from the savour of life, from his lost coun- 
 try, the men he knew, the women he loved, their tem- 
 ples, their markets and their homes, that it seemed 
 
 71
 
 72 THE KING OF THE WORLD 
 
 the gods had drawn that sweet and easy world away 
 from his entangled feet. 
 
 But at last upon a day he was astonished and cheered 
 by the sight of a black butterfly flickering in the air 
 before him, and towards evening he espied a giant 
 mound lying lonely in the east. He drove his camel 
 to it, but found only a hill of sand whirled up by 
 strange winds of the desert. He cast himself from the 
 camel's back and lay miserably in the dust. His grief 
 was extreme, but in time he tended his tired beast 
 and camped in the shadow of the hill. When he gave 
 himself up to sleep the night covering them was very 
 calm and beautiful, the sky soft and streaming with 
 stars ; it seemed to his saddened mind that the desert 
 and the deep earth were indeed dead, and life and love 
 only in that calm enduring sky. But at midnight a 
 storm arose with quickening furies that smote the des- 
 ert to its unseen limits, and the ten thousand stars were 
 flung into oblivion ; winds flashed upon him with a pas- 
 sion more bitter than a million waves, a terror greater 
 than hosts of immediate enemies. They grasped and 
 plunged him into gulfs of darkness, heaped mountains 
 upon him, lashed him with thongs of snakes and scat- 
 tered him with scimitars of unspeakable fear. His 
 soul was tossed in the void like a crushed star and his 
 body beaten into the dust with no breath left him to be- 
 moan his fate. Nevertheless by a miracle his soul 
 and body lived on. 
 
 It was again day when he recovered, day in the like- 
 ness of yesterday, the horizons still infinitely far. 
 Long past noon, the sun had turned in the sky ; he was 
 
 * I
 
 THE KING OF THE WORLD 73 
 
 alone. The camel was doubtless buried in the fathoms 
 he himself had escaped, but a surprising wonder 
 greeted his half-blinded eyes; the hill of sand was 
 gone, utterly, blown into the eternal waste of the des- 
 ert, and in its track stood a strange thing— a shrine. 
 There was a great unroofed pavement of onyx and 
 blue jasper, large enough for the floor of a temple, 
 with many life-size figures, both men and women, 
 standing upon it all carved in rock and facing, at the 
 sacred end, a giant pillared in black basalt, seven 
 times the height of a man. The sad captain divined 
 at once that this was the lost shrine of Namu-Sarkkon, 
 the dead god of whom tradition spoke in the ancient 
 litanies of his country. He heaved himself painfully 
 from the grave of sand in which he had lain half- 
 buried, and staggering to the pavement leaned in the 
 shade of one of those figures fronting the dead god. 
 In a little time he recovered and ate some figs which 
 he carried in a leather bag at his hip. and plucked the 
 sand from his eyes and ears and loosened his san- 
 dals and gear. Then he bowed himself for a moment 
 before the black immobile idol, knowing that he would 
 tarry here now until he died. 
 
 Namu-Sarkkon, the priestless god, had been praised 
 of old time above all for his gifts of joy. Worshippers 
 had gathered from the cities of Assyria at this his only 
 shrine, offering their souls for a gift to him who. in his 
 time and wisdom, granted their desires. But Namu- 
 Sarkkon, like other gods, was a jealous god, and, be- 
 cause the hearts of mankind are vain and destined 
 to betrayal, he turned the bodies of his devotees into
 
 74 THE KING OF THE WORLD 
 
 rock and kept them pinioned in stone for a hundred 
 years, or for a thousand years, according to the nature 
 of their desires. Then if the consummation were 
 worthy and just, the rock became a living fire, the 
 blood of eternity quickened the limbs, and the god 
 released the body full of youth and joy. But what god 
 lives for ever? Not Namu-Sarkkon. He grew old 
 and forgetful ; his oracle was defamed. Stronger gods 
 supplanted him and at last all power departed save 
 only from one of his eyes. That eye possessed the 
 favour of eternity, but only so faintly that the wor- 
 shipper when released from his trap of stone lived at 
 the longest but a day, some said even but an hour. 
 None could then be found to exchange the endurances 
 of the world for so brief a happiness. His worship 
 ceased, Namu-Sarkkon was dead, and the remote 
 shrine being lost to man's heart was lost to man's eyes. 
 Even the tradition of its time and place had become a 
 mere fantasy, but the whirlwinds of uncounted years 
 sowing their sands about the shrine had left it blame- 
 less and unperishable, if impotent. 
 
 Recollecting this, the soldier gazed long at the dead 
 idol. Its smooth huge bulk, carved wonderfully, was 
 still without blemish and utterly cleansed of the sand. 
 The strange squat body with the benign face stood on 
 stout legs, one advanced as if about to stride forward 
 to the worshipper, and one arm outstretched offered 
 the sacred symbol. Then in a moment the Assyrian's 
 heart leaped within him; he had been staring at the 
 mild eyes of the god — surely there was a movement in
 
 THE KING OF THE WORLD 75 
 
 one of the eyes! He stood erect, trembling, then 
 flung himself prostrate before Namu-Sarkkon, the 
 
 living god! He lay long, waiting for his doom to 
 eclipse him, the flaming swords of the sun scathing his 
 weary Limbs, the sweat from his temples dripping in 
 tiny pools beside his eyes. At last he moved, he knelt 
 up, and shielding his stricken eyes with one arm he 
 gazed at the god, and saw now quite clearly a black 
 butterfly resting on the lid of one of Sarkkon's eyes, 
 inflecting its wings. He gave a grunt of comprehen- 
 sion and relief. He got up and went among the other 
 figures. Close at hand they seemed fashioned of soft 
 material, like camphor or wax, that was slowly dis- 
 solving, leaving them little more than stooks of clay, 
 rough clod-like shapes of people, all but one figure 
 which seemed fixed in coloured marble, a woman of 
 beauty so wondrous to behold that the Assyrian bent 
 his head in praise before her, though but an image of 
 stone. When he looked again at it the black butterfly 
 from the eyelid of the god fluttered between them and 
 settled upon the girl's delicately carved lips for a mo- 
 ment, and then away. Amazedly watching it travel 
 back to the idol he heard a movement and a sigh behind 
 him. He leaped away, with his muscles distended, his 
 fingers outstretched, and fear bursting in his eyes. 
 The beautiful figure had moved a step towards him. 
 holding out a caressing hand, calling him by his name, 
 his name! 
 
 "Talakku ! Talakku !" 
 
 She stood thus almost as if again turned to stone,
 
 j6 THE KING OF THE WORLD 
 
 until his fear left him and he saw only her beauty, 
 and knew only her living loveliness in a tunic of the 
 sacred purple fringed with tinkling discs, that was 
 clipped to her waist with a zone of gold and veiled, 
 even in the stone, her secret hips and knees. The 
 slender feet were guarded with pantoffles of crimson 
 hide. Green agates in strings of silver hung beside her 
 brows, depending from a fillet of gems that crowned 
 and confined the black locks tightly curled. Buds 
 of amber and coral were bound to her dusky wrists 
 with threads of copper, and between the delicacy of her 
 brown breasts an amulet of beryl, like a blue and 
 gentle star, hung from a necklace made of balls of opal 
 linked with amethysts. 
 
 "Wonder of god! who are you?" whispered the war- 
 rior; but while he was speaking she ran past him 
 sweetly as an antelope to the dark god. He heard the 
 clicking of her beads and gems as she bent in rever- 
 ence kissing the huge stone feet of Sarkkon. He did 
 not dare to approach her although her presence filled 
 him with rapture ; he watched her obeisant at the shrine 
 and saw that one of her crimson shoes had slipped 
 from the clinging heel. What was she — girl or god- 
 dess, phantom or spirit of the stone, or just some 
 lunatic of the desert? But whatever she was it was 
 marvellous, and the marvel of it shocked him; time 
 seemed to seethe in every channel of his blood. He 
 heard her again call out his name as if from very far 
 away. 
 
 "Talakku!" 
 
 He hastened to lift her from the pavement, and con-
 
 THE KING OF THE WORLD 77 
 
 quering his tremors he grasped and lifted her roughly, 
 as a victor might hale a captive. 
 
 "Pretty antelope, who are you?" 
 
 She turned her eyes slowly upon his — this was no 
 captive, no phantom — his intrepid arms fell back 
 weakly to his sides. 
 
 "You will not know me, O brave Assyrian captain," 
 said the girl gravely. "I was a weaver in the city of 
 Eridu. . . ." 
 
 "Eridu!" It was an ancient city heard of only in 
 the old poems of his country, as fabulous as snow in 
 Canaan. 
 
 "Ai ... it is long since riven into dust. I was a 
 slave in Eridu, not . . . not a slave in spirit . . ." 
 
 "Beauty so rare is nobility enough," he said shyly. 
 
 "I worshipped god Namu-Sarkkon — behold his 
 shrine. Who loves Namu-Sarkkon becomes what 
 he wishes to become, gains what he wishes to 
 gain." 
 
 "I have heard of these things," exclaimed the Assyr- 
 ian. "What did you gain, what did you wish to be- 
 come?" 
 
 "I worshipped here desiring in my heart to be loved 
 by the King of the World." 
 
 "Who is he ?" 
 
 She dropped her proud glances to the earth before 
 him. 
 
 "Who was this King of the World ?" 
 
 Still she made no reply nor lifted her eyes. 
 
 "Who are these figures that stand with us here?" 
 he asked.
 
 78 THE KING OF THE WORLD 
 
 "Dead, all dead," she sighed, "their destinies have 
 closed. Only I renew the destiny." 
 
 She took his hand and led him among the wasting 
 
 images. 
 
 "Merchants and poets, dead ; princesses and slaves, 
 dead; soldiers and kings, they look on us with eyes 
 of dust, dead, all dead. I alone of Sarkkon's wor- 
 shippers live on enduringly ; I desired only love. I 
 feed my spirit with new desire. I am the beam of his 
 eye." 
 
 "Come," said the Assyrian suddenly, "I will carry 
 you to Shinar; set but my foot to that lost track . . . 
 will you?" 
 
 She shook her head gravely ; "All roads lead to Sark- 
 kon." 
 
 "Why do we tarry here? Come." 
 
 "Talakku, there is no way hence, no way for you, 
 no way for me. We have wandered into the bound- 
 less. What star returns from the sky, what drop from 
 the deep ?" 
 
 Talakku looked at her with wonder, until the long- 
 ing in his heart lightened the shadow of his doom. 
 
 "Tell me what I must do," he said. 
 
 She turned her eyes towards the dark god. "He 
 knows," she cried, seizing his hands and drawing him 
 towards the idol, "Come, Talakku." 
 
 "No, no !" he said in awe, "I cannot worship there. 
 Who can deny the gods of his home and escape ven- 
 geance? In Shinar, beloved land, goes not one bee 
 unhived nor a bird without a bower. Shall I slip my 
 allegiance at every gust of the desert?"
 
 J! IF, KING OF THE WORLD 79 
 
 For a moment a look of anguish appeared in her 
 eyes. 
 
 "But if you will not leave this place," he continued 
 gently, "suffer me to stay." 
 
 "Talakku, in a while I must sink again into the 
 stone." 
 
 "By all the gods I will keep you till I die," he said. 
 "One day at least 1 will walk in Paradise." 
 
 "Talakku, not a day, not an hour; moments, mo- 
 ments, there are hut moments now." 
 
 "Then, I am hut dead," he cried, "for in that stone 
 your sleeping heart will never dream of me." 
 
 "O, you whip me with rods of lilies. Quick', Tal- 
 akku." He knew in her urgent voice the divining 
 hope with which she wooed him. Alas for the Assyr- 
 ian, he was hut a man whose dying lips are slaked with 
 wise honey. He embraced her as in a dream under the 
 knees of towering Sarkkon. Her kisses, wrapt in the 
 delicate veils of love, not the harsh brief glister of 
 passion, were more lulling than a thousand songs of 
 lost Shinar, but the time's sweet swiftness pursued 
 them. Her momentary life had flown like a rushing 
 star, swift and delighting but doomed. From the heel 
 of the god a beetle of green lustre began to creep to- 
 wards them. 
 
 "Farewell, Talakku," cried the girl. She stood again 
 in her place before Namu-Sarkkon. "Have no fear, 
 Talakku. prince of my heart. I will lock up in your 
 breast all my soft unsundering years. Like the bird of 
 fire they will surely spring again." 
 
 He waited, dumb, beside her, and suddenly her limbs
 
 80 THE KING OF THE WORLD 
 
 compacted into stone once more. At the touch of his 
 awed fingers her breast burned with the heat of the 
 sun instead of the wooing blood. Then the vast si- 
 lence of the world returned upon him ; he looked in 
 trembling loneliness at the stark sky, the unending des- 
 ert, at the black god whose eye seemed to flicker bale- 
 fully at him. Talakku turned to the lovely girl, but 
 once more amazement gathered in all his veins. No 
 longer stood her figure there — in its place he beheld 
 only a stone image of himself. 
 
 "This is the hour, O beauteous one !" murmured the 
 Assyrian, and, turning again towards the giant, he 
 knelt in humility. His body wavered, faltered, sud- 
 denly stiffened, and then dissolved into a little heap of 
 sand. 
 
 The same wind that unsealed Namu-Sarkkon and his 
 shrine returning again at eve covered anew the idol 
 and its figures, and the dust of the Assyrian captain 
 became part of the desert for evermore.
 
 ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME
 
 ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME 
 
 . . . AND in the whole of his days, vividly at 
 the end of the afternoon — he repeated it again and 
 again to himself — the kind country spaces had never 
 absorbed quite so rich a glamour of light, so 
 miraculous a bloom of clarity. He could feel stream- 
 ing in his own mind, in his bones, the same crystalline 
 brightness that lay upon the land. Thoughts and 
 images went Bowing through him as easily and 
 amiably as fish swim in their pools; and as idly, too, 
 for one of his speculations took up the theme of his 
 family name. There was such an agreeable oddness 
 about it, just as there was about all the luminous sky 
 today, that it touched him as just a little remarkable. 
 What did such a name connote, signify, or symbolize? 
 It was a rann of a name, but it had euphony! Then 
 again, like the fish, his ambulating fancy flashed into 
 other shallows, and he giggled as he paused, peering at 
 the buds in the brake. Turning back towards his 
 house again he could see, beyond its roofs, the spire of 
 the Church tinctured richly as the vane: all round him 
 was a new grandeur upon the grass of the fields, and 
 the spare trees had shadows below that seemed to sup- 
 port them in the manner of a plinth, more real than 
 
 83
 
 84 ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME 
 
 themselves, and the dykes and any chance heave of the 
 level fields were underlined, as if for special emphasis, 
 with long shades of mysterious blackness. 
 
 With a little drift of emotion that had at other times 
 assailed him in the wonder and ecstasy of pure light, 
 Jaffa Codling pushed through the slit in the back hedge 
 and stood within his own garden. The gardener was at 
 work. He could hear the voices of the children about 
 the lawn at the other side of the house. He was very 
 h a PPy> and the place was beautiful, a fine white many- 
 windowed house rising from a lawn bowered with plots 
 of mould, turretted with shrubs, and overset with a 
 vast walnut tree. This house had deep clean eaves, 
 a roof of faint coloured slates that, after rain, glowed 
 dully, like onyx or jade, under the red chimneys, and 
 half-way up at one end was a balcony set with black 
 balusters. He went to a French window that stood 
 open and stepped into the dining room. There 
 was no-one within, and, on that lonely instant, a strange 
 feeling of emptiness dropped upon him. The clock 
 ticked almost as if it had been caught in some indecent 
 act; the air was dim and troubled after that glory 
 outside. Well, now, he would go up at once to his 
 study and write down for his new book the ideas and 
 images he had accumulated — beautiful rich thoughts 
 they were — during that wonderful afternoon. He 
 went to mount the stairs and he was passed by one of 
 the maids ; humming a silly song she brushed past him 
 rudely, but he was an easy-going man — maids were un- 
 teachably tiresome — and reaching the landing he saun- 
 tered towards his room. The door stood slightly open
 
 ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME 85 
 
 and he could hear voices within. He put his hand 
 upon the door ... it would not open any further. 
 What the devil ... he pushed — like the bear in the 
 tale — and he pushed, and he pushed — was there some- 
 thing against it on the other side? He put his shoulder 
 to it . . . some wedge must be there, and that was ex- 
 traordinary. Then his whole apprehension was swept 
 up and whirled as by an avalanche — Mildred, his wife, 
 was in there; he could hear her speaking to a man in 
 fair soft tones and the rich phrases that could be 
 used only by a woman yielding a deep affection to 
 him. Codling kept still. Her words burned on his 
 mind and thrilled him as if spoken to himself. There 
 was a movement in the room, then utter silence. He 
 again thrust savagely at the partly open door, but 
 he could not stir it. The silence within continued. 
 He beat upon the door with his fists, crying; "Mildred, 
 Mildred!" There was no response, but he could hear 
 the rocking arm chair commence to swing to and fro. 
 Pushing his hand round the edge of the door he tried 
 to thrust his head between the opening. There was 
 not space for this, but he could just peer into the 
 corner of a mirror hung near, and this is what he 
 saw : the chair at one end of its swing, a man sitting 
 in it, and upon one arm of it Mildred, the beloved 
 woman, with her lips upon the man's face, caressing 
 him with her hands. Codling made another effort to 
 get into the room — as vain as it was violent. "Do 
 you hear me, Mildred?" he shouted. Apparently 
 neither of them heard him; they rocked to and fro 
 while he gazed stupefied. What, in the name of God,
 
 86 ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME 
 
 . . . What this . . . was she bewitched . . . were 
 there such things after all as magic, devilry! 
 
 He drew back and held himself quite steadily. The 
 chair stopped swaying, and the room grew awfully 
 still. The sharp ticking of the clock in the hall rose 
 upon the house like the tongue of some perfunctory 
 mocker. Couldn't they hear the clock? . . . Couldn't 
 they hear his heart? He had to put his hand upon his 
 heart, for, surely, in that great silence inside there, 
 they would hear its beat, growing so loud now that it 
 seemed almost to stun him ! Then in a queer way he 
 found himself reflecting, observing, analysing his own 
 actions and intentions. He found some of them to be 
 just a little spurious, counterfeit. He felt it would be 
 easy, so perfectly easy to flash in one blast of anger and 
 annihilate the two. He would do nothing of the kind. 
 There was no occasion for it. People didn't really do 
 that sort of thing, or, at least, not with a genuine pas- 
 sion. There was no need for anger. His curiosity 
 was satisfied, quite satisfied, he was certain, he had 
 not the remotest interest in the man. A welter of un- 
 expected thoughts swept upon his mind as he stood 
 there. As a writer of books he was often stimulated 
 by the emotions and impulses of other people, and now 
 his own surprise was beginning to intrigue him, leav- 
 ing him, O, quite unstirred emotionally, but interest- 
 ing him profoundly. 
 
 He heard the maid come stepping up the stairway 
 again, humming her silly song. He did not want a 
 scene, or to be caught eavesdropping, and so turned 
 quickly to another door. It was locked. He sprang
 
 ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME 87 
 
 to one beyond it; the handle would not turn. "Bah! 
 what's up with 'em?" But the girl was now upon him, 
 carrying a tray of coffee things. "O, Mary !" he ex- 
 claimed casually, "I . . ." To his astonishment the 
 girl stepped past him as if she did not hear or see him, 
 tapped upon the door of his study, entered, and closed 
 the door behind her. Jaffa Codling then got really 
 angry. "Hell! were the blasted servants in it!'' He 
 dashed to the door again and tore at the handle. It 
 would not even turn, and, though he wrenched with 
 fury at it, the room was utterly sealed against him. 
 He went away for a chair with which to smash the 
 effrontery of that door. No, he wasn't angry, either 
 with his wife or this fellow — Gilbert, she had called 
 him — who had a strangely familiar aspect as far as 
 he had been able to take it in ; but when one's servants 
 . . . faugh! 
 
 The door opened and Mary came forth smiling de- 
 murely. He was a few yards further along the cor- 
 ridor at that moment. ''Mary!" he shouted, "leave the 
 door open !" Mary carefully closed it and turned her 
 back on him. He sprang after her with bad words 
 bursting from him as she went towards the stairs and 
 flitted lightly down, humming all the way as if in 
 derision. He leaped downwards after her three steps 
 at a time, but she trotted with amazing swiftness into 
 the kitchen and slammed the door in his face. Cod- 
 ling stood, but kept his hands carefully away from the 
 door, kept them behind him. "No, no," he whispered 
 cunningly, "there's something fiendish about door 
 handles today, I'll go and get a bar, or a butt of tim-
 
 88 ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME 
 
 ber," and, jumping out into the garden for some such 
 thing, the miracle happened to him. For it was noth- 
 ing else than a miracle, the unbelievable, the impossible, 
 simple and laughable if you will, but having as much 
 validity as any miracle can ever invoke. It was simple 
 and laughable because by all the known physical laws 
 he should have collided with his gardener, who hap- 
 pened to pass the window with his wheelbarrow as 
 Codling jumped out on to the path. And it was un- 
 believable that they should not, and impossible that they 
 did not collide; and it was miraculous, because Cod- 
 ling stood for a brief moment in the garden path and 
 the wheelbarrow of Bond, its contents, and Bond him- 
 self passed apparently through the figure of Codling 
 as if he were so much air, as if he were not a living 
 breathing man but just a common ghost. There was 
 no impact, just a momentary breathlessness. Codling 
 stood and looked at the retreating figure going on 
 utterly unaware of him. It is interesting to record 
 that Codling's first feelings were mirthful. He gig- 
 gled. He was jocular. He ran along in front of the 
 gardener, and let him pass through him once more; 
 then after him again; he scrambled into the man's 
 barrow, and was wheeled about by this incompre- 
 hensible thick-headed gardener who was dead to all his 
 master's efforts to engage his attention. Presently he 
 dropped the wheelbarrow and went away, leaving Cod- 
 ling to cogitate upon the occurrence. There was no 
 room for doubt, some essential part of him had become 
 detached from the obviously not less vital part. He 
 felt he was essential because he was responding to the
 
 ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME 89 
 
 experience, he was re-acting in the norma! way to 
 normal stimuli, although he happened for the time 1 
 ing to he invisible to his fellows and unable to com- 
 municate with them. How had it come about — this 
 queer thing? How could he discover what part 
 of him had cut loose, as it were? There v 
 no question of this being death; death wasn't funny, 
 it wasn't a joke; he had still all his human instinc 
 You didn't get angry with a faithless wife or 
 joke with a fool of a gardener if you were dead, 
 certainly not ! He had realized enough of him- 
 self to know he was the usual man of instincts, desires, 
 and prohibitions, complex and contradictory; his fam- 
 ily history for a million or two years would have 
 noted that, not explicitly — obviously impossible — but 
 suggestively. He had found himself doing things he 
 had no desire to do, doing things he had a desire not 
 to do, thinking thoughts that had no contiguous mean- 
 ings, no meanings that could be related to his general 
 experience. At odd times he had been chilled — aye, 
 and even agreeably surprised — at the immense poten- 
 tial evil in himself. But still, this was no mere Jekyl 
 and Hyde affair, that a man and his own ghost should 
 separately inhabit the same world was a horse of quite 
 another colour. The other part of him was alive" and 
 active somewhere ... as alive ... as alive . . . j 
 as he was, but dashed if he knew where! What a lark 
 when they got back to each other and compared nol ' 
 In his tales he had brooded over so many imagined 
 personalities, followed in the track of so many 
 psychological enigmas that he had felt at times
 
 go ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME 
 
 a stranger to himself. What if, after all, that 
 brooding had given him the faculty of projecting 
 this figment of himself into the world of men. 
 Or was he some unrealized latent element of being 
 without its natural integument, doomed now to drift 
 over the ridge of the world for ever. Was it his per- 
 sonality, his spirit? Then how was the dashed thing 
 working? Here was he with the most wonderful hap- 
 pening in human experience, and he couldn't differen- 
 tiate or disinter things. He was like a new Adam 
 flung into some old Eden. 
 
 There was Bond tinkering about with some plants 
 a dozen yards in front of him. Suddenly his three 
 children came round from the other side of the house, 
 the youngest boy leading them, carrying in his hand 
 a small sword which was made, not of steel, but of 
 some more brightly shining material ; indeed it seemed 
 at one moment to be of gold, and then again of flame, 
 transmuting everything in its neighbourhood into the 
 likeness of flame, the hair of the little girl Eve, a part 
 of Adam's tunic ; and the fingers of the boy Gabriel as 
 he held the sword were like pale tongues of fire. Ga- 
 briel, the youngest boy, went up to the gardener and 
 gave the sword into his hands, saying: "Bond, is this 
 sword any good?" Codling saw the gardener talce the 
 weapon and examine it with a careful sort of smile ; 
 his great gnarled hands became immediately transpar- 
 ent, the blood could be seen moving diligently about the 
 veins. Codling was so interested in the sight that he 
 did not gather in the gardener's reply- The little boy 
 was dissatisfied and repeated his question, "No, but
 
 ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME 91 
 
 Bond, is this sword any good?" Codling rose, and 
 stood by invisible. The three beautiful children were 
 grouped about the great angular figure of the gardener 
 in his soiled clothes, looking up now into his face, and 
 now at the sword, with anxiety in all their puckered 
 eyes. "Well, Marse Gabriel," Codling could hear him 
 reply, "as far as a sword goes, it may be a good un, 
 or it may be a bad un, but, good as it is, it can never be 
 anything but a bad thing." He then gave it back to 
 them; the boy Adam held the haft of it, and the girl 
 Eve rubbed the blade with curious fingers. The 
 younger boy stood looking up at the gardener with un- 
 satisfied gaze. "But, Bond, can't you say if this sword's 
 any good?" Bond turned to his spade and trowels. 
 "Mebbe the shape of it's wrong, Marse Gabriel, though 
 it seems a pretty handy size." Saying this he moved 
 off across the lawn. Gabriel turned to his brother and 
 sister and took the sword from them ; they all followed 
 after the gardener and once more Gabriel made en- 
 quiry: "Bond, is this sword any good?" The gar- 
 dener again took it and made a few passes in the air 
 like a valiant soldier at exercise. Turning then, he 
 lifted a bright curl from the head of Eve and cut it 
 off with a sweep of the weapon. He held it up to look 
 at it critically and then let it fall to the ground. Cod- 
 ling sneaked behind him and, picking it up, stood 
 Stupidly looking at it. "Mebbe, Marse Gabriel," the 
 gardener was saying, "it ud be better made of steel, bul 
 it has a smartish edge on it." He went to pick up the 
 barrow but Gabriel seized it with a spasm of anger, and 
 cried out: "No, no, Bond, will you say, just yes or no,
 
 92 ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME 
 
 Bond, is this sword any good!" The gardener stood 
 still, and looked down at the little boy, who repeated 
 his question — "just yes or no, Bond!" "No, Marse 
 Gabriel !" "Thank you, Bond !" replied the child with 
 dignity, "that's all we wanted to know," and, calling 1 to 
 his mates to follow him, he ran away to the other side 
 of the house. 
 
 Codling stared again at the beautiful lock of hair in 
 his hand, and felt himself grow so angry that he 
 picked up a strange looking flower pot at his feet and 
 hurled it at the retreating gardener. It struck Bond 
 in the middle of the back and, passing clean through 
 him, broke on the wheel of his barrow, but Bond 
 seemed to be quite unaware of this catastrophe. Cod- 
 ling rushed after, and, taking the gardener by the 
 throat, he yelled, "Damn you, will you tell me what 
 all this means?" But Bond proceeded calmly about 
 his work un-noticing, carrying his master about as if 
 he were a clinging vapour, or a scarf hung upon his 
 neck. In a few moments, Codling dropped exhausted 
 to the ground. "What. . . . O Hell . . . what, 
 what am I to do?" he groaned, "What has happened 
 to me? What shall I do? What can I do?" He 
 looked at the broken flowerpot. "Did I invent that?" 
 He pulled out his watch. "That's a real watch, I hear 
 it ticking, and it's six o' clock." Was he dead or dis- 
 embodied or mad? What was this infernal lapse of 
 identity? And who the devil, yes, who was it up- 
 stairs with Mildred? He jumped to his feet and 
 hurried to the window ; it was shut ; to the door, it was 
 fastened; he was powerless to open either. Well!
 
 ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME 93 
 
 well! this was experimental psychology with a ven- 
 geance, and he began to chuckle again. He'd have to 
 write to McDougall about it. Then he turned and 
 saw Bond wheeling across the lawn towards him again. 
 "Why is that fellow always shoving that infernal green 
 barrow around ?" he asked, and, the fit of fury seizing 
 him again, he rushed towards Bond, but, before he 
 reached him, the three children danced into the garden 
 again, crying, with great excitement, "Bond, O, 
 Bond !" The gardener stopped and set down the ter- 
 rifying barrow; the children crowded about him, and 
 Gabriel held out another shining thing, asking: 
 "Bond, is this box any good?" The gardener took 
 the box and at once his eyes lit up with interest and 
 delight. "O, Marse Gabriel, where'd ye get it? 
 Where'd ye get it?" "Bond," said the boy impatiently, 
 "Is the box any good?" "Any good?" echoed the 
 man, "Why, Marse Gabriel, Marse Adam, Miss Eve, 
 look yere!" Holding it down in front of them, he 
 lifted the lid from the box and a bright coloured bird 
 flashed out and flew round and round above their 
 heads. "O," screamed Gabriel with delight, "It's a 
 kingfisher!" "That's what it is," said Bond, "a king- 
 fisher!" "Where?" asked Adam. "Where?" asked 
 Eve. "There it flies — round the fountain — see it? see 
 it !" "No," said Adam. "No," said Eve. 
 
 "O, do, do, see it," cried Gabriel, "here it comes, it's 
 coming!" and, holding his hands on high, and standing 
 on his toes, the child cried out as happy as the bird 
 which Codling saw flying above them. 
 
 "I can't see it," said Adam.
 
 94 ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME 
 
 "Where is it, Gaby?" asked Eve. 
 
 "O, you stupids," cried the boy, "There it goes. 
 There it goes . . . there . . . it's gone!" 
 
 He stood looking brightly at Bond, who replaced 
 the lid. 
 
 "What shall we do now?" he exclaimed eagerly. 
 For reply, the gardener gave the box into his hand, and 
 walked off with the barrow. Gabriel took the box 
 over to the fountain. Codling, unseen, went after 
 him, almost as excited as the boy ; Eve and her brother 
 followed. They sat upon the stone tank that held the 
 falling water. It was difficult for the child to un- 
 fasten the lid; Codling attempted to help him, but he 
 was powerless. Gabriel looked up into his father's 
 face and smiled. Then he stood up and said to the 
 others : 
 
 "Now, do watch it this time." 
 
 They all knelt carefully beside the water. He 
 lifted the lid and, behold, a fish like a gold carp, but 
 made wholly of fire, leaped from the box into the foun- 
 tain. The man saw it dart down into the water, he 
 saw the water bubble up behind it, he heard the hiss 
 that the junction of fire and water produces, and saw 
 a little track of steam follow the bubbles about the tank 
 until the figure of the fish was consumed and disap- 
 peared. Gabriel, in ecstasies, turned to his sister with 
 blazing happy eyes, exclaiming: 
 
 "There ! Evey !" 
 
 "What was it?" asked Eve, nonchalantly, "I didn't 
 see anything." 
 
 "More didn't I," said Adam.
 
 ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME 95 
 
 "Didn't you see that lovely fish?" 
 
 "No," said Adam. 
 
 "No," said Eve. 
 
 "O, stupids," cried Gabriel, "it went right past the 
 bottom of the water." 
 
 "Let's get a fishin' hook," said Adam. 
 
 "No, no, no," said Gabriel, replacing the lid of the 
 box. "O no." 
 
 Jaffa Codling had remained on his knees staring at 
 the water so long that, when he looked around him 
 
 u'n, the children had gone away. He gol up and 
 went to the door, and that was closed; the windov 
 fastened. He went moodily to a garden bench and sat 
 on it with folded arms. Dusk had begun to fall into 
 the shrubs and trees, the grass to grow dull, the air 
 chill, the sky to muster its gloom. Bond had over- 
 turned his barrow, stalled his tools in the lodge, and 
 gone to his home in the village. A curious cat came 
 round the house and surveyed the man who sat chained 
 to his seven-horned dilemma. It grew dark and fear- 
 fully silent. Was the world empty now? Some small 
 thing, a snail perhaps, crept among the dead leaves 
 in the hedge, with a sharp, irritating noise. A strange 
 flood of mixed thoughts poured through his mind un- 
 til at last one idea disentangled itself, and he began 
 thinking with tremendous fixity of little Gabriel. He 
 wondered if he could brood or meditate, or "will" with 
 sufficient power to bring him into the garden again. 
 The child had just vaguely recognized him for a mo- 
 ment at the waterside. He'd try that dod ;e. telepathy 
 was a mild kind of a trick after so much of the mi-
 
 96 ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME 
 
 raculous. If he'd lost his blessed body, at least the 
 part that ate and smoked and talked to Mildred. . . . 
 He stopped as his mind stumbled on a strange recog- 
 nition. . . . What a joke, of course . . . idiot . . . 
 not to have seen that. He stood up in the garden with 
 joy ... of course, he was upstairs with Mildred, it 
 was himself, the other bit of him, that Mildred had 
 been talking to. What a howling fool he'd been. 
 
 He found himself concentrating his mind on the pur- 
 pose of getting the child Gabriel into the garden once 
 more, but it was with a curious mood that he endeav- 
 oured to establish this relationship. He could not fix 
 his will into any calm intensity of power, or fixity of 
 purpose, or pleasurable mental ecstasy. The utmost 
 force seemed to come with a malicious threatening 
 splenetic "entreaty." That damned snail in the hedge 
 broke the thread of his meditation ; a dog began to bark 
 sturdily from a distant farm ; the faculties of his mind 
 became joggled up like a child's picture puzzle, and 
 he brooded unintelligibly upon such things as skating 
 and steam engines, and Elizabethan drama so lapped 
 about with themes like jealousy and chastity. Really 
 now, Shakespeare's Isabella was the most consummate 
 snob in. . . . He looked up quickly to his wife's room 
 and saw Gabriel step from the window to the balcony 
 as if he were fearful of being seen. The boy lifted up 
 his hands and placed the bright box on the rail of the 
 balcony. He looked up at the faint stars for a mo- 
 ment or two, and then carefully released the lid of the 
 box. What came out of it and rose into the air ap- 
 peared to Codling to be just a piece of floating light,
 
 ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME 97 
 
 but as it soared above the roof he saw it grow to be 
 a little ancient ship, with its hull and fully set sails and 
 its three masts all of faint primrose flame colour. It 
 cleaved through the air, rolling slightly as a ship 
 through the wave, in widening circles above the house, 
 making a curving ascent until it lost the shape of a 
 vessel and became only a moving light hurrying to some 
 sidereal shrine. Codling glanced at the boy on the 
 balcony, but in that brief instant something had hap- 
 pened, the ship had burst like a rocket and released 
 three coloured drops of fire which came falling slowly, 
 leaving beautiful grey furrows of smoke in their 
 track. Gabriel leaned over the rail with outstretched 
 palms, and, catching the green star and the blue one 
 as they drifted down to him, he ran with a rill of 
 laughter back into the house. Codling sprang forward 
 just in time to catch the red star; it lay vividly blast- 
 ing his own palm for a monstrous second, and then, 
 slipping through, was gone. He stared at the ground, 
 at the balcony, the sky, and then heard an ex- 
 clamation ... his wife stood at his side. 
 
 "Gilbert ! How you frightened me I" she cried, "I 
 thought you were in your room ; come along in to 
 dinner." She took his arm and they walked up the 
 steps into the dining room together. "Just a moment," 
 said her husband, turning to the door of the room. 
 His hand was upon the handle, which turned easily in 
 his grasp, and he ran upstairs to his own room. He 
 opened the door. The light was on, the fire was burn- 
 ing brightly, a smell of cigarette smoke about, pen 
 and paper upon his desk, the Japanese book-knife,
 
 98 ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME 
 
 the gilt matchbox, everything all right, no one there. 
 He picked np a book from his desk. . . . Monna 
 Vanna. His bookplate was in it — Ex Libris — Gilbert 
 Cannister. He put it down beside the green dish; 
 two yellow oranges were in the green dish, and two 
 most deliberately green Canadian apples rested by their 
 side. He went to the door and swung it backwards 
 and forwards quite easily. He sat on his desk trying 
 to piece the thing together, glaring at the print and the 
 book-knife and the smart matchbox, until his wife 
 came up behind him exclaiming: "Come along, Gil- 
 bert !" 
 
 "Where are the kids, old man?" he asked her, and, 
 before she replied, he had gone along to the nursery. 
 He saw the two cots, his boy in one, his girl in the 
 other. He turned whimsically to Mildred, saying, 
 "There arc only two, are there?" Such a question did 
 not call for reply, but he confronted her as if expect- 
 ing some assuring answer. She was staring at him with 
 her bright beautiful eyes. 
 
 "Are there ?" he repeated. 
 
 "How strange you should ask me that now !" she 
 said. . . . "If you're a very good man . . . per- 
 haps. . . ." 
 
 "Mildred !" 
 
 She nodded brightly. 
 
 He sat down in the rocking chair, but got up again 
 saying to her gently — "We'll call him Gabriel." 
 
 "Rut, suppose — " 
 
 "No, no," he said, stopping her lovely lips, "I know 
 all about him." And he told her a pleasant little tale.
 
 
 THE PRINCESS OF KINGDOM GONE
 
 THE PRINCESS OF KINGDOM GONE 
 
 LONG ago a princess ruled over a very tiny king- 
 dom, too small, indeed, for ambition. Had it 
 been larger she might have been a queen, and 
 had it been seven times larger, so people said, she would 
 certainly have been an empress. As it was, the bar- 
 barians referred to her country as "that field !" or put 
 other indignities upon it which, as she was high-minded, 
 the princess did not heed, or, if she did heed, had too 
 much pride to acknowledge. 
 
 In other realms her mansion, her beautiful mansion, 
 would have been called a castle, or even a palace, so high 
 was the wall, crowned with pink tiles, that enclosed 
 and protected it from evil. The common gaze was 
 warded from the door by a grove of thorns and trees, 
 through which an avenue curved a long way round from 
 the house to the big gate. The gate was of knotted 
 oak, but it had been painted and grained most cleverly 
 to represent some other fabulous wood. There was 
 this inscription upon it : no hawkers, no circulars, 
 no gratuities. Everybody knew the princess had not 
 got any of these things, but it was because they also 
 knew the mansion had no throne in it that people 
 sneered, really — but how unreasonable; you might just 
 
 101
 
 102 THE PRINCESS OF KINGDOM GONE 
 
 as well grumble at a chime that hadn't got a clock! 
 As the princess herself remarked — "What is a throne 
 without highmindedness !" — hinting, of course, at cer- 
 tain people whom I dare not name. Behind the man- 
 sion lay a wondrous garden, like the princess herself 
 above everything in beauty. A very private bower was 
 in the midst of it, guarded with corridors of shaven 
 yew and a half-circle hedge of arbutus and holly. A 
 slim river flowed, not by dispensation, but by accident, 
 through the bower, and the bed and bank of it, screened 
 by cypresses, had been lined, not by accident but by de- 
 sign — so strange are the workings of destiny- — with 
 tiles and elegant steps for a bathing pool. Here the 
 princess, when the blazon of the sun was enticing, 
 used to take off her robes of silk and her garments of 
 linen and walk about the turf of the bower around the 
 squinancy tree before slipping into the dark velvet 
 water. 
 
 One day when she stepped out from the pool she 
 discovered a lot of crimson flower petals clinging to 
 her white skin. "How beautiful they are," she cried, 
 picking up her mirror, "and where do they come from ?" 
 As soon as convenient she enquired upon this matter of 
 her Lord Chancellor, a man named Smith who had 
 got on very well in life but was a bit of a smudge. 
 
 "Crimson petals in the bath!" 
 
 "Yes, they have floated down with the stream." 
 
 "How disgusting ! Very ! I'll make instant enqui- 
 ries !" 
 
