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 Puck. 
 
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 Signa. 
 
 Two Little Wooden Shoes. 
 
 In a Winter City. 
 
 Ariadne. 
 
 Friendship. 
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 Pipistrello. 
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 Bimbi. With Nine Illustrations by EDMUND H. 
 
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 A Dog of Flanders, &c. With Six Illustrations by 
 
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 Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos, selected from the Works 
 
 of OUIDA by F. SYDNEY MORRIS. Pos 8vo. cloth extra, 5 s. CHEAP 
 EDITION, illustrated boards, as. 
 
 London: CHATTO & WINDUS, in St. Martin's Lane, W.C. 
 
PUCK 
 
 HIS VICISSITUDES, ADVENTURES, OBSERVATIONS, 
 
 CONCLUSIONS, FRIENDSHIPS, AND 
 
 PHILOSOPHIES 
 
 RELATED BY HIMSELF AND EDITED BY 
 
 OUIDA 
 
 AUTHOR OF " FOLLE-FARINE," " IDAL1A," "HELD IN BONDAGE" 
 "CECIL CASTLEMAINE'S GAGE," ETC. 
 
 A NEW EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 CHATTO & WINDUS 
 
 1899 
 
DEDICATED 
 
 TO 
 
 jFsftfjfuJ ftfen^ anD a (gallant 
 SULLA FELIX, 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Introduction His First Paper . * 1 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. His First Memory . .... 3 6 
 
 II. Under the Bose-thorn <> 13 
 
 III. Under the Apple-tree . 24 
 
 IV. Trust's Tale . 29 
 
 V. Ambrose of the Forge . . . * 32 
 
 VI. The Sabbath-breaker , 44 
 
 VII. His First Betrayal. . 55 
 
 VIIL- In the Market-place .... * 68 
 
 IX. Jacobs' Church 73 
 
 X. He is launched on Life . , . 88 
 
 XL He sees Society 103 
 
 XII. At the Coronet Theatre 112 
 
 XIII. Bronze 138 
 
 XIV. Sunday Morning - 148 
 
 XV. His First Season 158 
 
 XVI. Bomances of the Bow 170 
 
 XVII. Beltran 180 
 
 VIIL His Views on Dinners . . . . . 188 
 
 &IX. He Studies the Stage 197 
 
 XX. La Beine Cocotte 206 
 
 XXL The Wood-elf 216 
 
 XXII. Par-ci; par-la f 245 
 
 XXIIL-Vendetta . . . . c , . 261 
 
 XXIV. La Pipetta 285 
 
 XXV. The Dog and the Devil ..... 302 
 
 XXVI. The Silver Stag . 314 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 XXYIL Faustina Victrix , 330 
 
 XXVHI.-' Cleopatre' ....... 341 
 
 XXIX. In the Quarter of the Poor 356 
 
 XXX. A Tom Letter . . . . , . 371 
 
 XXXI. 'The Child Gladys' .... 374 
 
 XXXII. A Story of the Sea . ... 895 
 
 XXXDI. ' Milord, the Hawk ' 424 
 
 XXXIV. ' The Woman at the Lattice ' ... 440 
 
 XXXV. Toy-Soldiers .459 
 
 XXXVI. April Flowers ...*, 470 
 
 XXXVIL-'Victrix' t 481 
 
 XXYm. Bonnet Blanc ... 488 
 
 XXXIX. Nellie's Prayer . . , ff 491 
 
 XL. 'Githa' ...*.. s 508 
 
 XLI. Slain * 518 
 
 XLII. Valete . : A 539 
 
 L'Eavoi , 557 
 
PUCK, 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 HIS PIBST PAPEB. 
 
 I AM only a, dog. 
 
 I find in all autobiographies which I have ever heard TOIL d 
 that it is considered polite to commence with self-apprecia- 
 ation. But for all that I do not considermyself the inferior of 
 any living creature : I never heard of any autobiographist 
 that did consider himself so. According to their own account 
 they are all incompris; and I suppose I was also; for I was 
 always held in contempt as a 'dumb brute.' Nobody, except 
 that wise woman, Eosa Bonheur, ever discerned that animals 
 only do not speak because they are endowed with a discretion 
 far and away over that of blatant, bellowing, gossiping, 
 garrulous Man. 
 