 He searched and he searched — he was very thorough 
 was Smith — but though his researches took no end of
 
 THE PRINCESS OF KINGDOM GONE 1 03 
 
 time, and he issued a bulky dossier commanding all and 
 sundry to attach the defiant person of the miscreant or 
 miscreants who had defiled the princess's bath stream 
 or pool with refuse detritus or scum, offering, too, re- 
 wards for information leading to his, her or their de- 
 tection, conviction, and ultimate damnation, they availed 
 him not. The princess continued to bathe and to 
 emerge joyfully from the stream covered with petals 
 and looking as wonderful as a crimson leopard. She 
 caught some of the petals with a silver net; she dried 
 them upon the sunlight and hid them in the lining of 
 her bed, for they were full of acrid but pleasing odours. 
 So she herself early one morning walked abroad, early 
 indeed, and passed along the river until she came to the 
 field adjoining the mansion. Very sweet and strange 
 the world seemed in the quiet after dawn. She stopped 
 beside a half-used rick to look about her; there was a 
 rush of surprised wings behind the stack and a thou- 
 sand starlings fled up into the air. She heard their 
 wings beating the air until they had crossed the river 
 and dropped gradually into an elm tree like a black- 
 shower. Then she perceived a tall tree shining with 
 crimson blooms and long dark boughs bending low 
 upon the river. Near it a tiny red cottage stood in 
 the field like a painted box, surrounded by green tri- 
 angular bushes. It was a respectable looking cottage, 
 named River View. On her approach the door sud- 
 denly opened, and a youth with a towel, just that and 
 nothing more, emerged. He took flying rejoicing leaps 
 towards the flaming tree, sprung upon its lowest limb 
 and flung himself into the stream. He glided there
 
 104 THE PRINCESS OF KINGDOM GONE 
 
 like a rod of ivory, but a crimson shower fell from 
 the quivering tree and veiled the pleasing boy until 
 he climbed out upon the opposite bank and stood 
 covered, like a leopard, with splendid crimson scars. 
 The princess dared peer no longer; she retraced her 
 steps, musing homewards to breakfast, and was rude 
 to Smith because he was such a fool not to have dis- 
 covered the young man who lived next door under the 
 mysterious tree. 
 
 At the earliest opportunity she left a card at River 
 View. Narcissus was the subject's name, and in due 
 time he came to dinner, and they had green grapes 
 and black figs, nuts like sweet wax and wine like 
 melted amethysts. The princess loved him so much 
 that he visited her very often and stayed very late. 
 He was only a poet and she a princess, so she could 
 not possibly marry him although this was what she very 
 quickly longed to do; but as she was only a princess, 
 and he a poet clinking his golden spurs, he did not 
 want to be married to her. He had thick curling 
 locks of hair red as copper, the mild eyes of a child, 
 and a voice that could outsing a thousand delightful 
 birds. When she heard his soft laughter in the dim 
 delaying eve he grew strange and alluring to the prin- 
 cess. She knew it was because he was so beautiful 
 that everybody loved him and wanted to win and keep 
 him, but he had no inclination for anything but his art 
 — which was to express himself. That was very sad 
 for the princess; to be able to retain nothing of him 
 but his poems, his fading images, while he himself 
 eluded her as the wind eludes all detaining arms,
 
 THE PRINCESS OF KINGDOM GONE 10$ 
 
 forest and feather, briar and down of a bird. He did 
 not seem to be a man at all but just a fairy image that 
 slipped from her arms, gone, like brief music in the 
 moonlight, before she was aware. 
 
 When he fell sick she watched by his bed. 
 
 "Tell me," she murmured, her wooing palms caress- 
 ing his flaming hair, "tell me you love me." 
 
 All he would answer was : "I dream of loving you, 
 and I love dreaming of you, but how can I tell if I 
 love you?" 
 
 Very tremulous but arrogant she demanded of him : 
 "Shall I not know if you love me at all?" 
 
 "Ask the fox in your brake, the hart upon your 
 mountain. I can never know if you love me." 
 
 "I have given you my deepest vows, Narcissus; 
 love like this is wider than the world." 
 
 "The same wind blows in desert as in grove." 
 
 "You do not love at all." 
 
 "Words are vain, princess, but when I die, put 
 these white hands like flowers about my heart; if I 
 dream the unsleeping dream I will tell you there." 
 
 "My beloved," she said, "if you die I will put upon 
 your grave a shrine of silver, and in it an ark of gold 
 jewelled with green garnets and pink sapphires. My 
 spirit should dwell in it alone and wait for you ; until 
 you came back again I could not live." 
 
 The poet died. 
 
 The princess was wild with grief, but she com- 
 manded her Lord Chancellor and he arranged magnifi- 
 cent obsequies. The shrine of silver and the ark of 
 jewelled gold were ordered, a grave dug in a new
 
 106 THE PRINCESS OF KINGDOM GONE 
 
 planted garden more wonderful than the princess's 
 bower, and a To Let bill appeared in the window of 
 River View. At last Narcissus, with great pomp, was 
 buried, the shrine and the ark of gold were clapped 
 down upon him, and the princess in blackest robes 
 was led away weeping on the arm of Smith — Smith 
 was wonderful. 
 
 The sun that evening did not set — it mildly died 
 out of the sky. Darkness came into the meadows, the 
 fogs came out of them and hovered over the river and 
 the familiar night sounds began. The princess sat in 
 the mansion with a lonely heart from which all hopes 
 were receding ; no, not receding, she could see only the 
 emptiness from which all her hopes had gone. 
 
 At midnight the spirit of Narcissus in its cerecloth 
 rose up out of the grave, frail as a reed; rose out of 
 its grave and stood in the cloudy moonlight beside the 
 shrine and the glittering ark. He tapped upon the 
 jewels with his fingers but there was no sound came 
 from it, no fire, no voice. "O holy love," sighed the 
 ghost, "it is true what I feared, it is true, alas, it is 
 true!" And lifting again his vague arm he crossed 
 out the inscription on his tomb and wrote there instead 
 with a grey and crumbling finger his last poem: 
 
 Pride and grief in your heart, 
 Love and grief in mine. 
 
 Then he crept away until he came to the bower in the 
 princess's garden. It was all silent and cold ; the moon 
 was touching with brief beam the paps of the plaster
 
 THE PRINCESS OF KINGDOM GONE 1 07 
 
 Diana. The ghost laid himself down to rest for ever 
 beneath the squinancy tree, to rest and to wait ; he 
 wanted to forestall time's inscrutable awards. He 
 sank slowly into the earth a> a knot of foam slips 
 through the beach of the seashore. Deep down he 
 rested and waited. 
 
 Day after day, month after month, the constant 
 princess went to her new grove of lamentation. The 
 grave garden was magnificent with holy flowers, the 
 shrine polished and glistening, the inscription cri-p 
 and clear — the ghost's erasure being vain for mortal 
 eyes. In the ark she knew her spirit brooded and 
 yearned, she fancied she could see its tiny flame be- 
 hind the garnets and sapphires, and in a way this 
 gave her happiness. Meanwhile her own once happy 
 bower was left to neglect. The bolt rusted in its 
 gate, the shrubs rioted, tree trunks were crusted with 
 oozy fungus, their boughs cracked to decay, the rose 
 fell rotten, and toads and vermin lurked in the deso- 
 lation of the glades. 'Twas pitiful; 'twas as if the 
 heart of the princess had left its pleasant bower and 
 had indeed gone to live in her costly shrine. 
 
 In the course of time she was forced to go away 
 on business of state and travelled for many months ; 
 on her return the face of the Lord Chancellor was 
 gloomy with misery. The golden ark had been stolen. 
 Alarm and chagrin filled the princess. She went to 
 the grave. It too had now grown weedy and looked 
 forlorn. It was as if her own heart had been stolen 
 away from her. "Oh," she moaned, "what does it 
 matter !" and, turning away, went home to her bower.
 
 lo8 THE PRINCESS OF KINGDOM GONE 
 
 There, among that sad sight, she saw a strange new 
 tree almost in bloom. She gave orders for the pool 
 to be cleansed and the bower restored to its former 
 beauty. This was done, and on a bright day when 
 the blazon of the sun was kind she went into the 
 bower again, flung her black robes from her, and 
 slipped like a rod of ivory into the velvet water. 
 There were no blooms to gather now, though she 
 searched with her silver net, but as she walked from 
 the pool her long hair caught in the boughs of the 
 strange tall squinancy tree, and in the disentangling it 
 showered upon her beautiful crimson blooms that as 
 they fell lingered upon her hips, her sweet shoulders, 
 and kissed her shining knees.
 
 COMMUNION
 
 COMMUNION 
 
 HE was of years calendared in unreflecting 
 minds as tender years, and he was clothed in 
 tough corduroy knickerbockers, once the 
 habiliments of a linger being, reaching to the tops of 
 Mime boots shod with tremendous nails and fastened 
 by bits of fugitive string. His jacket was certainly the 
 jacket of a child — possibly some dead one, for it was 
 not his own — and in lieu of a collar behold a twist of 
 uncoloured, unclean flannel. Pink face, pink hands, 
 yellow hair, a quite unredeemable dampness about 
 his small nose — altogether he was a country boy. 
 
 "What are you doing there, Tom Prowse?" asked 
 Grainger, the sexton, entering to him suddenly one 
 Saturday afternoon. The boy was sitting on a bench 
 in the empty nave, hands on knees, looking towards 
 the altar. He rose to his feet and went timidly through 
 the doorway under the stern glance of that tall tall 
 man. whose height enabled him to look around out of 
 a grave when it was completely dug. "You pop on out 
 of 'ere," said Grainger, threateningly, but to himself, 
 when the boy had gone. 
 
 Walking into the vestry Grainger emptied his pockets 
 of a number of small discarded bottles and pots of 
 various shapes and uses — ink bottles, bottles for gum 
 
 111
 
 112 COMMUNION 
 
 and meat extract, fish-paste pots, and tins which had 
 contained candy. He left them there. The boy, after 
 he had watched him go away, came back and resumed 
 his seat behind one of the round piers. 
 
 A lady dressed in black entered and, walking to the 
 front stall under the pulpit, knelt down. The boy 
 stared at the motionless figure for a long time until his 
 eyes ached and the intense silence made him cough a 
 little. He was surprised at the booming hollow echo 
 and coughed again. The lady continued bowed in her 
 place ; he could hear her lips whispering sibilantly : the 
 wind came into the porch with sudden gust and lifted 
 the arras at the door. Turning he knocked his clumsy 
 boots against the bench. After that the intense silence 
 came back again, humming in his ears and almost stop- 
 ping his breath, until he heard footsteps on the gravel 
 path. The vicar's maid entered and went towards the 
 vestry. She wished to walk softly when she observed 
 the kneeling lady but her left shoe squeaked stubbornly 
 as she moved, and both heels and soles echoed in sharp 
 tones along the tiles of the chancel. The boy heard 
 the rattle of a bucket handle and saw the maid place 
 the bucket beside the altar and fetch flowers and 
 bottles and pots from the vestry. Some she stood 
 upon the table of the altar; others, tied by pieces of 
 string, she hung in unique positions upon the front 
 and sides, filling them with water from the pail as she 
 did so; and because the string was white, and the 
 altar was white, and the ugly bottles were hidden in 
 nooks of moss, it looked as if the very cloth of the 
 altar sprouted with casual bloom.
 
 COMMUNION 113 
 
 Not until the maid had departed did the lady who 
 had been bowed so long lift up her head adoringly to- 
 wards the brass cross; the boy overheard her deep 
 sigh ; then she, too, went away, and in a few moments 
 more the boy followed and walked clumsily, thought- 
 fully, to his home. 
 
 J lis father was the village cobbler. He was a 
 widower, and he was a freethinker too ; no mere passive 
 rejector of creeds, but an active opponent with a creed 
 of his own, which if less violent was not less bigoted 
 than those he so witheringly decried. The child Tom 
 had never been allowed to attend church ; until today, 
 thus furtively, he had never even entered one, and in 
 the day school religious instruction had been forbidden 
 by his atheistic father. But while faith goes on work- 
 ing its miracles the whirligigs of unfaith bring on 
 revenges. The boy now began to pay many secret 
 visits to the church. He would walk under the 
 western tower and slip his enclosing palms up and 
 down the woolly rope handles, listen to the slow beat 
 of the clock, and rub with his wristband the mouldings 
 of the brass lectern with the ugly bird on a ball and the 
 three singular chubby animals at the foot, half ox, 
 half dog, displaying monstrous teeth. He scrutinized 
 the florid Georgian memorial fixed up the wall, re- 
 cording the virtues, which he could not read, of a de- 
 parted Rodney Giles; made of marble, there were two 
 naked fat little boys with wings; they pointed each with 
 one hand towards the name, and with the other held 
 a handkerchief each to one tearful eye. This was 
 very agreeable to young Prowse, but most he loved to
 
 114 COMMUNION 
 
 sit beside one of the pillars — the stone posties, he called 
 them — and look at the window above the altar where 
 for ever half a dozen angels postured rhythmically upon 
 the ladder of Jacob. 
 
 One midsummer evening, after evensong, he entered 
 for his usual meditation. He had no liking for any 
 service or ritual; he had no apprehension of the 
 spiritual symbols embodied in the building; he only 
 liked to sit there in the quiet, gazing at things in a 
 dumb sort of way, taking, as it were, a bath of holi- 
 ness. He sat a long time; indeed, so still was he, he 
 might have been dozing as the legions of dead 
 parishioners had dozed during interminable dead ser- 
 mons. When he went to the door — the light having 
 grown dim — he found it was locked. He was not at 
 all alarmed at his situation: he went and sat down 
 again. In ten minutes or so he again approached the 
 door ... it was still locked. Then he walked up the 
 aisle to the chancel steps and crossed the choir for the 
 first time. Choristers' robes were in the vestry, and 
 soon, arrayed in cassock and surplice, he was walking 
 with a singular little dignity to his old seat by one of 
 the pillars. He sat there with folded hands, the church 
 growing gloomier now; he climbed into the pulpit and 
 turned over the leaves of the holy book; he sat in the 
 choir stalls, pretended to play the organ, and at last 
 went before the altar and, kneeling at the rails, clasped 
 his orthodox hands and murmured, as he had heard 
 others murmuring there, a rigmarole of his scholastic 
 hours :
 
 COMMUNION 1 1 5 
 
 Thirty days hath September, 
 
 April, June and November. 
 
 All the rest have thirty-otic, 
 
 Excepting February alone. 
 
 And leap year coming once in four, 
 
 February then has one day more. 
 
 Re-entering the vestry, he observed on a shelf in 
 a niche a small loaf wrapped in a piece of linen. He 
 felt hungry and commenced to devour the bread, and 
 from a goblet there he drank a little sip of sweet tast- 
 ing wine. He liked the wine very much, and drank 
 more and more of it. 
 
 There was nothing else to be done now in the dark- 
 ness, so he went on to the soft carpet within the altar 
 rails, and, piling up a few of the praying mats from the 
 choir — little red cushions they were, stamped with 
 black fleur-de-lys, which he admired much in the day- 
 light — he fell asleep. 
 
 And he slept long and deeply until out of some 
 wonderful place he began to hear the word "Ruffian, 
 Ruffian," shouted with anger and harshness. He was 
 pulled roughly to his feet, and apprehension was shaken 
 into his abominable little head. 
 
 The morning sunlight was coming through the altar 
 window, and the vicar's appearance was many-coloured 
 as a wheelwright's door ; he had a green face, and his 
 surplice was scaled with pink and purple gouts like a 
 rash from some dreadful rainbow. And dreadful in- 
 deed was the vicar as he thrust the boy down the altar
 
 Il6 COMMUNION 
 
 steps into the vestry, hissing as he did, "Take off those 
 things !" and darting back to throw the cushions into 
 proper places to support the knees of the expected 
 devotees. 
 
 "Now, how did you get in here?" he demanded, 
 angrily. 
 
 The boy hung up the cassock : "Someone locked me 
 in last night, Sir." 
 
 "Who was it?" 
 
 "I dunno, Sir, they locked me in all night." 
 
 His interrogator glared at him for a moment in 
 silence, and the boy could not forbear a yawn. 
 Thereat the vicar seized him by the ear and, pulling it 
 with such animation as to contort his own features as 
 well as the child's, dragged him to the vestry door, gur- 
 gling with uncontrolled vexation, "Get out of this. Get 
 out . . . you . . . you beast!" 
 
 As the boy went blinking down the nave the tenor 
 bell began to ring; the stone posties looked serene and 
 imperturbable in new clean sunlight, and that old black- 
 bird was chirping sweetly in the lilac at the porch.
 
 THE QUIET WOMAN
 
 THE QUIET WOMAN 
 
 IT was the loneliest place in the world, Hardross 
 said. A little cogitation and much experience had 
 given him the fancy that the ark of the kingdom 
 of solitude was lodged in a lift, any lift, carrying a 
 charter of mute passengers from the pavement to any 
 sort of Parnassus. Nothing ever disturbs its velveteen 
 progression; no one ever speaks to the lift man (un- 
 less it happens to be a lift girl). At Hardross's place 
 of abode it happened to be a lift boy, sharp and white- 
 faced, whose tough hair was swept backwards in a stiff 
 lock from his brow, while his pert nose seemed inclined 
 to pursue it. His name was Brown. His absences 
 from duty were often coincident with the arrivals 
 and departures of Mr. Hardross. His hands were 
 brown enough if the beholder carried some charity in 
 his bosom, but the aspect of his collar or his 
 shoes engendered a deal of vulgar suspicion, and 
 his conduct was at once inscrutable and unscrupulous. 
 It may have been for this reason that Hardros< had 
 lately begun walking the whole downward journey 
 from his high chamber, but it must have been something 
 less capricious that caused him always to essay the 
 corresponding upward flight. A fancy for exercise 
 perhaps, for he was a robust musician, unmarried, 
 and of course, at thirty-three or thirty-four, had come 
 
 119
 
 \ 
 
 120 THE QUIET WOMAN 
 
 to the years of those indiscretions which he could with 
 impunity and without reprobation indulge. 
 
 On the second floor, outside the principal door of 
 one set of chambers, there always stood a small con- 
 sole table; it was just off the landing, in an alcove that 
 covered two other doors, a little dark angular-limbed 
 piece of furniture bearing a green lacquer dish of 
 void visiting cards, a heap that seemed neither to in- 
 crease nor dwindle but lay there as if soliciting, so 
 naively, some further contributions. Two maiden 
 ladies, the Misses Pilcher, who kept these rooms, had 
 gone to France for a summer holiday, but though the 
 flat had for the time being some new occupants the 
 console table still kept its place, the dish of cards of 
 course languishing rather unhope fully. The new ten- 
 ants were also two ladies, but they were clearly not 
 sisters and just as clearly not Pilcherly old maids. 
 One of them, Hardross declared, was the loveliest 
 creature he had ever seen. She was dark, almost tall, 
 about as tall as Hardross though a little less robust 
 and rather more graceful. Her mature scarlet lips 
 and charming mature eyes seemed always to be want- 
 ing to speak to him. But she did not speak to him, 
 even when he modestly tried to overcome, well, not 
 her reserve — no one with such sparkling eyes could 
 possibly be reserved — but her silence. He often passed 
 her on the landing but he did not hear her voice, or 
 music, or speech, or any kind of intercourse within the 
 room. He called her The Quiet Woman. The other 
 lady, much older, was seldom seen; she was of great 
 dignity. The younger one walked like a woman con-
 
 THE QUIET WOMAN 121 
 
 scious and proud of the beauty underneath her beau- 
 tiful clothes; the soft slippers she wore seemed charged 
 with that silent atmosphere. Even the charwoman 
 who visited them daily and rattled and swept about 
 was sealed of the conspiracy of silence; at least he 
 never caught — though it must be confessed that he 
 guiltily tried — the passage of a single word. What 
 was the mystery of the obstinately silent menage? Did 
 the elder lady suffer from sorrow or nerves ; was she 
 under a vow; was she a genius writing a sublime 
 book? 
 
 The voiceless character of the intercourse did not 
 prevent Hardross becoming deeply enamoured and at 
 the same time deeply baffled. Morning and evening 
 as he went to the great city church of which he was 
 organist he would often catch a glimpse of his quiet 
 woman on the stairs. At favourable junctures he had 
 lifted his hat and said Good-morning or Good-evening, 
 but she had turned away as if overcome by confusion 
 or an excess of propriety. 
 
 "I am a coward," he would think; "shyness and 
 diffidence rule me, they curse me, they ruin my life; 
 but she, good heavens! is extraordinarily retiring. 
 Why, I am just a satyr, a rampant raging satyr, a 
 satyr !" And he would liken her to Diana, always 
 darting with such fawnlike modesty from the alcove 
 whenever he approached. He did not even know her 
 name. He wanted to enquire of the lift boy Brown or 
 the porter, but there again he lacked the casual touch to 
 bring off the information. The boy was too young, too 
 cute, too vulgar, and the porter too taciturn, as diffi-
 
 122 THE QUIET WOMAN 
 
 cult for Hardross to approach as an archbishop would 
 have been. But Miss Barker now, that milliner, down 
 below on the ground floor ! She would know ; she 
 knew everybody and everything about the chambers in- 
 cluding, quite familiarly, Hardross himself — she would 
 be sure to know. But even she would have to be 
 approached with discrimination. 
 
 "Evening, Miss Barker !" he cried. The good- 
 looking spinster peered up from a half -trimmed bonnet. 
 "When do you go for a holiday, then?" 
 
 "Holidays," she sighed, though the corner of her 
 mouth was packed with pins, "I cannot afford holi- 
 days." 
 
 "Ho-ho, you can't afford !" 
 
 Their common fund of repartee lay in his confident 
 assumption that she was rolling in surplus income and 
 her counter assertion that she was stricken in poverty; 
 that people — the pigs — would not pay her prices, or 
 that those who did not flinch at her prices would not 
 pay her bills. 
 
 "Astonishing, deplorable, this Mammon-worship!" 
 he declared, leaning genially upon her table; "you 
 know, it breaks my heart to see you a slave to it, a 
 woman of a thousand, ten thousand in fact. Give it 
 up, O," — he beat the table with his hand — "give it up 
 before it is too late !" 
 
 "Too late for what?" she asked. 
 
 "Why, all the delightful things a woman like you 
 could do." 
 
 "As what?"
 
 THE QUIET WOMAN 123 
 
 "O . . . travel, glories of nature, you know, friend- 
 ship, men . . . love itself." 
 
 "Give me all the money I want," — she was brusque 
 about it, and began to dab the unwanted pins back 
 into their cushion — "and I'll buy, yes buy, a sweetheart 
 for each day in the week." 
 
 "Heavens now !" He was chilled by this implica- 
 tion of an experience that may have been dull, that 
 must have been bitter, but he floundered on: "What 
 now would you give for me?" 
 
 "For you !" She contemplated him with gravity : 
 "To be sure I had not thought of you, not in that 
 way." 
 
 "O but please do think of me, dear lady, put me in 
 your deepest regard." 
 
 The ghost of a knowing grin brushed her features. 
 Really a charming woman, in parts. A little stout, 
 perhaps, and she had fat red hands, but her heart was 
 a good substantial organ, it was in the right place, and 
 her features seemed the best for wear. 
 
 "You are one of those surprising ladies" — he plunged 
 gaily — "who've a long stocking somewhere, with trunks 
 full of shares and scrip, stocks at the bank and mort- 
 gages at your solicitor's. O yes, yes," he cried out 
 against her protestation, "and you will make a strange 
 will leaving it all to me!" 
 
 She shook her head hopelessly, bending again 
 over the bonnet whose desperate skeleton she had 
 clothed with a flounce of crimson velvet. She was 
 very quiet.
 
 124 THE QUIET WOMAN 
 
 "Have I been rude?" he hazarded. "Forgive me." 
 
 "Well, it's not true," she insisted. 
 
 "Forgive me — I have hurt you — of course it's not 
 true." 
 
 Apparently she forgave him; he was soon asking 
 if there were any rooms to let in the building. "Fur- 
 nished, I mean." He gave rein to his naive strategy: 
 "I have friends who want to come here and stay with 
 me for a short holiday. I thought you might know 
 of some." 
 
 "In these flats?" She shook her head, but he per- 
 sisted and played his artful card: 
 
 "The Miss Pilchers, on the second floor, haven't 
 they gone away?" 
 
 She did not know — why not ask the porter. 
 
 "Yes, I must ask the porter, but I can never catch 
 the porter, he is so fugitive, he is always cutting his 
 lucky. I hate that man, don't you?" 
 
 And there, temporarily, he had to leave it. 
 
 So many days passed now without a glimpse of his 
 lovely one that he had almost brought himself to the 
 point of tapping at the door and enquiring after her 
 welfare, only the mysterious air of the apartment — 
 how strange, how soundless it was — forbade any such 
 crudeness. One morning he recklessly took a cigaretfe 
 from his case and laid it upon the console table as he 
 passed. When he returned later the cigarette was 
 gone; it had been replaced by a chocolate cream, just 
 one, a big one. He snatched it away and rapturously 
 ate it. Later in the day he was blessed by a deep 
 friendly gaze, as she flitted into her room. Hardross
 
 THE QUIET WOMAN 125 
 
 rejoiced; in the morning he left another cigarette and 
 was again rewarded. 
 
 "But O God help me," he thought, <; I can't go on 
 like this!" 
 
 So he bought a whole box of bonbons, but his 
 courage deserted him as he approached their door; he 
 left the package upon the console table and slunk 
 guiltily away. The next morning he observed a whole 
 box of cigarettes, a well-known exquisite brand, laid 
 temptingly there. He stretched his eager hand towards 
 it, but paused. Could that be a gift for him ? Heavens 
 above! What were the miraculous gods about to 
 shower upon him? Was this their delicate symbol? 
 He could not believe it, no, he could not, he left the 
 box lying there. And it lay there for hours indeed until 
 he crept down and seized it. Afterwards he walked 
 trembling into the brighter air and went for a long 
 ride on the top of an omnibus. There had been no 
 letter, but he fancied that he had got hold of a clue. 
 "Be very careful, Hardross my boy, this is too 
 too splendid to spoil." 
 
 An afternoon or so later he met her coming into 
 the hall, a delicious figure with gay parasol and wide 
 white hat. He delayed her : 
 
 "Let me thank you, may I, for those perfect cigar- 
 ettes?" 
 
 The lovely creature did not reply. She just smiled 
 her recognition of him ; she did not speak nor move 
 away, she stood there quite silent and timid. 
 
 "I wonder," he began again, "if I might" — it sounded 
 dreadfully silly to him, but having begun he went on —
 
 126 THE QUIET WOMAN 
 
 "if I might invite you to my church this evening, a 
 rather special choral service, very jolly, you know. 
 I'm the organist; would you come?" 
 
 No answer. 
 
 "Would you care to come?" 
 
 She lifted both her hands and touching her lips and 
 ears with significant gestures shook her head ever so 
 hopelessly at him. 
 
 "Deaf and dumb !" he exclaimed. Perhaps the shock 
 of the revelation showed too painfully in his face for 
 she turned now sadly away. But the hall was divinely 
 empty. He caught one of the exquisite hands and 
 pressed it to his lips. 
 
 Thereafter Hardross walked about as if he too were 
 deaf and dumb, except for a vast effusion of sighs. 
 He could praise that delicacy of the rarest whereby she 
 had forborne to lure him, as she could so easily have 
 done, into a relation so shrouded and so vague. But 
 that did not solve his problem, it only solidified it. He 
 wanted and awaited the inspiration of a gesture she 
 could admire, something that would propitiate her 
 delicacy and alarms. He did not want to destroy 
 by clumsy persistencies the frail net of her regard for 
 him; he was quite clear about that, the visible fineness 
 of her quality so quelled him. Applying himself to the 
 task he took lessons in the alphabet language, that in- 
 ductile response of fingers and thumbs. 
 
 Meanwhile she had marked her sense of the com- 
 plication by hiding like a hurt bird, and although the 
 mystery of the quiet rooms was now exposed she her- 
 self remained unseen. He composed a graceful note
 
 THE QUIET WOMAN 127 
 
 and left it upon the console table. The note dis- 
 appeared but no reply came: she made no sign and he 
 regretted his ardour. 
 
 Such a deadlock of course could not exist for ever, 
 and one evening he met her walking up the stairs. She 
 stopped mutually with him. He was carrying his 
 music. He made a vain attempt to communicate with 
 her by means of his finger alphabet, but she did not 
 understand him although she delightedly made a reply 
 on her ringers which he was too recently initiated to 
 interpret. They were again at a standstill : he could 
 think of nothing to do except to open his book of organ 
 music and show her the title page. She looked it over 
 very intelligently as he tried by signs to convey his 
 desire to her, but he was certain she was blank about 
 it all. He searched his pockets for a pencil — and swore 
 at his non-success. There he stood like a fool, star- 
 ing at her smiling face until to his amazement she took 
 his arm and they descended the stairs, they were in the 
 street together. He walked to the church on some- 
 thing vastly less substantial than air, and vastly supe- 
 rior. 
 
 Hardross's church was square and ugly, with large 
 round-headed windows. Its entrance was up some steps 
 between four Corinthian pillars upon the bases of 
 which cabmen snoozed when it was warm or coughed 
 and puffed in the winter cold. There was a pump on 
 the kerb and a stand for hackney cabs. A jungle of 
 evergreens squatted in a railed corner under the tower, 
 with a file of iris plants that never flowered. Upon the 
 plinth of the columns a ribald boy had chalked :
 
 128 THE QUIET WOMAN 
 
 REMOVE THIS OBSTACLE 
 
 Eternally at the porch tired cabhorses drooped and 
 meditated, while the drivers cut hunches of bread and 
 meat or cheese or onion and swallowed from their 
 tin bottles the cold tea or other aliment associated 
 with tin bottles. There was always a smell of dung 
 at the entrance, and an aroma of shag tobacco from 
 the cabmen's pipes curled into the nave whenever the 
 door opened for worshippers. Inside the church 
 Hardross ushered his friend to a seat that he could 
 watch from his organ loft. There were few people 
 present. He borrowed a lead pencil from a choir boy, 
 and while the lesson was being perfunctorily intoned, 
 sounding like some great voice baffled by its infinitely 
 little mind, he scribbled on a sheet of paper the ques- 
 tions he was so eager to ask; what was her name 
 and things like that: 
 
 How can we communicate? May I zvrite to you? 
 Will you to me? Excuse the catechism and scribble 
 but I want so much to know you and grab at this 
 opportunity. 
 
 Yours devotedly 
 John Hardross 
 
 When he looked up her place was empty; she had 
 gone away in the middle of the service. He hurried 
 home at last very perturbed and much abashed, for it 
 was not so much the perplexities of intercourse, the 
 torment of his dilemma, that possessed him now as a 
 sense of felicities forbidden and amenities declined.
 
 THE QUIET WOMAN 1 29 
 
 But his fickle intelligence received a sharp admon- 
 itory nudge on the following evening when he espied 
 her sitting in the same place at church for all the world 
 as if she had not deserted it on the evening before. 
 Then he remembered that of course she couldn't hear 
 a thing — idiot he was to have invited her. Again she 
 left the church before the close of the service. This 
 for several days, the tantalized lover beholding her 
 figure always hurrying from his grasp. 
 
 He pursued the practice of the deaf and dumb 
 alphabet with such assiduity that he became almost 
 apt in its use; the amount of affection and devotion that 
 he could transcribe on finger and thumb was prodigious, 
 he yearned to put it to the test. When at last he met 
 her again in the hall he at once began spelling out 
 things, absurd things, like: "May I beg the honour of 
 your acquaintance?" She watched this with interest, 
 with excitement even, but a shadow of doubt crept 
 into her lovely eyes. She moved her own fingers 
 before him, but in vain ; he could not interpret a single 
 word, not one. He was a dense fool ; O how dense, 
 how dense! he groaned. But then he searched his 
 pockets and brought out the note he had scribbled in 
 church. It was a little the worse for wear but he 
 smoothed it, and standing close by her side held it for 
 her perusal. Again his hopes were dashed. She 
 shook her head, not at all conclusively but in a vague 
 uncomprehending way. She even with a smile indi- 
 cated her need of a pencil, which he promptly supplied. 
 To his amazement what she scribbled upon the page 
 were some meaningless hieroglyphs, not letters, though
 
 130 THE QUIET WOMAN 
 
 they were grouped as in words, but some strange abra- 
 cadabra. He looked so dismally at her that she smiled 
 again, folding the paper carefully ere she passed on up 
 the stairs. 
 
 Hardross was now more confounded than ever. A 
 fearful suspicion seized him: was she an idiot, was it 
 a mild insanity, were those marks just the notation of 
 a poor diseased mind? He wished he had kept that 
 letter. God, what a tragedy ! But as he walked into 
 the town his doubts about her intellect were dispelled. 
 Poof ! only an imbecile himself could doubt that 
 beautiful staring intelligence. That was not it; it was 
 some jugglery, something to do with those rooms. 
 Nothing was solved yet, nothing at all; how uncanny 
 it was becoming ! 
 
 He returned in the afternoon full of determination. 
 Behold, like a favourable augury, the door by the con- 
 sole table stood open, wide open. It did occur to him 
 that an open door might be a trap for unwary men 
 but he rapped the brass knocker courageously. Of 
 course there was no response — how could there be — 
 and he stepped inside the room. His glance had but 
 just time to take in the small black piano, the dark 
 carpet, the waxed margins of the floor, the floral 
 dinginess of the walls brightened by mirrors and 
 softened by gilt and crimson furniture, when the quiet 
 woman, his Diana, came to him joyfully holding out 
 both her hands. Well, there was no mystery here 
 after all, nothing at all, although the elder lady was 
 out and they were apparently alone. Hardross held 
 her hands for some moments, the intensity of which
 
 THE QUIET WOMAN 131 
 
 was as deeply projected in her own eyes as in the 
 tightness of his clasp. And there was tea for him ! 
 She was at her brightest, in a frock of figured muslin, 
 and sitting before her he marvelled at the quickness 
 of her understanding, the vividness of her gestures, 
 the gentleness with which she touched lvis sleeve. 
 That criminal suspicion of her sanity crowned him 
 with infamy. Such communication was deliciously 
 intimate; there came a moment when Hardross in a 
 wild impulsive ecstasy flung himself before her, bow- 
 ing his head in her lap. The quiet woman was giving 
 him back his embraces, her own ardour was droopit 
 beautifully upon him, when he heard a strange voice 
 exclaim in the room : "God is my help ! Well then !" 
 A rattle of strange words followed which he could 
 not comprehend. He turned to confront the elder 
 woman, who surveyed them with grim amusement. 
 The other stood up, smiling, and the two women spoke 
 in finger language. The newcomer began to remove 
 her gloves, saying: 
 
 "It is Mr. Hardross then. 1 am glad to inert. 
 There is a lot of things to be spoken, eh?" 
 
 She was not at all the invalid he had half expected 
 to find. She removed her hat and came back a com- 
 petent-looking woman of about fifty, who had really 
 an overwhelming stream of conversation. She took 
 tea and, ignoring the girl as if she were a block of 
 uncomprehending ornament, addressed herself to the 
 interloper. 
 
 "You do not know me, Mr. Hardross?" 
 
 "It is a pleasure I have but looked forward to,"
 
 132 THE QUIET WOMAN 
 
 he replied, in the formal manner that at times irre- 
 sistibly seized him, "with the keenest possible antic- 
 ipation and. . . ." 
 
 "No, I am Madame Peshkov. We are from Odessa, 
 do you know it ? We go back to our Russia tomorrow ; 
 yes, it is true." 
 
 His organs of comprehension began to crackle in 
 his skull, but he went on stirring his fresh cup of tea 
 and continued to do so for quite a long time. 
 
 "No, you . . . are . . . Russian ! I did not know." 
 Amid his musing astonishment that fact alone was 
 portentous; it explained so much, everything in fact, 
 but how he could ever contrive to learn such a language 
 was the question that agitated him, so fearfully difficult 
 a language, and on his fingers too ! Then that other 
 thunderclap began to reverberate: they were going, 
 when was it? Tomorrow! All this while Madame 
 Peshkov ran on with extravagant volubility. She had 
 the habit of picking one of the hairpins from her hair 
 and gently rubbing her scalp with the rounded end of 
 it; she would replace the pin with a stylish tap of her 
 fingers. It was a long time before Hardross extracted 
 the pith from her remarks, and then only when the 
 hypnotism induced by the stirring of his tea suddenly 
 lapsed ; he became aware of the dumb girl's gaze fixed 
 piercingly upon him, while his own was drawn away 
 by the force of the other's revelations. What he had 
 already taken in was sad and strange. Her name was 
 Julia Krasinsky. She was not at all related to Madame 
 Peshkov, she was an orphan. Madame's own daughter 
 had been deaf and dumb, too, and the girls had been in-
 
 THE QUIET WOMAN 133 
 
 separable companions until two years ago, when Nat- 
 alia Peshkov had died — O, an unspeakable grief still. 
 He gathered that Madame was a widow, and that since 
 Natalia's death the two women had lived and travelled 
 together. Madame talked on ; it was tremendously ex- 
 citing to Hardross crouching in his chair, but all that 
 echoed in his mind were the words Julia Krasinsky, 
 Julia Krasinsky, until she suddenly asked him : 
 
 "Do you love her ?" 
 
 He was startled by this appalling directness; he 
 stammered a little but he finally brought out: 
 
 "I adore her. Beyond everything I deeply deeply 
 love her." He then added : "I feel shameful enough 
 now. I rage inwardly. All these many weeks I have 
 dallied like a boy, I did not understand the situation. 
 I have wasted our chances, our time, and now you are 
 going." 
 
 "You can't waste time"; retorted the abrupt lady. 
 "Time deals with you no matter how you use his 
 hours." 
 
 "I suppose so," he agreed quite helplessly, "but we 
 might have been extraordinary friends." 
 
 "O, but you are, eh! She is bewitched, you can- 
 not speak to her, she cannot speak to you, but yet you 
 love. O, she is vairy vairy fond of you, Mr. Har- 
 dross. Why not? She has the best opinions of you." 
 
 "Ah, she will change her opinion now. A fool like 
 me?" 
 
 "No one ever changes an opinion. Your opinions 
 govern and guide and change you. If they don't they 
 are not worth holding. And most of them are not,
 
 134 THE QUIET WOMAN 
 
 eh, do you see, we are such fools but God is our help." 
 
 She talked confidently, intimately and quickly, but 
 Hardross wished she would not do so, or use her hair- 
 pins in that absurd distracting way. He himself had 
 no confidence; he was reserved by nature, irrevocably, 
 and the mask of deliberation was necessary to him. 
 
 "Madame Peshkov, I shall take her out for a walk 
 in the town, now, at once!" he cried. 
 
 "Ah, so?" Madame nodded her head vigorously, 
 even approvingly. He had sprung up and approached 
 the quiet woman. All her gentle nearness overcame 
 him and he took her audaciously into his arms. Not 
 less eagerly she slid to his breast and clung there like a 
 bird to the shelter of its tree. Julia turned to Madame 
 Peshkov with a smiling apologetic shrug, as much as to 
 say: "What can one do with such a fellow, so strong 
 he is, you see !" Madame bade him bring Julia later 
 on to the cafe where they always dined. 
 
 His happiness was profound. He had never had an 
 experience so moving as the adorable dumb woman by 
 his side: yet so unsurprising, as if its possibility had 
 always lain goldenly in his mind like an undreamed 
 dream, or like music, half-remembered music. There 
 was nothing, of course, just nothing they could talk 
 about. They could look into shop windows together 
 rather intimately, and they were a long time in a shady 
 arcade of the park, full of lime-browsing bees, where 
 they sat watching a peacock picking the gnats off the 
 shrubs. It was the pleasantest possible defeat of time. 
 Then there was the handsome girl crossing the yard 
 of a weaving mill as they passed. She was carrying
 
 THE QUIET WOMAN 135 
 
 a great bale of bright blue wool and had glanced at 
 them with a friendly smile. Her bare white arms 
 encircled the wool: she had big gilt rings in her ears, 
 and her fine shining chestnut-coloured hair was dis- 
 arrayed and tumbled upon the bale. Julia had pressed 
 his arm with joy. Yes, she delighted in the things 
 he delighted in; and she felt too that sense of sorrow 
 that hung in the air about them. 
 
 Her appearance in the cafe stirred everybody like a 
 wave of sweet air. Hardross was filled with pride. 
 He felt that it was just so that she would enrich the 
 world wherever she wandered, that things would re- 
 spond to her appearance in astonishing mysterious 
 ways. Why, even the empty wine glasses seemed to 
 behave like large flowers made miraculously out of 
 water, a marvel of crystal petals blooming but for her ; 
 certainly the glasses on other tables didn't look at all 
 like these. He drank four glasses of wine and 
 after dinner they all sat together in the flat until the hafi 
 darkness was come. And now Madame Peshkov too 
 was very silent ; she sat smoking or scratching her head 
 with her pins. It was nine o'clock, but there re- 
 mained a preposterous glare in the west that threw 
 lateral beams against the tops of tall buildings, although 
 the pavements were already dim. It made the fronts of 
 the plastered houses over the way look like cream 
 cheese. Six scarlet chimney pots stood stolidly at 
 attention — the torsos of six guardsmen from whom 
 head and limbs had been unkindly smitten; the roof 
 seemed to be rushing away from them. Beyond was an 
 echo of the sunset, faint in the northern sky. How
 
 136 THE QUIET WOMAN 
 
 sweet, how sad, to sit so silently in this tremulous 
 gloom. It was only at the last when they parted at her 
 door that the shadow of their division became omni- 
 present. Then it overwhelmed them. 
 
 Hardross crept upstairs to his own rooms. In such 
 plights the mind, careless of time present and time past, 
 full of an anguish that quenches and refills like a 
 sponge, writhes beyond hope with those strange lesions 
 of demeanour that confound the chronicler. Tra-la-la, 
 sang the distracted man, snapping his sweating fingers 
 in time with a ribald leering ditty, Tra-la-la. He 
 dropped plumb to Atlantean depths of grief, only to 
 emerge like a spouting whale with the maddening Tra- 
 la-la tugging him, a hook in his body, from despair to 
 dementia. He was roused from this vertiginous exer- 
 cise by a knocking at his door. The door was thrust 
 open, and Madame Peshkov asked if he was there. 
 He rose up and switched on a light. 
 
 "What is to be done now?" cried the lady. If her 
 silence below had been complete, as complete as poor 
 Julia's, she was now fully audible and not a little agi- 
 tated. "What is to be done? I cannot believe it of 
 her but it is true, as true as God !" 
 
 Hardross beheld her sink, stricken with some 
 trouble, into an armchair, beating her hands together. 
 
 "I have no influence, gone it is, no power over her, 
 none whatever. What is to be done? Assist us 
 please. She has been so. . . . O, for days, and now 
 it comes, it comes. . . ." 
 
 "What has come ?" he interrupted sharply.
 
 THE QUIET WOMAN 137 
 
 "I cannot believe it of her, but it is true ... as God. 
 She is like a vast . . . cold . . . stone, a mountain." 
 
 "Is this about Julia?" 
 
 "She will not go. Of course she will not go! She 
 declines, she will not come back to Odessa. She says 
 she will not come. I have to tell you this, Mr. Har- 
 dross, I cannot move her. She is like a vast . . . cold 
 . . . stone. What then?" 
 
 Madame's appeal seemed pregnant with a signifi- 
 cance that he but dimly savoured. He asked : "What 
 is she going to do then ?" 
 
 "To stop in this England, here, in this very place ! 
 But our passages are booked, tomorrow it is — pooh, 
 it does not matter ! — I am to leave her here in this 
 place, here she will stay, in a foreign land, without 
 speech or understanding. But what is to be done, I 
 ask of you?" 
 
 He was delirious himself; he kept whispering Julia, 
 Julia, but he managed to ask with a lugubrious cover- 
 ing of propriety : 
 
 "What? I don't know. Shall I go to her?" 
 
 "But can you not see? Do you comprehend, you 
 Hardross? O, it is a madness, I want to explain it 
 to you but it is all so gross, so swift, like a vulture. 
 You see it is impossible for me to remain an hour 
 longer, an hour in England impossible absolutely ; 
 there are reasons, lives perhaps, depending on my re- 
 turn. Yes, it is true; we live in Russia, do you sec, 
 and in Russia . . . ah, you understand ! But how 
 shall I leave this woman here?"
 
 138 THE QUIET WOMAN 
 
 Madame stared at him with curious inquisitiveness, 
 beating her hands upon the arm of the chair as if she 
 expected an answer, a prompt one: 
 
 "Of course she will not go away from you now, 
 of course, of course, she has never had a lover before 
 — how could she, poor thing. I understand it, she is 
 not a child. And you Mr. Hardross you are a gener- 
 ous man, you have courage, a good man, a man of his 
 honour, O yes, it is true, I see it, I feel it, and so she 
 will not be torn away from you now. I understand 
 that, she is no longer a child." 
 
 Madame rose and took him by the arm. "Marry 
 her, my friend! Do not you see? I can leave her to 
 you. Marry her at once, marry her!" She stood as 
 if it were something that could be done on the spot, as 
 easy as giving one a cup of tea. But he did not hesi- 
 tate. 
 
 "Why, I would give my soul to do it !" he cried, 
 and rushed away down the stairs to Julia. 
 
 And surely she was as wise as she was beautiful, 
 and as rich as she was wise.
 
 THE TRUMPETERS
 
 THE TRUMPETERS 
 
 THEY were crossing the Irish Sea. It 
 was night, blowing a moderate gale, 
 but the moon, aloft on the port bow 
 with a wind, was chock full of such astounding 
 brightness that the turmoil of the dark waves was easy 
 and beautiful to see. The boat was crowded with 
 soldiers on leave ; the few civilian passengers — mechan- 
 ics, labourers, and a miner going to his home in Wex- 
 ford, who had got drunk at the harbour inn before 
 coming aboard — were congregated in the angles on the 
 lee-side of the saloon bunks and trying to sleep amid 
 the chill seething, roaring, and thudding. The miner, 
 young, powerful, and very much at his ease, sprawled 
 among them intoxicated. He sang, and continued to 
 sing at intervals, a song about "The hat that my father 
 wore," swaying, with large dreamy gestures, to and fro, 
 round and about, up and down upon the unfortunate 
 men sitting to right and left of him. Close at hand 
 sat another young man, but smaller, who carried a big 
 brass trumpet. 
 
 "Throw him in the sea, why not, now !" the trum- 
 peter shouted to the drunken man's weary supporters. 
 "Begad I would do it if he put his pig's face on e'er 
 
 141
 
 142 THE TRUMPETERS 
 
 a shoulder of me!" He was a small, emphatic young 
 man: "Give him a crack now, and lay on him, or by 
 the tears of God we'll get no repose at all !" 
 
 His advice was tendered as constantly and as insist- 
 ently as the miner's song about his parent's headgear, 
 and he would encourage these incitements to vicarious 
 violence by putting the brass trumpet to his lips and 
 blowing some bitter and not very accurate staves. So 
 bitter and so inaccurate that at length even the drunken 
 miner paused in his song and directed the trumpeter 
 to "shut up." The little man sprang to his feet in fury, 
 and approaching the other he poured a succession of 
 trumpet calls close into his face. This threw the miner 
 into a deep sleep, a result so unexpected that the en- 
 raged trumpeter slung his instrument under his arm 
 and pranced belligerently upon the deck. 
 
 "Come out o' that, ye drunken matchbox, and by 
 the Queen of Heaven I'll teach ye! Come now!" 
 
 The miner momentarily raised himself and re-com- 
 menced his song : " 'Tis the Hat that me Father wore !" 
 At this the trumpeter fetched him a mighty slap across 
 the face. 
 
 "Ah, go away," groaned the miner, "or I'll be sick on 
 
 ye." 
 
 "Try it, ye rotten gossoon! ye filthy matchbox! 
 Where's yer khavkeef" 
 
 The miner could display no khaki; indeed, he was 
 sleeping deeply again. 
 
 "I'm a man o' me principles, ye rotten matchbox !" 
 yelled the trumpeter. "In the Munsters I was . . . 
 seven years . . . where's your kharkeef"
 
 THE TRUMPETERS 143 
 
 He seized the miner by the collar and shook that 
 pari of the steamer into a new commotion until he was 
 
 collared by the and kicked up on to the fore- 
 
 deck. 
 
 Nothing up there, not even his futile trumpeting, 
 could disturb the chill rejoicing beauty of the night. 
 
 id increased. ln:l the moonlight was bland and 
 
 !• uring. Often the cope of some tall wave would 
 plunge dully over the bows, filling the deck with water 
 that floundered foaming with the ship's movement or 
 dribbled back through the scuppers into the sea. Yet 
 there was no menace in the dark wandering water ; each 
 wave tossed back from its neck a wreath of foam that 
 slewed like milk across the breast of its follower. 
 
 The trumpeter sat upon a heap of ropes beside a big 
 soldier. 
 
 "The rotten matchbox, did ye ever see the like o' 
 that? I'll kill him against the first thing we step 
 ashore, like ye would a flea!" 
 
 "Be aisy." said the soldier; "why are ye making 
 trouble at all ? Have ye hurt your little finger?" 
 
 "Trouble, is it? What way would I be making 
 trouble in this world ?" exclaimed the trumpeter. 
 "Isn't it the world itself as puts trouble on ye, so it 
 like a wild cat sitting under a tub of unction! O, 
 very pleasant it is, O ay! No, no, my little sojee, that 
 is imt it at all. You can't let the flaming world rusTi 
 
 ant ye like that. . . ." 
 
 "Well, it's a quiet life I'm seeking," interjected the 
 soldier, wrapping his greal coat comfortingly across his 
 breast, "and by this and by that, a quiet night too."
 
 144 THE TRUMPETERS 
 
 "Is that so? Quiet, is it? But I say, my little 
 sojee, you'll not get it at all and the whole flaming world 
 whickering at ye like a mad cracker itself. Would ye 
 sleep on that wid yer quiet life and all? It's to 
 tame life you'd be doing, like it was a tiger. And 
 it's no drunken boozer can tame me as was with the 
 Munsters in the East . . . for seven holy years." 
 
 "Ah, go off wid you, you've hurt your little finger." 
 
 "Me little finger, is it?" cried the trumpeter, hold- 
 ing his thin hands up for inspection in the moonlight, 
 "I have not then." 
 
 "You surprise me," the soldier said, gazing at him 
 with sleepy amused tolerance. "Did you never hear 
 of Tobin the smith and Mary of Cappoquin ?" 
 
 "I did not then," snapped the other. "Who was 
 they?" 
 
 "He was a roaring, fatal feller, a holy terror, a giant. 
 He lived in the mountains but he went over the coun- 
 try killing things — a tiger or two at an odd time, I'm 
 thinking — and destroying the neat condition of the 
 world. And he had a nasty little bit of a bugle. . ." 
 
 "Was it the like o' that?" demanded the other, hold- 
 ing out the trumpet and tapping it with his fingers. 
 
 " 'A bugle,' I said," replied the soldier sternly, "and 
 every time he puffed in its tubes the noise of it was 
 so severe the hens in the town fell dead. . . ." 
 
 "The hens !" 
 
 "Yes, and the ducks on the ponds were overcome 
 with emotion and sank to the bottom. One day he 
 was in his forge driving a few nails into the shoe of
 
 THE TRUMPETERS 145 
 
 an ass when he hit his little finger such a blow, a ter- 
 rible blow, that it bled for a day. Then he seared the 
 wound with his searing iron, but it was no better, and 
 it bled for a night. I will go — says he — to the physi- 
 cian of Cappoquin and be sewn up with some golden 
 wire. So he drove into Cappoquin, but when he was 
 in it the physician was gone to a christening; there 
 was only his daughter Mary left to attend to him, a 
 bright good girl entirely, and when she saw the finger 
 she said to Tobin: 'I declare on my soul if I don't 
 chop it off it's not long till you have your death.' 
 'Chop it off, then,' says Tobin, and she did so. He 
 came back the next day and this is how it was ; the 
 physician was gone to a wake. 'What's your need?' 
 asked Mary. He showed her his hand and it dripping 
 with blood. 'I declare to my God,' said Mary, 'if I 
 don't chop it off it's short till you have your death.' 
 'Chop it off,' says Tobin, and she struck off the hand. 
 The day after that he drove in again, but the physician 
 was gone to an inquest about a little matter concerning 
 some remains that had been found. 'What is it today, 
 Tobin?' and he showed her his arm bleeding in great 
 drops. T declare by the saints,' says she, 'that unless 
 I chop it off you'll die in five minutes.' 'Chop it off,' 
 says Tobin, and she struck off his arm. The next day 
 he was back again with the stump of his arm worse 
 than before. 'Oh, I see what it is,' said Mary, and go- 
 ing behind him she struck off his head with one blow of 
 her father's sharp knife and gave it to the cat." 
 "That is a neat tale," said the trumpeter. "Did you
 
 146 THE TRUMPETERS 
 
 hear the story of the dirty soldier and the drummer?" 
 
 "No — " The soldier hesitated reflectively. "No, I 
 never heard it." 
 
 "Well, this is how it was . . ." 
 
 But just then the steamer began to approach the har- 
 bour, and in the hurry and scurry of preparations to 
 land the two friends were separated and the tale was 
 never told. 
 
 At the disembarkation passengers and soldiers 
 crowded on the pier awaiting the boat train. The har- 
 bour was full of lights; the moon was still high in the 
 heavens, but her glory faded as the sun began to rise. 
 The thick densities of the night sky quivered into frail 
 blues, violet and silver were mingled in the sea, the 
 buildings on the wharf looked strange ; icily, bitterly 
 grey. The trumpeter ran about in the bleak air seek- 
 ing the "rotten matchbox," but he could not find him. 
 He comforted himself by executing some castigating 
 blares upon his instrument. The hollow wharves and 
 the pier staging echoed with acrid sound that pleased 
 his simple heart. He blew and blew and blew until he 
 was surrounded by people watching him strain his 
 determined eyes and inflate his pale cheeks — all of them 
 secretly hoping that the ones might fall out or the 
 others might crack. Suddenly he caught sight of the 
 now-sobered miner, quite close to him, almost touching 
 him ! The call he was blowing faded with a stupid 
 squeak. The world began to flame again . . . when 
 an officer burst into the circle, demanding to know who 
 he was, where from, and what in all the realm of bias-
 
 THE TRUMPETERS 147 
 
 phcmous things he meant b] tootling in that infernal 
 manner on that infernal thing. 
 
 The trumpeter drew himself proudly to attention 
 and saluted. 
 
 "Discharged I am. sir, it's with the Ministers I was, 
 seven years, sir, with the Ministers, in the er. 
 
 "You disgrace the Army! If I hear another 
 tootle on that thing, 1 . . . I'll have you clapped in 
 irons — I will! And . . . and transported . . . damn 
 me if I don't! You understand?" 
 
 The trumpeter meekly saluted as the captain swag- 
 gered away. At that moment the miner laid his hand 
 upon his arm. 
 
 "What, my little man," said he, "have you lost your 
 teeth? Give it me now!" 
 
 And putting the trumpet to his own lips he blew a 
 brilliant and mocking reveille, whose echoes hurtled far 
 over the harbour and into the neighbouring hills. 
 
 "God save us!" cried the trumpeter with a furtive 
 eye on the captain at the end of the platform, who did 
 not appear to have heard that miraculous salvo, "it's a 
 great grand breath you've got, sir."
 
 THE ANGEL AND THE SWEEP
 
 THE ANGEL AND THE SWEEP 
 
 I'D been sitting in the Axe & Cleaver along of 
 Mrs. Pellegrini for an hour at least; I hadn't 
 ■l her in live years since she was doing the 
 roads near Pontypool. An hour at least, for isn't the 
 Axe & Cleaver the pleasant kind of place? Talking or 
 not talking you can always hear the water lashing from 
 the outfall above Hinney Lock, the sound of it making 
 you feel drowsy and kind. And isn't the old bridge 
 there a thing to be looking at indeed? 
 
 Mrs. Pellegrini had a family of pikeys who traded in 
 horses, willow-wattles, and rocksalt ; she was as cun- 
 ning as a jacksnipe, and if she had a deep voice like a 
 man she was full of wisdom. A grand great woman 
 was Rosa Pellegrini, with a face silky-brown like a 
 beechnut, and eyes and hair the equal of a rook for 
 darkness. The abundance of jewellery hooked and 
 threaded upon her was something to be looking at too. 
 Old man and young Isaac kept going out to look at 
 the horses, or they'd be coming in to upbraid her for 
 delaying, but she could drink a sconce of beer without 
 the least sparkle of hilarity, as if it were a tribute she 
 owed her whole magnificent constitution, or at least a 
 reward lor some part of it. So she kept doing it, 
 
 161
 
 152 THE ANGEL AND THE SWEEP 
 
 while her son and her husband could do no other and 
 did it with nothing of her inevitable air. 
 
 Well, I was sitting in the Axe & Cleaver along of 
 Mrs. Pellegrini when who should rove in but Larry 
 McCall, good-looking Larry, bringing a friend with 
 him, a soft kind of fellow who'd a harsh voice and a 
 whining voice that we didn't like the noise of tho' he 
 had good money in his purse. Larry gave me the 
 grace of the day directly he entered the door, and then, 
 letting a cry of joy out of him, he'd kissed Mrs. Pelle- 
 grini many times before she knew what was happening 
 to her. She got up and punished him with a welt on 
 his chin that would have bruised an oak-tree, and bade 
 him behave himself. He sat down soothingly beside 
 her and behaved very well. His companion stood 
 very shy and nervous, like a kitten might be watching 
 a cockfight. 
 
 "Who is this young man?" Mrs. Pellegrini asks. 
 
 "That's Arthur," said Larry: "I forget what 
 Arthur knocks a living out of — I've known him but 
 these three bits of an hour since we were walking in the 
 one direction." 
 
 "My dad," said Arthur slowly and raspingly, "is an 
 undertaker, and he lets me help him in his business: 
 we bury people." 
 
 "Oh come, young man," said Mrs. Pellegrini, "that's 
 no sort of a trade at all — d'ye think it, Mr. McCall ? n 
 
 "No, I do not," replied Larry, "but Arthur does. 
 It don't seem to be a trade with very much humour in 
 it. Life ain't a sad solid chunk."
 
 THE ANGEL AND THE SWEEP 1 53 
 
 "Now that's just where you're wrong," drawled 
 Arthur. 
 
 " 'Tain't a life at all," Rosa interrupted severely, "it's 
 only sniffing, having a bad cold! No sort of a life at 
 all— d'ye think it, Mr. McCall?" 
 
 "No, I do not," said Larry with a chuckle, "but 
 Arthur does!" 
 
 "Oh, I know what you're a deluding on," commenced 
 the young man again, "but. . . ." 
 
 "Strike me dead if I can see any fun in funerals!" 
 Mrs. Pellegrini said with finality, taking up her mug. 
 "But if you will have your grief, young man," she 
 added, pausing in one of her gulps to gaze at Arthur 
 until he quivered, "you must have it, and may fortune 
 fall in love with what we like. Fill up that cup now !" 
 
 The young man in agitation obeyed, and while this 
 was doing we all heard someone come over the bridge 
 singing a song, and that was Jerry Ogwin, who could 
 tell the neatest tales and sing the littlest songs. Well, 
 there were great salutations, for we all knew Jerry and 
 loved Jerry, and he loved some of us. But he was the 
 fiercest looking, fieriest gipsy man you ever saw, and 
 he had all the gullible prescience of a cockney. 
 
 "My fortune ! Where are you from, you cunning 
 little man?" 
 
 "I bin doing a bit o' road down Kent and London 
 way. D'ye know Lewisham?" commenced Jerry. 
 
 "No," said Larry, grinning at me, "but Arthur 
 does!" 
 
 "No, I don't ; I never been there," chanted Arthur.
 
 154 THE ANGEL AND THE SWEEP 
 
 "Now what's the good of talking like that!" said 
 McCall sternly, and letting a wink at me. 
 
 "More I ain't," asserted Arthur. 
 
 "Then I was at Deptford and Greenwich — know 
 Greenwich?" continued Jerry. 
 
 "No," replied Larry, then adding nonchalantly, 
 "Arthur does." 
 
 "No, I don't, I don't," said Arthur wormily, for 
 Jerry was glaring at him, and that fighting scar 
 all down his nose, where his wife Katey once hit him 
 with the spout of a kettle, was very disturbing. 
 
 "What's the good of that?" urged the devilish- 
 minded Larry. "Why don't you talk to the gentleman, 
 you don't want to vex him, do you?" 
 
 "You ain't blooming silly, are you?" queried Jerry. 
 
 Without waiting for reply he drifted off again. 
 
 "Me and my mate was doing a bit o' road with 
 oranges and things, you know — three for a 'eaver — 
 down Mary's Cray; d'ye know Mary's Cray?" 
 
 But this time Arthur was looking avidly out of the 
 window. 
 
 "Well, we was 'avin' a bit of grub one night, just 
 about dark it was, you know, with a little fire, we'd bin 
 cookin' something, when a blooming sweep come along. 
 I'll tell it to you; it was just inside a bit of a wood and 
 we was sleeping rough. My mate was a bit nervous, 
 you know, 'e kept looking round as if 'e could see some- 
 thing, but it was that dark you might be looking in a 
 sack. I says to Timmy : what's up with you ? I 
 dunno, 'e says, something going on, and just as 'e says 
 that this blooming sweep 'oofs in from nowhere and
 
 THE ANGEL AND THE SWEEP 1 55 
 
 falls over our beer. I says to Timmy, 'e's knocked 
 over our beer; are you going to fight 'im or shall f? 
 And Timmy shouts: look at 'im, 'e's laying"on the 
 fire! And s'elp me ( iod so 'e was, 'is legs was in the 
 
 sticks and 'is trousers was a-hurning. Come out of 
 it, we says, but 'e didn't move. No, my oath, 'e lay. d 
 there like a dead sheep. Well, we pulled 'im oil it, 
 but V was like a silly bloke. 'E couldn't stand up and 
 'e couldn't say anything. 'E got a lot of froth round 
 'is mouth like a 'orse that's going wicked. And 'e 
 wasn't drunk, neither, hut. you know, 'e was just 
 frightened out of 'is life about something. We sit 
 'im down with 'is hack against a tree and made the 
 fire up again. What's the matter with you, we says; 
 you got a lit. we says; what d'ye want coming 'ere, 
 we says? But we couldn't get no answer from Mm. 
 'Is face was that dam white 'cept where it was smudged 
 with soot, and there was this froth dribbling on 'im, and 
 what d'yer think, 'e'd got a red rose stuck in 'is button- 
 'ole. 'E was a horrible sight; we couldn't bear 'im, so 
 we ] »icks 'im up, and Timmy give 'im a clout in the 
 ear and shoves 'im out among some bushes where we 
 couldn't see 'im. Sw'elp me if 'e didn't come crawling 
 back on 'is hands and knees where we was sitting 
 round the fire. Oh, V was horrible. Timmy went 
 nearly daft and T thought 'e was going to give 'im one 
 good kick in the mouth and finish 'im. 'Stead of that 
 we picks 'im up again and runs 'im further down the 
 wood and heaves 'im into some blackberry bushes and 
 tells 'im what we'd do to 'im if 'e come again. That 
 was no good ; in five minutes 'e crawled back. Timmy
 
 156 THE ANGEL AND THE SWEEP 
 
 was shaking like a dog, and fell on 'im as if 'e was go- 
 ing to strangle 'im, but we had to let 'im stay, and old 
 Timmy was blacker than the sweep when 'e'd done 
 with 'im. But the bloke wouldn't say nothing or open 
 'is eyes, you know, he wouldn't open his eyes, 'e was 
 like something what had been murdered and wouldn't 
 die, if you know what I mean. Blast 'im, I could kill 
 'im, Timmy says. That's no good of, says I, and at 
 last we left 'im 'side the fire, and we went off some- 
 where just outside the wood and packed up in a clump 
 of ur-grass. I went to sleep, but I don't believe old 
 Timmy did, well, I know 'e didn't. Now we hadn't 
 'eard nothing all night, nothing at all, but when I wakes 
 up in the morning the blooming sweep was gone and 
 not a chink of 'im left anywhere. But," said Jerry 
 impressively to Arthur, who eyed him with horror, 
 "we found something else!" There was silence while 
 Jerry's face was connected to his mug of beer. No- 
 body spoke. We eyed him with eager interest. He 
 vanquished his thirst and smacked his lips but held the 
 mug in readiness for further libation. 
 
 "Not twenty chain away a woman was laying down. 
 Timmy touches me frightened like and says, Look, 
 what's that? My eyes was nearly skinned out of me. 
 I couldn't speak. We walked quietly up to 'er like two 
 sick men. She lay there just as if she'd dropped out 
 of the sky, naked as an angel, not a shift nor a stock- 
 ing, not a button on 'er." There was again silence 
 until Larry struck a match loudly on a jar, his pipe, 
 hooked tightly in his forefinger, having gone out. Mrs. 
 Pellegrini stared, and breathed audibly. "And," said
 
 THE ANGEL AND THE SWEEP 157 
 
 Jerry impressively, "she was the grandest creature 
 what ever you see. I touched 'er with them 
 two fingers and she was cold as iron, stiff, gone a bit 
 dull like pearls look, but the fine build of that lady was 
 the world's wonder. There was not a scratch or a 
 wound on 'er or the sign of 'er death anywhere. One 
 of 'er legs was cocked up at the knee like she'd lay in 
 bed. 'Er two eyes was just looking at the ground and 
 there was a kind of funny smile on 'er face. Fine 
 long hair she had, black as a cat's back and long as the 
 tail of a horse. And in it there was a red rose, and in 
 one of 'er hands she was holding a white lily. There 
 was a little bird's dropping on 'er stomach. I wiped 
 it off. I says to Timmy: That sweep! And 'e says 
 to me, Jerry Ogwin, we're 'aving a share out. What 
 about that sweep I says to 'im, but all 'e says was: 
 we're 'aving a share out. 'E was afraid of getting 
 pulled for this job, you know. I never seen a man so 
 frightened afore, and 'e was not a chap as renagged 
 ever, not Timmy." 
 
 "That 'e wasn't," said Mrs. Pellegrini, "I seen 'im 
 once half murder two sojers for beating a deaf and 
 dumb man." 
 
 "Well," continued Jerry, "I says all right Timmy, 
 and so we 'as a share out and gits on different roads. 
 My share was a clothes basket and a pair of spectacles 
 cost tuppence ha'penny, you know, and I walked all 
 that day as 'ard as ever I could. Then I bushes for the 
 night, and when I woke up nex' morning I 'card some 
 talking going on. I looks under the 'edge and found 
 I was side a strawberry field, you know, a lot of straw-
 
 158 THE ANGEL AND THE SWEEP 
 
 berries. So I 'ops in and sells my basket to the straw- 
 berry pickers for a shilling. They give me a shilling 
 for it, so that was all right. 'Ad a shilling and a pair 
 of spectacles for my share out. I goes on a bit and 
 then I comes across a beanfeast party, and I showed 
 'em my pair o' gold spectacles — I'd just found 'em — 
 you know !" 
 
 Larry burst into a peal of laughter that seemed to 
 surprise Jerry and he said : 
 
 "Ain't you ever met a feller what's found a pair of 
 gold spectacles?" 
 
 Larry couldn't reply and Jerry continued: 
 
 "No, ain't you really ? God, what a laugh ! Yes, 
 I sells 'em to a fly young party for two and f o' pence 
 and off I goes. Never 'eard no more of Timmy. 
 Never 'eard no more of anything. I dunno if they 
 found the girl. I dunno if they found that sweep. 
 They didn't find me." 
 
 He paused for a moment. 
 
 "They didn't find me" he repeated. 
 
 There was silence at last; the room was getting dim 
 with evening. Mrs. Pellegrini spoke: 
 
 "And you wiped it off her stomach, did you, Jerry?" 
 
 "I did," said he. 
 
 Mrs. Pellegrini turned to Arthur and said in a sharp 
 voice : 
 
 "Fill that pot for the gentleman!" 
 
 The young man in terror obeyed, he exceedingly 
 obeyed. 
 
 When the last pot was emptied Jerry and Larry and 
 the wretched mute went off along the road together.
 
 THE ANGEL AND THE SWEEP 159 
 
 Rosa Pellegrini said "So long" to me and drove off 
 with her cavalcade. The inn was empty and quiet again 
 so you could hear the water at the outfall. 
 
 I walked along the hank of the old river until I came 
 to the lock where the water roaring windily from the 
 lasher .streamed like an old man's beard; a pair of 
 swans moved in the slack water of the pool. Away 
 there was a fine lea of timothy grass looking as soft 
 as wool. And at the end of the lea there was a low 
 long hill covered with trees full of the arriving dark- 
 ness; a train that you could not hear the noise of shot 
 through a grove and poured a long spool of white 
 fume upon the trees quietly, a thing to be looking at, 
 it was so white and soft. But I was thinking . . . 
 thinking . . . thinking of the grand white slim woman 
 who did not seem dead at all to me, lying with a lily 
 in her hand, a red rose in her hair. And I could not 
 think it to be true at all ; I believe Jerry was only tell- 
 ing us one of his tales.
 
 ARABESQUE
 
 arabesque: the mouse 
 
 IX the main street amongst tall establishments of 
 mart and worship was a high narrow house 
 pressed between a coffee factory and a boot- 
 maker's. It had four flights of long dim echoing 
 stairs, and at the top, in a room that was full of the 
 smell of dried apples and mice, a man in the middle 
 age of life had sat reading Russian novels until he 
 thought he was mad. Late was the hour, the night out- 
 side black and freezing, the pavements below empty 
 and undistinguishable when he closed his book and sat 
 motionless in front of the glowing but flameless fire. 
 He felt he was very tired yet he could not rest. He 
 stared at a picture on the wall until he wanted to cry ; it 
 was a colour print by Utamaro of a suckling child 
 caressing its mother's breasts as she sits in front of a 
 blackbound mirror. Very chaste and decorative it was, 
 in spite of its curious anatomy. The man gazed, empty 
 of sight though not of mind, until the sighing of the 
 gas jet maddened him. He got up, put out the light, 
 and sat down again in the darkness trying to compose 
 his mind before the comfort of the fire. And he was 
 just about to begin a conversation with himself when 
 a mouse crept from a hole in the skirting near the fire- 
 
 163
 
 164 ARABESQUE 
 
 place and scurried into the fender. The man had the 
 crude dislike for such sly nocturnal things, but this 
 mouse was so small and bright, its antics so pretty, 
 that he drew his feet carefully from the fender and sat 
 watching it almost with amusement. The mouse 
 moved along the shadows of the fender, out upon the 
 hearth, and sat before the glow, rubbing its head, ears, 
 and tiny belly with its paws as if it were bathing itself 
 with the warmth, until, sharp and sudden, the fire sank, 
 an ember fell, and the mouse flashed into its hole. 
 
 The man reached forward to the mantelpiece and put 
 his hand upon a pocket lamp. Turning on the beam, 
 he opened the door of a cupboard beside the fireplace. 
 Upon one of the shelves there was a small trap baited 
 with cheese, a trap made with a wire spring, one of 
 those that smashed down to break the back of ingenu- 
 ous and unwary mice. 
 
 "Mean — so mean," he mused, "to appeal to the hun- 
 ger of any living thing just in order to destroy it." 
 
 He picked up the empty trap as if to throw it in the 
 fire. 
 
 "I suppose I had better leave it though — the place 
 swarms with them." He still hesitated. "I hope that 
 little beastie won't go and do anything foolish." He 
 put the trap back quite carefully, closed the door of the 
 cupboard, sat down again and extinguished the lamp. 
 
 Was there any one else in the world so squeamish 
 and foolish about such things ! Even his mother, 
 mother so bright and beautiful, even she had laughed at 
 his childish horrors. He recalled how once in his 
 childhood, not long after his sister Yosine was born, a
 
 ARABESQUE 1 65 
 
 friendly neighbour had sent him home with a bun 
 of dead larks tied by the feet "for supper." The pitiful 
 inanimity of the birds had brought a gush of 
 tears ; he had run weeping home and into the kitchen, 
 and there he had found the strange thing doing. It 
 was dusk; mother was kneeling before the fire. He 
 dropped the larks. 
 
 "Mother!" he exclaimed softly. She looked at his 
 tearful face. 
 
 "What's the matter, Filip?" she asked, smiling too 
 at his astonishment. 
 
 "Mother! What you doing?" 
 
 Her bodice was open and she was squeezing her 
 breasts ; long thin streams of milk spurted into the fire 
 with a plunging noise. 
 
 "Weaning your little sister," laughed mother. She 
 took his inquisitive face and pressed it against the 
 delicate warmth of her bosom, and he forgot the dead 
 birds behind him. 
 
 "Let me do it, mother," he cried, and doing so he 
 discovered the throb of the heart in his mother's breast. 
 Wonderful it was for him to experience it, although 
 she could not explain it to him. 
 
 "Why does it do that?" 
 
 "If it did not beat, little son, I should die and the 
 Holy Father would take me from you." 
 
 "God?" 
 
 She nodded. He put his hand upon his own breast. 
 "Oh feel it. Mother!" he cried. Mother unbuttoned 
 his little coat and felt the gentle tick tick with her warm 
 palm.
 
 1 66 ARABESQUE 
 
 "Beautiful!" she said. 
 
 "Is it a good one?" 
 
 She kissed his upsmiling lips. "It is good if it beats 
 truly. Let it always beat truly, Filip, let it always 
 beat truly." 
 
 There was the echo of a sigh in her voice, and he 
 had divined some grief, for he was very wise. He 
 kissed her bosom in his tiny ecstasy and whispered 
 soothingly: "Little mother! little mother!" In such 
 joys he forgot his horror of the dead larks; indeed he 
 helped mother to pluck them and spit them for supper. 
 
 It was a black day that succeeded, and full of tragedy 
 for the child. A great bay horse with a tawny mane 
 had knocked down his mother in the lane, and a heavy 
 cart had passed over her, crushing both her hands. She 
 was borne away moaning with anguish to the surgeon 
 who cut off the two hands. She died in the night. 
 For years the child's dreams were filled with the horror 
 of the stumps of arms, bleeding unendingly. Yet he 
 had never seen them, for he was sleeping when she 
 died. 
 
 While this old woe was come vividly before him he 
 again became aware of the mouse. His nerves 
 stretched upon him in repulsion, but he soon relaxed 
 to a tolerant interest, for it was really a most engaging- 
 little mouse. It moved with curious staccato scurries, 
 stopping to rub its head or flicker with its ears; they 
 seemed almost transparent ears. It spied a red cind 
 and skipped innocently up to it . . . sniffing . . . 
 sniffing . . . until it jumped back scorched. It would 
 crouch as a cat does, blinking in the warmth, or scamper
 
 ARABESQUE 1 67 
 
 madly as if dancing, and then roll upon its side rubbing 
 its head with those pliant paws. The melancholy man 
 watched it until it came at last to rest and squatted 
 meditatively upon its haunches, hunched up, looking 
 curiousty wise, a pennyworth of philosophy; then once 
 more the coals sank with a rattle and again the mouse 
 was gone. 
 
 The man sat on before the fire and his mind filled 
 again with unaccountable sadness. He had grown into 
 manhood with a burning generosity of spirit and rifts 
 of rebellion in him that proved too exacting for his 
 fellows and seemed mere wantonness to men of casual 
 rectitudes. "Justice and Sin," he would cry, "Property 
 and Virtue — incompatibilities ! There can be no sin 
 in a world of justice, no property in a world of virtue!" 
 With an engaging extravagance and a certain clear- 
 eyed honesty of mind he had put his two and two to- 
 gether and seemed then to rejoice, as in some topsy- 
 turvy dream, in having rendered unto Crcsar, as you 
 might say, the things that were due to Napoleon ! But 
 this kind of thing could not pass unexpiated in a 
 world of men having an infinite regard for Property 
 and a pride in their traditions of Virtue and Justice. 
 They could indeed forgive him his sins but they could 
 not forgive him his compassions. So he had to go seek 
 for more melodious-minded men and fair unambiguou 
 women. But rebuffs can deal more deadly blows than 
 daggers; he became timid — a timidity not of fear but 
 of pride — and grew with the years into misanthropy, 
 susceptible to trivial griefs and despairs, a vessel of 
 emotion that emptied as easily as it filled, until he came
 
 1 68 ARABESQUE 
 
 at last to know that his griefs were half deliberate, his 
 despairs half unreal, and to live but for beauty — which 
 is tranquillity — to put her wooing hand upon him. 
 
 Now, while the mouse hunts in the cupboard, one 
 fair recollection stirs in the man's mind — of Cassia and 
 the harmony of their only meeting, Cassia who had 
 such rich red hair, and eyes, yes, her eyes were full of 
 starry enquiry like the eyes of mice. It was so long 
 ago that he had forgotten how he came to be in it, that 
 unaccustomed orbit of vain vivid things — a village 
 festival, all oranges and houp-la. He could not remem- 
 ber how he came to be there, but at night, in the court 
 hall, he had danced with Cassia — fair and unambiguous 
 indeed ! — who had come like the wind from among the 
 roses and swept into his heart. 
 
 "It is easy to guess," he had said to her, "what you 
 like most in the world." 
 
 She laughed; "To dance? Yes, and you . . . ?" 
 
 "To find a friend." 
 
 "I know, I know," she cried, caressing him with 
 recognitions. "Ah, at times I quite love my friends — 
 until I begin to wonder how much they hate me !" 
 
 He had loved at once that cool pale face, the abun- 
 dance of her strange hair as light as the autumn's clus- 
 tered bronze, her lilac dress and all the sweetness about 
 her like a bush of lilies. How they had laughed at the 
 two old peasants whom they had overheard gabbling 
 of trifles like sickness and appetite ! 
 
 "There's a lot of nature in a parsnip," said one, a 
 fat person of the kind that swells grossly when stung by
 
 ARABESQUE 169 
 
 a bee, "a lot of nature when it's young, but when it's 
 old it's like everything else." 
 
 "True it is." 
 
 "And I'm very fond of vegetables, yes, and I'm very 
 fond of bread." 
 
 "Come out with me," whispered Cassia to Filip, and 
 they walked out in the blackness of midnight into what 
 must have been a garden. 
 
 "Cool it is here," she said, "and quiet, but too dark 
 even to see your face — can you see mine?" 
 
 "The moon will not rise until after dawn," said he, 
 "it will be white in the sky when the starlings whistle 
 in your chimney." 
 
 They walked silently and warily about until they 
 felt the chill of the air. A dull echo of the music came 
 to them through the walls, then stopped, and they heard 
 the bark of a fox away in the woods. 
 
 "You are cold," he whispered, touching her bare 
 neck with timid fingers. "Quite, quite cold," drawing 
 his hand tenderly over the curves of her chin and face. 
 "Let us go in," he said, moving with discretion from the 
 rapture he desired. "We will come out again," said 
 Cassia. 
 
 Rut within the room the ball was just at an end. the 
 musicians were packing up their instruments and the 
 dancers were flocking out and homewards, or to the 
 buffet which was on a platform at one end of the room. 
 The two old peasants were there, munching hugely. 
 
 "I tell you," said one of them, "there's nothing in 
 the world for it but the grease of an owl's liver. That's
 
 170 ARABESQUE 
 
 it, that's it ! Take something on your stomach now, 
 just to offset the chill of the dawn !" 
 
 Filip and Cassia were beside them, but there were so 
 many people crowding the platform that Filip had to 
 jump down. He stood then looking up adoringly at 
 Cassia, who had pulled a purple cloak around her. 
 
 "For Filip, Filip, Filip," she said, pushing the last 
 bite of her sandwich into his mouth, and pressing upon 
 him her glass of Loupiac. Quickly he drank it with 
 a great gesture, and, flinging the glass to the wall, took 
 Cassia into his arms, shouting: "I'll carry you home, 
 the whole way home, yes, I'll carry you !" 
 
 "Put me down !" she cried, beating his head and pull- 
 ing his ears, as they passed among the departing 
 dancers. "Put me down, you wild thing!" 
 
 Dark, dark was the lane outside, and the night an 
 obsidian net, into which he walked carrying the girl. 
 But her arms were looped around him, she discovered 
 paths for him, clinging more tightly as he staggered 
 against a wall, stumbled upon a gulley, or when her 
 sweet hair was caught in the boughs of a little lime 
 tree. 
 
 "Do not loose me, Filip, will you, do not loose me," 
 Cassia said, putting her lips against his temple. 
 
 His brain seemed bursting, his heart rocked within 
 him, but he adored the rich grace of her limbs against 
 his breast. "Here it is," she murmured, and he carried 
 her into a path that led to her home in a little lawned 
 garden where the smell of ripe apples upon the branches 
 and the heavy lustre of roses stole upon the air. Roses 
 and apples ! Roses and apples ! He carried her right
 
 ARABESQUE 171 
 
 into the porch before she slid clown and stood close to 
 him with her hands still upon his shoulders. He could 
 breathe happily at the release, standing silent and look- 
 ing round at the sky sprayed with wondrous stars but 
 without a moon. 
 