 /Only a dog,' indeed! However, the phrase has a pretty, 
 modest, graceful look, so let it stand. Men never are taken 
 At their own valuation by others; and so I suppose dogs can- 
 not expect to be either. 
 
 'Only a dog!' "Well dogs cannot lie, or bribe, or don 
 surplice, or pick a lock, or go bull-baiting in share-markets^ 
 or preside as chairmen over public companies ; we can only, 
 if we are dishonest, run off with a bone in a most open and 
 foolish fashion, and get instantly whipped for our pains. So 
 that there is one art, at least, in which men are decidedly in 
 advance of us; and in deference to that super-excellence in 
 stealing I beg: again to state, in my humilitv, that I am only 
 a Dog 
 
2 PUCK, 
 
 Such a little dog too. I can go in a muff with a seent- 
 bottle, or in a coat-pocket with a meerschaum. I am verv 
 white, very woolly, very pretty indeed ; covered all over with 
 snowy curls, and having two bright black eyes and a black 
 shiny tip to my nose like patent leather. I have heard myself 
 delared a thousand times to be 'thoro'-bred;' but I really 
 do not feel any more sure of my^ paternity than the public 
 can be of the authorship of a prince's periods or a bishop's 
 charge. I have in my own mind very patrician doubts as to 
 my father; and can, with truly aristocratic haziness, trace 
 my ancestry rp to an O. 
 
 I have studied life, I assure you ; and widely too, though 
 I am only a tiny Maltese. I am called Maltese, you know, 
 though I never saw Malta, just as our nobles are called Nor- 
 man though they do not own an acre of land in Normandy. 
 
 I have studied life ; we little cupids usually belong to the 
 fair sex; and for a vantage-point from which to survey all 
 Lhe tricks and trades, the devilries, and the frivolities, thesins 
 and the shams, the shifts and the scandals of this world of 
 yours, commend me to a cosy nook under a woman's laces! 
 
 I remember once hearing a big Alp-dog and a small King 
 Charles disputing with one another as to which knew best the 
 world and all its wickedness. Mont Blanc narrated most 
 thrilling adventures among the snows of his birth-place, told 
 how he had rescued travellers from midnight death, and dug 
 a child out of an icy grave, and guarded a lonely old chateau 
 through a whole dreary Swiss winter ; and wound up by de- 
 claring that he must have seen the game of life best since he 
 had once belonged to poor Grammont Caderousse, and now 
 lived with a G-uardsman who had rooms in Mount-street, 
 where they played hazard till the dawn was up, and told all 
 the naughtiest stories that were about on the town. 
 
 Little Charlie heard patiently, shivering at the mention 
 of snow, then winked his brown eye when Mont Blanc talked 
 of his G-uardsman. 
 
 'My dear Alp,' said he, 'I see a trick more than you for 
 all that; for I live with the ladies. As for your owner in 
 Mount-street, a ficofor him! "Why Ilelongto the woman 
 that ruins him /' 
 
 The coterie of dogs thatwas listening declared the little fel- 
 low had won. Mont Blanc lived in the sphere of the tricked ; 
 in the land of the tricksters, Ice might be cold, but 
 
HIS FIRST PAP3R. 3 
 
 act so cold as the souls oicocottes; chicken-hazard might be 
 perilous, "but not so perilous as the ways of cocodettes. 
 
 You must be spider or fly, as somebody says. Now all 
 my experience tells me that men are mostly the big, good- 
 natured, careless blue-bottles, half drunk with their honey o 
 pleasure, and rushing blindly into any web that dazzles them 
 a little in the sunshine; and women are the dainty, painted, 
 patient spiders that just sit and weave, and weave, and weave, 
 till pong! Bluebottle is in head foremost, and is killed, 
 and sucked dry, and eaten up at leisure. 
 