 "You are stronger than I thought you, stronger than 
 you look, you are really very strong," she whispered, 
 nodding her head to him. Opening the buttons of his 
 coat she put her palm against his breast. 
 
 "Oh how your heart does beat : does it beat truly — 
 and for whom ?" 
 
 He had seized her wrists in a little fury of love, cry- 
 ing: "Little mother, little mother!" 
 
 "What are you saying?" asked the girl, but before 
 he could continue there came a footstep sounding be- 
 hind the door, and the clack of a bolt. . . . 
 
 What was that? Was that really a bolt or was it 
 . . . was it . . . the snap of the trap? The man sat 
 up in his room intently listening, with nerves quivering 
 again, waiting for the trap to kill the little philosopher. 
 When he felt it was all over he reached guardedly in 
 the darkness for the lantern, turned on the beam, and 
 opened the door of the cupboard. Focussing the light 
 upon the trap he was amazed to see the mouse sitting on 
 its haunches before it, uncaught. Its head was bowed, 
 but its bead-like eyes were full of brightness, and it 
 sat blinking, it did not flee. 
 
 "Shoosh !" said the man, but the mouse did not move. 
 "Why doesn't it go? Shoosh!" he said again, and 
 suddenly the reason of the mouse's strange behaviour 
 was made clear. The trap had not caught it completely,
 
 172 ARABESQUE 
 
 but it had broken off both its forefeet, and the thing 
 crouched there holding out its two bleeding stumps 
 humanly, too stricken to stir. 
 
 Horror flooded the man, and conquering his repug- 
 nance he plucked the mouse up quickly by the neck. 
 Immediately the little thing fastened its teeth in his 
 finger; the touch was no more than the slight prick 
 of a pin. The man's impulse then exhausted itself. 
 What should he do with it? He put his hand behind 
 him, he dared not look, but there was nothing to be done 
 except kill it at once, quickly, quickly. Oh, how should 
 he do it? He bent towards the fire as if to drop the 
 mouse into its quenching glow ; but he paused and shud- 
 dered, he would hear its cries, he would have to listen. 
 Should he crush it with finger and thumb? A glance 
 towards the window decided him. He opened the sash 
 with one hand and flung the wounded mouse far into 
 the dark street. Closing the window with a crash he 
 sank into a chair, limp with pity too deep for tears. 
 
 So he sat for two minutes, five minutes, ten minutes. 
 Anxiety and shame filled him with heat. He opened 
 the window again, and the freezing air poured in and 
 cooled him. Seizing his lantern he ran down the echo- 
 ing stairs, into the dark empty street, searching long 
 and vainly for the little philosopher until he had to 
 desist and return to his room, shivering, frozen to his 
 very bones. 
 
 When he had recovered some warmth he took the 
 trap from its shelf. The two feet dropped into his 
 hand ; he cast them into the fire. Then he once more 
 set the trap and put it back carefully into the cupboard.
 
 FELIX TINCLER
 
 FELIX TIXCLER 
 
 THE child was to have a birthday tomorrow 
 and was therefore not uneasy about being 
 late home from school this afternoon. He 
 had lost his pencil case; a hollow long round thing it 
 was, like a rolling-pin, only it had green' and yellow 
 rings painted upon it. He kept his marbles in it and 
 so he was often in a trouble about his pencils. He 
 had not tried very much to find the pencil case because 
 the boys "deludered" him — that's what his father 
 always said. He had asked Heber Gleed if he had seen 
 it — he had strange suspicions of that boy — but Heber 
 Gleed had sworn so earnestly that the greengrocer 
 opposite the school had picked it up, he had even "saw 
 him do it," that Felix Tinder went into Mr. Gobbit's 
 shop, and when the greengrocer lady appeared in 
 answer to the ring of the door bell he enquired politely 
 for his pencil case. She was tall and terrible with a 
 squint and, what was worse, a large velvety mole with 
 hairs sprouting from it. She immediately and with 
 inexplicable fury desired him to flee from her green- 
 grocer shop, with a threat of alternative cast igat ion in 
 which a flatiron and a red-hot pick-axe were to figure 
 with unusual and unpleasant prominence. Well he had 
 
 175
 
 176 FELIX TINCLER 
 
 run out of Mr. Gobbit's shop, and there was Heber 
 Gleed standing in the road giggling derisively at him. 
 Felix walked on alone, looking in the gutters and areas 
 for his pencil case, until he encountered another 
 friendly boy who took him to dig in a garden where 
 they grew castor-oil plants. When he went home it 
 was late; as he ran along under the high wall of the 
 orphanage that occupied one end of his street its harsh 
 peevish bell clanged out six notes. He scampered past 
 the great gateway under the dismal arch that always 
 filled him with uneasiness, he never passed it without 
 feeling the sad trouble that a prison might give. He 
 stepped into his own pleasant home, a little mute, and 
 a little dirty in appearance; but at six years of age in a 
 home so comfortable and kind the eve of the day that 
 is to turn you into seven is an occasion great enough 
 to yield an amnesty for peccadilloes. His father was 
 already in from work, he could hear him singing. He 
 gave his mother the sprigs he had picked from the 
 castor-oil plant and told her about the pencil case. 
 The meal was laid upon the table, and while mother 
 was gone into the kitchen to boil the water for tea he 
 sat down and tried to smooth out the stiff creases in 
 the white table cloth. His father was singing gaily 
 in the scullery as he washed and shaved : 
 
 High cockalorum, 
 
 Charlie ate the spinach. . . . 
 
 He ceased for a moment to give the razor a vigorous 
 stropping and then continued:
 
 FELIX TINCLER 177 
 
 High cockalorum. 
 High cockalee. . . . 
 
 Felix knew that was not the conclusion of the song. 
 He listened, but for some moments all that followed 
 was the loud crepitation of a razor searching a stubborn 
 beard and the sigh of the kettle. Then a new vigour 
 seized the singer: 
 
 But mother brought the pandy down 
 And bate the gree. . . . 
 
 Again that rasping of chin briefly intervened, but the 
 conclusion of the cropping was soon denoted by the 
 strong rallentando of the singer : 
 
 . . .dy image, 
 High cock-alorum, 
 High cock-a-lee. 
 
 Mrs. Tincler brought in the teapot and her husband 
 followed her with his chin tightly shaven but blue, 
 crying with mock horror: 
 
 "Faylix, my son ! that is seven years old tomorrow 1 
 look at him, Mary, the face of him and the hands of 
 him ! I didn't know there was a bog in this parish ; 
 is it creeping in a bog you have been?" 
 
 The boy did not blench at his father's spurious aus- 
 terity, he knew he was the soul of kindness and fun. 
 
 "Go wash yourself at the sink," interposed his 
 mother. Kevin Tincler, taking his son by the hand, 
 continued with mocking admonishment: "All the fine
 
 178 FELIX TINCLER 
 
 copybooks of the world that you've filled up with that 
 blather about cleanliness and holiness, the up strokes 
 very thin and the down strokes very thick! What 
 was it, Mary, he has let it all out of his mind?" 
 
 "Go and wash, Felix, and come quickly and have 
 your tea," laughed Mary Tincler. 
 
 "Ah, but what was it — in that grand book of yours?" 
 
 The boy stood, in his short buff tunic, regarding his 
 father with shy amusement. The small round clear- 
 skinned face was lovely with its blushes of faint rose; 
 his eyes were big and blue, and his head was covered 
 with thick curling locks of rich brown hair. 
 
 "Cleanliness comes next to godliness," he replied. 
 
 "Does it so, indeed?" exclaimed his father. "Then 
 you're putting your godliness in a pretty low category !" 
 
 "What nonsense," said Mary Tincler as the boy 
 left them. 
 
 The Irishman and his dark-eyed Saxon wife sat 
 down at the table waiting for their son. 
 
 "There's a bit of a randy in the Town Gardens to- 
 night, Mary — dancing on the green, fireworks ! 
 When the boy is put to bed we'll walk that way." 
 
 Mary expressed her pleasure but then declared she 
 could not leave the boy alone in his bed. 
 
 "He'll not hurt, Mary, he has no fear in him. Give 
 him the birthday gift before we go. Whisht, he's com- 
 ing !" 
 
 The child, now clean and handsome, came to his 
 chair and looked up at his father sitting opposite to 
 him. 
 
 "Holy Mother !" exclaimed the admiring parent, "it's
 
 FELIX TINCLER 1 79 
 
 the neck of a swan he has. Faylix Tincler, may ye 
 live to be the father of a bishop!" 
 
 After tea his father took him up on the down for an 
 hour. As they left their doorway a group of the tidy 
 but wretched orphans was marching back into their 
 seminary, little girls moving in double columns be- 
 hind a stiff- faced woman. They were all dressed alike 
 in garments of charity exact as pilchards. Grey capes, 
 worsted stockings, straw hats with blue bands round 
 them, and hard boots. The boys were coming in from 
 a different direction, but all of them, even the minutest, 
 were clad in corduroy trousers and short jackets high 
 throated like a gaoler's. This identity of garment was 
 contrary to the will of God for he had certainly made 
 their pinched bodies diverse enough. Some were 
 short, some tall, dark, fair, some ugly, others hand- 
 some. The sight of them made Felix unhappy, he 
 shrank into himself, until he and his father had slipped 
 through a gap in a hedge and were going up the hill 
 that stretched smoothly and easily almost from their 
 very door. The top of the down here was quiet and 
 lovely, but a great flank of it two miles away was scat- 
 tered over with tiny white figures playing very deliber- 
 ately at cricket. Pleasant it was up there in the calm 
 evening, and still bright, but the intervening valley was 
 full of grey ungracious houses, allotments, railway 
 arches, churches, graveyards, and schools. Worst of 
 all was the dull forbidding aspect of the Orphanage 
 down beyond the roof of their own house. 
 
 They played with a ball and had some wrestling 
 matches until the declining day began to grow dim even
 
 180 FELIX TINCLER 
 
 on the hill and the fat jumbo clouds over the town were 
 turning pink. If those elephants fell on him — what 
 would they do? Why, they'd mix him up like ice- 
 cream! So said his father. 
 
 "Do things ever fall out of the sky?" 
 
 "Rain," said Mr. Tincler. 
 
 "Yes, I know." 
 
 "Stars* — maybe." 
 
 "Where do they go?" 
 
 "O they drop on the hills but ye can never find 'em." 
 
 "Don't Heaven ever?" 
 
 "What, drop down ! no," said Mr. Tincler, "it don't. 
 I have not heard of it doing that, but maybe it all just 
 stoops down sometimes, Faylix, until it's no higher 
 than the crown of your hat. Let us be going home 
 now and ye'll see something this night." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 "Wait, Faylix, wait!" 
 
 As they crossed from the hill Mary drawing down 
 the blinds signalled to them from the window. 
 
 "Come along, Felix," she cried, and the child ran 
 into the darkened room. Upon the table was set a 
 little church of purest whiteness. Kevin had bought 
 it from an Italian hawker. It had a wonderful tall 
 steeple and a cord that came through a hole and pulled 
 a bell inside. And that was not all; the church was 
 filled with light that was shining through a number of 
 tiny arched windows, blue, purple, green, violet, the 
 wonderful windows were everywhere. Felix was 
 silent with wonder; how could you get a light in a
 
 FELIX TINCLER l8l 
 
 church that hadn't got a door! then Mary lifted the 
 hollow building from the table; it had no floor, and 
 there was a night-light glowing in one of her patty-pans 
 filled with water. The church was taken up to bed 
 with him in the small chamber next his parents' room 
 and set upon a bureau. Kevin and Mary then went 
 off to the "bit of devilment" in the town gardens. 
 Felix kept skipping from his bed, first to gaze at the 
 church, and then to lean out of the window in his night- 
 shirt, looking for the lamplighter who would come to 
 the street lamp outside. The house was the very last, 
 and the lamp was the very last lamp, on one of the 
 roads that led from the town and thence went poking 
 out into the steady furze-covered downs. And as the 
 lamp was the very last to be lit darkness was always 
 half-fallen by the time the old man arrived at his 
 journey's end. He carried a pole with a brass tube at 
 one end. There were holes in the brass tube showing 
 gleams of light. The pole rested upon his shoulders 
 as he trudged along humming huskily. 
 
 "Here he is," cried Felix, leaning from the window 
 and waving a white arm. The dull road, empty of 
 traffic and dim as his mother's pantry by day, curved 
 slightly, and away at the other end of the curve a jet 
 of light had sprung suddenly into the gloom like a 
 bright flower bursting its sheath ; a black figure moved 
 along towards him under the Orphanage wall. Other 
 lamps blossomed with light and the lamplighter, 
 approaching the Tinders' lamp, thrust the end of his 
 pole into the lantern, his head meanwhile craning back
 
 1 82 FELIX TINCLER 
 
 like the head of a horse that has been pulled violently 
 backwards. He deftly turned the tap ; with a tiny dull 
 explosion that sounded like a doormat being beaten 
 against the wall in the next street the lamp was lit and 
 the face of the old man sprang into vague brilliance, 
 for it was not yet utterly dark. Vague as the light 
 was, the neighbouring hills at once faded out of recog- 
 nition and became black bulks of oblivion. 
 
 "Oi . . . Oi . . ." cried the child, clapping his 
 hands. The old man's features relaxed, he grunted in 
 relief, the pole slid down in his palm. As the end of 
 it struck the pavement a sharp knock he drew an old 
 pipe from his pocket and lit it quite easily although one 
 of his hands was deficient of a thumb and some 
 fingers. He was about to travel back into the spar- 
 kling town when Felix called to him: 
 
 "Soloman ! Soloman !" 
 
 "Goo an to yer bed, my little billycock, or you'll 
 ketch a fever." 
 
 "No, but what's this?" Felix was pointing to the 
 ground below him. The old man peered over the iron 
 railings into the front garden that had just sufficient 
 earth to cherish four deciduous bushes, two plants of 
 marigold, and some indeterminate herbs. In the dim- 
 ness of their shadows a glowworm beamed clearly. 
 
 "That?" exclaimed he. "O s'dripped off the moon, 
 yas, right off, moon's wastin' away, you'll see later on 
 if you'm watch out fer it, s'dripped off the moon, right 
 off." Chuckling, he blew out the light at the end of 
 his pole, and went away, but turned at intervals to 
 wave his hand towards the sky, crying "Later on,
 
 FELIX TINCLER 1 83 
 
 right off!" and cackling genially until he came to a 
 tavern. 
 
 The child stared at the glowworm and then sur- 
 veyed the sky, but the tardy moon was deep behind 
 the hills. He left the open window and climbed into 
 bed again. The house was empty, but he did not 
 mind, father and mother had gone to buy him another 
 birthday gift. He did not mind, the church glowed 
 in its corner on the bureau, the street lamp shined all 
 over the ceiling and a little bit upon the wall where the 
 splendid picture of Wexford Harbour was hanging. 
 It was not gloomy at all although the Orphanage bell 
 once sounded very piercingly. Sometimes people 
 would stroll by, but not often, and he would hear them 
 mumbling to each other. He would rather have a 
 Chinese lantern first, and next to that a little bagpipe, 
 and next to that a cockatoo with a yellow head, and 
 then a Chinese lantern, and then . . . He awoke ; 
 he thought he heard a heavy bang on the door as if 
 somebody had thrown a big stone. But when he 
 looked out of the window there was nobody to be seen. 
 The little moon drip was still lying in the dirt, the sky 
 was softly black, the stars were vivid, only the lamp 
 dazzled his eyes and he could not see any moon. But 
 as he yawned he saw just over the down a rich globe 
 of light moving very gradually towards him, swaying 
 and falling, falling in the still air. To the child's 
 dazzled eyes the great globe, dropping towards him 
 as if it would crush the house, was shaped like an 
 elephant, a fat squat jumbo with a green trunk. 
 Then to his relief it fell suddenly from the sky right
 
 184. FELIX TINCLER 
 
 on to the down where he and father had played. The 
 light was extinguished and black night hid the deflated 
 fire-balloon. 
 
 He scrambled back into bed again but how he 
 wished it was morning so that he could go out and 
 capture the old elephant — he knew he would find it! 
 When at last he slept he sank into a world of white 
 churches that waved their steeples like vast trunks, 
 and danced with elephants that had bellies full of 
 fire and hidden bells that clanged impetuously to a 
 courageous pull of each tail. He did not wake again 
 until morning was bright and birds were singing. It 
 was early but it was his birthday. There were no 
 noises in the street yet, and he could not hear his 
 father or mother moving about. He crawled silently 
 from his bed and dressed himself. The coloured 
 windows in the little white fane gleamed still, but it 
 looked a little dull now. He took the cake that 
 mother always left at his bedside and crept down the 
 stairs. There he put on his shoes and, munching the 
 cake, tiptoed to the front door. It was not bolted 
 but it was difficult for him to slip back the latch 
 quietly, and when at last it was done and he stood out- 
 side upon the step he was doubly startled to hear a 
 loud rapping on the knocker of a house a few doors 
 away. He sidled quickly but warily to the corner of 
 the street, crushing the cake into his pocket, and then 
 peeped back. It was more terrible than he had anti- 
 cipated! A tall policeman stood outside that house 
 bawling to a woman with her hair in curl papers who 
 was lifting the sash of an upper window. Felix
 
 FELIX TIXCLER 1 85 
 
 turned and ran through the gap in the hedge and on- 
 wards up the hill. He did not wait; he thought he 
 heard the policeman calling out "Tincler !" and he ran 
 faster and faster, then slower and more slow as the 
 down steepened, until he was able to sink down 
 breathless behind a clump of the furze, out of sight and 
 out of hearing. The policeman did not appear to be 
 following him ; he moved on up the hill and through 
 the soft smooth alleys of the furze until he reached 
 the top of the down, searching always for the white 
 elephant which he knew must be hidden close there 
 and nowhere else, although he had no clear idea in 
 his mind of the appearance of his mysterious quarry. 
 Vain search, the elephant was shy or cunning and 
 eluded him. Hungry at last and tired he sat down and 
 leaned against a large ant hill close beside the thick 
 and perfumed furze. Here he ate his cake and then 
 lolled, a little drowsy, looking at the few clouds in 
 the sky and listening to birds. A flock of rooks was 
 moving in straggling flight towards him, a wide flat 
 changing skein, like a curtain of crape that was being 
 pulled and stretched delicately by invisible fingers. 
 One of the rooks flapped just over him ; it had a 
 small round hole right through the feathers of one 
 wing — what was that for? Felix was just falling to 
 sleep, it was so soft and comfortable there, when a tiny 
 noise, very tiny but sharp and mysterious, went "Ping !" 
 just by his ear, and something stung him lightly in 
 the neck. He knelt up, a little startled, but he peered 
 steadily under the furze. "Ping!" went something 
 again and stung him in the ball of the eye. It made
 
 1 86 FELIX TINCLER 
 
 him blink. He drew back; after staring silently at 
 the furze he said very softly "Come out!" Nothing 
 came; he beckoned with his forefinger and called 
 aloud with friendliness "Come on, come out !" At that 
 moment his nose was almost touching a brown dry 
 sheath of the furze bloom, and right before his eyes 
 the dried flower burst with the faint noise of "Ping!" 
 and he felt the shower of tiny black seeds shooting 
 against his cheek. At once he comprehended the 
 charming mystery of the furze's dispersal of its seeds, 
 and he submitted himself to the fairylike bombard- 
 ment with great glee, forgetting even the elephant 
 until in one of the furze alleys he came in sight of a 
 heap of paper that fluttered a little heavily. He went 
 towards it; it was so large that he could not make out 
 its shape or meaning. It was a great white bag mads 
 of paper, all crumpled and damp, with an arrange- 
 ment of wire where the hole was and some burned tow 
 fixed in it. But at last he was able to perceive the 
 green trunk, and it also had pink eyes ! He had 
 found it and he was triumphant ! There were words 
 in large black letters painted upon it which he could 
 not read, except one word which was cure. It was 
 an advertisement fire-balloon relating to a specific 
 for catarrh. He rolled the elephant together care- 
 fully, and carrying the mass of it clasped in his two 
 arms he ran back along the hill chuckling to himself, 
 "I'm carrying the ole elephant." Advancing down the 
 hill to his home he was precariously swathed in a 
 drapery of balloon paper. The door stood open; he 
 walked into the kitchen. No one was in the kitchen
 
 FELIX TIXCLER 1 87 
 
 but there were sharp strange voices speaking in the 
 room above. He thought he must have come into the 
 wrong house but the strange noises frightened him into 
 silence; he stood quite still listening to them. He had 
 dropped the balloon and it unfolded upon the floor, 
 partly revealing the astounding advertisement of 
 
 PEASEGOOD'S PODOPHYLLIN 
 
 The voices above were unravelling horror upon 
 horror. He knew by some divining instinct that 
 tragedy was happening to him, had indeed already en- 
 veloped and crushed him. A mortar had exploded 
 at the fireworks display, killing and wounding people 
 that he knew. 
 
 "She had a great hole of a wound in the soft part 
 of her thigh as you could put a cokernut in . . ." 
 
 "God a mighty. . . !" 
 
 "Died in five minutes, poor thing." 
 
 "And the husband . . . they couldn't . . . ?" 
 
 "No, couldn't identify . . . they could not identify 
 him . . . only by some papers in his pocket." 
 
 "And he'd got a little bagpipe done up in a package 
 ... for their little boy. . . ." 
 
 "Never spoke a word. . . ." 
 
 "Never a word, poor creature." 
 
 "May Christ be good to 'em." 
 
 "Yes, yes," they all said softly. 
 
 The child walked quietly up the stairs to his 
 mother's bedroom. Two policemen were there making 
 notes in their pocket books, their helmets lying on the 
 unused bed. There were also three or four friendly
 
 1 88 FELIX TINCLER 
 
 women neighbours. As he entered the room the 
 gossip ceased abruptly. One of the women gasped 
 "O Jesus !" and they seemed to huddle together eyeing 
 him as if he had stricken them with terror. With his 
 fingers still upon the handle of the door he looked up 
 at the tallest policeman and said: 
 
 "What's the matter?" 
 
 The policeman did not reply immediately; he folded 
 up his notebook, but the woman who had gasped came 
 to him with a yearning cry and wrapped him in her 
 protesting arms with a thousand kisses. 
 
 "Ye poor lamb, ye poor little orphan, whatever 
 'ull become of ye!" 
 
 At that moment the bell of the Orphanage burst 
 into a peal of harsh impetuous clangour, and the 
 policemen picked up their helmets from the bed.
 
 THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH
 
 THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH 
 
 SINCE the earth began its twisting, or since very 
 soon after it began, there have been persons 
 on it who perceived more or less early in life 
 that it was seldom possible to get something in return 
 for quite nothing, and that even if you did the delicate 
 situation then arising was attended often with at least 
 as much personal danger as delight, and generally with 
 much more. Tom Toole knew all about it, so he was not 
 going to sell his own little white soul to the devil, 
 though he was sixty years of age and his soul, he ex- 
 pected, was shrivelled a bit now like a dried fig. He 
 had no faith in Wishing Hats, or Magic Carpets, or 
 Herbs of Longevity, and he had not heard of the 
 Philosopher's Stone, but he had a belief in an Elixir, 
 somewhere in the world, that would make you young 
 again. He had heard, too, of the Transmutation of 
 Metals; indeed, he had associated himself a great 
 many years ago with a Belfast brass founder in the 
 production of certain sovereigns. The brass founder 
 perished under the rigours of his subsequent incarcer- 
 ation in gaol, but Tom Toole had been not at all un- 
 comfortable in the lunatic asylum to which a com- 
 passionate retribution had assigned him. It was in 
 
 191
 
 192 THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH 
 
 the Asylum that he met the man from Kilsheelan who, 
 if you could believe him, really had got a "touch" 
 from the fairies and could turn things he had no wish 
 for into the things he would be wanting. The man 
 from Kilsheelan first discovered his gift, so he told Tom 
 Toole, when he caught a turtle dove one day and 
 changed it into a sheep. Then he turned the sheep 
 into a lather-pot just to make sure, and it was sure. 
 So he thought he would like to go to the land of the 
 Ever Young which is in the western country, but he 
 did not know how he could get there unless he went 
 in a balloon. Sure, he sat down in his cabin and 
 turned the shaving-pot into a fine balloon, but the 
 balloon was so large it burst down his house and he 
 was brought to the asylum. Well that was clear 
 enough to Tom Toole, and after he had got good 
 advice from the man from Kilsheelan it came into his 
 mind one day to slip out of the big gates of the 
 asylum, and, believe me, since then he had walked 
 the roads of Munster singing his ballads and 
 searching for something was difficult to find, and 
 that was his youth. For Tom Toole was grow- 
 ing old, a little old creature he was growing, gay 
 enough and a bit of a philanderer still, but age is 
 certain and puts the black teeth in your mouth and the 
 whiteness of water on your hair. 
 
 One time he met a strange little old quick-talking 
 man who came to him; he seemed to just bob up in 
 front of him from the road itself. 
 
 "Ah, good day t'ye, and phwat part are ye fram?" 
 "I'm from beyant," said Tom Toole, nodding back
 
 THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH 1 93 
 
 to the Knockmealdown Mountain, where the good 
 monks had lodged him for a night. 
 
 "Ah, God deliver ye and indeed I don't want to 
 know your business at all but . . . but . . . where 
 are ye going?" 
 
 Between his words he kept spitting, in six or seven 
 little words there would be at least one spit. There was 
 yellow dust in the llaps of his ears and neat bushes of 
 hair in the holes. Cranks and wrinkles covered his 
 nose, and the skull of him was bare but there was a 
 good tuft on his chin. Tom Toole looked at him 
 straight and queer for he did not admire the fierce ex- 
 pression of him, and there were smells of brimstone 
 on him like a farmer had been dipping his ewes, and 
 lie almost expected to see a couple of horns growing 
 out of his brow. 
 
 "It's not meself does be knowing at all, good little 
 man," said Tom Toole to him, "and I might go to the 
 fair of Cappoquin, or I might walk on to Dungarvan, 
 in the harbour now, to see will I buy a couple of 
 lobsters for me nice supper." 
 
 And he turned away to go off upon his road but 
 the little old man followed and kept by his side, tell- 
 ing him of a misfortune he had endured; a chaise of 
 his, a little pony chaise, had been almost destroyed, 
 but the ruin was not so great for a kind lady of his 
 acquaintance, a lady of his own denomination. ] 
 given him four pounds, one shilling and ninepence. 
 "Ah, not that I'm needing your money, ma'am, savs 1, 
 hut damage is damage, I says, and it's not right. I says, 
 that I should be at the harm of your coachman." And
 
 194 THE ELIXIR 0F YOUTH 
 
 there he was spitting and going on like a clock spilling 
 over its machinery when he unexpectedly grasped Tom 
 Toole by the hand, wished him Good day, and Good 
 luck, and that he might meet him again. 
 
 Tom Toole walked on for an hour and came to a 
 cross roads, and there was the same old man sitting in 
 a neat little pony chaise smoking his pipe. 
 
 "Where are ye going?" says he. 
 
 "Dungarvan," said Tom Toole. 
 
 "Jump in then," said the little old man, and they 
 jogged along the road conversing together; he was 
 sharp as an old goat. 
 
 "What is your aspiration?" he said, and Tom Toole 
 told him. 
 
 "That's a good aspiration, indeed. I know what 
 you're seeking, Tom Toole ; let's get on now and there'll 
 be tidings in it." 
 
 When Tom Toole and the little old man entered the 
 public at Dungarvan there was a gang of strong young 
 fellows, mechanics and people to drive the traction 
 engines, for there was a circus in it. Getting their 
 fill of porter, they were, and the nice little white 
 loaves ; very decent boys, but one of them a Scotchman 
 with a large unrejoicing face. And he had a hooky 
 nose with tussocks of hair in the nostrils and the two 
 tails of hair to his moustache like an old Chinese man. 
 Peter Mullane was telling a tale, and there was a sad 
 bit of a man from Bristol, with a sickness in his breast 
 and a cough that would heave out the side of a moun- 
 tain. Peter Mullane waited while Tom Toole and his 
 friend sat down and then he proceeded with his tale.
 
 THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH 1 95 
 
 "Away with ye! said the devil to Neal Girlin, and 
 away he was gone to the four corners of the world. 
 And when he came to the first corner he saw a place 
 where the rivers do be rushing, . . ." 
 
 ". . . the only dam thing that does rush then in this 
 country," interrupted the Scotchman with a sneer. 
 
 "Shut your . . ." began the man from Bristol, but 
 he was taken with the cough, until his cheeks were 
 scarlet and his eyes, fixed angrily upon the Highland 
 man, were strained to teardrops. "Shut your . . ." he 
 began it again, but he was rent by a large and vexing 
 spasm that rocked him, while his friends looked at 
 him and wondered would he be long for this world. 
 He recovered quite suddenly and exclaimed ". . . dam 
 face" to that Highland man. And then Peter Mul- 
 lane went on : 
 
 "I am not given to thinking," said he, "that the Lord 
 would put a country the like of Ireland in a wee corner 
 of the world and he wanting the nook of it for thistles 
 and the poor savages that devour them. Well, Neal 
 Carlin came to a place where the rivers do be rush- 
 ing . . ." he paused invitingly — "and he saw a little 
 fairy creature with fine tresses of hair sitting under 
 a rowan tree." 
 
 "A rowan?" exclaimed the Highland man. 
 
 Peter nodded. 
 
 "A Scottish tree!" declared the other. 
 
 "O shut your . . ." began the little coughing man, 
 but again his conversation was broken, and by the 
 time he had recovered from his spasms the company 
 was mute.
 
 196 THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH 
 
 "If," said Peter Mullane, "you'd wish to observe the 
 rowan in its pride and beauty just clap your eye upon 
 it in the Galtee Mountains. How would it thrive, I 
 ask you, in a place was stiff with granite and sloppy 
 with haggis ? And what would ye do, my clever man, 
 what would ye do if ye met a sweet fairy 
 woman ... ?" 
 
 "I'd kiss the Judy," said the Highland man spitting 
 a great splash. 
 
 Peter Mullane gazed at him for a minute or two 
 as if he did not love him very much, but then he con- 
 tinued : 
 
 "Neal Carlin was attracted by her, she was a sweet 
 creature. Warm! says she to him with a friendly 
 tone. Begod, ma'am, it is a hot day, he said, and 
 thinks he, she is a likely person to give me my aspira- 
 tion. And sure enough when he sat down beside her 
 she asked him What is your aspiration, Neal Carlin? 
 and he said, saving your grace, ma'am, it is but to 
 enjoy the world and to be easy in it. That is a good 
 aspiration, she said, and she gave him some secret 
 advice. He went home to his farm, Neal Carlin did, 
 and he followed the advice, and in a month or two he 
 had grown very wealthy and things were easy with 
 him. But still he was not satisfied, he had a greedy 
 mind, and his farm looked a drifty little place that was 
 holding him down from big things. So he was not 
 satisfied though things were easy with him, and one 
 night before he went sleeping he made up his mind 
 'It's too small it is. I'll go away from it now and a farm 
 twice as big I will have, three times as big, yes, I will
 
 THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH 1 97 
 
 have it ten times as big.' He went sleeping on the 
 wildness of his avarice, and when he rolled off the 
 
 tie in the morning and stood up to stretch his limbs 
 he hit his head a wallop against the rafter. He cursed 
 it and had a kind of thought that the place had got 
 smaller. As he went from the door he struck his 
 brow against the lintel hard enough to beat down the 
 house. What is come to me. he roared in his pains; 
 and looking into his field there were his five cows and 
 his bullock no bigger than sheep— will ye believe that, 
 then — and his score of ewes no bigger than rabbits, 
 mind it now, and it was not all, for the very jackdaws 
 were no bigger than chafers and the neat little wo 
 was no more account than a grove of raspberry bushes. 
 Away he goes to the surgeon's to have drops put in his 
 s for he feared the blindness was coming on him, but 
 on his return there was his bullock no bigger than 
 an old boot, and his cabin had wasted to the size of 
 a birdcage." 
 
 Peter leaned forward, for the boys were quiet, and 
 consumed a deal of porter. And the Highland man 
 asked him "Well, what happened!" 
 
 "O he just went up to his cabin and kicked it over 
 the hedge as you might an old can. and then he 
 strolled off to another corner of the world, Neal Carlin 
 did, whistling 'The Lanty Girl.' " 
 
 Tom Toole's friend spoke to Peter Mullane. "Did 
 ye say it was in the Galtee Mountains that the young 
 fellow met the lady?" 
 
 "In the Galtee Mountains," said Peter. 
 
 "To the Galtee Mountains let us be going, Tom
 
 198 THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH 
 
 Toole," cried the little old man, "Come on now, there'll 
 be tidings in it!" 
 
 So off they drove ; and when they had driven a day 
 and slept a couple of nights they were there, and they 
 came to a place where the rivers do be rushing and 
 there was a rowan tree but no lady in it. 
 
 "What will we do now, Tom Toole?" says the old 
 man. 
 
 "We'll not stint it." says he, and they searched by 
 night and by day looking for a person would give them 
 their youth again. They sold the chaise for some 
 guineas and the pony for a few more, and they were 
 walking among the hills for a thousand days but never 
 a dust of fortune did they discover. Whenever they 
 asked a person to guide them they would be swearing 
 at them or they would jeer. 
 
 "Well, may a good saint stretch your silly old skins 
 for ye !" said one. 
 
 "Thinking of your graves and travelling to the priest 
 ye should be !" said another. 
 
 "The nails of your boots will be rusty and rotted 
 searching for the like of that," said a third. 
 
 "It's two quarts of black milk from a Kerry cow ye 
 want," said one, "take a sup of that and you'll be 
 young again!" 
 
 "Of black milk!" said Tom Toole's friend; "where 
 would we get that?" 
 
 The person said he would get a pull of it in the 
 Comeragh Mountains, fifty miles away. 
 
 "Tom Toole," said the little old man, "it's what I'll 
 do. I'll walk on to the Comeragh Mountains to see
 
 THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH 1 99 
 
 what I will see, and do you go on searching here, for 
 to find that young girl would be better than forty 
 guineas' worth of blather. And when I find the cow 
 I'll take my fill of a cup and bring you to it." 
 
 So they agreed upon it and the old man went away 
 saying. "I'll be a store of days, no more. Good day, 
 Tom Toole, good day !" much as an old crow might 
 shout it to a sweep. 
 
 When he was gone Tom Toole journeyed about the 
 world and the day after he went walking to a fair. 
 Along the road the little ass carts were dribbling into 
 town from Fews and Carrigleena, when he saw a young 
 girl in a field trying to secure an ass. 
 
 "Oi . . . Oi . . . !" the girl was calling out to him 
 and he went in the field and helped her with the ass, 
 which was a devil to capture and it not wanting. She 
 thanked him ; she was a sweet slip of a colleen with a 
 long fall of hair that the wind was easy with. 
 
 " 'Tis warm !" she said to Tom Toole. "Begod, 
 ma'am," says he to her quickly, taking his cue, "it is a 
 hot day." 
 
 "Where are ye going, Tom Toole?" she asked him, 
 and he said, "I am seeking a little contrivance, ma'am, 
 that will let me enjoy the world and live easy in it. 
 That is my aspiration." 
 
 "I'll give you what you are seeking," and she gave 
 him a wee bottle with red juices in it. 
 
 "Indeed, ma'am, I'm obliged to ye," and he took 
 her by the hand and wished her Good day and Good 
 luck and that he might meet her again. 
 
 When he got the elixir of youth he gave over his
 
 200 THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH 
 
 searching. He hid the bottle in his breast and went up 
 into the mountains as high as he could go to bide the 
 coming of the little old man. It is a queer thing but 
 Tom Toole had never heard the name of him — it would 
 be some foreign place in the corners of the world li 
 Portugal, that he had come from; no doubt. Up he 
 went; first there was rough pasture for bullocks, then 
 fern and burst furze, and then little but heather, and 
 great rocks strewn about like shells, and sour brown 
 streams coming from the bog. He wandered about 
 for twenty days and the old man did not return, and 
 for forty days he was still alone. 
 
 "The divil receive him but I'll die against his re- 
 turn !" And Tom Toole pulled the wee bottle from his 
 breast. He was often minded to lift the cork and take 
 a sup of the elixir of youth. "But," says he, "it 
 would be an unfriendly deed. Sure if I got me youth 
 sudden I'd be off to the wonders of the land and leave 
 that old fool roaming till the day of Judgment." And 
 he would put the bottle away and wait for scores of 
 days until he was sick and sorry with grieving. A 
 thousand days he was on his lonely wanderings, soft 
 days as mellow as cream, and hard days when it is ribs 
 of iron itself you would want to stiffen you against 
 the crack of the blast. His skimpy hair grew down to 
 the lappet of his coat, very ugly he was, but the little 
 stranger sheep of the mountain were not daunted when 
 he moved by, and even the flibeens had the soft call 
 for him. A thousand days was in it and then he said : 
 
 "Good evening to me good luck. I've had my enough 
 of this. Sure I'll despise myself for ever more if 1
 
 THE ELIXIR OE YOUTH 201 
 
 wait the tide of another drifting day. It's tonight I'll 
 sleep in a bed with a quilt of down over me heart, for 
 I'm going t<> be voting again.'' 
 
 He crept down the mountain to a neat little town and 
 
 til in n room in the public to have a enp of porter. 
 A little forlorn "Id man also came in from the road and 
 sat down beside, ami when the)- looked at each other 
 they each let out a groan. "Glory be !" says he. 
 "Glory be," cried Tom Toole, "it's the good little man 
 in the heel of it. Where in hell are ye from?" 
 
 "From the mountains." 
 
 "And what fortune is in it, did ye find the farm?" 
 
 "Divil a clod." 
 
 "Nor the Kerry cow?" 
 
 "Divil a horn."' 
 
 "Nor the good milk?" 
 
 "Divil a quart, and I that dry I could be drunk with 
 the smell of it. Tom Toole, I have traipsed the high 
 and the deep of this realm and believe you me it is not 
 in it ; the long and the wide of this realm . . . not in 
 it." I! muttering sadly "not in it." 
 
 "Me good little man," cried Tom Toole, "don't be 
 havering like an old goat. Here it is ! the fortune of 
 the world !" 
 
 He took the wee bottle from his breast and shook it 
 before hi . "The drops that 'ull give ye your 
 
 youth as easy as shifting a shirt. Come, now, I've 
 waited the long days to share wid ye, for I couldn't 
 bring myself to desart a comrade was ranging the back 
 of the wild regions for the likes of me. Many's the 
 time I've lifted that cork, and thinks I: He's gone,
 
 202 THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH 
 
 and soon I'll be going, so here goes. Divil a go was 
 in it. I could not do it, not for silver and not for gold 
 and not for all the mad raging mackerel that sleep in 
 the sea." 
 
 The little old stranger took the wee bottle in his two 
 hands. He was but a quavering stick of a man now; 
 half dead he was, and his name it is Martin O'Moore. 
 
 "Is it the rale stuff, Tom Toole?" 
 
 "From herself I got it," he said, and he let on to him 
 about that sweet-spoken young girl. 
 
 "Did she give you the directions on the head of it?" 
 
 "What directions is it ?" 
 
 "The many drops is a man to drink!" 
 
 "No, but a good sup of it will do the little job." 
 
 "A good sup of it, Tom Toole, a good sup of it, 
 ay?" says he unsqueezing the cork. "The elixir of 
 youth, a good sup of it, says you, a good sup of it, a 
 great good good sup of it!" 
 
 And sticking it into his mouth he drained the wee 
 bottle of its every red drop. He stood there looking 
 like a man in a fit, holding the empty bottle in his hand 
 until Tom Toole took it from him with reproaches in 
 his poor old eyes. But in a moment it was his very 
 eyes he thought were deceiving him ; not an inch of 
 his skin but had the dew of fear on it, for the little old 
 man began to change his appearance quick like the sand 
 running through a glass, or as fast as the country 
 changes down under a flying swan. 
 
 "Mother o' God!" screamed Martin O'Moore, "it's 
 too fast backward I'm growing, dizzy I am." 
 
 And indeed his bald head suddenly got the fine black
 
 THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH 203 
 
 hair grown upon it, the whiskers flew away from him 
 and his face was young. He began to wear a strange 
 old suit that suddenly got new, and he had grown down 
 through a handsome pair of trousers and into the little 
 kniekerhockers of a boy before you could count a score. 
 And he had a hit of a cold just then, though he was out 
 of it in a twink, and lie let a sneeze that hurst a button 
 off his breeches, a little tin button, which was all that 
 ever was found of him. Smaller and smaller he fell 
 away, like the dust in an hour glass, till he was no 
 bigger than an acorn and then devil a bit of him was 
 left there at all. 
 
 Tom Toole was frightened at the quiet and the emp- 
 tiness and he made to go away, but he turned in the 
 doorway and stretching out his arms to the empty 
 room he whispered "The greed ! the avarice ! May hell 
 pour all its buckets on your bad little heart ! May . . ." 
 But just then he caught sight of the cup of porter that 
 Martin O'Moore had forgotten to drink, so he went 
 back to drink his enough and then went out into the 
 great roaring world where he walked from here to 
 there until one day he came right back to his old 
 Asylum. He had been away for twenty years, he was 
 an old man, very old indeed. And there was the man 
 from Kilsheelan digging potatoes just inside the gates 
 of the sunny garden. 
 
 " Tis warm !" said the traveller staring at him 
 through the railings, but the man from Kilsheelan only 
 said "Come in, Tom Toole, is it staying or going ye 
 are?"
 
 THE CHERRY TREE
 
 THE CHERRY TREE 
 
 THERE was uproar somewhere among the 
 ckyards of Australia Street. It was so 
 alarming that people at their midday meal sat 
 still and stared at one another. A fortnight before 
 murder had been done in the street, in broad daylight 
 with a chopper ; people were nervous. An upper win- 
 dow was thrown open and a startled and startling 
 head exposed. 
 
 "It's that young devil, Johnny Flynn. again ! Killing 
 rats!" shouted Mrs. Knatchbole, shaking her fist 
 towards the Flynns' backyard. Mrs. Knatchbole was 
 ugly; she had a goitred neck and a sharp skinny nose 
 with an orb shining at its end, constant as grief. 
 
 '"\ ou wait, my boy, till your mother comes home, you 
 just wait!" invited this apparition, but Johnny was 
 gazing sickly at the body of a big rat slaughtered by 
 the dogs of his friend George. The uproar was caused 
 by the quarrelling of the dogs, possibly for honours, 
 but more probably, as is the custom of victors, for loot. 
 
 "Bob down!" warned George, but Johnny bobbed up 
 to catch the full anger of those baleful Knatchbole 
 eyes. The urchin put his lingers promptly to his nose. 
 
 "Look at that for eight years old !" screamed the lady. 
 
 207
 
 208 THE CHERRY TREE 
 
 "Eight years old 'e is ! As true as God's my maker 
 I'll . . ." 
 
 The impending vow was stayed and blasted for ever, 
 Mrs. Knatchbole being taken with a fit of sneezing, 
 whereupon the boys uttered some derisive "Haw 
 haws !" 
 
 So Mrs. Knatchbole met Mrs. Flynn that night as she 
 came from work, Mrs. Flynn being a widow who toiled 
 daily and dreadfully at a laundry and perforce left her 
 children, except for their school hours, to their own 
 devices. The encounter was an emphatic one and the 
 tired widow promised to admonish her boy. 
 
 "But it's all right, Mrs. Knatchbole, he's going from 
 me in a week, to his uncle in London he is going, a 
 person of wealth, and he'll be no annoyance to ye then. 
 I'm ashamed that he misbehaves but he's no bad boy 
 really." 
 
 At home his mother's remonstrances reduced Johnny 
 to repentance and silence; he felt base indeed; he 
 wanted to do something great and worthy at once to 
 offset it all ; he wished he had got some money, he'd 
 have gone and bought her a bottle of stout — he knew 
 she liked stout. 
 
 "Why do ye vex people so, Johnny?" asked Mrs. 
 Flynn wearily. "I work my fingers to the bone for ye, 
 week in and week out. Why can't ye behave like 
 Pomony ?" 
 
 His sister was a year younger than he; her name 
 was Mona, which Johnny's elegant mind had disliked. 
 One day he re-baptized her ; Pomona she became and 
 Pomona she remained. The Flynns sat down to supper.
 
 THE CHERRY TREE 209 
 
 "Never mind, mum," said the boy, kissing her as he 
 ed, "talk to US about the cherry tree!" The cherry 
 tree, luxuriantly hluoming, was the crown of the 
 mother's memories of her youth and her father's farm; 
 around the myth of its wonderful blossoms and fruit 
 she could weave garlands of romance, and to her own 
 mind as well as to the minds of her children it became 
 a heavenly symbol of her old lost home, grand with 
 acres and delightful with orchard and full pantry. 
 What wonder that in her humorous narration the joys 
 were multiplied and magnified until even Johnny was 
 obliged to intervene. "Look here, how many horses 
 did your father have, mum . . . really, though?" Mr-. 
 Flynn became vague, cast a furtive glance at this son 
 of hers and then gulped with laughter until she recov- 
 ered her ground with "Ah, but there was a cherry 
 tree!'' It was a grand supper — actually a polony and 
 some potatoes. Johnny knew this was because he was 
 going away. Kver since it was known that he was to go 
 to London they had been having something special like 
 this, or sheep's trotters or a pig's tail. Mother seemed 
 to grow kinder and kinder to him. He wished he had 
 some money, he would like to buy her a bottle of stout 
 — he knew she liked stout. 
 
 Well, Johnny went away to live with his un :le, but 
 alas he was only two months in London before he was 
 returned to his mother and Pomony. Uncle was an 
 engine-driver who disclosed to his astounded nephew 
 a passion for gardening. This was incomprehensible to 
 Johnny Flynn. A great roaring boiling locomotive was 
 the grandest thing in the world. Johnny had rides on
 
 2IO THE CHERRY TREE 
 
 it, so he knew. And it was easy for him to imagine 
 that every gardener cherished in the darkness of his 
 disappointed soul an unavailing passion for a steam 
 engine, but how an engine-driver could immerse him- 
 self in the mushiness of gardening was a baffling prob- 
 lem. However, before he returned home he discovered 
 one important thing from his uncle's hobby, and he sent 
 the information to his sister : 
 
 Dear Pomona — 
 
 Uncle Harry has got a alotment and grozv veggu- 
 tables. He says -what makes the mold is worms. You 
 knoiv we puled all the worms out off our garden and 
 chukked them over Miss Natchbols zvall. Well you 
 better get some more quick a lot ask George to help 
 you and I bring som seeds home when I comes next 
 week by the xcursion on Moms birthday 
 
 Your sincerely brother 
 
 John Fly tin 
 
 On mother's birthday Pomona met him at the station. 
 She kissed him shyly and explained that mother was 
 going to have a half holiday to celebrate the double 
 occasion and would be home with them at dinner time. 
 "Pomony, did you get them worms?" 
 Pomona was inclined to evade the topic of worms 
 for the garden, but fortunately her brother's enthusi- 
 asm for another gardening project tempered the wind 
 of his indignation. When they reached home he un- 
 wrapped two parcels he had brought with him ; he ex- 
 plained his scheme to his sister; he led her into the 
 garden. The Flynns' backyard, mostly paved with
 
 TIIK CHERRY TREE 21 1 
 
 bricks, was small and so the enclosing walls, truculently 
 capped by chips of glass, although too low for privacy 
 were yet too high for the growth of any cherishable 
 plant. Johnny had certainly once reared a magnifi- 
 cent exhibit of two cowslips, but these had been myste- 
 riously destroyed by the Knatchbole cat. The dank 
 little enclosure was charged with sterility; nothing 
 flourished there except a lot of beetles and a daunt- 
 1< reen bush, as tall as Johnny, displaying a pro- 
 
 fusion of thick shiny leaves that you could split on 
 your tongue and make squeakers with. Pomona 
 showed him how to do this and they then busied them- 
 selves in the garden until the dinner siren warned them 
 that Mother would be coming home. They hurried 
 into the kitchen and Pomona quickly spread the cloth 
 and the plates of food upon the table, while Johnny 
 placed conspicuously in the centre, after laboriously 
 extracting the stopper with a fork and a hair-pin. a 
 bottle of stout brought from London. He had been 
 much impressed by numberless advertisements upon 
 the hoardings respecting this attractive beverage. The 
 children then ran off to meet their mother and they 
 all came home together with great hilarity. Mrs. 
 Flynn's attention having been immediately drawn 
 to the sinister decoration of her dining table. Po- 
 mona was requested to pour out a glass of the 
 nectar. Johnny handed this gravely to his parent, say- 
 ing: 
 
 "Many happy returns of the clay, Mrs. Flynn!" 
 "O, dear, dear!" gasped his mother merrily, "you 
 drink first!"
 
 212 THE CHERRY TREE 
 
 "Excuse me, no, Mrs. Flynn," rejoined her son, 
 "many happy returns of the day !" 
 
 When the toast had been honoured Pomona and 
 Johnny looked tremendously at each other. 
 
 "Shall we?" exclaimed Pomona. 
 
 "O yes," decided Johnny; "come on, mum, in the 
 garden, something marvellous !" 
 
 She followed her children into that dull little den, 
 and fortuitously the sun shone there for the occasion. 
 Behold, the dauntless evergreen bush had been 
 stripped of its leaves and upon its blossomless twigs 
 the children had hung numerous couples of ripe 
 cherries, white and red and black. 
 
 "What do you think of it, mum?" cried the chil- 
 dren, snatching some of the fruit and pressing it into 
 her hands, "what do you think of it ?" 
 
 "Beautiful!" said the poor woman in a tremulous 
 voice. They stared silently at their mother until she 
 could bear it no longer. She turned and went sobbing 
 into the kitchen.
 
 CLORINDA WALKS IN HEAVEN
 
 CLORINDA WALKS IN HEAVEN 
 
 MISS SMITH, Clorinda Smith, desired not to 
 die on a wet day. Her speculations upon 
 the possibilities of one's demise were quite 
 ingenuous and had their mirth, but she shrunk from 
 that figure of her dim little soul — and it was only 
 dimly that she could figure it at all — approaching the 
 pathways of the Boundless in a damp, bedraggled con- 
 dition. 
 
 "But the rain couldn't harm your spirit," declared 
 her comforting friends. 
 
 "Why not?" asked Clorinda, "if there is a ghost 
 of me, why not a ghost of the rain?" 
 
 There were other aspects, delectable and illusive, 
 of this imagined apotheosis, but Clorinda always hoped 
 — against hope be it said — that it wouldn't be wet. 
 On three evenings there had been a bow in the sky, 
 and on the day she died rain poured in fury. With 
 a golden key she unlocked the life out of her bosom 
 and moved away without fear, as if a great light had 
 sprung suddenly under her feet in a little dark place, 
 into a region where things became starkly real and one 
 
 nied to live like the beams rolling on the tasselled 
 corn in windy acres. There was calmness in those 
 
 215
 
 2l6 CLORINDA WALKS IN HEAVEN 
 
 translucent leagues and the undulation amid a vast im- 
 placable light until she drifted, like a feather fallen 
 from an unguessed star, into a place which was ex- 
 traordinarily like the noon-day world, so green and 
 warm was its valley. 
 
 A little combe lay between some low hills of turf, 
 and on a green bank beside a few large rocks was a 
 man mending a ladder of white new-shaven willow 
 studded with large brass nails, mending it with hard 
 knocks that sounded clearly. The horizon was ter- 
 raced only just beyond and above him, for the hills 
 rolled steeply up. Thin pads of wool hung in the 
 arch of the ultimate heavens, but towards the end of 
 the valley the horizon was crowded with clouds 
 torn and disbattled. Two cows, a cow of white and 
 a cow of tan, squatted where one low hill held up, as 
 it were, the sunken limits of the sky. There were 
 larks — in such places the lark sings for ever — and 
 thrushes — the wind vaguely active — seven white ducks 
 — a farm. Each nook was a flounce of blooms and 
 a bower for birds. Passing close to the man — he was 
 sad and preoccupied, dressed in a little blue tunic — she 
 touched his arm as if to enquire a direction, saying 
 "Jacob !" 
 
 She did not know what she would have asked of 
 him, but he gave her no heed and she again called to 
 him "Jacob!" He did not seem even to see her, so 
 she went to the large white gates at the end of the 
 valley and approached a railway crossing. She had 
 to wait a long time for trains of a vastness and gran- 
 deur were passing, passing without sound. Strange
 
 CLORINDA WALKS IX IIF.AYLX 217 
 
 advertisements on the hoardings and curious direction 
 ts gathered some of her attention. She observed 
 that in every possible situation, on any available post 
 or stone, people had carved initials, sometimes a whole 
 name, often with a date, and Clorinda experienced 
 a doubt of the genuineness of some of these so remote 
 was the antiquity implied. At last, the trains were 
 all gone by, and as the barriers swung back she crossed 
 the permanent way. 
 
 There was neither ambiguity in her movements nor 
 surprise in her apprehensions. She just crossed over 
 to a group of twenty or thirty men who moved to 
 welcome her. The)- were ban ' indal-footed, 
 
 lightly clad in beautiful loose tunics of peacock and 
 cinnamon, which bore not so much the significance 
 of colour as the quality of light; one of them rushed 
 eagerly forward, crying "Clorinda!" offering to her 
 a long coloured scarf. Strangely, as he came closer, 
 he grew Tes< perceivable; Clorinda was aware in a 
 flash that she was viewing him by some other mechan- 
 ism than that of her two eyes. Tn a moment he utterly 
 disappeared and she felt herself wrapt into his being, 
 caressed with faint caresses, and troubled with dim 
 faded ecstasies and recognitions not wholly agreeable. 
 The other men stood grouped around them, glancing 
 with half-closed cynical eyes. Those who stood far- 1 
 thest away were more clearly seen : in contiguity a 
 presence could only be divined, resting only — but how 
 admirably! — in the nurture of one's mind. 
 
 "What is it?" Clorinda asked: and all the voices 
 replied, "Yes, we know you!"
 
 2l8 CLORINDA WALKS IN HEAVEN 
 
 She felt herself released, and the figure of the man 
 rejoined the waiting group. "I was your husband 
 Reuben," said the first man slowly, and Qorinda, who 
 had been a virgin throughout her short life, exclaimed 
 "Yes, yes, dear Reuben !" with momentary tremors 
 and a queer fugitive drift of doubt. She stood there, 
 a spook of comprehending being, and all the uncharted 
 reefs in the map of her mind were anxiously engaging 
 her. For a time she was absorbed by this new knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 Then another voice spoke : 
 
 "I was your husband Raphael !" 
 
 "I know, I know," said Clorinda, turning to the 
 speaker, "we lived in Judea." 
 
 "And we dwelt in the valley of the Nile," said an- 
 other, "in the years that are gone." 
 
 "And I too . . . and I too . . . and I too," they all 
 clamoured, turning angrily upon themselves. 
 
 Clorinda pulled the strange scarf from her shoulders 
 where Reuben had left it, and, handling it so, she 
 became aware of her many fugitive sojournings upon 
 the earth. It seemed that all of her past had become 
 knit in the scarf into a compact pattern of beauty 
 and ugliness of which she was entirely aware, all 
 its multiplexity being immediately resolved . . . the 
 habitations with cave men, and the lesser human unit of 
 the lesser later day. Patagonian, Indian, Cossack, Poly- 
 nesian, Jew ... of such stuff the pattern was intimately 
 woven, and there were little plangent perfect moments 
 of the past that fell into order in the web. Clorinda 
 watching the great seabird with pink feet louting
 
 CLORINDA WALKS IN HEAVEN 219 
 
 above the billows that roared upon Iceland, or Clo- 
 rinda hanging her girdle upon the ebony hooks of the 
 image of Tunteelee. She had taken voyaging drafts 
 upon the whole world, cataract jungle and desert, ingle 
 and pool and strand, ringing the changes upon a whole 
 gamut of masculine endeavour . . . from a prophet 
 to a haberdasher. She could feel each little life lying 
 now as in a sarsnet of cameos upon her visible breasts: 
 thereby for these . . . these men . . . she was draped 
 in an eternal wonder. But she could not recall any 
 image of her past life in these realms, save only that 
 her scarf was given back to her on every return by 
 a man of these men. 
 
 She could remember with humility her transient 
 passions for them all. None, not one, had ever given 
 her the measure of her own desire, a strong harsh flame 
 that fashioned and tempered its own body; nothing 
 but a nebulous glow that was riven into embers before 
 its beam had sweetened into pride. She had gone 
 from them childless always and much as a little child. 
 
 From the crowd of quarrelling ghosts a new figure 
 detached itself, and in its approach it subdued that 
 v ague vanishing which had been so perplexing to Clo- 
 rinda. Out of the crowd it slipped, and loomed lov- 
 ingly beside her, took up her thought and the inter- 
 rogation that came into her mind. 
 
 "No," it said gravely, "there is none greater than 
 these. The ultimate reaches of man's mind produce 
 nothing but images of men." 
 
 "But," said Clorinda. "do you mean that our ideals, 
 previsions of a vita-nuova . . ."
 
 220 CLORINDA WALKS IN HEAVEN 
 
 "J u st so," it continued, "a mere intoxication. Even 
 here you cannot escape the singular dower of dreams 
 . . . you can be drunk with dreams more easily and 
 more permanently than with drugs." 
 
 The group of husbands had ceased their quarrelling 
 to listen; Clorinda swept them with her glances 
 thoughtfully and doubtfully. 
 
 "Could mankind be so poor," the angel resumed, "as 
 poor as these, if it housed something greater than it- 
 self ?" 
 
 With a groan the group of outworn husbands drew 
 away. Clorinda turned to her companion with dis- 
 appointment and some dismay. ... "I hardly under- 
 stand yet ... is this all then just . . ." 
 
 "Yes," it replied, "just the ghost of the world." 
 
 She turned unhappily and looked back across the 
 gateway into the fair combe with its cattle, its fine 
 grass, and the man working diligently therein. A sense 
 of bleak loneliness began to possess her; here, then, 
 was no difference save that there were no correlations, 
 no consequences ; nothing had any effect except to 
 produce the ghost of a ghost. There was already in 
 the hinterland of her apprehensions a ghost, a ghost of 
 her new ghostship : she was to be followed by herself, 
 pursued by figures of her own ceaseless being ! 
 
 She looked at the one by her side : "Who are you ?" 
 she asked, and at the question the group of men drew 
 again very close to them. 
 
 "I am your unrealized desires," it said: "Did you 
 think that the dignity of virginhood, rarely and deliber-
 
 CLORINDA WALKS IN HEAVEN 221 
 
 ately chosen, could be so brief and barren? Why, that 
 pure idea was my own immaculate birth, and I was 
 born, the living mate of you." 
 
 The hungry-eyed men shouted with laughter. 
 
 "Go away!" screamed Clorinda to them; "I do not 
 want you." 
 
 Although they went she could hear the echoes of 
 their sneering as she took the arm of her new lover. 
 "Let us go," she said, pointing to the man in the combe, 
 "and speak to him." As they approached the man he 
 lifted his ladder hugely in the air and dashed it to the 
 ground so passionately that it broke. 
 
 "Angry man! angry man!" mocked Clorinda. He 
 turned towards her fiercely. Clorinda began to fear 
 him; the muscles and knots of his limbs were uncouth 
 like the gnarl of old trees; she made a little pretence 
 of no more observing him. 
 
 "Now what is it like," said she jocularly to the angel 
 at her side, and speaking of her old home, "what is it 
 like now at Weston-super-Mare?" 
 
 At that foolish question the man with the ladder 
 reached forth an ugly hand and twitched the scarf 
 from her shoulders. 
 
 It cannot now be told to what remoteness she had 
 come, or on what roads her undirected feet had trav- 
 elled there, but certain it is that in that moment she 
 was gone. . . . Why, where, or how cannot be estab- 
 lished : whether she was swung in a blast of annihila- 
 tion into the uttermost gulfs, or withdrawn for her 
 beauty into that mysterious Nox, into some passionate
 
 222 CLORINDA WALKS IN HEAVEN 
 
 communion with the eternal husbands, or into some 
 eternal combat with their passionate other wives . . . 
 from our scrutiny at least she passed for ever. 
 
 It is true there was a beautiful woman of this 
 name who lay for a month in a deep trance in the 
 West of England. On her recovery she was balladed 
 about in the newspapers and upon the halls for quite a 
 time, and indeed her notoriety brought requests for her 
 autograph from all parts of the world, and an offer 
 of marriage from a Quaker potato merchant. But 
 she tenderly refused him and became one of those 
 faded grey old maids who wear their virginity like 
 antiquated armour.
 
 CRAVEN ARMS
 
 CRAVEN ARMS 
 
 THE teacher of the sketching class at the eve- 
 ning school was a man who had no great ca- 
 pacity for enduring affection, but his hand- 
 some appearance often inspired in women those emo- 
 tions which if not enduring are deep and disturbing. 
 His own passions may have been deep but they were 
 undeniably fickle. 
 
 The townspeople were proud of their new school 
 for in addition to the daily curriculum evening instruc- 
 tion of an advanced modern kind was given. Of 
 course all schools since the beginning of time have been 
 modern at some period of their existence but this one 
 was modern, so the vicar declared, because it was so 
 blessedly hygienic. It was built upon a high tree- 
 arboured slope overlooking the snug small town and on 
 its western side stared ambiguously at a free upland 
 country that was neither small nor snug. The seven- 
 teen young women and the nine young men were defi- 
 nitely, indeed articulately, inartistic, they were as an- 
 aesthetic as pork pies, all except Julia Tern, a golden- 
 haired fine-complexioned fawn of a girl whose talent 
 
 225
 
 226 CRAVEN ARMS 
 
 was already beyond the reach of any instruction the 
 teacher could give. He could not understand why she 
 continued to attend his classes. 
 
 One evening she brought for his criticism a portrait 
 sketch of himself. 
 
 "This is extraordinarily beautiful," he murmured. 
 
 "Yes?" said Julia. 
 
 "I mean the execution, the presentation and so 
 on." 
 
 Julia did not reply. He stared at her picture of him, 
 a delicately modelled face with a suggestion of nobil- 
 ity, an air that was kind as it was grave. The gravity 
 and nobility which so pleased him were perhaps the 
 effect of a high brow from which the long brown hair 
 flowed thinly back to curve in a tidy cluster at his 
 neck. Kindness beamed in the eyes and played around 
 the thin mouth, sharp nose, and positive chin. What 
 could have inspired her to make this idealization of 
 himself, for it was idealization in spite of its fidelity 
 and likeness? He knew he had little enough nobility 
 of character — too little to show so finely — and as for 
 that calm gravity of aspect, why gravity simply was 
 not in him. But there it was on paper, deliberate and 
 authentic, inscribed with his name — David Masterman 
 ipio. 
 
 "When, how did you come to do it?" 
 
 "I just wanted it, you were a nice piece, I watched 
 you a good deal, and there you are !" She said it jaun- 
 tily but there was a pink flush in her cheeks. 
 
 "It's delicious," he mused, "I envy you. I can't 
 touch a decent head — not even yours. But why have
 
 CRAVEN ARMS 227 
 
 you idealized me so?" He twitted her lightly about 
 the gravity and nobility. 
 
 "But you are like that, you are. That's how I see 
 you, at this moment." 
 
 She did not give him the drawing as he hoped she 
 would. He did not care to ask her for it — there was 
 delirious flattery in the thought that she treasured it so 
 much. Masterman was a rather solitary man of about 
 thirty, with a modest income which he supplemented 
 with the fees from these classes. He lived alone in a 
 wooden bungalow away out of the town and painted 
 numbers of landscapes, rather lifeless imitations, as he 
 knew, of other men's masterpieces. They were 
 frequently sold. 
 
 Sometimes on summer afternoons he would go into 
 woods or fields with a few of his pupils to sketch or 
 paint farmhouses, trees, clouds, stacks, and other rural 
 furniture. He was always hoping to sit alone with 
 Julia Tern but there were other loyal pupils who never 
 missed these occasions, among them the two Forrest 
 girls, Tanthe the younger, and Katharine, daughters of 
 a thriving contractor. Julia remained inscrutable, she 
 gave him no opportunities at all ; he could never divine 
 her feelings or gather any response to his own. but 
 there could be no doubt of the feelings of the Forrest 
 girls — they quite certainly liked him enormously. Ex- 
 cept for that, they too, could have no reason for con- 
 tinuing in his classes for both were as devoid of artis- 
 tic grace as an inkstand. They brought fruit or choc- 
 olate to the classes and shared them with him. Their 
 attentions, their mutual attentions, were manifested in
 
 228 CRAVEN ARMS 
 
 many ways, small but significant and kind. On these 
 occasions Julia's eyes seemed to rest upon him with an 
 ironical gaze. It was absurd. He liked them well 
 enough and sometimes from his shy wooing of the 
 adorable but enigmatic Julia he would turn for solace 
 to Ianthe. Yet strangely enough it was Kate, the least 
 alluring to him of the three girls, who took him to 
 her melancholy heart. 
 
 Ianthe was a little bud of womanhood, dark-haired 
 but light-headed, dressed in cream coloured clothes. 
 She was small and right and tight, without angularities 
 or rhythms, just one dumpy solid roundness. But she 
 had an astonishing vulgarity of speech, if not of mind, 
 that exacerbated him and in the dim corridors of his 
 imagination she did not linger, she scurried as it were 
 into doorways or upon twisting staircases or stood 
 briefly where a loop of light fell upon her hair, her 
 dusky face, her creamy clothes, and her delightful 
 rotundities. She had eyes of indiscretion and a mind 
 like a hive of bees, it had such a tiny opening and was 
 so full of a cloying content. 
 
 One day he suddenly found himself alone with Ianthe 
 in a glade of larch trees which they had all been sketch- 
 ing. They had loitered. He had been naming wild 
 flowers which Ianthe had picked for the purpose and 
 then thrown wantonly away. She spied a single plant 
 of hellebore growing in the dimness under the closely 
 planted saplings. 
 
 "Don't ! don't !" he cried. He kept her from pluck- 
 ing it and they knelt down together to admire the white 
 virginal flower.
 
 CRAVEN ARMS 229 
 
 His arm fell round Ianthe's waist in a light casual 
 way. He scarcely realized its presumption. He had 
 not intended to do it ; as far as that went he did not 
 particularly want to do it, but there his arm was. 
 Ianthe took no notice of the embrace and he felt fool- 
 ish, he could not retreat until they rose to walk on ; 
 then Ianthe pressed close to his side until his arm once 
 more stole round her and they kissed. 
 
 "Heavens above !" she said, "you do get away with it 
 quick." 
 
 "Life's short, there's no time to lose, I do as I'd 
 be done by." 
 
 "And there are so many of us! But glory," said 
 the jolly girl, taking him to her bosom, "in for a penny, 
 in for a pound." 
 
 She did not pick any more flowers and soon they 
 were out of the wood decorously joining the others. 
 He imagined that Julia's gaze was full of irony, and 
 the timid wonder in Kate's eyes moved him uncom- 
 fortably. There was something idiotic in the whole 
 affair. 
 
 Until the end of the summer he met Ianthe often 
 enough in the little town or the city three miles off. 
 Her uncouthness still repelled him ; sometimes he dis- 
 liked her completely, but she was always happy to be 
 with him, charmingly fond and gay with all the en- 
 dearing alertness of a pert bird. 
 
 Her sister Kate was not just the mere female that 
 Ianthe was; at once sterner and softer her passions 
 were more strong but their defences stood solid as a 
 rock. In spite of her reserve she was always on the
 
 230 CRAVEN ARMS 
 
 brink of her emotions and they, unhappily for her, 
 were often not transient, but enduring. She was 
 nearly thirty, still unwed. Her dark beauty, for she, 
 too, was fine, seemed to brood in melancholy over his 
 attentions to the other two women. She was quiet, 
 she had little to say, she seemed to stand and wait. 
 One autumn night at the school after the pupils had 
 gone home he walked into the dim lobby for his hat and 
 coat. Kate Forrest was there. She stood with her 
 back to him adjusting her hat. She did not say a word 
 nor did he address her. They were almost touching 
 each other, there was a pleasant scent about her. In the 
 classroom behind the caretaker was walking about the 
 hollow-sounding floor, humming loudly as he clapped 
 down windows and mounted the six chairs to turn out 
 the six gas lamps. When the last light through the 
 glazed door was gone and the lobby was completely 
 dark Kate all at once turned to him, folded him in her 
 arms, and held him to her breast for one startling 
 moment, then let him go, murmuring O . . . O . . . 
 It made him strangely happy. He pulled her back in 
 the gloom, whispering tender words. They walked 
 out of the hall into the dark road and stopped to con- 
 front each other. The road was empty and dark ex- 
 cept for a line of gas lamps that gleamed piercingly 
 bright in the sharp air and on the polished surface of 
 the road that led back from the hill down past her 
 father's villa. There were no lamps in the opposite 
 direction and the road groped its way out into the dark 
 country where he lived, a mile beyond the town. It
 
 CRAVEN ARMS 23 I 
 
 was wind) and some unseen trees behind a wall near 
 them swung and to ed with many pleasant sounds. 
 
 "1 will come a little way with you," Kate said. 
 
 "Yes, come a little way," he whispered, pressing 
 her arm, "I'll come hack with you." 
 
 She took his arm and they turned towards the coun- 
 try. He could think of nothing to say, he was utterly 
 subdued by his surprise ; Kate was sad, even moody ; 
 but at last she said slowly : "I am unlucky, I always 
 fall in love with men who can't love me." 
 
 "( > but I can and do, dear Kate," he cried lightly. 
 "Love me, Kate, go on loving me, I'm not, well, I'm 
 not very wicked." 
 
 "No, no, you do not." She shook her head mourn- 
 fully: after a few moments she added: "It's Julia 
 Tern." 
 
 He was astounded. How could she have known 
 this, how could any one have known — even Julia her- 
 self ? It was queer that she did not refer to his friend- 
 ship with Ianthe; he thought that was much more 
 obvious than his love for Julia. In a mood that he 
 only half understood he began to deny her reproach- 
 ful charge. 
 
 "Why, you must think me very fickle indeed. I 
 really love you, dear Kate, really you." His arm was 
 around her neck, he smoothed her cheek fondly against 
 his own. She returned his caresses but he could 
 glimpse the melancholy doubt in her averted eyes. 
 
 "We often talk of you, we often talk of you at night, 
 in bed, often."
 
 232 CRAVEN ARMS 
 
 "What do you say about me — in bed? Who?" 
 "Ianthe and me. She likes you." 
 "She likes me! What do you say about me — in 
 bed?" 
 
 He hoped Ianthe had not been indiscreet but Kate 
 only said : "She doesn't like you as I do — not like this." 
 
 Soon they began to walk back toward the town. He 
 smiled once when, as their footsteps clattered unregu- 
 larly upon the hard clean road, she skipped to adjust 
 the fall of her steps to his. 
 
 "Do not come any further," she begged as they 
 neared the street lamps. "It doesn't matter, not at all, 
 what I've said to you. It will be all right. I shall 
 see you again." 
 
 Once more she put her arms around his neck mur- 
 muring : "Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight." 
 
 He watched her tripping away. When he turned 
 homewards his mind was full of thoughts that were 
 only dubiously pleasant. It was all very sweet, sur- 
 prisingly sweet, but it left him uneasy. He managed 
 to light a cigarette, but the wind blew smoke into his 
 eyes, tore the charred end into fiery rags and tossed 
 the sparkles across his shoulder. If it had only been 
 Julia Tern ! — or even Ianthe ! — he would have been 
 wholly happy, but this was disturbing. Kate was good- 
 looking but these quietly passionate advances amazed 
 him. Why had he been so responsive to her? He 
 excused himself, it was quite simple; you could not 
 let a woman down, a loving woman like that, not at 
 once, a man should be kind. But what did she mean
 
 CRAVEN ARMS 233 
 
 when she spoke of always falling in love with men 
 who did not like her? He tossed the cigarette away 
 and turned up the collar of his coat for the faintest 
 fall of warm rain blew against his face like a soft 
 beautiful net. He thrust his hands into his pockets and 
 walked sharply and forgettingly home. 
 
 11 
 
 Two miles away from the little town was the big city 
 with tramways, electric light, factories, canals, and tens 
 of thousands of people, where a few nights later he 
 met Ianthe. Walking around and away from the happy 
 lighted streets they came out upon the bank of a canal 
 where darkness and loneliness were intensified by the 
 silent passage of black water whose current they could 
 divine but could not see. As they stepped warily 
 along the unguarded bank he embraced her. Even a3 
 he did so he cursed himself for a fool to be so fond 
 of this wretched imp of a girl. In his heart he believed 
 he disliked her, but he was not sure. She was childish, 
 artful, luscious, stupid — this was no gesture for a man 
 with any standards. Silently clutching each other they 
 approached an iron bridge with lamps upon it and a 
 lighted factory beyond it. The softly-moving water 
 could now be seen — the lamps on the bridge let down 
 thick rods of light into its quiet depths and beyond the 
 arch the windows of the factory, inverted in the stream, 
 bloomed like baskets of fire with flaming fringes among 
 the eddies caused by the black pillars. A boy shuffled 
 across the bridge whistling a tune ; there was the rumble
 
 234 CRAVEN ARMS 
 
 and trot of a cab. Then all sounds melted into a quiet 
 without one wave of air. The unseen couple had 
 kissed, Ianthe was replying to him: 
 
 "No, no, I like it, I like you." She put her brow 
 against his breast. "I like you, I like you." 
 
 His embracing hand could feel the emotion stream- 
 ing within the girl. 
 
 "Do you like me better than her?" 
 
 "Than whom ?" he asked. 
 
 Ianthe was coy. "You know, you know." 
 
 Masterman's feelings were a mixture of perturba- 
 tion and delight, delight at this manifestation of 
 jealousy of her sister which was an agreeable thing, 
 anyway, for it implied a real depth of regard for him; 
 but he was perturbed for he did not know what Kate 
 had told this sister of their last strange meeting. He 
 saluted her again exclaiming: "Never mind her. 
 This is our outing, isn't it?" 
 
 "I don't like her," Ianthe added naively, "she is so 
 awfully fond of you." 
 
 "O confound her," he cried, and then, "you mustn't 
 mind me saying that so, so sharply, you don't mind, 
 do you?" 
 
 Ianthe's lips were soft and sweet. Sisters were 
 quite unscrupulous, Masterman had heard of such 
 cases before, but he had tenderness and a reluctance to 
 wound anybody's susceptibility, let alone the feelings 
 of a woman who loved. He was an artist not only in 
 paint, but in sentiment, and it is possible that he ex- 
 celled in the less tangible medium. 
 
 "It's a little awkward," he ventured. Ianthe didn't
 
 CRAVEN ARMS 235 
 
 understand, she didn't understand that at all. 
 
 "The difficulty, you see," he said with the air of one 
 handling whimsically a question of perplexity that yet 
 yielded its amusement, "is ... is Kate." 
 
 "Kate?" said Ianthe. 
 
 "She is so — so gone, so absolutely gone." 
 
 "Gone?" 
 
 "Well, she's really really in love, deeply, deeply," 
 he said looking away anywhere but at her sister's 
 eyes. 
 
 "With Chris Halton, do you mean?" 
 
 "Ho, ho !" he laughed, "Halton ! Lord, no, with me, 
 with me, isn't she?" 
 
 "With you !" 
 
 But Ianthe was quite positive even a little ironical 
 about that. "She is not, she rather dislikes you, Mr. 
 Prince Charming, so there. We speak of you some- 
 times at night in bed — we sleep together. She knows 
 what / think of you but she's quite, well she doesn't 
 like you at all — she acts the heavy sister." 
 
 "O," said Masterman, groping as it were for some 
 light in his darkness. 
 
 "She — what do you think — she warns me against 
 you," Ianthe continued. 
 
 "Against me?" 
 
 "As if I care. Do you?" 
 
 "No, no. I don't care." 
 
 They left the dark bank where they had been stand- 
 ing and walked along to the bridge. Halfway up its 
 steps to the road he paused and asked : "Then who is it 
 that is so fond of me?"
 
 236 CRAVEN ARMS 
 
 "O you know, you know." Ianthe nestled blissfully 
 in his arm again. 
 
 "No, but who is it, I may be making another howler. 
 I thought you meant Kate, what did she warn you of, 
 I mean against me?" 
 
 They were now in the streets again, walking towards 
 the tram centre. The shops were darkened and closed, 
 but the cinemas lavished their unwanted illuminations 
 on the street. There were no hurrying people, there 
 was just strolling ease; the policemen at corners were 
 chatting to other policemen now in private clothes. 
 The brilliant trams rumbled and clanged and stopped, 
 the saloons were full and musical. 
 
 "What did she warn you against?" he repeated. 
 
 "You," chuckled Ianthe. 
 
 "But what about? What has she got against me?" 
 
 "Everything. You know, you know you do." The 
 archness of Ianthe was objectively baffling but under 
 it all he read its significance, its invitation. 
 
 He waited beside her for a tram but when it came 
 he pleaded a further engagement in the city. He had 
 no other engagement, he only wanted to be alone, to 
 sort out the things she had dangled before his mind, 
 so he boarded the next car and walked from the Tutsan 
 terminus to his cottage. Both girls were fond of him, 
 then — Ianthe's candour left him no room for doubt — 
 and they were both lying to each other about him. 
 Well, he didn't mind that, lies were a kind of protective 
 colouring, he lied himself whenever it was necessary, 
 or suited him. Not often, but truth was not always 
 possible to sensitive minded men. Why, after all,
 
 CRAVEN ARMS 237 
 
 should sympathetic mendacity be a monopoly of polite 
 society ? "But it's also the trick of thieves and seducers, 
 David Masterman," he muttered to himself. "I'm not 
 a thief, no, I'm not a thief. As for the o'her thing, 
 well, what is there against me — nothing, nothing at all." 
 But a strange voiceless sigh seemed to echo from the 
 trees along the dark road, "Not as yet, not as yet." 
 
 He walked on more rapidly. 
 
 Three women! There was no doubt about the 
 third, Ianthe had thought of Julia, too, just as Kate 
 had. What a fate for a misogamist ! He felt like a 
 mouse being taken for a ride in a bath chair. He had 
 an invincible prejudice against marriage not as an in- 
 stitution but because he was perfectly aware of his 
 incapacity for faithfulness. His emotions were deep 
 but unprolonged. Love was love, but marriage turned 
 love into the stone of Sisyphus. At the sound of the 
 marriage bell — a passing bell — earth at his feet would 
 burst into flame and the sky above would pour upon 
 him an unquenching profusion of tears. Love was a 
 fine and ennobling thing, but though he had the will to 
 love he knew beyond the possibility of doubt that his 
 own capacity for love was a meandering strengthless 
 thing. Even his loyalty to Julia Tern — and that had the 
 strongest flavour of any emotion that had ever beset 
 him, no matter how brief its term — even that was a 
 deviating zigzag loyalty. For he wanted to go on be- 
 ing jolly and friendly with Ianthe if only Julia did 
 not get to know. With Kate, too, that tender melan- 
 choly woman; she would be vastly unhappy. Who 
 was this Christopher whom Ianthe fondly imagined her
 
 238 CRAVEN ARMS 
 
 sister to favour? Whoever he was, poor devil, he 
 would not thank D. M. for his intervention. But he 
 would drop all this ; however had he, of all men, come 
 to be plunged so suddenly into a state of things for 
 which he had shown so little fancy in the past? Julia 
 would despise him, she would be sure to despise him, 
 sure to; and yet if he could only believe she would 
 not it would be pleasant to go on being friendly with 
 Ianthe pending . . . pending what? 
 
 Masterman was a very pliant man, but as things 
 shaped themselves for him he did not go a step further 
 with Ianthe, and it was not to Julia at all that he made 
 love. 
 
 in 
 
 The amour, if it may be described as such, of David 
 Masterman and Kate Forrest took a course that was 
 devoid of ecstasy, whatever other qualities may have 
 illuminated their desires. It was an affair in which 
 the human intentions, which are intellectual, were on 
 both sides strong enough to subdue the efforts of pas- 
 sion, which are instinctive, to rid itself of the custom- 
 ary curbs ; and to turn the clash of inhibitions wherein 
 the man proposes and the woman rejects into a con- 
 flict not of ideal but of mere propriety. They were 
 like two negative atoms swinging in a medium from 
 which the positive flux was withdrawn; for them the 
 nebulae did not "cohere into an orb." 
 