 You men think women do not know much of life. Pooh! 
 I, Puck, who have dwelt for many of my days on their boudoir 
 cushions, and eaten of their dainty little dinners, and been 
 smuggled under their robes even into opera, balls, and 
 churches, tell you that it is an utter fallacy. They do not 
 choose you to know that they know it, very probably; but 
 there is nothing that is hidden from them, I promise you. 
 
 They were very good to me on the whole (except that they 
 would generally overfeed me one day, and forget to feed me 
 at all the next), and I do not want to speak against them ; buf 
 if ever Metempsychosis whisk mylittlesoulinto aman's body, 
 hang me if I will not steer clear of my ladies! that's afl. 
 
 For viewing life, all its cogs, and wheels, and springs, 
 there is nothing so well as to be a lady's pet dog. To see the 
 pretty creatures quarrel with their mirrors, and almost swear 
 over their hairdressing, and get into a passion because the 
 white powder insists on resting in little tell-tale patches, and 
 sit pondering grimly for an hour over the debatable ques- 
 tion of more or less rouge ; and then to trot down on the edge 
 of their trailing skirts, and go beside them as they sweep into 
 the drawing-room, radiant with smiles, and brilliant for con- 
 quest, and hear them murmur prettiest welcome to the rivals 
 whom they could slaughter were only their fan a dagger. 
 WTiy, there is nothing in the world beats that for comedy! 
 
 Ah! you scowl at this, and say 'What a dissolute dog 
 is this Fuck; he has lived with Phryne, and Lias, and all of 
 them!' Not at all, my good sir, not a bit of it. I have had 
 mistresses in all classes of society ; I have dwelt with p easants 
 as well as with peeresses ; and on my honor I have belonged 
 to young girls that rouged like any lorette, and to matrons 
 that intrigued like any courtesan; and I have seen as genuine 
 spurts of spiteful chagrin, or impulsive good-nature, in tii? 
 
 " 2 
 
4 PUCK. 
 
 greenroom as in the schoolroom, and as matchless pieces of 
 impudent acting in the saloor as on the stage. ' Souventfemme 
 varie^ well, I don't think it (though they were always 
 variable about my meals) ; I have f o*and female nature very 
 much the same all the world over. And a dog knows 
 as a man cannot know; when 'only a dog' is with her, she 
 thinks she is all alone, you see! 
 
 You fear I am llrr.se and cynical? Perhaps I am. My 
 curls fall off a good deal, and I am forced to have my food 
 cut up in a mincing-machine; the world naturally looks dark 
 to us all when we come to this. But I have very often 
 found living agreeable enough, even though I have lived 
 sufficiently long to realise what Brummel left at Calais : and 
 I have met noble women without rouge, and with truth on 
 their tongues. I have ! And when I met them, I admired 
 them, I loved them, as your dogs (and men) of the world 
 always do, with an astonished reverential admiration that 
 your country bumpkins, your ungenerous youths, never feel. 
 
 "We are ifi appreciated, we cynics ; on mv honor, if cyni- 
 cism be not the highest homage to Virtue tnere is, I should 
 like to know what Virtue wants. We sigh over her absence 
 end we glorify her perfections. But Virtue is always a 
 trifle stuck-up, you know, and she is very difficult to please. 
 
 She is always looking uneasily out of the 'tail of her eye' 
 at her opposition leader, Sin, and wondering why Sin 
 dresses so well and drinks such very good wine. "We 
 'cynics' tell her that under Sin's fine clothes there is a 
 breast cancer-eaten, and at the bottom of the wine there is 
 a bitter dreg called satiety: but virtue does not much heed 
 that ; like the woman she "is, she only notes that Sin drives 
 a pair of ponies in the sunshine, while she herself is often 
 left to plod wearily through the everlasting falling rain. So 
 she dubs us 'cynics' and leaves us who can wonder if we 
 won't follow her through the rain? Sin smiles so merrily if 
 she makes us pay toll at the end; whereas Virtue ah me, 
 Virtue itill find such virtue in frowning! 
 
 However, I fear I am getting a trifle too French-Memoir- 
 esque, all epigram and no memoir. Living so much in the 
 cream of society I have got a good deal of its froth. It is 
 not wit, but it passes very well for it over a dinner-table. 
 Put down in black and white you may find it a trifle fri- 
 volous. As for printing wit even my wit you xaight just 
 
HIS FIRST PAPER $ 
 
 as well talk of petrifying a vanille souffle. So I ani afraid 
 even I may seem dull sometimes ; and I ha?e as great a 
 horror of seeming stupid as of seeming edifying. 
 
 How I hate that last word. It always brings to my 
 memory a gentle dean who preached most divine platitudes, 
 but invariably trod on my tail. I recollect the reverend 
 gentleman had a playful habit too of pitching biscuits at me, 
 which, when my innocent mouth opened for them, burnt it 
 with a horrid hidden dab of mustard. And he tricked an old 
 commissionaire too, who once took me about, out of a shil- 
 ling for a message. By the way, commissionaires hate to 
 do work for the cloth. ' Nobody else cuts 'em down so close 
 to a penny as them parsons,' they will always tell you. 
 What we poor dogs have lost by being shut out of church 
 by the beadles ! 
 
 But I am running out of my autobiographical track 
 again, just as Montespan and Bussy Babutin, and all o 
 them always do. I will try and hark back again to my ear- 
 liest reminiscences. They are humble ones, I must admit. 
 The world always feels a savage pleasure in tracing its 
 Shakespeares into a butcher's shop, and its Yoltaires into an 
 attorney's office, and its great men generally into paternal 
 pigsties ; it is a set-off to it for their disagreeable superiority. 
 So it will be at once familiar and soothing to it to learn that 
 I the spoiled pet and idol of its oligarchy first con- 
 sciously opened my eyes in a cottage. You see I am as 
 thoroughly honest as Kousseau in his Confessions. 
 
 Poor Jean Jacques ! he only got called a scoundrel for 
 his pains. I wonder where the man is who, telling the 
 naked truth about himself , would not get called so ? 
 
 Polite lies, polite lies ! They are the decorous garment 
 and the fitting food of the world. To be in the fashion, I 
 shall have to treat you to them before I have done. But 
 at the present moment I feel truthful. I am aware of the 
 vulgarity of the admission ; but I make it I feel truthful. 
 
 So here is the account of my earliest home. 
 
PUCK. 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 HIS FIBST MEMOET. 
 
 THE first thing I distinctly remember is lying on some 
 straw, in a wooden bed, and hearing the sound of voices 
 above. 
 
 ' Do'ee think 't'U live ? ' said one, the full gay voice of a 
 girl. 
 
 ' It '11 dew/ said the slow soft tones of a man. ' Git 
 a bit o' summat softer, lass ; the straw, it do nashen of him.' 
 
 The straw was truly nashing of me North-English for 
 pricking and hurting me ; and I took a liking to the man 
 for his thoughtfulness accordingly. The surnmat softer 
 came, in the shape of an old wool kerchief ; and he laid me 
 gently on it, put me in the warmth of the sun, and fed me 
 with some new milk, It was the man who did all this : the 
 girl stood looking on amused. 
 
 ' How came 'ee to be gi'en him, Ben ? she asked, with 
 her hand on her side. 
 
 ' It seems as mother's dead,' he responded ; my mothef 
 he meant, I found afterwards. 'And pups was such a 
 trouble like to kip i' the quick, that up a' the Hall they'd 
 no away wi' em, and Jack he was a-goin' to put this little 
 un i' ttie water. It's the last o' the litter. " Gi' he to me, 
 Jack," says I ; and he gi'ed him. " He's o' rare walue," 
 says Jack, " but he wunna live." " I dunno 'bout walue," 
 says I. " He's no bigger than a kit ; but he 'ull ha' a 
 squeak for life anyhow wi' me." And I tuk him. Poor 
 beastie, he's o' walue surely i' Q-od's sight ! ' 
 
 The girl's eyes sparkled. 
 
 1 M'appen we might sell him after a bit? she cried eagerly, 
 
 I shivered where I lay : already I was regarded as a 
 goods and chattel, purchasable, marketable, and without a 
 vote in the sale ! Mark you : it was a woman first pro- 
 posed my barter. It may have coloured all my subsequent 
 views of the sex ; I do not deny it. 
 