 Kate's fine figure was not so fine as Julia Tern's; 
 her dusky charms were excelled by those of Ianthe; 
 but her melancholy immobility, superficial as it was,
 
 CRAVEN ARMS 239 
 
 had a suggestive emotional appeal that won Master- 
 man away from her rivals. Those sad eyes had but 
 to rest on his and their depths submerged him. Her 
 black hair had no special luxuriance, her stature no un- 
 usual grace ; the eyes were almost blue and the thin oval 
 face had always the flush of fine weather in it; but 
 her strong hands, though not as white as snow, were 
 paler than milk, their pallor was unnatural. Almost 
 w'thout an effort she drew him away from the en- 
 tangling Ianthe, and even the image of Julia became 
 but a fair cloud seen in moonlight, delicate and desir- 
 able but very far away ; it would never return. Julia 
 had observed the relations between them — no discern- 
 ing eye could misread Kate's passion — and she gave up 
 his class, a secession that had a deep significance for 
 him, and a grief that he could not conceal from Kate 
 though she was too wise to speak of it. 
 
 But in spite of her poignant aspect — for it was in 
 that appearance she made such a powerful appeal to 
 Masterman ; the way she would wait silently for him on 
 the outside of a crowd of the laughing chattering stu- 
 dents was touching — she was an egotist of extraordi- 
 nary type. She believed in herself and in her virtue 
 more strongly than she believed in him or their mutual 
 love. By midsummer, after months of wooing, she 
 knew that the man who so passionately moved her and 
 whose own love she no less powerfully engaged was a 
 man who would never marry, who had a morbid pre- 
 posterous horror of the domesticity and devotion that 
 was her conception of living bliss. "The hand that 
 rocks the cradle rocks the world," he said. He, too,
 
 240 CRAVEN ARMS 
 
 knew that the adored woman, for her part, could not 
 dream of a concession beyond the limits her virginal 
 modesty prescribed. He had argued and stormed and 
 swore that baffled love turns irrevocably to hatred. 
 She did not believe him, she even smiled. But he had 
 behaved grossly towards her, terrified her, and they 
 had parted in anger. 
 
 He did not see her for many weeks. He was sur- 
 prised and dismayed that his misery was so profound. 
 He knew he had loved her, he had not doubted its 
 sincerity but he had doubted its depth. Then one Sep- 
 tember evening she had come back to the class and 
 afterwards she had walked along the road with him 
 towards his home. 
 
 "Come to my house," he said, "you have never been 
 to see it." 
 
 She shook her head, it was getting dark, and they 
 walked on past his home further into the country. 
 The eve was late but it had come suddenly without the 
 deliberation of sunset or the tenuity of dusk. Each 
 tree was a hatful of the arriving blackness. They 
 stood by a white gate under an elm, but they had little 
 to say to each other. 
 
 "Come to my house," he urged again and again ; she 
 shook her head. He was indignant at her distrust of 
 him. Perhaps she was right but he would never for- 
 give her. The sky was now darker than the road ; 
 the sighing air was warm, with drifting spots of 
 rain. 
 
 "Tell me," she suddenly said taking his arm, "has 
 anybody else ever loved you like that."
 
 CRAVEN ARMS 24.I 
 
 He prevaricated: "Like what?" He waited a long 
 time for her answer. She gave it steadily. 
 
 "Like you want me to love you." 
 
 He, too, hesitated. He kissed her. He wanted to 
 tell her that it was not wise to pry. 
 
 "Tell me," she urged, "tell me." 
 
 "Yes," he replied. He could not see her plainly in 
 the darkness, but he knew of the tears that fell from 
 her eyes. 
 
 "How unreasonable," he thought, "how stupid !" 
 He tried to tell the truth to her — the truth as he con- 
 ceived it — about his feelings towards her, and towards 
 those others, and about themselves as he perceived it. 
 
 She was almost alarmed, certainly shocked. 
 
 "But you don't believe such things," she almost 
 shivered, "I'm sure you don't, it isn't right, it is not 
 true." 
 
 "It may not be true," he declared implacably, "but 
 I believe it. The real warrant for holding a belief 
 is not that it is true but that it satisfies you." She 
 did not seem to understand that; she only answered 
 irrelevantly. "I'll make it all up to you some day. 
 I shall not change, David, toward you. We have got 
 all our lives before us. I shan't alter — will you?" 
 
 "Not alter !" he began angrily but then subduedly 
 added with a grim irony that she did not gather in: 
 "No, I shall not alter." 
 
 She flung herself upon his breast murmuring: 
 "I'll make it all up to you, some day." 
 
 He felt like a sick-minded man and was glad when 
 they parted. He went back to his cottage grumbling
 
 242 CRAVEN ARMS 
 
 audibly to himself. Why could he not take this woman 
 with the loving and constant heart and wed her? He 
 did not know why, but he knew he never would do 
 that. She was fine to look upon but she had ideas 
 (if you could call them ideas) which he disliked. 
 Her instincts and propensities were all wrong, they 
 were antagonistic to him, just, as he felt, his 
 were antagonistic to her. What was true, though, 
 was her sorrow at what she called their mis- 
 understandings and what was profound, what was 
 almost convincing, was her assumption (which but 
 measured her own love for him) that he could not 
 cease to love her. How vain that was. He had not 
 loved any woman in the form she thought all love must 
 take. These were not misunderstandings, they were 
 just simply at opposite ends of a tilted beam; he the 
 sophisticated, and she the innocent beyond the reach 
 of his sophistries. But Good Lord, what did it all 
 matter? what did anything matter? He would not 
 see her again. He undressed, got into bed. He 
 thought of Julia, of Ianthe, of Kate. He had a dream 
 in which he lay in a shroud upon a white board and 
 was interrogated by a saint who carried a reporter's 
 notebook and a fountain pen. 
 
 "What is your desire, sick-minded man?" the saint 
 interrogated him, "what consummation would exalt 
 your languid eyes?" 
 
 "I want the present not to be. It is neither grave 
 nor noble." 
 
 "Then that is your sickness. That mere negation is 
 at once your hope and end."
 
 CRAVEN ARMS 243 
 
 "I do not know." 
 
 "If the present so derides the dignified past surely 
 your desire lies in a future incarnating beautiful old 
 historic dreams?" 
 
 "I do not know." 
 
 "Ideals are not in the past. They do not exist in 
 any future. They rush on, and away, beyond your 
 immediate activities, beyond the horizons that are for 
 ever fixed, for ever charging down upon us." 
 
 "I do not know." 
 
 "What is it you do know?" asked the exasperated 
 saint, jerking his fountain pen to loosen its flow, and 
 Masterman replied like a lunatic : 
 
 "I know that sealing wax is a pure and beautiful 
 material and you get such a lot of it for a penny." 
 
 He woke and slept no more. He cursed Kate, he 
 sneered at Julia, he anathematized Ianthe, until the 
 bright eye of morning began to gild once more their 
 broken images. 
 
 IV 
 
 Between the sisters there grew a feud ; Ianthe be- 
 haved evilly when she discovered their mutual infatu- 
 ation for their one lover. The echoes of that feud, at 
 first dim, but soon crashingly clear, reached him, 
 touched him and moved him on Kate's behalf : all his 
 loyalty belonged to her. What did it matter if he 
 could not fathom his own desire, that Ianthe was still 
 his for a word, that Kate's implacable virtue still offered 
 its deprecatory hand, when Kate herself came back to 
 him?
 
 244 CRAVEN ARMS 
 
 They were to spend a picnic day together and she 
 went to him for breakfast. Her tremors of propriety 
 were fully exercised as she cycled along to his home; 
 she was too fond of him and he was more than fond 
 of her; but all her qualms were lulled. He did not 
 appear in any of the half-expected negligee, he was 
 beautifully and amusingly at home. 
 
 "My dear!" he exclaimed in the enjoyment of her 
 presence; she stood staring at him as she removed her 
 wrap, the morn though bright being fresh and cool: 
 "Why do I never do you justice ! Why do I half for- 
 get ! You are marvellously, irresistibly lovely. How 
 do you do it — or how do I fail so?" 
 
 She could only answer him with blushes. His 
 bungalow had but two rooms, both on the ground 
 floor, one a studio and the other his living and sleeping 
 room. It was new, built of bricks and unpainted 
 boards. The interior walls were unplastered and mi- 
 decorated except for three small saucepans hung on 
 hooks, a shelf of dusty volumes, and nails, large rusty 
 nails, projecting everywhere, one holding a discarded 
 collar and a clothes brush. A tall flat cupboard con- 
 tained a narrow bed to be lowered for sleeping, huge 
 portmanteaus and holdalls reposed in a corner beside 
 a bureau, there was a big brass candle-pan on a chair 
 beside the round stove. While he prepared break- 
 fast the girl walked about the room, making shy replies 
 to his hilarious questions. It was warm in there but 
 to her tidy comfort-loving heart the room was dis- 
 ordered and bare. She stood looking out of the win-
 
 CRAVEN ARMS 245 
 
 dow: the April air was bright but chilly, the grass in 
 thin tufts fluttered and shivered. 
 
 "It is very nice," she said to him once, "but it's 
 strange and I feel that I ought not to be here." 
 
 "O, never mind where you ought to be," he cried, 
 pouring out her coffee, "that's where you are, you 
 suit the place, you brighten and adorn it, it's your native 
 setting, Kate. No — I know exactly what is running 
 in your mind, you are going to ask if I suffer loneli- 
 ness here. Well, I don't. A great art in life is the 
 capacity to extract a flavour from something not ob- 
 viously flavoured, but here it is all flavour. Come 
 and look at things." 
 
 He rose and led her from egg and toast to the world 
 outside. Long fields of pasture and thicket followed 
 a stream that followed other meadows, soon hidden 
 by the ambulating many folding valleys, and so on to 
 the sea, a hundred miles away. Into his open door 
 were blown, in their season, balls of thistledown, 
 crisp leaves, twigs and dried grass, the reminder, the 
 faint brush, of decay. The airs of wandering winds 
 came in, odours of herb, the fragrance of viewless 
 flowers. The land in some directions was now being 
 furrowed where corn was greenly to thrive, to wave 
 in glimmering gold, to lie in the stook, to pile on giant 
 stack. Horses were trailing a harrow across an upland 
 below the park, the wind was flapping the coats of the 
 drivers, the tails and manes of the horses, and heav- 
 ing gladly in trees. A boy fired the heaps of sqnitch 
 whose smoke wore across the land in dense deliberate
 
 246 CRAVEN ARMS 
 
 wieaths. Sportsmen's guns were sounding from the 
 hollow park. 
 
 Kate followed Masterman around his cottage; he 
 seemed to be fascinated by the smoke, the wind, the 
 horses and men. 
 
 "Breakfast will be cold." 
 
 How queerly he looked at her before he said : "Yes, 
 of course, breakfast will be getting cold," and then 
 added, inconsequently : "Flowers are like men and 
 women, they either stare brazenly at the sun or they 
 bend humbly before it, but even the most modest de- 
 sire the sun." 
 
 When he spoke like that she always felt that the 
 words held a half-hidden, perhaps libidinous, meaning, 
 which she could not understand but only guess at; 
 and she was afraid of her guesses. Full of curious, 
 not to say absurd superstitions about herself and about 
 bim, his strange oblique emotions startled her virginal 
 understanding; her desire was to be good, very very 
 good, but to be that she could not but suspect the im- 
 pulses of most other people, especially the impulses of 
 men. Well, perhaps she was right: the woman who 
 hasn't any doubts must have many illusions. 
 
 He carried a bag of lunch and they walked out into 
 the day. Soon the wind ceased, the brightness grew 
 warm, the warmth was coloured; clouds lolled in the 
 air like tufts of lilac. At the edge of a spinney they 
 sat down under a tree. Boughs of wood blown down 
 by the winter gales were now being hidden by the 
 spring grass. A rabbit, twenty yards away, sat up and 
 watched the couple, a fat grey creature. "Hoi," cried
 
 CRAVEN ARMS 247 
 
 Kate, and the rabbit hopped away. It could not run 
 very fast, it did not seem much afraid. 
 
 "Is it wounded?" she asked. 
 
 "No, I think it is a tame one, escaped from a farm or 
 a cottage near us, I expect." 
 
 Kate crept after it on hands and knees and it let 
 her approach. She offered it the core of an apple she 
 had just eaten. The rabbit took it and bit her finger. 
 Then Kate caught it by the ears. It squealed but Kate 
 held it to her bosom with delight, and the rabbit soon 
 rested there if not with delight at least with ease. It 
 was warm against her breast, it was delicious to feel 
 it there, to pull its ears and caress its fat flanks, but as 
 she was doing this she suddenly saw that its coat was 
 infested with fleas. She dropped the rabbit with a 
 scream of disgust and it rushed into the thicket. 
 
 "Come here," said Masterman to her, "let me search 
 you, this is distressing." 
 
 She knelt down before him and in spite of her wrig- 
 gling he reassured her. 
 
 "It's rather a nice blouse," he said. 
 
 "I don't care for it. I shall not wear it again. I 
 shall sell it to someone or give it to them." 
 
 "I would love to take it from you stitch by stitch." 
 
 With an awkward movement of her arm she thrust 
 at his face, crying loudly, "No, how dare you speak to 
 me like that !" 
 
 "Is it very daring?" For a moment he saw her 
 clenched hands, detestably bloodless, a symbol of 
 roused virtue : but at once her anger was gone, Kate 
 was contrite and tender. She touched his face with
 
 248 CRAVEN ARMS 
 
 her white ringers softly as the settling of a moth. "O, 
 why did we come here?" 
 
 He did not respond to her caresses, he was sullen, 
 they left the spinney ; but as they walked she took his 
 arm murmuring: "Forgive me, I'll make it all up to 
 you some day." 
 
 Coyness and cunning, passion and pride, were so 
 much at odds that later on they quarrelled again. Kate 
 knew that he would neither marry her nor let her go ; 
 she could neither let him go nor keep him. This 
 figure of her distress amused him, he was callously 
 provoking, and her resentment flowed out at the touch 
 of his scorn. With Kate there seemed to be no in- 
 termediate stages between docility and fury, or even 
 between love and hatred. 
 
 "Why are you like this ?" she cried, beating her pallid 
 hands together, "I have known you for so long." 
 
 "Ah, we have known each other for so long, but as 
 for really knowing you — no ! I'm not a tame rabbit 
 to be fondled any more." 
 
 She stared for a moment, as if in recollection; then 
 burst into ironical laughter. He caught her roughly 
 in his arms but she beat him away. 
 
 "O, go to ... go to . . ." 
 
 "Hell?" he suggested. 
 
 "Yes," she burst out tempestuously, "and stop there." 
 
 He was stunned by her unexpected violence. She 
 was coarse like Ianthe after all. But he said steadily : 
 
 "I'm willing to go there if you will only keep out of 
 my way when I arrive." 
 
 Then he left her standing in a lane, he hurried and
 
 CRAVEN ARMS 249 
 
 ran, clambering over stiles and brushing through 
 hedges, anything to get away from the detestable 
 creature. She did not follow him and they were soon 
 out of sight of each other. Anger and commination 
 swarmed to his lips, he branded her with frenzied 
 opprobrium and all the beastliness that was in him. 
 Nothing under heaven should ever persuade him to 
 approach the filthy beast again, the damned intolerable 
 pimp, never, never again, never. 
 
 But he came to a bridge. On it he rested. And in 
 that bright air, that sylvan peace, his rancour fell away 
 from him, like sand from a glass, leaving him dumb 
 and blank at the meanness of his deed. He went back 
 to the lane as fast as he could go. She was not there. 
 Kate, Kate, my dove ! But he could not find her. 
 
 He was lost in the fields until he came at last upon a 
 road and a lonely tavern thereby. It had a painted sign ; 
 a very smudgy fox, in an inexplicable attitude, destroy- 
 ing a fowl that looked like a plum-pudding but was in- 
 tended to depict a snipe. At the stable door the tiniest 
 black kitten in the world was shaping with timid belli- 
 gerency at a young and fluffy goose who, ignoring it, 
 went on sipping ecstatically from a pan of water. On 
 the door were nailed, in two semicircles of decoration, 
 sixteen fox pads in various stages of decay, an entire 
 spiral shaving from the hoof of a horse, and some 
 chalk jottings: 
 
 2 pads 
 
 3 cruppers 
 
 1 Bellyband 
 
 2 Set britchin
 
 250 CRAVEN ARMS 
 
 The tavern was long and low and clean, its garden was 
 bare but trim. There was comfort, he rested, had tea, 
 and then in the bar his painful musings were broken 
 by a ragged unfortunate old pedlar from Huddersfield. 
 
 "Born and bred in Slatterwick, it's no lie ah'm speak- 
 ing, ah were born and bred Slatterwick, close to Arthur 
 Brinkley's farm, his sister's in Canady, John Orkroyd 
 took farm, Arthur's dead." 
 
 "Humph!" 
 
 "And buried. That iron bridge at Jackamon's be- 
 long to Daniel Cranmer. He's dead." 
 
 "Humph !" 
 
 "And buried. From th' iron bridge it's two miles 
 and a quarter to Herbert Oddy's, that's the 'Bay 
 Horse/ am ah right, at Shelmersdyke. Three miles 
 and three-quarters from dyke to the 'Cock and Goat' 
 at Shapley Fell, am ah right?" 
 
 Masterman, never having been within a hundred 
 miles of Yorkshire, puffed at his cigarette and nodded 
 moodily, "I suppose so" or "Yes, yes." 
 
 "From Arthur Brinkley's to th' iron bridge is one 
 mile and a half and a bit, and from Arthur Brinkley's 
 to Jury Cartright's is just four mile. He's dead, sir." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And buried. Is that wrong? Am ah speaking 
 wrong? No. It's long step from yon, rough tramp 
 for an old man." 
 
 Masterman — after giving sixpence to the pedlar who, 
 uttering a benediction, pressed upon him a card of 
 shirt buttons — said "Good evening" and walked out
 
 CRAVEN ARMS 25 1 
 
 to be alone upon the road with his once angry but now 
 penitent mind. Kate, poor dear Kate! 
 
 The sun was low down lolling near the horizon but 
 there was an astonishing light upon the land. Cottage 
 windows were blocks of solid gold in this lateral 
 brilliance, shafts of shapely shade lay across leagues 
 of field, he could have counted every leaf among the 
 rumpled boskage of the sycamores. A vast fan of 
 indurated cloud, shell-like and pearly, was wavering over 
 the western sky but in the east were snowy rounded 
 masses like fabulous balloons. At a cross road he stood 
 by an old sign post, its pillar plastered with the faded 
 bill of a long-ago circus. He could read every word of 
 it but when he turned away he found everything had 
 grown dimmer. The wind arose, the forest began to 
 roar like a heaving beast. All verdurous things leaned 
 one way. A flock of starlings flew over him with one 
 movement and settled in a rolling elm. How lonely 
 it was. He took off his hat. His skull was fearfully 
 tender — he had dabbed it too hard with his hair brush 
 that morning. His hair was growing thin, like his 
 youth and his desires. 
 
 What had become of Kate, where had she hidden? 
 What would become of her? He would never see her 
 again. He disliked everything about her, except her 
 self. Her clothes, her speech, her walk, the way she 
 carried her umbrella, her reticence that was nothing 
 if not conspicuous, her melancholy, her angular con- 
 crete piety, her hands — in particular he disliked her 
 pale hands. She had a mind that was cultivated as per-
 
 252 CRAVEN ARMS 
 
 functorily as a kitchen garden, with ideas like roots or 
 beans, hostilities like briars, and a fence of prudery that 
 was as tough as hoops of galvanized iron. And yet he 
 loved her — or almost. He was ready to love her, he 
 wanted to, he wanted her; her deep but guarded de- 
 votion — it was limited but it was devotion — compelled 
 this return from him. It was a passionate return. 
 He had tried to mould that devotion into a form that 
 could delight him — he had failed. He knew her now, 
 he could peer into her craven soul as one peers into 
 an empty bottle, with one eye. For her the opportuni- 
 ties afforded by freedom were but the preludes to mis- 
 adventure. What a fool she was ! 
 
 When he reached home Kate stood in darkness at 
 the doorway of his house. He exclaimed with delight, 
 her surprising presence was the very centre of his de- 
 sire, he wanted to embrace her, loving her deeply, in- 
 explicably again; just in a moment. 
 
 "I want my bike," the girl said sullenly. "I left 
 it inside this morning. 
 
 "Ah, your bicycle! Yes, you did." He unlocked 
 the door. "Wait, there should be a candle, there should 
 be." 
 
 She stood in the doorway until he had lit it. 
 
 "Come in, Kate," he said, "let me give you some- 
 thing. I think there is some milk, certainly I have 
 some cake, come in, Kate, or do you drink beer, I have 
 beer, come in, I'll make you something hot." 
 
 But Kate only took her bicycle. "I ought to have 
 been home hours ago," she said darkly, wheeling it 
 outside and lighting the lantern. He watched her
 
 CRAVEN ARMS 253 
 
 silently as she dabbed the wick, the pallor of her hands 
 had never appeared so marked. 
 
 "Let's be kind to each other," he said, detaining her, 
 "don't go, dear Kate." 
 
 She pushed the bicycle out into the road. 
 
 "Won't you see me again?" he asked as she mounted 
 it. 
 
 "I am always seeing you," she called back, but her 
 meaning was dark to him. 
 
 "Faugh ! The devil ! The fool !" He gurgled 
 anathemas as he returned to his cottage. "And me too ! 
 What am I ?" 
 
 But no mortal man could ever love a woman of that 
 kind. She did not love him at all, had never loved 
 him. Then what was it she did love? Not her virtue 
 — you might as well be proud of the sole of your foot ; 
 it was some sort of pride, perhaps the test of her virtue 
 that the conflict between them provoked, the contest 
 itself alone alluring her, not its aim and end. She was 
 never happier than when having led him on she 
 thwarted him. But she would find that his metal was 
 as tough as her own. 
 
 Before going to bed he spent an hour in writing 
 very slowly a letter to Kate, telling her that he felt 
 they would not meet again, that their notions of love 
 were so unrelated, their standards so different. "My 
 morals arc at least as high as yours though likely 
 enough you regard me as a rip. Let us recognize 
 then," he wrote concludingly, "that we have come to 
 the end of the tether without once having put an ounce 
 of strain upon its delightful but never tense cord. But
 
 254 CRAVEN ARMS 
 
 the effort to keep the affair down to the level at which 
 you seem satisfied has wearied me. The task of living 
 down to that assured me that for you the effort of 
 living up to mine would be consuming. I congratu- 
 late you, my dear, on coming through scatheless and 
 that the only appropriate condolences are my own — 
 for myself." 
 
 It was rather pompous, he thought, but then she 
 wouldn't notice that, let alone understand it. She 
 suffered not so much from an impediment of speech — 
 how could she when she spoke so little? — as from an 
 impediment of intellect, which was worse, much worse, 
 but not so noticeable being so common a failing. She 
 was, when all was said and done, just a fool. It was a 
 pity, for bodily she must indeed be a treasure. 
 What a pity ! But she had never had any love for 
 him at all, only compassion and pity for his bad thoughts 
 about her ; he had neither pity for her nor compunction 
 --only love. Dear, dear, dear. Blow out the candle, 
 lock the door, Good-night! 
 
 He did not see her again for a long time. He would 
 have liked to have seen her, yes, just once more, but of 
 course he was glad, quite glad, that she did not wish to 
 risk it and drag from dim depths the old passion to 
 break again in those idiotic bubbles of propriety. She 
 did not answer his letter — he was amused. Then her 
 long silence vexed him, until vexation was merged in 
 alarm. She had gone away from Tutsan — of course — ■ 
 gone away on family affairs — oh, naturally ! — she might
 
 CRAVEN ARMS 2$$ 
 
 be gone for ever. But a real grief came upon him. 
 He had long mocked the girl, not only the girl but his 
 own vision of her; now she was gone his mind elab- 
 orated her melancholy immobile figure into an image of 
 beauty. Her absence, her silence, left him wretched. 
 He heard of her from Ianthe who renewed her blandish- 
 ments ; he was not unwilling to receive them now 
 — he hoped their intercourse might be reported to 
 Kate. 
 
 After many months he did receive a letter from her. 
 It was a tender letter though ill-expressed, not very 
 wise or informative, but he could feel that the old affec- 
 tion for him was still there, and he wrote her a long 
 reply in which penitence and passion and appeal were 
 mingled. 
 
 "I know now, yes, I see it all now ; solutions are so 
 easy when the proof of them is passed. We were cold 
 to each other, it was stupid, I should have made you love 
 me and it would have been well. I see it now. How 
 stupid, how unlucky ; it turned me to anger and you to 
 sorrow. Now I can think only of you." 
 
 She made no further sign, not immediately, and he 
 grew dull again. His old disbelief in her returned. 
 Bah ! she loved him no more than a suicide loved the 
 pond it dies in ; she had used him for her senseless 
 egoism, tempting him and fooling him, wantonly, he 
 had not begun it, and she took a chaste pride in saving 
 herself from him. What was it the old writer had 
 said? 
 
 "Chastity, by nature the gentlest of all affections — 
 give it but its head — 'tis like a ramping and roaring
 
 256 CRAVEN ARMS 
 
 lion." Saving herself ! Yes, she would save herself 
 for marriage. 
 
 He even began to contemplate that outcome. 
 
 Her delayed letter, when it came, announced that she 
 was coming home at once; he was to meet her train 
 in the morning after the morrow. 
 
 It was a dull autumnal morning when he met her. 
 Her appearance was not less charming than he had 
 imagined it, though the charm was almost inarticulate 
 and there were one or two crude touches that momenta- 
 rily distressed him. But he met with a flush of emotion 
 all her glances of gaiety and love that were somehow, 
 vaguely, different — perhaps there was a shade less re- 
 serve. They went to lunch in the city and at the end 
 of the meal he asked her : 
 
 "Well, why have you come back again ?" 
 
 She looked at him intently : "Guess !" 
 
 "I — well, no — perhaps — tell me, Kate, yourself." 
 
 "You are different now, you look different, David." 
 
 "Am I changed? Better or worse?" 
 
 She did not reply and he continued : 
 
 "You too, are changed. I can't tell how it is, or 
 where, but you are." 
 
 "O, I am changed, much changed," murmured Kate. 
 
 "Have you been well?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And happy?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Then how unwise of you to come back." 
 
 "I have come back," said Kate, "to be happier. But 
 somehow you are different."
 
 CRAVEN ARMS 257 
 
 "You are different, too. Shall we ever be happy 
 again ?" 
 
 "Why— why not!" said Kate. 
 
 "Come on !" he cried hilariously, "let us make a day 
 of it, come along!" 
 
 Out in the streets they wandered until rain began 
 to fall. 
 
 "Come in here for a while." They were passing a 
 roomy dull building, the museum, and they went in to- 
 gether. It was a vast hollow-sounding flagstone place 
 that had a central brightness fading into dim recesses 
 and galleries of gloom. They examined a monster 
 skeleton of something like an elephant, three stuffed 
 apes, and a picture of the dodo. Kate stood before 
 them without interest or amusement, she just contem- 
 plated them. What did she want with an elephant, an 
 ape, or a dodo? The glass exhibit cases were leaned 
 upon by them, the pieces of coal neatly arranged and 
 labelled were stared at besides the pieces of granite 
 or coloured rock with long names ending in orite 
 doritc and soritc and so on to the precious gems includ- 
 ing an imitation, as big as a bun. of a noted diamond. 
 They leaned over them, repeating the names on the 
 labels with the quintessence of vacuity. They hated 
 it. There were beetles and worms of horror, butter- 
 flies of beauty, and birds that had been stuffed so long 
 that they seemed to be intoxicated ; their beaks fitted 
 them as loosely as a drunkard's hat, their glassy eyes 
 were pathetically vague. After ascending a flight of 
 stone steps David and Kate stooped for a long time over 
 a case of sea-anemones that had been reproduced in
 
 258 CRAVEN ARMS 
 
 gelatine by a German with a fancy for such things. 
 From the railed balcony they could peer down into 
 the well of the fusty-smelling museum. No one else 
 was visiting it, they were alone with all things dead, 
 things that had died millions of years ago and were yet 
 simulating life. A footfall sounded so harsh in the 
 corridors, boomed with such clangour, that they took 
 slow diffident steps, almost tiptoeing, while Kate 
 scarcely spoke at all and he conversed in murmurs. 
 Whenever he coughed the whole place seemed to 
 shudder. In the recess, hidden from prying eyes, 
 David clasped her willing body in his arms. For once 
 she was unshrinking and returned his fervour. The 
 vastness, the emptiness, the deadness, worked upon 
 their feelings with intense magic. 
 
 "Love me, David," she murmured, and when they 
 moved away from the gelatinous sea-urchins she kept 
 both her arms clasped around him as they walked the 
 length of the empty corridors. He could not under- 
 stand her, he could not perceive her intimations, their 
 meaning was dark to him. She was so altered, this 
 was another Kate. 
 
 "I have come home to make it all up to you," she 
 repeated, and he scarcely dared to understand her. 
 
 They approached a lecture-room; the door was 
 open, the room was empty, they went in and stood near 
 the platform. The place was arranged like a tiny 
 theatre, tiers of desks rising in half-circles on three 
 sides high up towards the ceiling. A small platform 
 with a lecturer's desk confronted the rising tiers; on 
 the wall behind it a large white sheet; a magic lantern
 
 CRAVEN ARMS 259 
 
 on a pedestal was near and a blackboard on an easel. 
 \ pencil of white chalk lay broken on the floor. I 
 
 bind the easel was a piano, a new piano with a duster 
 mi its lid. Tbe room smelled of spilled acids. Tbe 
 
 lovers' steps upon tbe w len floor echoed louder than 
 
 ever after their peregrinations upon tbe flagstone ; 
 they were timid of tbe sound and stood still, clo 
 
 ether, silent. He touched her bosom and pressed 
 her to his heart, but all her surrender seemed Strang- 
 and nerveless. She was almost violently different; 
 he had liked her old rejections they were fiery and 
 passionate. He scarce knew what to do, he understood 
 her less than ever now. Dressed as she was in thick 
 winter clothes it was like embracing- a tree, it tired 
 him. She lay in his arms waiting, waiting, until he 
 felt almost stifled. Something like the smell of the 
 acids came from her fur necklet. He was glad when 
 she stood up, but she was looking at him intently. 
 To cover his uneasiness be went to the blackboard and 
 picking up a piece of the chalk he wrote the first incon- 
 sequent words that came into his mind. Kate stood 
 where be had left her, staring at the board as he traced 
 the words upon it : 
 
 Wc arc but little children weak 
 
 Laughing softly she strolled towards him. 
 
 "What do you write that for? I know what it is." 
 
 "What it is! Well, what is it?" 
 
 She took the chalk from bis finger 
 
 "It's a hymn." she went on, "it goes . . ."
 
 260 CRAVEN ARMS 
 
 "A hymn!" he cried, "I did not know that." 
 Underneath the one he had written she was now writ- 
 ing another line on the board. 
 
 x t> 
 
 Nor born to any high estate. 
 
 "Of course," he whispered, "I remember it now. 
 I sang it as a child — at school — go on, go on." 
 
 But she had thereupon suddenly turned away, silent, 
 dropping her hands to her side. One of her old black 
 moods had seized her. He let her go and picking up 
 another fragment of chalk completed the verse. 
 
 What can we do for Jcsu's sake 
 Who is so high and good and great? 
 
 She turned when he had finished and without a word 
 walked loudly to the piano, fetched the duster and 
 rubbed out the words they had written on the black- 
 board. She was glaring angrily at him. 
 
 "How absurd you are," — he was annoyed — "let us 
 go out and get some tea." He wandered off to the 
 door, but she did not follow. He stood just outside 
 gazing vacantly at a stuffed jay that had an indigo eye. 
 He looked into the room again. She was there still, 
 just as he had left her ; her head bent, her hands hang- 
 ing clasped before her, the dimness covering and caress- 
 ing her — a figure full of sad thoughts. He ran to her 
 and crushed her in his arms again. 
 
 "Kate, my lovely." 
 
 She was saying brokenly: "You know what I said.
 
 CRAVEN ARMS 26 1 
 
 I've come to make it all up to you. I promised, didn't 
 I?" 
 
 Something shuddered in his very soul — too late, too 
 late, this was no love for him. The magic lantern 
 looked a stupid childish toy, the smell of the acid was 
 repulsive. Of all they had written upon the black- 
 board one word dimly remained: Jesu. 
 
 She stirred in his arms. "You are changed, David." 
 "Changed, yes, everything is changed." 
 "This is just like a theatre, like a play, as if we were 
 acting." 
 
 "Yes, as if we were acting. But we are not acting. 
 Let us go up and sit in the gallery." 
 
 They ascended the steps to the top ring of desks and 
 looked down to the tiny platform and the white cur- 
 tain. She sat fondling his hands, leaning against him. 
 "Have you ever acted — you would do it so well?" 
 "Why do you say that? Am I at all histrionic?" 
 "Does that mean insincere? O no. But you are 
 the person one expects to be able to do anything." 
 
 "Nonsense! I've never acted. I suppose I could. 
 It isn't difficult, you haven't to be clever, only coura- 
 geous. I should think it very easy to be only an ordi- 
 nary actor, but I'm wrong, no doubt. I thought it was 
 easy to write — to write a play — until I tried. I once 
 engaged myself to write a little play for some students 
 to act. I had never done such a thing before and like 
 other idiots I thought I hadn't ever done it simply be- 
 cause I hadn't ever wanted to. Heavens, how harassed 
 T was and how ashamed! I could not do it, I got no 
 further than the author's speech."
 
 262 CRAVEN ARMS 
 
 "Well that was something. Tell me it." 
 
 "It's nothing to do with the play. It's what the 
 author says to the audience when the play is finished." 
 
 She insisted on hearing it whatever it was. "O well," 
 he said at last, "let's do that properly, at least. I'll go 
 down there and deliver it from the stage. You must 
 pretend that you are the enthusiastic audience. Come 
 and sit in the stalls." 
 
 They went down together. 
 
 "Now imagine that this curtain goes up and I 
 suddenly appear." 
 
 Kate faintly clapped her hands. He stood upon the 
 platform facing her and taking off his hat, began : 
 
 "Ladies and Gentlemen, 
 
 "I am so deeply touched by the warmth of this re- 
 ception, this utterly undeserved appreciation, that — for- 
 give me — I have forgotten the speech I had carefully 
 prepared in anticipation of it. Let me meet my obli- 
 gation by telling you a story ; I think it is true, I made 
 it up myself. Once upon a time there was a poor play- 
 wright — something like me — who wrote a play — some- 
 thing like this — and at the end of the performance the 
 audience, a remarkably handsome well-fed intellectual 
 audience — something like this — called him before the 
 curtain and demanded a speech. He protested that he 
 was unprepared and asked them to allow him to tell 
 them a story — something like this. Well, that, too, was 
 a remarkably handsome well-fed intellectual audience, 
 so they didn't mind and he began again. — Once upon a 
 time a poor playwright — and was just about to repeat 
 the story I have already twice told you when
 
 CRAVEN ARMS 263 
 
 suddenly, without a word of warning, without a sound, 
 without a compunction, the curtain swooped down and 
 chopped him clean in half." 
 
 Masterman made an elaborate obeisance and stepped 
 off the platform. 
 
 "Is that all?" asked Kate. 
 
 "That's all." 
 
 At that moment a loud bell clanged throughout the 
 building signifying that the museum was about to 
 close. 
 
 "Come along !" he cried, but Kate did not move, she 
 still sat in the stalls. 
 
 "Don't leave me, David, I want to hear the play?" 
 she said archly. 
 
 "There was no play. There is no play. Come, or 
 we shall be locked in for the night." 
 
 She still sat on. He went to her and seized her 
 hands. 
 
 "What does it matter!" she whispered, embracing 
 him. "I want to make it all up to you." 
 
 He was astoundingly moved. She was marvellously 
 changed. If she hadn't the beauty of perfection she 
 had some of the perfection of beauty. He adored her. 
 
 "But, no," he said, "it won't do, it really won't. 
 Come, I have got to buy you something at once, a 
 ring with a diamond in it, as big as a bun, an engage- 
 ment ring, quickly, or the shops will be shut." 
 
 He dragged the stammering bewildered girl away, 
 down the stairs and into the street. The rain had 
 ceased, the sunset sky was bright and Masterman was 
 intensely happy.
 
 COTTON
 
 COTTON 
 
 AT the place where the road from Carnahy 
 Down ends in the main western highway 
 that goes towards Hath there stands, or once 
 stood, a strongly built stone cottage confronting, on the 
 opposite side of the highroad, a large barn and some 
 cattle stalls. A man named Cotton lived with his wife 
 lonely in this place, their whole horizon bounded by 
 the hedges and fences of their farm. His Christian 
 name, for some unchristian reason, was Janifex, people 
 called him Jan, possibly because it rhymed with his 
 v iie's name, which was Ann. And Ann was a robust 
 managing woman of five and thirty, childless, full of 
 desolating cleanliness and kindly tyrannies, with no per- 
 ceptions that were not determined by her domestic am- 
 bition, and no sympathies that could interfere with her 
 diurnal energies whatever they might be. Jan was a 
 mild husbandman, prematurely aged, with large teeth 
 and, since "forty winters had besieged his brow," but 
 little hair. Sometimes one of the large teeth would 
 drop out, leaving terrible gaps when he opened his 
 mouth and turning his patient smile to a hideous leer. 
 These evacuations, which were never restored, began 
 with the death of Queen Victoria; throughout the reign 
 
 267
 
 268 COTTON 
 
 of her successor great events were punctuated by simi- 
 lar losses until at last Jan could masticate, in his staid 
 old manner, only in one overworked corner of his 
 mouth. 
 
 He would rise of a morning throughout the moving 
 year at five of the clock; having eaten his bread and 
 drunk a mug of cocoa he would don a long white jacket 
 and cross the road diagonally to the gate at the eastern 
 corner of the sheds; these were capped by the bright 
 figure of a golden cockerel, voiceless but useful, 
 'flaunting always to meet the challenge of the wind. 
 Sometimes in his deliberate way Jan would lift his 
 forlorn eyes in the direction of the road coming from 
 the east, but he never turned to the other direction as 
 that would have cost him a physical effort and bodily 
 flexion had ceased years and years ago. Do roads ever 
 run backward — leaps not forward the eye? As he 
 unloosed the gate of the yard his great dog would lift 
 its chained head from some sacks under a cart, and a 
 peacock would stalk from the belt of pines that partly 
 encircled the buildings. The man would greet them, 
 saying "O, ah!" In the rickyard he would pause to 
 release the fowls from their hut and watch them run to 
 the stubbles or spurn the chaff with their claws as they 
 ranged between the stacks. If the day were windy the 
 chaff would fall back in clouds upon their bustling 
 feathers, and that delighted his simple mind. It is 
 difficult to account for his joy in this thing for though 
 his heart was empty of cruelty it seemed to be empty 
 of everything else. Then he would pass into the stalls
 
 COTTON 269 
 
 and with a rattle of can and churn the labour of the 
 day was begun. 
 
 Thus he lived, with no temptations, and few desires 
 except perhaps for milk puddings, which for some 
 reason concealed in Ann's thrifty hosom he was only 
 occasionally permitted to enjoy. Whenever his wife 
 thought kindly of him she would give him a piece 
 of .silver and he would traipse a mile in the evening, a 
 mile along to the Huntsman's Cup, and take a 
 tankard of beer. On his return he would tell Ann of 
 the things he had seen, the people he had met, and 
 other events of his journey. 
 
 Once, in the time of spring, when buds were burst- 
 ing along the hedge coverts and birds of harmony and 
 swiftness had begun to roost in the wood, a blue- 
 chinned Spaniard came to lodge at the farm for a 
 few weeks. He was a labourer working at some par- 
 ticular contract upon the estate adjoining the Cottons' 
 holding, and he was accommodated with a bed and an 
 abundance of room in a clean loft behind the house. 
 With curious shoes upon his feet, blazing check 
 trousers fitting tightly upon bis thighs, a wrapper of 
 pink silk around his neck, he was an astonishing figure 
 in that withdrawn corner of the world. When the sea- 
 son chilled him a long black cloak with a hood for his 
 head added a further strangeness. Juan da Costa was 
 his name. lie was slightly round-shonldered with an 
 uncongenial squint in his eyes; though he used but 
 few words of English his ways were beguiling ; he 
 sang very blithely shrill Spanish songs, and had a
 
 270 COTTON 
 
 pleasant courtesy of manner that presented a deal of 
 attraction to the couple, particularly Ann, whose casual 
 heart he reduced in a few hours to kindness, and in 
 a few days, inexplicably perhaps, to a still warmer 
 emotion — yes, even in the dull blankness of that mind 
 some ghostly star could glimmer. From the hour 
 of his arrival she was an altered woman although, with 
 primitive subtlety the transition from passivity to 
 passion was revealed only by one curious sign, and 
 that was the spirit of her kindness evoked for the 
 amiable Jan, who now fared mightily upon his favour- 
 ite dishes. 
 