 ' Nay,' said the man in his slow gentle voice. ' A drop o* 
 milk's all he 'ull cost awhiles we shanna be harmed 
 i' that and he'll grow to us, and we'll grow to him 
 .belikes. Dogs are main and faithful. Look at auld Trust 
 
HIS FIRST MEMORY. 7 
 
 It *ull be time eno' to talk o' tnrnin' this'n out o' door when 
 he have misbehave hisself. I likes the looks on him.' 
 
 1 But Jack told 'ee he was worth summat ? ' urged the girt 
 impatiently. ' It was the old madam brought them wee 
 idrite dogs to the Hall first o' all, and they allus said as 
 how those little uns 'ud fetch their own weight i' gold.' 
 
 The man shook his head a little sadly. 
 
 ' Ah, ye allus thinks too much o' gold, my lass,' he said 
 with a soft reproach. 
 
 She laughed a little fiercely. 
 
 ' "We ha' got so much, to be sure ! * 
 
 ' We ha' got eno',' said he, with a patience very gentle, 
 and a little dogged. ' We ha' got bit and drop, and hearth 
 fire, and roof tree. We ha' got eno'.' 
 
 She gave a peevish, passionate twist to her dress ; it was 
 woollen, homespun, and without grace or beauty. 
 
 He sawthe gesture, androsefroni his knees beside mybed. 
 
 * There was a dead woman found o' Moorside yester- 
 night,' he said quietly. ' And the bones were thro 7 the skin ; 
 she's been clammed along o' want o' mill-work. You han't 
 got to ga ta mill, lassie.' 
 
 The rebuke was a very gentle one ; but it displeased her. 
 She stood silent, in a yellow breadth of sunlight streaming 
 in through the leaded lattice of the long, lancet-shaped, 
 creeper-shaded window. 
 
 She was very lovely, this girl strong, and lithe, and tall > 
 with a cloud o hair that would have glistened like bronze 
 with a little care, and great brown sleepy eyes that yet 
 could flash and glitter curiously, and a handsome, pouting, 
 ruddy mouth. 
 
 She wore a russet-coloured skirt that reached scarce 
 below her knees, and a yellow kerchief over her white full 
 breast, and in her ears she had two tawdry brass rings and 
 drops, and a string of red glass beads round her throat. 
 She was quite young, exuberant though her growth had 
 been ; and the man, whilst he reproached her for her dis- 
 content, looked at her as if she were the thing he loved best 
 under the sun. He himself was very unlike her ; he had a 
 homely, gentle, thoughtful countenance, and rough-hewn 
 features, and gray patient eyes ; on the whole there was a 
 great resemblance between him and a shaggy sheep-dog 
 that stood on the threshold, a sheep-dog who became ary 
 
8 PUCK. 
 
 first friend, and \vho was the creature he had referred to 
 
 by the name of Trust. 
 
 1 Take care o' him, Trust,' eaid the man, as he left me 
 and went through the door with his hoe and his spade, out 
 to his garden work, in the still evening time ; and Trust 
 came slowly to my side, and touched me good humouredly 
 with his great red tongue, and stretched himself down beside 
 my box. Trust had a shrewd, kindly, black and white face, 
 and I was glad to be in his charge instead of that of the 
 girl who had spoken of selling me. 
 
 She indeed never looked at me any more, but betook her- 
 self to the window, where, by the sunset light, she began 
 twisting an old hat about, and bedizening it with some 
 shabby rose ribbons that seemed to please her but little, to 
 judge by the dissatisfied passionate way in which she 
 pulled them one from another, and stuck them here, and 
 twisted them there, and finally flung them all aside in a 
 tumbled heap. 
 
 When the twilight came the soft, sudden, gray twilight 
 of a mild November's day she still sat by the lattice, with 
 her elbows on the little deal table, and her hands twisted 
 among her hair, staring vacantly out at the shadowy wood 
 beyond, and doing nothing at all. 
 
 The man came in again, bringing in with him from his 
 garden a sweet fresh scent of virgin mould, and of damp 
 moss, and of leaves and grasses fragrant from late autumn 
 buds that blossomed amongst them. 
 
 The girl never stirred. 
 
 ' Eh, Avice,' he called cheerily to her. * Ha ye no* a bit 
 of supper for un, my lass ? I'm rare and hungered ; them 
 clods is hard to turn, the land's so drenched-like wi' the wet.' 
 
 He gave himself a shake just as sheep-dogs do, and 
 seemed to shake off him, as it were, fresh odours of flower- 
 roots and dewy earth. Avice rose without alacrity, and took 
 down a black pot from where it swung by a hook and chain 
 in the wide brick chimney, and emptied its contents into a 
 pan ; then set the pan with some flet milk and oat cake, on 
 the bench that served them as a table. 
 
 'They've took the smoke,' he murmured, as he ate the 
 burnt and blackened potatoes ; but he said it patiently, and 
 made his meal without further lament ; apparently used to 
 the state of his kitchen. Avice ate her own supper without 
 
HIS FIRST MEMORY, 9 
 
 tendering him any excuse for the mischance that had come 
 to the potatoes whilst she had been sorting her rose ribbons; 
 md indeed she had a little sweet cake for her own eating, 
 of which she did not offer him, nor even myself an atom. 
 
 ' All praises be to G-od as gi'es us our daily bread,' said 
 the man with sincere and grateful reverence, as he bent his 
 fair curly head over the remnants of the smoked potatoes. 
 
 * Daily bread ! ' muttered the handsome girl. ' It's main 
 and fine what He do gi'e us, niver a bit o* wheat-loaf, 
 mayhap, for weeks and weeks togither.' 
 
 But she muttered it under her breath, as she did not 
 dare let him hear it. I heard it ; but then dogs hear and 
 see a great many things to which men, in their arrogance 
 and their stupidity, are deaf and blind. Wherever yet was 
 the man who could tell a thief by pure instinct ? We smell 
 dishonesty on the air, but you only ask it to dinner, play 
 cards with it, appoint it executor in your will, trust in it as 
 vour attorney, your priest, and your brother, and set it in 
 high places exultingly. 
 
 Even your clever men are such fools : your best worldly 
 knowledge is only on the tip of your tongue as parrota 
 carry their jargon, and your Eochefoucaulds writing their 
 aphorisms make asses of themselves over their Longuevilles. 
 
 But I am straying afield again. 
 
 I remind myself of what old Trust, when I came to 
 know him well, told me : ' Sheep and men are very much 
 alike,' said Trust, who thought both very poor creatures. 
 'Very much alike indeed. They go in flocks, and can't 
 give a reason why. They leave their fleece on any bramble 
 that is strong enough to insist on fleecing them. They 
 bleat loud at imagined evils, while they tumble straight 
 into real dangers. And for going off the line, there's 
 nothing like them. There may be pits, thorns, quagmires, 
 spring-guns, what not, the other side of the hedge, but go 
 off the straight track they will and no dog can stop them. 
 It's just the sheer love of straying. You may bark at them 
 right and left ; go they will, though they break their legs 
 down a limekiln. O, men and sheep are wonderfully 
 similar ; take them all in all.' 
 
 This was a favourite saying of Trust's, and I think he 
 knew, for he had been sheep-dog to several farms, and had 
 seen a deal of mankind in the little towns on the market- 
 
10 PUCK. 
 
 days, where the drovers haggled over their flocks, and 
 fought over their ale. Trust was now far on in years, and 
 his present master kept him only out of good-nature ; but 
 he was a valuable dog still, so far as shrewdness and faith- 
 fulness went. 
 
 When the man and the girl had gone up the little creak- 
 ing dark stairway that evening, seeking their beds like 
 the fowls with nightfall, Trust told me a little about them 
 
 He had the garrulousness of old age. From a sense oi 
 chivalry and royalty he was cautious about what he said 
 about Avice ; but I saw that he did not think very well of 
 her. 
 