 Sometimes the Spaniard would follow Jan about the 
 farm. "Grande !" he would say, gesturing with his arm 
 to indicate the wide-rolling hills. 
 
 "O, ah !" Jan would reply, "there's a heap o' land 
 in the open air." 
 
 The Spaniard does not understand. He asks : 
 "What?" 
 
 "O, ah!" Jan would echo. 
 
 But it was the cleanly buxom Ann to whom Da Costa 
 devoted himself. He brought home daily, though not 
 ostensibly to her, a bunch of the primroses, a stick 
 of snowbudded sallow, or a sprig of hazel hung with 
 catkins, soft caressable things. He would hold the 
 hazel up before Ann's uncomprehending gaze and strike 
 the lemon-coloured powder from the catkins on to the 
 expectant adjacent buds, minute things with stiff 
 female prongs, red like the eyes of the white rabbit 
 which Ann kept in the orchard hutch. 
 
 One day Juan came home unexpectedly in mid-after-
 
 COTTON 271 
 
 noon. It was a cold dry day and he wore his black 
 (leak and hood. 
 
 "Sec." lie cried, walking up to Ann, who greeted 
 him with a smile; he held out to her a posy of white 
 violets tied up with some blades of thick grass. She 
 smell them bill said nothing. He pressed the violets 
 to his lips and again held them out, this time to her 
 lips. She took them from him and touched them with 
 the front of her bodice while he watched her with 
 delighted eyes. 
 
 "You . . . give ... me ... something . . . for 
 . . . los flores?" 
 
 "Piece a cake!" said Ann, moving towards the pantry 
 door. 
 
 "Ah . . . cake . . . !" 
 
 As she pulled open the door, still keeping a demure 
 eye upon him, the violets fell out and down upon the 
 floor, unseen by her. He rushed towards them with 
 a cry of pain and a torrent of his strange language; 
 picking them up he followed her into the pantry, a 
 narrow place almost surrounded by shelves with pots 
 of pickles and jam. plates, cups and jugs, a scrap of 
 meat upon a trencher, a white bowl with cob nuts and a 
 pair of iron crackers. 
 
 "See . . . lost!" he cried shrilly as she turned to him. 
 She was about to take them again when he stayed her 
 with a whimsical gesture. 
 
 "Me . . . me," he said, and brushing her eyes with 
 their soft perfume he unfastened the top button of her 
 bodice while the woman stood motionless ; then the 
 second button, then the third. He turned the corners
 
 272 COTTON 
 
 inwards and tucked the flowers between her flesh and 
 underlinen. They stood eyeing one another, breathing 
 uneasily, but with a pretence of monchalance. "Ah!" 
 he said suddenly; before she could stop him he had 
 seized a few nuts from the white bowl and holding 
 open her bodice where the flowers rested he dropped 
 the nuts into her warm bosom. "One . . . two . . . 
 three!" 
 
 "Oh . . . !" screamed Ann mirthfully, shrinking 
 from their tickling, but immediately she checked her 
 laughter — she heard footsteps. Beating down the 
 grasping arms of the Spaniard she darted out of the 
 doorway and shut him in the pantry, just in time to 
 meet Jan coming into the kitchen howling for a chain 
 he required. 
 
 "What d'ye want?" said Ann. 
 
 "That chain for the well-head, gal, it's hanging in 
 the pantry." He moved to the door. 
 
 "Taint," said Ann barring his way. "It's in 
 the barn. I took it there yesterday, on the oats 
 it is, you'll find it, clear off with your dirty boots.'* 
 She "hooshed" him off much as she "hooshed" the 
 hens out of the garden. Immediately he was gone 
 she pulled open the pantry door and was confronted by 
 the Spaniard holding a long clasp knife in his 
 raised hand. On seeing her he just smiled, threw down 
 the knife and took the bewildered woman into his arms. 
 
 "Wait, wait," she whispered, and breaking from him 
 she seized a chain from a hook and ran out after her 
 husband with it, holding up a finger of warning to the 
 Spaniard as she brushed past him. She came back
 
 COTTON 273 
 
 panting, having made some sort of explanation to 
 Jan; entering the kitchen quietly she found the Span- 
 iard's cloak lying upon the tahle; the door of the pantry 
 was shut and he had apparently gone back there to 
 await her. Ann moved on tiptoe round the table; 
 picking up the cloak she enveloped herself in it and 
 pulled the hood over her head. Having glanced with 
 caution through the front window to the farmyard, she 
 coughed and shuffled her feet on the flags. The door 
 of the pantry moved slowly open; the piercing ardour 
 of his glance did not abash her, but her curious appear- 
 ance in his cloak moved his shrill laughter. As he 
 approached her she .seized his wrists and drew him to 
 the door that led into the orchard at the back of the 
 house ; she opened it and pushed him out, saying, "Go 
 on, go on." She then locked the door against him. 
 He walked up and down outside the window making 
 lewd signs to her. He dared not call out for fear of 
 attracting attention from the farmyard in front of the 
 house. He stood still, shivered, pretended in dumb 
 show that he was frozen. She stood at the window 
 in front of him and nestled provocatively in his cloak. 
 But when he put his lips against the pane he drew the 
 gleam of her languishing eyes closer and closer to meet 
 his kiss through the glass. Then she stood up, took 
 off the black cloak, and putting her hand into her bosom 
 brought out the three nuts, which she held up to him. 
 She stood there fronting the Spaniard enticingly, 
 dropped the nuts back into her bosom one . . . two 
 . . . three . . . and then went and opened the d< 
 In a few weeks the contract was finished, and one
 
 274 COTTON 
 
 bright morning the Spaniard bade them each farewell. 
 Neither of them knew, so much was their intercourse 
 restricted, that he was about to depart, and Ann 
 watched him with perplexity and unhappiness in her 
 eyes. 
 
 "Ah, you Cotton, good-bye I say, and you seiiora, 
 I say good-bye." 
 
 With a deep bow he kissed the rough hand of the 
 blushing country woman. "Bueno." He turned with 
 his kit bag upon his shoulder, waved them an airy 
 hand and was gone. 
 
 On the following Sunday Jan returned from a visit 
 in the evening and found the house empty; Ann was 
 out, an unusual thing, for their habits were fixed and 
 deliberate as the stars in the sky. The sunsetting light 
 was lying in meek patches on the kitchen wall, turn- 
 ing the polished iron pans to the brightness of silver, 
 reddening the string of onions, and filling glass jars 
 with solid crystal. He had just sat down to remove 
 his heavy boots when Ann came in, not at all the worka- 
 day Ann but dressed in her best clothes smelling of 
 scent and swishing her stiff linen. 
 
 "Hullo," said Jan, surprised at his wife's pink face 
 and sparkling eyes, "bin church?" 
 
 "Yes, church," she replied, and sat down in her 
 finery. Her husband ambled about the room for vari- 
 ous purposes and did not notice her furtive dabbing 
 of her eyes with her handkerchief. Tears from Ann 
 were inconceivable. 
 
 The year moved through its seasons, the lattermath 
 hay was duly mown, the corn stooked in rows ; Ann was
 
 COTTON 275 
 
 with child and the ridge of her stays was no longer 
 visible behind her plump shoulders. Fruit dropped 
 from the orchard boughs, the quince was gathered from 
 the wall, the hunt swept over the field. Christmas came 
 and went, and then a child was horn to the Cottons, a 
 dusky boy, who was shortly christened Juan. 
 
 "He was a kind chap, that man," said Ann, "and 
 we've no relations to please, and it's like your name — 
 and your name is outlandish !" 
 
 fan's delight was now to sit and muse upon the child 
 as he had ever mused upon chickens, lambs and calves. 
 "O, ah !" he would say, popping a great finger into the 
 babe's mouth, "O, ah!" Rut when, as occasionally 
 happened, the babe squinted at him, a singular fancy 
 would stir in his mind, only to slide away before it 
 could congeal into the likeness of suspicion. 
 
 Snow, when it falls near spring upon those Cotswold 
 hills, falls deeply and the lot of the husbandmen is hard. 
 Sickness, when it comes, comes with a flail and in its 
 hobnailed boots. Contagious and baffling, disease had 
 stricken the district; in mid March great numbers of 
 the country folk were sick abed, hospitals were full, 
 and doctors were harried from one dawn to another. 
 Jan would come in of an evening and recite the calen- 
 dar of the day's dooms gathered from men of the 
 adjacent fields. 
 
 "Amos Green 'ave gone then, pore o' chap." 
 
 "Pore Amos," the pitying Ann would say, wrapping 
 her babe more warmly. 
 
 "And Buttif ant's coachman." 
 
 "Dear, dear, what 'ull us all come to !"
 
 276 COTTON 
 
 "Mrs. Jocelyn was worse 'en bad this morning." 
 
 "Never, Jan! Us'll miss 'er." 
 
 "Ah, and they do say Parson Rudwent won't last out 
 the night." 
 
 "And whom's to bury us then ?" asked Ann. 
 
 The invincible sickness came to the farm. Ann one 
 morning was weary, sickly, and could not rise from 
 her bed. Jan attended her in his clumsy way and kept 
 coming in from the snow to give her comforts and 
 food, but at eve she was in fever and lay helpless in 
 the bed with the child at her breast. Jan went off for 
 the doctor, not to the nearest village for he knew that 
 quest to be hopeless, but to a tiny town high on the 
 wolds two miles away. The moon, large, sharp and 
 round, blazed in the sky and its light sparkled upon 
 the rolling fields of snow; his boots were covered at 
 every muffled step ; the wind sighed in the hedges and 
 he shook himself for warmth. He came to the hill 
 a< last; halfway up was a church, its windows glow- 
 ing with warm-looking light and its bells pealing cheer- 
 fully. He passed on and higher up met a priest trot- 
 ting downwards in black cassock and saintly hat, his 
 hands tucked into his wide sleeves, trotting to keep 
 himself warm and humming as he went. Jan asked a 
 direction of the priest, who gave it with many circum- 
 stances of detail, and after he had parted he could 
 hear the priest's voice call still further instructions 
 after /him as long as he was in sight. "O, ah!" said 
 Jan each time, turning and waving his hand. But after 
 all his mission was a vain one ; the doctor was out and 
 away, it was improbable that he would be able to
 
 COTTON 277 
 
 come, and the simple man turned home with a dull 
 irt. When he reached the farm Ann was delirious 
 but still clung to the dusky child, sleeping snugly at 
 her bosom. The man sat up all night before the fire 
 waiting vainly Eor the doctor, and the next day he 
 himself became ill. And strangely enough as he 
 worked among his beasts the crude suspicion in his 
 mind about the child took shape and winked without 
 resistance until he came to suspect and by easy degrees 
 to apprehend fully the time and occasion of Ann's 
 duplicity. 
 
 "Nasty dirty filthy thing!'' he murmured from his 
 sick mind. lie was brushing the dried mud from the 
 hocks of an old bay horse, but it was not of his horse 
 he was thinking. Later he stood in the rickyard and 
 --tared across the road at the light in their bedroom. 
 Throwing down the fork with which he had been t" 
 ing beds of straw he shook his fist at the window and 
 cried out: "I hate 'er, I does, nasty dirty filthy thing!'' 
 
 When he went into the house he replenished the 
 but found he could take no further care for himself 
 or the sick woman; he just stupidly doffed his clot 1 
 and in utter misery and recklessness stretched himself 
 in the bed with Ann. He lay for a long while with ach- 
 ing brows, a snake-strangled feeling in every limb, an 
 unquenchable drouth in his throat, and his wife's body 
 burning beside him. Outside the night was bright, 
 I autiful and still sparkling with frost; quiet, as if the 
 wind had been wed htly in some far corner of the 
 
 sky, except for a cracked insulator on the- telegraph 
 pole just near the window, that rattled and humri
 
 278 COTTON 
 
 with monstrous uncare. That, and the ticking of the 
 clock ! The lighted candle fell from its sconce on the 
 mantelpiece ; he let it remain and it flickered out. The 
 glow from the coals was thick upon the ceiling and 
 whitened the brown ware of the teapot on the untidy- 
 hearth. Falling asleep at last he began dreaming at 
 once, so it seemed, of the shrill cry of lambs hailing 
 him out of wild snow-covered valleys, so wild and pro- 
 longed were the cries that they woke him, and he knew 
 himself to be ill, very ill indeed. The child was wail- 
 ing piteously, the room was in darkness, the fire out, 
 but the man did not stir, he could not care, what could 
 he do with that flame behind his eyes and the misery of 
 death consuming him? But the child's cries were un- 
 ceasing and moved even his numbed mind to some 
 effort. "Ann!" he gasped. The poor wife did not 
 reply. "Ann !" He put his hand out to nudge her ; in 
 one instant the blood froze in his veins and then boiled 
 again. Ann was cold, her body hard as a wall, dead 
 . . . dead. Stupor returned upon him; the child, un- 
 helped, cried on, clasped to that frozen breast until the 
 man again roused himself to effort. Putting his great 
 hands across the dead wife he dragged the child from 
 her arms into the warmth beside him, gasping as he did 
 so, "Nasty . . . dirty . . . thing." It exhausted him 
 but the child was still unpacified and again he roused 
 himself and felt for a biscuit on the table beside the 
 bed. He crushed a piece in his mouth and putting the 
 soft pap upon his finger fed thus the hungry child un- 
 til it was stilled. By now the white counterpane spread 
 vast like a sea, heaving and rocking with a million
 
 COTTON 279 
 
 waves, the framework of the hedstead moving like the 
 tackle of tossed ships. He knew there was only one 
 way to stem that sickening movement. "I hate 'er, I 
 does," rose again upon his lips, and drawing up his 
 legs that were at once chilly and streaming with sweat, 
 full of his new hatred he urged with all his might his 
 wife's cold body to the edge of the bed and withdrew 
 the bedclothes. Dead Ann toppled and slid from him 
 ami her body clumped upon the floor with a fall that 
 shook the room ; the candle fell from the mantelpiece, 
 bounced from the teapot and rolled stupidly along the 
 bare boards under the bed. "Hate 'er!" groaned the 
 man; he hung swaying above the woman and tried to 
 spit upon her. He sank back again to the pillow and 
 the child, murmuring "O, ah !" and gathering it clumsily 
 to his breast. He became tranquil then, and the hol- 
 low-sounding clock beat a dull rhythm into his mind, 
 until that sound faded out with all light and sound, and 
 [an fell into sleep and died, with the dusky child 
 clasped in his hard dead arms.
 
 A BROADSHEET BALLAD
 
 A BROADSHEET BALLAD 
 
 AT noon the tiler and the mason stepped down 
 from the roof of the village church which 
 they were repairing and crossed over the road 
 to the tavern to eat their dinner. It had been a nice 
 little morning, but there were clouds massing in the 
 south ; Sam the tiler remarked that it looked like thun- 
 der. The two men sat in the dim little taproom eating, 
 Bob the mason at the same time reading from a news- 
 paper an account of a trial for murder. 
 
 "I dunno what thunder looks like," Bob said, "but 
 I reckon this chap is going to be hung, though I can't 
 rightly say for why. To my thinking he didn't do it at 
 all : but murder's a bloody thing and someone ought to 
 suffer for it." 
 
 "I don't think," spluttered Sam as he impaled a flat 
 piece of beetroot on the point of a pocket-knife and 
 prepared to contemplate it with patience until his 
 stuffed mouth was ready to receive it, "he ought to 
 lie hung." 
 
 "There can be no other end for him though, with 
 a mob of lawyers like that, and a judge like that, and 
 a jury too . . . why the rope's half round his neck 
 this minute; he'll be in glory within a month, they 
 
 283 '
 
 284 A BROADSHEET BALLAD 
 
 only have three Sundays, you know, between the 
 sentence and the execution. Well, hark at that rain 
 then !" 
 
 A shower that began as a playful sprinkle grew to 
 a powerful steady summer downpour. It splashed 
 in the open window and the dim room grew more dim 
 and cool. 
 
 "Hanging's a dreadful thing," continued Sam, "and 
 'tis often unjust I've no doubt, I've no doubt at all." 
 
 "Unjust! I tell you ... at the majority of trials 
 those who give their evidence mostly knows nothing 
 at all about the matter; them as knows a lot — they 
 stays at home and don't budge, not likely !" 
 
 "No? But why?" 
 
 "Why? They has their reasons. I know that, I 
 knows it for truth . . . hark at that rain, it's made the 
 room feel cold." 
 
 They watched the downfall in complete silence for 
 some moments. 
 
 "Hanging's a dreadful thing," Sam at length re- 
 peated, with almost a sigh. 
 
 "I can tell you a tale about that, Sam, in a minute," 
 said the other. He began to fill his pipe from Sam's 
 brass box which was labelled cough lozenges and 
 smelled of paregoric. 
 
 "Just about ten years ago I was working over in 
 Cotswold country. I remember I'd been in to Glou- 
 cester one Saturday afternoon and it rained. I was 
 jogging along home in a carrier's van; I never seen it 
 rain like that afore, no, nor ever afterwards, not like 
 that. B-r-r-r-r! it came down . . . bashing! And
 
 A BROADSHEET BALLAD 285 
 
 we come to a cross roads where there's a public 
 house called The Wheel of Fortune, very lonely and 
 onsheltered it is just there. I see'd a young woman 
 Standing in the porch awaiting us, but the carrier v. 
 wet and tired and angry or something and wouldn't 
 stop. 'Xo room' — he bawled out to her — 'full up, 
 can't take you!' and he drove on. 'For th o' 
 
 God, Mate,' — I says — 'pull up and take that young 
 creature! She's . . . she's . . . can't you see!' 'But 
 I'm all behind as 'tis' — he shouts to me — 'you know 
 your gospel, don't you : time and tide wait for no man ?' 
 'Ah, but dammit all, they always call for a feller' — I 
 says. With that he turned round and we drove back 
 for the girl. She dumb in and sat on my knees; I 
 squat on a tub of vinegar, there was nowhere else and 
 1 was right and all, she was going on for a birth. Well, 
 the old van rattled away for six or seven miles ; when- 
 ever it stopped you could hear the rain clattering on the 
 tarpaulin, or sounding outside on the grass as if it was 
 breathing hard, and the old horse steamed and shivered 
 with it. I had knowed the girl once in a friendly way, 
 a pretty young creature, but now she was white and 
 sorrowful and wouldn't say much. By and bye we 
 came to another cross roads near a village, an :>>t 
 
 out there. 'Good day. my gal' — I says, affable If 
 and 'Thank you, sir,' — says she, and off she popped in 
 the rain with her umbrella up. A rare pretty girl, 
 quite young, I'd met her before, a girl you could get 
 uncommon fond of, you know, but I didn't meet her 
 aiterwards, she was mixed up in a bad business. It all 
 happened in the next six months while I was working
 
 286 A BROADSHEET BALLAD 
 
 round these parts. Everybody knew of it. This girl's 
 name was Edith and she had a younger sister Agnes. 
 Their father was old Harry Mallerton, kept The 
 British Oak at North Ouainy ; he stuttered. Well, this 
 Edith had a love affair with a young chap William, and 
 having a very loving nature she behaved foolish. Then 
 she couldn't bring the chap up to the scratch nohow by 
 herself, and of course she was afraid to tell her mother 
 or father : you know how girls are after being so 
 pesky natural, they fear, O they do fear ! But soon it 
 couldn't be hidden any longer as she was living at 
 home with them all, so she wrote a letter to her mother. 
 'Dear Mother,' she wrote, and told her all about her 
 trouble. 
 
 "By all accounts the mother was angry as an old lion, 
 but Harry took it calm like and sent for young William, 
 who'd not come at first. He lived close by in the village 
 so they went down at last and fetched him. 
 
 " 'All right, yes,' he said, 'I'll do what's lawful to be 
 done. There you are, I can't say no fairer, that I can't.' 
 
 " 'No,' they said, 'you can't.' 
 
 "So he kissed the girl and off he went, promising 
 to call in and settle affairs in a day or two. The next 
 day Agnes, which was the younger girl, she also wrote 
 a note to her mother telling her some more strange 
 news: 
 
 " 'God above !' the mother cried out, 'can it be true, 
 both of you girls, my own daughters, and by the same 
 man! whatever were you thinking on, both of ye! 
 Whatever can be done now !' " 
 
 "What!" ejaculated Sam, "both on 'em, both on 'em !"
 
 A BROADSHEET BALLAD 287 
 
 "As true as God', my mercy — both on 'em — same 
 chap. Ah! Mrs. Mallerton was afraid to tell her 
 husband at first, for old Harry was the devil born 
 in when he were roused up, so she sent for young 
 William herself, who'd not come again, of course, not 
 likely. But they made him come, O yes, when they 
 told the girls' father. 
 
 " 'Well, may I go to my d . . . d . . . d . . . dam- 
 nation at once!' roared old Harry — he stuttered, you 
 know — 'at once, if that ain't a good one!' So he took 
 off his coat, he took up a stick, he walked down the 
 street to William and cut him off his legs. Then he 
 heat him until he howled for his mercy, and you couldn't 
 stop old Harry once he were roused up — he was the 
 devil born again. They do say as he beat him for a 
 solid hour; I can't say as to that, but then old Harry 
 picked him up and carried him off to The British Oak 
 on his own back, and threw him down in his own 
 kitchen between his own two girls like a dead d 
 They do say that the little one Agnes flew at her father 
 like a raging cat until he knocked her sensele-s with a 
 clout over head; rough man he was." 
 
 "Well, a' called for it, sure," commented Sam. 
 
 "Her did." agreed Bob, "but she was the quietest 
 known girl for miles round those parK very shy and 
 quiet." 
 
 "A shady lane breeds mud," said Sam. 
 
 "What do you say? — O ah! — mud. vcs. P.ut pretty 
 girls both, girls you could get very fond of. skin like 
 apple bloom, and as like a^ two pinks they were. They 
 had to decide which of them William was to marry."
 
 288 A BROADSHEET BALLAD 
 
 "Of course, ah !" 
 
 " 'I'll marry Agnes' — says he. 
 
 " 'You'll not' — says the old man — 'You'll marry 
 Edie.' 
 
 ' 'No, I won't,' — William says — 'it's Agnes I love 
 and I'll be married to her or I won't be married to e'er 
 of 'em.' All the time Edith sat quiet, dumb as a 
 shovel, never a word, crying a bit; but they do say 
 the young one went on like a ... a young . . . Jew." 
 
 "The jezebel!" commented Sam. 
 
 "You may say it; but wait, my man, just wait. An- 
 other cup of beer. We can't go back to church until 
 this humbugging rain have stopped." 
 
 "No, that we can't." 
 
 "Its my belief the 'bugging rain won't stop this side 
 of four o'clock." 
 
 "And if the roof don't hold it off it 'ull spoil they 
 Lord's commandments that's just done up on the chan- 
 cel front." 
 
 "O, they be dry by now." Bob spoke reassuringly 
 and then continued his tale. " 'I'll marry Agnes or I 
 won't marry nobody' — William says — and they couldn't 
 budge him. No, old Harry cracked on but he wouldn't 
 have it, and at last Harry says : 'It's like this.' He 
 pulls a half crown out of his pocket and 'Heads it's 
 Agnes,' he says, 'or tails it's Edith,' he says." 
 
 "Never! Ha! Ha!" cried Sam. 
 
 " 'Heads it's Agnes, tails it's Edie,' so help me God. 
 And it come down Agnes, yes, heads it was — Agnes — 
 and so there they were." 
 
 "And they lived happy ever after ?"
 
 A BROADSHEET BALLAD 289 
 
 "Happy ! You don't know your human nature, 
 Sam; wherever was you brought up? 'Heads it's 
 Agnes,' said old Harry, and at that Agnes Hung her 
 arms round William's neck and was for going off with 
 him then and there, ha ! But this is how it happened 
 about that. William hadn't any kindred, he was a 
 lodger in the village, and his landlady wouldn't have 
 him in her house one mortal hour when she heard of 
 it ; give him the rightabout there and then. He couldn't 
 get lodgings anywhere else, nobody would have any- 
 thing to do with him, so of course, for safety's sake, 
 old Harry had to take him, and there they all lived 
 together at The British Oak — all in one happy family. 
 But they girls couldn't bide the sight of each other, so 
 their father cleaned up an old outhouse in his yard that 
 was used for carts and hens and put William and his 
 Agnes out in it. And there they had to bide. They 
 had a couple of chairs, a sofa, and a bed and that kind 
 of thing, and the young one made it quite snug." 
 
 "Twas a hard thing for that other, that Edie, Bob." 
 "It was hard, Sam, in a way, and all this was happen- 
 ing just afore I met her in the carrier's van. She was 
 very sad and solemn then ; a pretty girl, one you could 
 like. Ah, you may choke me, but there they lived 
 together. Edie never opened her lips to either of them 
 again, and her father sided with her, too. What was 
 worse, it came out after the marriage that Agnes was 
 quite free of trouble — it was only a trumped-up game 
 between her and this William because he fancied her 
 better than the other one. And they never had no child, 
 them two, though when poor Edie's mischance came
 
 290 A BROADSHEET BALLAD 
 
 along I be damned if Agnes weren't fonder of it than 
 its own mother, a jolly sight more fonder, and William 
 — he fair worshipped it." 
 
 "You don't say !" 
 
 "I do. 'Twas a rum go, that, and Agnes worshipped 
 it, a fact, can prove it by scores 0' people to this day, 
 scores, in them parts. William and Agnes worshipped 
 it, and Edie — she just looked on, 'long of it all, in the 
 same house with them, though she never opened her 
 lips again to her young sister to the day of her death." 
 
 "Ah, she died? Well, it's the only way out of such 
 a tangle, poor woman." 
 
 "You're sympathizing with the wrong party." Bob 
 filled his pipe again from the brass box; he ignited it 
 with deliberation; going to the open window he spat 
 into a puddle in the road. "The wrong party, Sam; 
 'twas Agnes that died. She was found on the sofa one 
 morning stone dead, dead as a adder." 
 
 "God bless me!" murmured Sam. 
 
 "Poisoned !" added Bob, puffing serenely. 
 
 "Poisoned !" 
 
 Bob repeated the word poisoned. "This was the 
 way of it," he continued: "One morning the mother 
 went out in the yard to collect her eggs, and she began 
 calling out 'Edie, Edie, here a minute, come and look 
 where that hen have laid her egg ; I would never have 
 believed it/ — she says. And when Edie went out her 
 mother led her round the back of the outhouse, and 
 there on the top of a wall this hen had laid an egg. 
 'I would never have believed it, Edie' — she says — 
 'scooped out a nest there beautiful, ain't she? I won-
 
 A BROADSHEET BALLAD 291 
 
 dercd where her was laying. T'other morning the 
 dog brought an egg round in his mouth and laid it on 
 the doormat. There now Aggie, Aggie, here a minute, 
 come and look where the hen have laid that egg.' And 
 as Aggie didn't answer the mother went in and found 
 her on the sofa in the outhouse, stone dead." 
 
 "How'd they account for it?" asked Sam, after a 
 brief interval. 
 
 "That's what brings me to the point about that young 
 feller that's going to be hung," said Bob, tapping the 
 newspaper that lay upon the bench. "I don't know 
 what would lie between two young women in a wran- 
 gle of that sort; some would get over it quick, but 
 some would never sleep soundly any more not for a 
 minute of their mortal lives. Edie must have been one 
 of that sort. There's people living there now as could 
 tell a lot if they'd a mind to it. Some knowed all 
 about it, could tell you the very shop where Edie 
 managed to get hold of the poison, and could describe 
 to me or to you just how she administrated it in a glass 
 of barley water. Old Harry knew all about it, he 
 knew all about everything, but he favoured Edith and 
 he never budged a word. Clever old chap was Harry, 
 and nothing came out against Edie at the inquest — 
 nor the trial neither." 
 
 "Was there a trial then?" 
 
 "There was a kind of a trial. Naturally. A beau- 
 tiful trial. The police came and fetched poor William. 
 They took him away and in due course he was hanged." 
 
 "William! But what had he got to do with it?" 
 
 "Nothing. It was rough on him. but he hadn't
 
 292 A BROADSHEET BALLAD 
 
 played straight and so nobody struck up for him. They 
 made out a case against him — there was some onlucky 
 bit of evidence which I'll take my oath old Harry knew 
 something about — and William was done for. Ah, 
 when things take a turn against you it's as certain as 
 twelve o'clock, when they take a turn ; you get no more 
 chance than a rabbit from a weasel. It's like dropping 
 your matches into a stream, you needn't waste the 
 bending of your back to pick them out — they're no 
 good on, they'll never strike again. And Edith, she 
 sat in court through it all, very white and trembling 
 and sorrowful, but when the judge put his black cap 
 on they do say she blushed and looked across at William 
 and gave a bit of a smile. Well, she had to suffer 
 for his doings, so why shouldn't he suffer for hers. 
 That's how I look at it. . . ." 
 
 "But God-a-mighty . . . !" 
 
 "Yes, God-a-mighty knows. Pretty girls they were, 
 both, and as like as two pinks." 
 
 There was quiet for some moments while the tiler 
 and the mason emptied their cups of beer. "I think," 
 said Sam then, "the rain's give over now." 
 
 "Ah, that it has," cried Bob. "Let's go and do a 
 bid more on this 'bugging church or she won't be done 
 afore Christmas."
 
 POMONA'S BABE
 
 POMONA'S BABE 
 
 JOHNNY FLYNN was then seventeen years old. 
 At that age you could not call him boy without 
 vexing him, or man without causing him to blush 
 —his teasing, ruddy and uproarious mother delighted 
 to produce either or both of these manifestations for 
 her off-spring was a pale mild creature — but he had 
 given a deal of thought to many manly questions. 
 Marriage, for instance, was one of these. That was 
 an institution he admired but whose joys, whatever 
 they were, he was not anxious to experience; its dif- 
 ficulties and disasters as ironically outlined by the 
 widow Flynn were the subject of his grossest scepti- 
 cism, scepticism in general being not the least promi- 
 nent characteristic of Johnny Flynn. 
 
 Certainly his sister Pomona was not married; she 
 was only sixteen, an age too early for such bliss, but 
 all the same she was going to have a baby; he had 
 quarrelled with his mother about that. He quarrelled 
 with his mother about most things, she delighted in 
 quarrels, they amused her very much ; but on this 
 occasion she was really very angry, or she pretended 
 to be so — which was worse, much worse than the real 
 
 thing. 
 
 295
 
 296 POMONA'S BABE 
 
 The Flynns were poor people, quite poor, living in 
 two top-floor rooms at the house of a shoemaker, also 
 moderately poor, whose pelting and hammering of 
 soles at evening were a durable grievance to Johnny. 
 He was fond of the shoemaker, a kind bulky tall man 
 of fifty, though he did not like the shoemaker's wife, 
 as bulky as her husband and as tall but not kind to 
 him or to anything except Johnny himself ; nor did he 
 like any of the other lodgers, of whom there were 
 several, all without exception beyond the reach of 
 affluence. The Flynn apartments afforded a bedroom 
 in front for Mrs. Flynn and Pomona, a room where 
 Johnny seldom intruded, never without a strained sense 
 of sanctity similar to the feeling he experienced when 
 entering an empty church as he sometimes did. He 
 slept in the other room, the living room, an arrange- 
 ment that also annoyed him. He was easily annoyed, 
 but he could never go to bed until mother and sister 
 had retired, and for the same reason he had always to 
 rise before they got up, an exasperating abuse of 
 domestic privilege. 
 
 One night he had just slipped happily into his bed and 
 begun to read a book called "Rasselas," which the odd- 
 eyed man at the public library had commended to him, 
 when his mother returned to the room, first tapping 
 at the door, for Johnny was a prude as she knew not 
 only from instinct and observation but from protests 
 which had occasionally been addressed to her by the 
 indignant boy. She came in now only half clad, in 
 petticoat and stockinged feet, her arms quite bare.
 
 POMONA'S BABE 297 
 
 They were powerful arms as they had need to be, for 
 she was an ironer of linen at a laundry, but they 
 were nice to look at and sometimes Johnny liked 
 looking at them, though he did not care for her to run 
 about like that very often. Airs. Flynn sat down at 
 the foot of his couch and stared at her son. 
 
 "Johnny," she began steadily, but paused to rub her 
 forehead with her thick white shiny fingers. "I don't 
 know how to tell you, I'm sure, or what you'll say. . . ." 
 Johnny shook "Rasselas" rather impatiently and heaved 
 3 protesting sigh- "I can't think," continued his 
 mother, "no, I can't think that it's our Pomony, but 
 there she is and it's got to be done, I must tell you ; 
 besides you're the only man in our family now, so it's 
 only right for you, you see, and she's going to have a 
 baby. Our Pomony !" 
 
 The boy turned his face to the wall, although his 
 mother was not looking at him — she was staring at that 
 hole in the carpet near the fender. At last he said, 
 "Humph . . . well?" And as his mother did not say 
 anything, he added, "What about it, I don't mind?" 
 Mrs. Flynn was horrified at his unconcern, or she pre- 
 tended to be so; Johnny was never sure about the 
 genuineness of her moods. It was most unfilial, but 
 he was like that — so was Mrs. Flynn. Now she cried 
 out, "You'll have to mind, there, you must. I can't 
 take everything on my own shoulders. You're the only 
 man left in our family now. you must, Johnny. What 
 are we to do?" 
 
 He glared at the wallpaper a foot from his eyes.
 
 298 POMONA'S BABE 
 
 It had an unbearable pattern of blue but otherwise in- 
 describable flowers ; he had it in his mind to have some 
 other pattern there — some day. 
 
 "Eh ?" asked his mother sharply, striking the foot of 
 the bed with her fist. 
 
 "Why . . . there's nothing to be done . . . now 
 ... I suppose.''' He was blushing furiously. "How 
 did it happen, when will it be?" 
 
 "It's a man she knows, he got hold of her, his name 
 is Stringer. Another two months about. Stringer. 
 Hadn't you noticed anything? Everybody else has. 
 You are a funny boy, I can't make you out at all, 
 Johnny, I can't make you out. Stringer his name is, 
 but I'll make him pay dearly for it, and that's what I 
 want you — to talk to you about. Of course he denies 
 of everything, they always do." 
 
 Mrs. Flynn sighed at this disgusting perfidy, 
 brightening however when her son began to discuss the 
 problem. But she talked so long and he got so sleepy 
 at last that he was very glad when she went to bed 
 again. Secretly she was both delighted and disap- 
 pointed at his easy acceptance of her dreadful revela- 
 tion; fearing a terrible outburst of anger she had kept 
 the knowledge from him for a long time. She was 
 glad to escape that, it is true, but she rather hungered 
 for some flashing reprobation of this unknown beast, 
 this Stringer. She swore she would bring him to 
 book, but she felt old and lonely, and Johnny was a 
 strange son, not very virile. The mother had told 
 Pomona terrifying prophetic tales of what Johnny 
 would do, what he would be certain to do; he would,
 
 POMONA'S BABE 299 
 
 for instance, murder that Stringer and drive Pomony 
 into the street; of course he would. Yet here he was, 
 quite calm about it, as if he almost liked it. Well, she 
 had told him, she could do no more, she would leave 
 it to him. 
 
 In the morning Johnny greeted his sister with ten- 
 der affection and at evening, having sent her to bed, he 
 and his mother resumed their discussion. 
 
 "Do you know, mother," he said, "she is quite hand- 
 some, I never noticed it before." 
 
 Mrs. Flynn regarded him with desperation and then 
 informed him that his sister was an ugly disgusting 
 little trollop who ought to be birched. 
 
 "No, no, you are wrong, mother, it's bad, but it's 
 all right." 
 
 "You think you know more about such things than 
 your own mother, I suppose." Mrs. Flynn sniffed and 
 glared. 
 
 He said it to her gently : "Yes." 
 
 She produced a packet of notepaper and envelopes 
 "The Monster Packet for a Penny," all complete with 
 a wisp of pink blotting paper and a penholder without 
 a nib, which she had bought at the chandler's on her 
 way home that evening, along with some sago and 
 some hair oil for Johnny whose stiff unruly hair pro- 
 voked such spasms of rage in her bosom that she de- 
 clared that she was "sick to death of it." On the 
 supper table lay also a platter, a loaf, a basin of mus- 
 tard pickle, and a plate with round lengths of cheese 
 shaped like small candles. 
 
 "Devil blast him!" muttered Mrs. Flynn as she
 
 300 POMONA'S BABE 
 
 fetched from a cupboard shelf a sour-looking bottle 
 labelled Writing Fluid, a dissolute pen, and requested 
 Johnny to compose a letter to Stringer — devil blast 
 him ! — telling him of the plight of her daughter Pomona 
 Flynn, about whom she desired him to know that she 
 had already consulted her lawyers and the chief of 
 police and intimating that unless she heard from him 
 satisfactory by the day after tomorrow the matter 
 would pass out of her hands. 
 
 "That's no good, it's not the way," declared her son 
 thoughtfully; Mrs. Flynn therefore sat humbly con- 
 fronting him and awaited the result of his cogitations. 
 Johnny was not a very robust youth, but he was grow- 
 ing fast now, since he had taken up with running; 
 he was very fleet, so Mrs. Flynn understood, and had 
 already won a silver-plated hot water jug, which they 
 used for the milk. But still he was thin and not tall, 
 his dark hair was scattered; his white face was a nice 
 face, thought Mrs. Flynn, very nice, only there was al- 
 ways something strange about his clothes. She 
 couldn't help that now, but he had such queer fancies, 
 there was no other boy in the street whose trousers 
 were so baggy or of such a colour. His starched 
 collars were all right of course, beautifully white and 
 shiny, she got them up herself, and they set his neck 
 off nicely. 
 
 "All we need do," her son broke in, "is just tell him." 
 
 "Tell him?" 
 
 "Yes, just tell him about it — it's very unfortunate 
 ; — and ask him to come and see you. I hope, though,"
 
 POMONA'S BABE 301 
 
 he paused, "I hope they won't want to go and get 
 married." 
 
 "He ought to be made to, devil blast him," cried 
 Mrs. Flvnn, "only she's frightened, she is; afraid of 
 her mortal life of him! We don't want him here, 
 neither, she says he's a nasty horrible man." 
 
 Johnny sat dumb for some moments. Pomona was a 
 day girl in service at a restaurant. Stringer was a clerk 
 to an auctioneer. The figure of his pale little sister 
 shrinking before a ruffian (whom he figured as a fat 
 man with a red beard ) startled and stung him. 
 
 " I '.esides," continued Mrs. Flynn, "he's just going to 
 be married to some woman, some pretty judy, God 
 help her ... in fact, as like as not he's married to her 
 already by now. No, I gave up that idea long ago. T 
 did. before I told you, long ago." 
 
 "We can only tell him about Pomony then, and ask 
 him what he would like to do." 
 
 "What he would like to do, well, certainly!" pro- 
 tested the widow. 
 
 "And if he's a decent chap." continued Johnny 
 serenely, "it will be all right, there won't be any diffi- 
 culty. If he ain't, then we can do something else." 
 
 His mother was reluctant to concur but the boy had 
 his way. He sat with his elbows on the table, his 
 head pressed in his hands, but he could not think out 
 the things he wanted to say to this man. He would 
 look up and stare around the room as if he were in a 
 strange place, though it was not strange to him at all 
 for he had lived in it many years. There was not
 
 302 POMONA'S BABE 
 
 much furniture in the apartment, yet there was but lit- 
 tle space in it. The big table was covered with Amer- 
 ican cloth, mottled and shiny. Two or three chairs full 
 of age and discomfort stood upon a carpet that was full 
 of holes and stains. There were some shelves in a re- 
 cess, an engraving framed in maple of the player 
 scene from "Hamlet," and near by on the wall hung a 
 gridiron whose prongs were woven round with col- 
 oured wools and decorated with satin bows. Mrs. 
 Flynn had a passion for vases, and two of these florid 
 objects bought at a fair companioned a clock whose 
 once snowy face had long since turned sallow because 
 of the oil Mrs. Flynn had administered "to make it go 
 properly." 
 
 But he could by no means think out this letter ; 
 his mother sat so patiently watching him that he asked 
 her to go and sit in the other room. Then he sat on, 
 sniffing, as if thinking with his nose, while the room 
 began to smell of the smoking lamp. He was remem- 
 bering how years ago, when they were little children, he 
 had seen Pomony in her nightgown and, angered with 
 her for some petty reason, he had punched her on the 
 side. Pomony had turned white, she could not speak, 
 she could not breathe. He had been momentarily 
 proud of that blow, it was a good blow, he had never 
 hit another boy like that. But Pomony had fallen 
 into a chair, her face tortured with pain, her eyes 
 filled with tears that somehow would not fall. Then 
 a fear seized him, horrible, piercing, frantic: she was 
 dying, she would die, and there was nothing he could 
 do to stop her ! In passionate remorse and pity he had
 
 POMONA'S babe 303 
 
 flung himself before her, kissing her feet — they were 
 small and beautiful though not very clean, — until at 
 last he had felt Pomony's arms droop caressin 
 around him and heard Pomony's voice speaking lov- 
 [y and forgivingly to him. 
 
 After a decent interval his mother returned to him. 
 
 "What are we going to do about her?" she asked, 
 "she'll have to go away." 
 
 "Away! Do you mean go to a home? No, but 
 why go away? I'm not ashamed; what is there to be 
 ashamed of?" 
 
 ''Who the deuce is going to look after her? You 
 talk like a tom-fool — yes, you are," insisted Mrs. 
 Flynn passionately. "I'm out all day from one week's 
 end to the other. She can't be left alone, and the people 
 downstairs are none too civil about it as it is. She'll 
 have to go to the workhouse, that's all." 
 
 Johnny was aghast, indignant, and really angry. 
 He would never never consent to such a thing ! 
 Pomony ! Into a workhouse! She should not, she 
 should stop at home, here, like always, and have a 
 nurse. 
 
 "Fool!" muttered his mother, with castigating scorn. 
 "Where's the money for nurses and doctors to come 
 from? I've got no money for such things!" 
 
 "T'll get some !" declared Johnny hotly. 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "I'll sell something." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "I'll save up." 
 
 "How?"
 
 304 POMONA'S BABE 
 
 "And I'll borrow some." 
 
 "You'd better shut up now or I'll knock your head 
 off," cried his mother. "Fidding and fadding about — 
 you're daft!" 
 
 "She shan't go to any workhouse!" 
 
 "Fool !" repeated his mother, revealing her disgust at 
 his hopeless imbecility. 
 
 "I tell you she shall not go there," shouted the boy, 
 slung into angry resentment by her contempt. 
 
 "She shall, she must." 
 
 "I say she shan't!" 
 
 "O don't be such a blasted fool," cried the distracted 
 woman, rising from her chair. 
 
 Johnny sprang to his feet almost screaming, "You 
 are the blasted fool, you, you !" 
 
 Mrs. Flynn seized a table knife and struck at her 
 son's face with it. He leaped away in terror, his 
 startled appearance, glaring eyes and strained figure 
 so affecting Mrs. Flynn that she dropped the knife, and, 
 sinking into her chair, burst into peals of hysterical 
 laughter. Recovering himself the boy hastened to the 
 laughing woman. The maddening peals continued and 
 increased, shocking him, unnerving him again ; she was 
 dying, she would die. His mother's laughter had al- 
 ways been harsh but delicious to him, it was so infec- 
 tious, but this was demoniacal, it was horror. 
 
 "O, don't, don't, mother, don't," he cried, fondling 
 her and pressing her yelling face to his breast. 'But 
 she pushed him fiercely away and the terrifying laughter 
 continued to sear his very soul until he could bear it no
 
 POMONA'S BABE 305 
 
 longer. He struck at her shoulders with clenched fist 
 and hook her frenziedly, frantically, crying: 
 
 "Stop it, stop, O stop it, she'll go mad, stop it, stop." 
 
 He was almost exhausted, when suddenly Pomona 
 rushed into the room in her nightgown. Her long 
 black hair tumbled in lovely locks ahout her pale face 
 and her shoulder ; her feet were bare. 
 
 "O Johnny, what are you doing?" gasped his little 
 pale sister Pomony, who seemed so suddenly, so un- 
 believably, turned into a woman. "Let her alone." 
 
 She pulled the boy away, fondling and soothing 
 their distracted mother until Mrs. Flynn partially re- 
 covered. 
 
 "Come to bed now," commanded Pomona, and Mrs. 
 Flynn thereupon, still giggling, followed her child. 
 When he was alone trembling Johnny turned down the 
 lamp flame which had filled the room with smoky 
 fumes. His glance rested upon the table knife; the 
 room was silent and oppressive now. He glared at the 
 picture of Hamlet, at the clock with the oily face, at 
 the notepaper lying white upon the table. They had 
 all turned into quivering semblances of the things they 
 were; he was crying. 
 
 11 
 
 A letter, indited in the way he desired, was posted 
 by Johnny on his way to work next morning. He was 
 clerk in the warehouse of a wholesale provision mer- 
 chant and he kept tally, in some underground cellars 
 carpeted with sawdust, of hundreds of sacks of sugar
 
 306 POMONA'S BABE 
 
 and cereals, tubs of butter, of lard, of treacle, chests 
 of tea, a regular promontory of cheeses, cases of 
 candles, jam, starch, and knife polish, many of them 
 stamped with the mysterious words "Factory Bulked." 
 He did not like those words, they sounded ugly and their 
 meaning was obscure. Sometimes he took the cheese- 
 tasting implement from the foreman's bench and, when 
 no one was looking, pierced it into a fine Cheddar or 
 Stilton, withdrawing it with a little cylinder of cheese 
 lying like a small candle in the curved blade. Then he 
 would bite off the piece of rind, restore it neatly to 
 the body of the cheese, and drop the other candle-like 
 piece into his pocket. Sometimes his pocket was so full 
 of cheese that he was reluctant to approach the fore- 
 man fearing he would smell it. He was very fond of 
 cheese. All of them liked cheese. 
 
 The Flynns waited several days for a reply to the 
 letter, but none came. Stringer did not seem to think 
 it called for any reply. At the end of a week Johnny 
 wrote again to his sister's seducer. Pomona had given 
 up her situation at the restaurant; her brother was 
 conspicuously and unfailingly tender to her. He saved 
 what money he could, spent none upon himself, and 
 brought home daily an orange or an egg for the girl. 
 He wrote a third letter to the odious Stringer, not at 
 all threateningly, but just invitingly, persuasively. 
 And he waited, but waited in vain. Then in that un- 
 derground cheese tunnel where he worked he began to 
 plot an alternate course of action, and as time passed 
 bringing no recognition from Stringer his plot began 
 to crystallize and determine itself. It was nothing
 
 POMONA'S BABE 307 
 
 else than to murder the man; he would kill him, he 
 had thought it out, it could be done. He would 
 wail for him near Stringer's lodgings one dark night 
 and beat out his brains with a club. All that was 
 necessary then would be to establish an alibi. For some 
 days Johnny dwelt so gloatingly upon the details of 
 this retribution that he forgot about the alibi. By this 
 time he had accumulated from his mother — for he could 
 never once bring himself to interrogate Pomona person- 
 ally about her misfortune — sufficient description of 
 Stringer to recognize him among a thousand, so he 
 thought. It appeared that he was not a large man 
 with a red beard, but a small man with glasses, spats, 
 and a slight limp, who always attended a certain club 
 of which he was the secretary at a certain hour on 
 certain nights in each week. To Johnny's mind, the 
 alibi was not merely important in itself, it was a roman- 
 tic necessity. And it was so easy; it would be quite 
 sufficient for Johnny to present himself at the public 
 library where he was fairly well known. The library 
 was quite close to Stringer's lodgings and they, fortu- 
 nately, were in a dark quiet little street. He would 
 borrow a book from the odd-eyed man in the reference 
 department, retire to one of the inner study rooms, and 
 a! half past seven creep out unseen, creep out, creep 
 out with his thick stick and wait by the house in that 
 dark quiet little street; it was very quiet, and it would 
 be very dark; wait there for him all in the dark, just 
 creep quietly out — and wait. Bui in order to get that 
 alibi quite perfect he would have to take a friend with 
 him to the library room, so that the friend could swear
 
 308 POMONA'S BABE 
 
 that he had really been there all the time, because it 
 was just possible the odd-eyed man wouldn't be pre- 
 pared to swear to it; he did not seem able to see 
 very much, but it was hard to tell with people like 
 that. 
 
 Johnny Flynn had not told any of his friends about 
 his sister's misfortune; in time, time enough, they were 
 bound to hear of it. Of all his friends he rejected the 
 close ones, those of whom he was very fond, and 
 chose a stupid lump of a fellow, massive and nasal, 
 named Donald. Though awkward and fat he had 
 joined Johnny's running club; Johnny had trained him 
 for his first race. But he had subjected Donald to 
 such exhausting exercise, what with skipping, gym- 
 nastics, and tiring jaunts, that though his bulk disap- 
 peared his strength went with it ; to Johnny's great 
 chagrin he grew weak, and failed ignominiously in the 
 race. Donald thereafter wisely rejected all offers of 
 assistance and projected a training system of his own. 
 For weeks he tramped miles into hilly country, in the 
 heaviest of boots to the soles of which he had nailed 
 some thick pads of lead. When he donned his light 
 running shoes for his second race he displayed an 
 agility and suppleness, a god-like ease, that won not 
 only the race, but the admiration and envy of all the 
 competitors. It was this dull lumpish Donald that 
 Johnny fixed upon to assist him. He was a great fool 
 and it would not matter if he did get himself into 
 trouble. Even if he did Johnny could get him out again, 
 by confessing to the police ; so that was all right. He 
 asked Donald to go to the library with him on a certain
 
 POMONA'S BABE 309 
 
 evening to read a book called "Rassclas" — it was a 
 
 and book, very exciting — and Donald said he would 
 go. He did not propose to tell Donald of his homi- 
 cidal intention; he would just sit him down in the 
 lihrary with "Rasselas" while he himself sat at another 
 table behind Donald, yes, behind him; even if Donald 
 noticed him creeping out he would say he was only 
 going to the counter to get another book. It was all 
 quite clear, and -afe. He would be able to creep out, 
 creep out, rush up to the dark little street — yes, he 
 would ask Donald for a piece of that lead and wrap it 
 round the head of the stick — he would creep out, and 
 in ten minutes or twenty he would be back in the 
 library again asking for another book or sitting down 
 by Donald as if he had not been outside the place, as if 
 nothing had happened as far as he was concerned, 
 nothing at all ! 
 
 The few intervening days passed with vexing de- 
 liberation. Each night seemed the best of all possible 
 nights for the deed, each hour that Stringer survived 
 seemed a bad hour for the world. They were bad slow 
 hours for Johnny, but at last the day dawned, passed, 
 darkness came, and the hour rushed upon him. 
 
 He took his stick and called for Donald. 
 
 "Can't come." said Donald, limping to the door in 
 answer to Johnny's knock. "I been and hurt my leg." 
 
 For a moment Johnny was full of an inward silent 
 blasphemy that flashed from a sudden tremendous 
 hatred, but he said calmly : 
 
 "But still ... no, you haven't . . . what have you 
 hurt it for?"
 
 310 POMONA'S BABE 
 
 Donald was not able to deal with such locution. He 
 ignored it and said: 
 
 "My knee-cap, my shin, Oo, come and have a look. 
 We was mending a flue ... it was the old man's 
 wheelbarrow. . . . Didn't I tell him of it neither!" 
 
 "O, you told him of it?" 
 
 Johnny listened to his friend's narration very ab- 
 stractedly and at last went off to the library by him- 
 self. As he walked away he was conscious of a great 
 feeling of relief welling up in him. He could not get 
 an alibi without Donald, not a sure one, so he would not 
 be able to do anything tonight. He felt relieved, he 
 whistled as he walked, he was happy again, but he went 
 on to the library. He was going to rehearse the alibi 
 by himself, that was the wise thing to do, of course, re- 
 hearse it, practise it; it would be perfect next week 
 when Donald was better. So he did this. He got out 
 a book from the odd-eyed man, who strangely enough 
 was preoccupied and did not seem to recognize him. 
 It was disconcerting, that ; he specially wanted the man 
 to notice him. He went into the study room rather 
 uneasily. Ten minutes later he crept out unseen, 
 carrying his stick — he had forgotten to ask Donald for 
 the piece of lead — and was soon lurking in the shadow 
 of the dark quiet little street. 
 
 It was a perfect spot, there could not be a better 
 place, not in the middle of a town. The house had an 
 area entry through an iron gate ; at the end of a brick 
 pathway, over a coalplate, five or six stone steps led 
 steeply up to a narrow front door with a brass letter 
 box, a brass knocker, and a glazed fanlight painted 29.
 
 POMONA'S BABE 3 I I 
 
 The windows too were narrow and the whole house 
 had a squeezed appearance. A church clock chimed 
 eight strokes. Johnny began to wonder what he would 
 do, what would happen, if Stringer were suddenly to 
 come out of that gateway. Should he — would he — 
 could he . . . ? And then the door at the top of the 
 steps did open wide and framed there in the lighted 
 space young Flynn saw the figure of his own mother. 
 
 She came down the step- alt me and he followed her 
 short jerky footsteps secretly until she reached the 
 well-lit part of the town, where he joined her. It w.i 
 quite simple, she explained to him with an air of supe- 
 rior understanding: she had just paid Mr. Stringer a 
 visit, waiting for letters from that humbug had made 
 her "popped." Had he thought she would creep on 
 her stomach and beg for a fourpenny piece when she 
 could put him in jail if all were known, as she would 
 too, if it hadn't been for her children, poor little father- 
 less things? No, middling boxer, not that! So she 
 had left oil work early, had gone and caught him at his 
 lodgings and taxed him with it. lie denied of it ; he was 
 that cocky, it so mortified her, that she had snatched up 
 the clock and thrown it at him. Yes, his own clock. 
 
 "But it was only a little one, though. He was fright- 
 ened out of his life and run upstairs. Then his land- 
 lady came rushing in. I told her all about it, every- 
 thing, and she was that 'popped' with him she give me 
 the name and address of his feons — their banns is been 
 put up. She made him come downstairs and face me, 
 and his face was as white as the driven snow, Johnny, 
 it was. He was obliged to own up. The lady said to
 
 312 POMONA'S BABE 
 
 him 'Whatever have you been at, Mr. Stringer,' she 
 said to him. 'I can't believe it, knowing you for ten 
 years, you must have forgot yourself.' O, a proper 
 understanding it was," declared Mrs. Flynn finally ; "his 
 lawyers are going to write to us and put everything in 
 order ; Duckle & Hoole, they are." 
 
 Again a great feeling of relief welled up in the boy's 
 breast, as if, having been dragged into a horrible vortex 
 he had been marvellously cast free again. 
 
 The days that followed were blessedly tranquil, 
 though Johnny was often smitten with awe at the 
 thought of what he had contemplated. That fool, Don- 
 ald, too, one evening insisted on accompanying him to 
 the library where he spent an hour of baffled under- 
 standing over the pages of "Rasselas." But the lawyers 
 Duckle & Hoole aroused a tumult of hatred in Mrs. 
 Flynn. They pared down her fond anticipations to the 
 minimum ; they put so much slight upon her family, and 
 such a gentlemanly decorum and generous forbearance 
 upon the behaviour of their client, Mr. Stringer, that 
 she became inarticulate. When informed that that 
 gentleman desired no intercourse whatsoever with any 
 Flynn or the offspring thereof she became speechless. 
 Shortly, Messrs. Duckle & Hoole begged to submit 
 for her approval a draft agreement embodying their 
 client's terms, one provision of which was that if the 
 said Flynns violated the agreement by taking any 
 proceedings against the said Stringer they should there- 
 upon ipso facto willy nilly or whatever forfeit and 
 pay unto him the said Stringer not by way of penalty
 
 POMONA'S BABE 313 
 
 hut as damages the sum of £100. Whereupon Mrs. 
 Flynn recovered her speech and suffered a little tender 
 irony to emerge. 
 
 The shoemaker, whose opinion upon this draft agree- 
 ment was solicited, confessed himself as much baffled 
 hy its phraseology as he was indignant at its tenor 
 and terms. 
 
 "That man," he declared solemnly to Johnny, "ought 
 to have his brain knocked out" ; and he conveyed by 
 subtle intimations to the hoy that that was the course 
 he would favour were he himself standing in Johnu 
 shoes. "One dark night," he had roared with a dread- 
 ful glare in his eyes, "with a neat heavy -tick!" 
 
 The Flynns also consulted a cabman who lodged in 
 the house. His legal qualifications appeared to lie in 
 the fact that he had driven the private coach of a major 
 general whose son, now a fruit farmer in British Co- 
 lumbia, had once been entered for the bar. The cab- 
 man was a very positive and informative cabman. 
 "List and learn," he would say, "list and learn" : and 
 he would regale Johnny, or any one else, with an 
 oration to which you might listen as hard as you liked 
 but from which you could not learn. He was husky, 
 with a thick red neck and the cheek bones of a horse 
 Having perused the agreement with one eye judicially 
 cocked, the other being screened by a drooping lid 
 adorned with a glowing nodule, he carefully refolded 
 the folios and returned them to the boy: 
 
 "Any judge — who was up to snuff — would impound 
 that dockyment."
 
 314 POMONA'S BABE 
 
 "What's that?" 
 
 "They would impound it," repeated the cabman smil- 
 ing wryly. 
 
 "But what's impound it? What for?" 
 
 "I tell you it would be impounded, that dockyment 
 would," asseverated the cabman. Once more he took 
 the papers from Johnny, opened them out, reflected 
 upon them and returned them again without a word. 
 Catechism notwithstanding, the oracle remained im- 
 pregnably mystifying. 
 
 The boy continued to save his pocket money. His 
 mother went about her work with a grim air, having 
 returned the draft agreement to the lawyers with an 
 ungracious acceptance of the terms. 
 
 One April evening Johnny went home to an empty 
 room ; Pomona was out. He prepared his tea and 
 afterwards sat reading "Tales of a Grandfather." 
 That was a book if anybody wanted a book! When 
 darkness came he descended the stairs to enquire of 
 the shoemaker's wife about Pomony, he was anxious. 
 The shoemaker's wife was absent too and it was late 
 when she returned accompanied by his mother. 
 
 Pomona's hour had come — they had taken her to the 
 workhouse — only just in time — a little boy — they were 
 both all right — he was an uncle. 
 
 His mother's deceit stupified him, he felt shamed, 
 deeply shamed, but after a while that same recogniz- 
 able feeling of relief welled up in his breast and 
 drenched him with satisfactions. After all what could 
 it matter where a person was born, or where one died, 
 as long as you had your chance of growing up at all,
 
 POMONA'S BABE 3 I 5 
 
 and, if lucky, of growing up all right. T'.ut this kibe 
 had got to bear the whole burden of its father's mis- 
 deed, though; it had got to behave itself or it would 
 have to pay its father a hundred pounds as damages. 
 Perhaps that was what that queer bit of poetry meant, 
 "The child is father of the man." 
 
 I lis mother swore that they were very good and clean 
 and kind at the workhouse, everything of the best and 
 most expensive; there was nothing she would have 
 liked better than to have gone there herself when 
 Johnny and Pomony were born. 
 
 "And if ever I have any more," Mrs. Flynn sighed, 
 but with profound conviction, "I will certainly go 
 there." 
 
 Johnny gave her half the packet of peppermints he 
 had bought for Pomona. With some of his saved money 
 he bought her a bottle of stout — she looked tired and 
 sad — she was very fond of stout. The rest of the 
 money he gave her for to buy Pomony something when 
 she visited her. He would not go himself to visit her, 
 not there. He spent the long intervening evenings at 
 the library — the odd-eyed man had shown him a lovely 
 book about birds. He was studying it. On Sundays, 
 in the spring, he was going out to catch birds himself, 
 out in the country, with a catapult. The cuckoo was a 
 marvellous bird. So was a titlark. Donald Gower 
 found a goatsucker's nest last year. 
 
 Then one day he ran from work all the way home, 
 knowing Pomony would at last be there. He wall 
 slowly up the street to recover his breath. He stepped 
 up the stairs, humming quite casually, and tapped at
 
 316 POMONA'S BABE 
 
 the door of their room — he did not know why he 
 tapped. He heard Pomony's voice calling him. A 
 thinner paler Pomony stood by the hearth, nursing a 
 white-clothed bundle, the fat pink babe. 
 
 "O, my dear!" cried her ecstatic brother, "the beauty 
 he is ! what larks we'll have with him !" 
 
 He took Pomona into his arms, crushing the infant 
 against her breast and his own. But she did not mind. 
 She did not rebuke him, she even let him dandle her 
 precious babe. 
 
 "Look, what is his name to be, Pomony? Let's call 
 him Rasselas." 
 
 Pomona looked at him very doubtfully. 
 
 "Or would you like William Wallace then, or Robert 
 Bruce?" 
 
 "I shall call him Johnny," said Pomona. 
 
 "O, that's silly!" protested her brother. But 
 Pomona was quite positive about this. He fancied 
 there were tears in her eyes, she was always tender- 
 hearted. 
 
 "I shall call him Johnny, Johnny Flynn."
 
 THE HURLY-BURLY
 
 THE HURLY-BURLY 
 
 TII1C Weetmans, mother, son, and daughter, 
 lived on a thriving farm. It was small 
 enough, God knows, but it had always been 
 a turbulent place of abode. For the servant it was: 
 "I'hemy, do this," or "Phemy, have you done that?" 
 from dawn to dark, and even from dark to dawn there 
 was a hovering of unrest. The widow Weetman, a 
 partial invalid, was the only figure that manifested any 
 semblance of tranquillity, and it was a misleading one 
 for she sat day after day on her large hams knitting 
 and nodding and lifting her grey face only to grumble, 
 her spectacled eyes transfixing the culprit with a basi- 
 lisk glare. And her daughter Alice, the housekeeper, 
 who had a large face, a dominating face, in some re- 
 spects she was all face, was like a blast in a corridor 
 with her "Maize for the hens, Phemy ! — More firewood, 
 Phemy ! — Who has set the trap in the harness room ? — 
 Come along! — Have you scoured the skimming pans? — 
 Why not! — Where are you idling? — Come along, 
 Phemy, I have no time to waste this morning, you 
 really must help me." It was not only in the house that 
 this cataract of industry flowed; outside there was 
 activity enough for a regiment. A master-farmer's 
 
 319
 
 320 THE HURLY-BURLY 
 
 work consists largely of a series of conversations with 
 other master-farmers, a long-winded way of doing long- 
 headed things, but Glastonbury Weetman, the son, was 
 not like that at all; he was the incarnation of energy, 
 always doing and doing, chock-full of orders, adju- 
 rations, objurgatives, blame, and blasphemy. That was 
 the kind of place Phemy Madigan worked at. No one 
 could rest on laurels there. The farm and the home 
 possessed everybody, lock, stock, and barrel ; work was 
 like a tiger, it ate you up implacably. The Weetmans 
 did not mind — they liked being eaten by such a tiger. 
 
 After six or seven years of this Alice went back to 
 marry an old sweetheart in Canada, where the Weet- 
 mans had originally come from, but Phemy's burden 
 was in no way lessened thereby. There were as many 
 things to wash and sew and darn; there was always 
 a cart of churns about to dash for a train it could not 
 possibly catch, or a horse to shoe that could not possi- 
 bly be spared. Weetman hated to see his people merely 
 walking: "Run over to the barn for that hay-fork," or 
 "Slip across to the ricks, quick now," he would cry, and 
 if ever an unwary hen hampered his own path it did so 
 only once — and no more. His labourers were mere 
 things of flesh and blood, but they occasionally resented 
 his ceaseless flagellations. Glas Weetman did not like 
 to be impeded or controverted; one day in a rage he 
 had smashed that lumbering loon of a carter called 
 Gathercole. For this he was sent to jail for a month. 
 
 The day after he had been sentenced Phemy Madi- 
 gan, alone in the house with Mrs. Weetman, had waked 
 at the usual early hour. It was a foggy September
 
 THE HURLY-BURLY 32 1 
 
 morning; Sampson and his boy Daniel were clattering 
 pails in tin.- dairy shed. The girl felt sick and gloomy 
 as she dressed; it was a wretched house to work in, 
 crickets in the kitchen, cockroaches in the garret, spiders 
 and mire everywhere. It was an old long low house; 
 she knew that when she descended the stairs the walls 
 would be stained with autumnal dampness, the banisters 
 and rails oozing with moisture. She wished she was a 
 lady and married and living in a palace fifteen stories 
 high. 
 
 It was fortunate that she was big and strong, though 
 she had been only a charity girl taken from the work- 
 house by the Weetmans when she was fourteen years 
 old. That was seven years ago. It was fortunate that 
 she was fed well at the farm, very well indeed ; it was 
 the one virtue of the place. But her meals did not 
 counterbalance things; that farm ate up the body and 
 blood of people. And at times the pressure was 
 charged with a special excitation, as if a taut elastic 
 thong bad been plucked and released with a rever- 
 berating ping. 
 
 It was so on this morning. Mrs. Weetman was d 
 in her bed. 
 
 At that crisis a new sense descended upon the girl, 
 a sense of responsibility. She was not in fear, she 
 felt no grief or surprise. It concerned her in 
 way, but she herself was unconcerned, and she slid with- 
 out effort into the position of mistress of the farm. She 
 opened a window and looked out of doors. A little 
 way off a boy with a red scarf stood by an open gate. 
 
 "Oi . . . oi, kup, knp, kupl" he cried to the cows in
 
 322 THE HURLY-BURLY 
 
 that field. Some of the cows having got up stared 
 amiably at him, others sat on ignoring his hail, while 
 one or two plodded deliberately towards him. "Oi . . . 
 oi, kup, kup, kup!" 
 
 "Lazy rascal, that boy," remarked Phemy, "we shall 
 have to get rid of him. Dan'l! Come here, Dan'l!" 
 she screamed, waving her arm wildly. "Quick!" 
 
 She sent him away for police and doctor. At 
 the inquest there were no relatives in England who 
 could be called upon, no witnesses other than Phemy. 
 After the funeral she wrote a letter to Glastonbury 
 Weetman in jail informing him of his bereavement, 
 but to this he made no reply. Meanwhile the work 
 of the farm was pressed forward under her control, for 
 though she was revelling in her personal release from 
 the torment she would not permit others to share her 
 intermission. She had got Mrs. Weetman's keys and 
 her box of money. She paid the two men and the 
 boy their wages week by week. The last of the barley 
 was reaped, the oats stacked, the roots hoed, the churns 
 sent daily under her supervision. And always she was 
 bustling the men. 
 
 "O dear me, these lazy rogues !" she would com- 
 plain to the empty rooms, "they waste time, so it's 
 robbery, it is robbery. You may wear yourself to the 
 bone and what does it signify to such as them? Alt 
 the responsibility, too! — They would take your skin if 
 they could get it off you — and they can't!" 
 
 She kept such a sharp eye on the corn and meal and 
 eggs that Sampson got surly. She placated him by 
 handing him Mr. Weetman's gun and a few cartridges,
 
 THE HURLY-BURLY 323 
 
 saying: "Just shoot me a couple of rabbits over in the 
 warren when you got time." At the end of the clay 
 Mr. Sampson had not succeeded in killing a rabbit so 
 he kept the gun. and the cartridges many more da 
 Phciny was really happy. The gloom of the farm had 
 disappeared. The farmhouse and everything about it 
 looked beautiful, beautiful indeed with its yard full of 
 ricks, the pond full of ducks, the fields full of shu 
 and cattle, and the trees still full of leaves and birds. 
 She flung maize about the yard; the hens scampered 
 towards it and the young pigs galloped, quarrelling 
 over the grains which they groped and snuffed for, 
 grinding each one separately in their iron jaws, while the 
 white pullets stalked delicately among them, picked up 
 the maize seeds, One, Two, Three, and swallowed them 
 like ladies. Sometimes on cold mornings she would 
 go outside and give an apple to the fat bay pony when 
 he galloped back from the station. He would stand 
 puffing with a kind of rapture, the wind from his nos- 
 trils discharging in the frosty air vague shapes like 
 smoky trumpets. Presently upon his hide a little ball 
 of liquid mysteriously suspired, grew, slid, dropped 
 from his flanks into the road. And then drops would 
 begin to come from all parts of him until the road 
 beneath was dabbled by a shower from his dew-distilling 
 outline, rhemy would say : 
 
 "The wretches ! They were so late they drove him 
 near distracted, poor thing. Lazy rogues, but wait till 
 master comes back, they'd better be careful !" 
 
 And if any friendly person in the village asked her: 
 "How are you getting on up there. Fhemv?" she
 
 324 THE HURLY-BURLY 
 
 would reply, "Oh, as well as you can expect with so 
 much to be done — and such men." The interlocutor 
 might hint that there was no occasion in the circum- 
 stances to distress oneself, but then Phemy would be 
 vexed. To her, honesty was as holy as the sabbath to 
 a little child. Behind her back they jested about her 
 foolishness ; but, after all, wisdom isn't a process, it's a 
 result, it's the fruit of the tree. One can't be wise, one 
 can only be fortunate. 
 
 On the last day of her Elysium the workhouse master 
 and the chaplain had stalked over the farm shooting 
 partridges. In the afternoon she met them and asked 
 for a couple of birds for Weetman's return on the 
 morrow. The workhouse was not far away, it was on 
 a hill facing west, and at sunset time its windows would 
 often catch the glare so powerfully that the whole 
 building seemed to burn like a box of contained 
 and smokeless fire. Very beautiful it looked to Phemy. 
 
 II 
 
 The men had come to work punctually and Phemy 
 herself found so much to do that she had no time to 
 give the pony an apple. She cleared the kitchen once 
 and for all of the pails, guns, harness, and implements 
 that so hampered its domestic intention, and there were 
 abundant signs elsewhere of a new impulse at work 
 in the establishment. She did not know at what hour 
 to expect the prisoner so she often went to the garden 
 gate and glanced up the road. The night had been wild 
 with windy rain, but morn was sparklingly clear though 
 breezy still. Crisp leaves rustled about the road where
 
 THE HURLY-BURLY 32 (J 
 
 the polished chestnuts beside the parted husks lay in 
 numbers, mixed with coral buds of the yews. The 
 sycamore leaves were black rags, but the delicate elm 
 foliage fluttered down like yellow stars. There was a 
 brown field neatly adorned with white coned heaps ot 
 turnips, behind it a small upland of deeply green Ju- 
 ne, behind that nothing but blue sky and rolling 
 cloud. The turnips, washed by the rain, were creamy 
 polished globes. 
 
 When at last he appeared she scarcely knew him. 
 Glas Weetman was a big, though not fleshy, man of 
 thirty with a large boyish face and a flat bald head. 
 Now he had a thick dark beard. He was hungry, but 
 his first desire was to be shaved. He stood before 
 the kitchen mirror, first clipping the beard away with 
 scissors, and as be lathered the remainder he said: 
 
 "Well, it's a bad state of things this, my sister dead 
 and my mother gone to America. What shall us do?" 
 He perceived in the glass that she was smiling. 
 "There's naught funny in it, my comic gal," he 
 bawled indignantly, "what are you laughing at?" 
 
 "I wer'n't laughing. It's your mother that's dead." 
 "My mother that's dead. 1 know." 
 "And Miss Alice that's gone to America." 
 "To America, T know, I know, so you can stop mak- 
 ing your bullock's eyes and get me something to eat. 
 What's been going on here?" 
 
 She gave him an outline of affairs. He looked at 
 her sternly when he asked her about bis sweetheart. 
 "Has Rosa Beauchamp been along here?" 
 "No," said Thcmy, and he was silent. She was
 
 326 THE HURLY-BURLY 
 
 surprised at the question. The Beauchamps were such 
 respectable high-up people that to Phemy's simple mind 
 they could not possibly favour an alliance, now, with a 
 man that had been in prison : it was absurd, but she did 
 not say so to him. And she was bewildered to find that 
 her conviction was wrong, for Rosa came along later 
 in the day and everything between her master and his 
 sweetheart was just as before ; Phemy had not divined 
 so much love and forgiveness in high-up people. 
 
 It was the same with everything else. The old harsh 
 rushing life was resumed, Weetman turned to his farm 
 with an accelerated vigour to make up for the lost time 
 and the girl's golden week or two of ease became an 
 unforgotten dream. The pails, the guns, the harness, 
 crept back into the kitchen. Spiders, cockroaches, and 
 mice were more noticeable than ever before, and Weet- 
 man himself seemed embittered, harsher. Time alone 
 could never still him, there was a force in his frame, 
 a buzzing in his blood. But there was a difference be- 
 tween them now ; Phemy no longer feared him. She 
 obeyed him, it is true, with eagerness, she worked in 
 the house like a woman and in the fields like a man. 
 They ate their meals together, and from this dissonant 
 comradeship the girl in a dumb kind of way began to 
 love him. 
 
 One April evening on coming in from the fields he 
 found her lying on the couch beneath the window, dead 
 plumb fast asleep, with no meal ready at all. He flung 
 his bundle of harness to the flags and bawled angrily 
 to her. To his surprise she did not stir. He was
 
 THE HURLY-BURLY 327 
 
 somewhat abashed, he stepped over to look at her. She 
 was lying on her side. There was a large rent in her 
 bodice between sleeve and shoulder; her flesh looked 
 soft and agreeable to him. Her shoes had slipped off 
 
 to the floor; her lips were folded in a sleepy pout. 
 
 "Why, she's quite a pretty cob," he murmured. 
 "Sh< '- all right, she's just tired, the Lord above knows 
 what for." 
 
 But he could not rouse the sluggard. Then a fancy 
 moved him to lift her in his arms; he carried her from 
 the kitchen and staggering up the stairs laid the sleeping 
 girl on her own bed. He then went downstairs and ate 
 pie and drank beer in the candle-light, guffawing once 
 or twice, "A pretty cob, rather." As he stretched him- 
 self after the meal a new notion amused him: he put a 
 plateful of food upon a tray together with a mug of 
 beer and the candle. Doffing his heavy boots and leg- 
 gings he carried the tray into Phemy's room. And he 
 stopped there. 
 
 in 
 
 The new circumstance that thus slipped into her life 
 did not effect any noticeable alteration of its general 
 contour and progress, Weetman did not change towards 
 her. Phemy accepted his mastership not alone because 
 she loved him but because her powerful sense of loyalty 
 covered all the possible opprobrium. She did not 
 seem to mind his continued relations with Rosa. 
 
 Towards midsummer one evening Glastonbury came 
 in in the late dusk. Phemy was there in the darkened
 
 328 THE HURLY-BURLY 
 
 kitchen. "Master," she said immediately he entered. 
 He stopped before her. She continued : "Something's 
 happened." 
 
 "Huh, while the world goes popping round some- 
 thing shall always happen." 
 
 "It's me — I'm took — a baby, master," she said. He 
 stood stock-still. His face was to the light, she could 
 not see the expression on his face, perhaps he wanted 
 to embrace her. 
 
 "Let's have a light, sharp," he said in his brusque 
 way. "The supper smells good but I can't see what 
 I'm smelling, and I can only fancy what I be looking 
 at." 
 
 She lit the candles and they ate supper in silence. 
 Afterwards he sat away from the table with his legs 
 outstretched and crossed, hands sunk into pockets, pon- 
 dering while the girl cleared the table. Soon he put his 
 powerful arm around her waist and drew her to sit on 
 his knees. 
 
 "Are ye sure o' that?" he demanded. 
 
 She was sure. 
 
 "Quite?" 
 
 She was quite sure. 
 
 "Ah, well then," he sighed conclusively, "we'll be 
 married." 
 
 The girl sprang to her feet. "No, no, no — how can 
 you be married — you don't mean that — not married — 
 there's Miss Beauchamp !" She paused and added, a 
 little unsteadily: "She's your true love, master." 
 
 "Ay, but I'll not wed her," he cried sternly. "If 
 there's no gainsaying this that's come on you, I'll
 
 THE HURLY-BURLY 329 
 
 stand to my guns. It's right and proper for we to 
 have a marriage." 
 
 His great thick-fingered hands rested upon his knees ; 
 the candles threw a wash of light upon his polished 
 leggings; he stared into the fireless grate. 
 
 "But we do not want to do that," said the girl, dully 
 and doubtfully. "You have given your ring to her, 
 you've given her your word. I don't want you to do 
 this for me. It's all right, master, it's all right." 
 
 "Are ye daft?" he cried. "I tell you we'll wed. 
 Don't keep clacking about Rosa. . . . I'll stand to my 
 guns.*' He paused before adding: "She'd gimme 
 the rightabout, fine now — don't you see, stupid — but 
 I'll not give her the chance." 
 
 Her eyes were lowered. "She's your true love, 
 master." 
 
 "What would become of you and your child? Ye 
 couldn't bide here!" 
 
 "No," said the trembling girl. 
 
 "I'm telling you what we must do, modest and 
 proper; there's naught else to be done, and I'm mid- 
 dling glad of it, I am. Life's a see-saw affair. I'm 
 middling glad of this." 
 
 So, soon, without a warning to any one. least of all to 
 Rosa Beauchamp, they were married by the registrar. 
 The change in her domestic status produced no other 
 change; in marrying Weetman she had married all 
 his ardour, she was swept into its current. She helped 
 to milk cows, she boiled nauseating messes for pigs, 
 chopped mangolds, mixed meal, and sometimes drove 
 a harrow in his windy fields. Though they slept to-
 
 330 THE HURLY-BURLY 
 
 gether she was still his servant. Sometimes he 
 called her his "pretty little cob" and then she knew he 
 was fond of her. But in general his custom was dis- 
 illusioning. His way with her was his way with his 
 beasts ; he knew what he wanted, it was easy to get. If 
 for a brief space a little romantic flower began to bud 
 in her breast it was frozen as a bud, and the vague 
 longing disappeared at length from her eyes. And she 
 became aware that Rosa Beauchamp was not yet done 
 with; somewhere in the darkness of the fields Glaston- 
 bury still met her. Phemy did not mind. 
 
 In the new year she bore him a son that died as it 
 came to life. Glas was angry at that, as angry as if 
 he had lost a horse. He felt that he had been duped, 
 that the marriage had been a stupid sacrifice, and in 
 this he was savagely supported by Rosa. And yet 
 Phemy did not mind; the farm had got its grip upon 
 her, it was consuming her body and blood. 
 
 Weetman was just going to drive into town; he sat 
 fuming in the trap behind the fat bay pony. 
 
 "Bring me that whip from the passage," he shouted ; 
 "there's never a damn thing handy !" 
 
 Phemy appeared with the whip. "Take me with 
 you," she said. 
 
 "God-a-mighty ! What for? I be comin' back in 
 an hour. They ducks want looking over and you've 
 all the taties to grade." 
 
 She stared at him irresolutely. 
 
 "And who's to look after the house? You know it 
 won't lock up — the key's lost. Get up there!"
 
 THE HURLY-BURLY 331 
 
 He cracked his whip in the air as the pony dashed 
 away. 
 
 In the summer Phemy fell sick, her arm swelled 
 enormously. The doctor came again and again. It 
 was blood-poisoning, caught from a diseased cow that 
 she had milked with a cut finger. A nurse arrived but 
 Phemy knew she was doomed, and though tortured with 
 pain she was for once vexed and protestant. For it 
 was a June night, soft and nubile, with a marvellous 
 moon ; a nightingale threw its impetuous garland into 
 the air. She lay listening to it, and thinking with sad 
 pleasure of the time when Glastonbury was in prison, 
 how grand she was in her solitude, ordering everything 
 for the best and working superbly. She wanted to go 
 on and on for evermore, though she knew she had 
 never known peace in maidenhood or marriage. The 
 troubled waters of the world never ceased to flow ; in 
 the night there was no rest — only darkness. Nothing 
 could emerge now. She was leaving it all to Rosa 
 Beauchamp. Glastonbury was gone out somewhere — 
 perhaps to meet Rosa in the fields. There was the 
 nightingale, and it was very bright outside. 
 
 "Nurse," moaned the dying girl, "what was I born 
 into the world at all for?"
 
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