 * She's a feckless thing,' he averred. ' Always running 
 her head on ribbons, and rings, and gay rags, and such-like, 
 all out of her station. She's a bit selfish too all young 
 things are ; you are, I don't doubt. Only you can't get 
 out of that bed yet, to fight for yourself as it were. She is 
 rare and handsome ; she thinks too much of it ; she'll sit 
 for hours staring at her face in that little bit of broken 
 mirror, and she is full of discontent ; but it will pass by 
 and by, perhaps, all that. She is so young and so spoiled ; 
 she was the youngest of ten, and Ben the oldest. All the 
 others are dead, and the father and mother as well, and 
 these two are left all alone. Ben don't think there's her 
 equal on all the earth ; every little thing as he can scrape 
 together he saves for her. Why, I know, she doesn't, that 
 he's saved a matter of five silver pieces this year, and put 
 it in a hole under, the old apple-tree ; and he is trying hard . 
 to save a whole pound by Barnaby Bright (midsummer-day, 
 that's her birthday), that he may buy her a gown she set 
 her heart on, when she saw it in the shop -window in Ash- 
 bourne this Candlemas. A great pink-coloured thing, 
 very ugly I thought, but she cried for it like a child, and it 
 vexed him sorely because he could nohow get it for her ; 
 he had only a few coppers by him. It is a very difficult 
 thing to lay mone^ by in these times, you see; quarry 
 work brings ill pay and the garden don't do well because 
 it is rocky and damp ; and the fowls haven't laid all the 
 winter, and it's trouble enough to put by ten shillings a 
 quarter for rent.' 
 
 And Trust shook his head like a dog on whom the eco- 
 nomies of the world weighed heavily. 
 
HIS FIRST MEMORY. II 
 
 ' Does she earn nothing ? ' I asked ; I was acute for my 
 age, even thus early. 
 
 ' Lord bless you, no/ said Trust. ' Flinging a bit to the 
 poultry, or mixing a little meal and water for cakes, is all 
 that lass ever- does from morn till night. There is a deal 
 for a woman to do, let alone earning money ; a woman that 
 trims her place tidily, and looks after the live stock, and is 
 handy at needle and thread, can save a power of money. 
 She don't need to go and earn it. But Avice, she just lets 
 him labour for her, in season and out of season, and does 
 nothing herself, and then turns round and mutters at him 
 because she can't eat off silver, and be shod in satin, and 
 carry a train after her like the peacocks. There are lots 
 of women like her ; lots, my dear. You will be sure to 
 come across them.' 
 
 Now Trust had, of a surety, never in his life known any 
 other women than drovers' daughters and shepherds' wives; 
 but when I grew older, and went into the world, I could 
 not help thinking that those drovers' daughters and 
 shepherds' wives must have represented the female sex 
 very completely and very faithfully. 
 
 ' Ben is good, is he not ? ' I asked, a little piteously ; for 
 there is nothing that ?ems so dreary to the young as 
 doubting or condemning those to whom they belong. 
 
 * G-ood as gold,' said Trust emphatically. ' And far 
 better indeed ; for gold has done a swarm of harm in this 
 world ; and Ben has done nothing but good all the days of 
 his life. He is the kind of a man that does good to every- 
 body except himself. I have known him ever since he was 
 a lad of fourteen. His father was dead and his mother 
 ailing ; and Ben was about the farm where I lived, and he 
 had the old woman and the babies all to keep as best he 
 could. My old master helped him a bit, but it was Ben 
 alone that kept the mother and the children off the parish. 
 He was always a quiet, cheery, still sort of lad, but with a 
 wonderful force of work in him, and as strong as a young 
 bull. He has always had queer tender kind of thoughts 
 too, about beasts and birds, and flowers and weeds, and all 
 manner of things that he sees. There is much more in Ben 
 than anybody thinks. "WTien he's been sitting on the hill- 
 side with me, all alone with the sheep, I've seen an odc^ 
 bright wondering look came in his eyes, just as if the 
 
12 PUCK. 
 
 bracken and the thyme had got talking to him, and he was 
 hearing beautiful stories from them. He can't write a 
 word, you know, and can only read just a little, spelling it 
 out as sheep hobble over a rutty road ; but I can't help 
 thinking that Ben, if he only could express what he feels, 
 and say all that the water and trees and things tell him, 
 would 'be what I once heard some artistrnen when they were 
 at work painting on my moorside talk about for an hour 
 and more I think they called it a poet. At least one of 
 them read aloud, and it was out of a book that they said 
 was a poet's, whilst the others were sketching ; and the 
 sound of what they did read was very like the look in Ben's 
 eyes when he was alone on the hills, gazing at the clouds 
 and the mists.' 
 
 I listened, much impressed, but not at all understanding 
 him. 
 
 ' You must have thought a great deal yourself ? ' I said 
 timidly. He looked very thoughtful witl :M iM wrinkled 
 and shaggy brows. 
 
 'Of course,' said Trust calmly. 'Dogs think a great deal; 
 when people believe us asleep, nine times out of ten we are 
 meditating. But men won't credit that, you see, because 
 if ever they happen to hit on a thought themselves, they 
 rush and set it all down in black and white, and cry out to 
 all the others what wonders they are. You must think, 
 among the hills and the dales; they make you, whether 
 you tike it or not. Even the sheep think, I do believe, 
 though they look so stupid. Everything in creation thinks, 
 that's my idea. Look at a little beetle, how clever it is, 
 how cunning in defence, how patient in labour, how full of 
 disquiet ; but you cannot understand, you are only a 
 nurseling. G-o to sleep until day-light. Myself I never 
 do more than doze ; that comes of habit when I used to 
 have my sheepfolds to guard. Here there is nothing to 
 take care of, for there is nothing to steal, unless it be those 
 brass earrings of Avice's ! ' 
 
 "With which smothered satire he stretched himself to 
 enjoy that semi- slumber which the French call * entre chat 
 et loup ; ' and I curled myself in my box to pass my first 
 night under the roof of Reuben Dare. 
 
UKDER THE RGSE-THORN. 1 3 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 UNDER THE EOSE-THOE2T. 
 
 IT was scarce daybreak when Trust went up the steep 
 ladder-like stairs, and scratched ?9udly at the door on top 
 of them. 
 
 'I always wake them so,' he explained when he descended- 
 and I saw afterwards that he never was too soon or two 
 late a single minute, though there was no village clock 
 within hearing, no clock at all in the house, and the sun at 
 that time was as irregular and as little to be depended on 
 as the sun usually is in the British Isles. * Only a dog!' 
 ah, * only a dog,' with no watch in his pocket, will keep 
 time with a punctuality that men seldom attain, despite all 
 their best chronometric aids ! 
 
 Soon a slow heavy step sounded on the stairway, and 
 Eeuben himself came down into the gloom ; patted Trust, 
 spoke to me and undid the single shutter. There was not 
 very much light even then : it was a chilly morning. He 
 went out to a little shed, brought in an armful of peat and 
 brushwood, made his own fire with a great deal of labour, 
 and got out his own breakfast. It was only a draught of 
 cider and a hunch of rye bread ; the diet on which most of 
 your hard rural labour, your sowing and reaping, your 
 ploughing and hoeing, your hedging and ditching, is done 
 after all. 
 
 To Trust he gave more of the bread than he ate himself; 
 and for me he heated a bowl of flet milk, talking to us both 
 in his kindly and dreamy fashion. 
 
 Later he took down from the cupboard a single little 
 dainty white china cup, and a small black china teapot ; 
 and a very tiny white wheat loaf, and pat of sweet amber- 
 hued butter. He put some tea in the pot weighing it as 
 heedf ully as some men weigh gold, for it was terribly costly 
 to him and left them all ready together, on the table 
 under the lattice. 
 
 Then he waited a moment or two, listening for a step on 
 the stair : there was none it was all silent above. A shade 
 of disappointment stole over his face, but no anger ; he 
 took his huge pickaxe and other tools from their corner, 
 put them over his shoulder, and went out through the 
 ^ lingering a moment with a backward look up the stai- 
 
14 PUCK. 
 
 Then he drew the door after him, and I heard his steps 
 growing fainter and fainter as they trod down the moss. 
 Trust had gone with him. 
 
 I was alone a long time, a very long time ; so long that I 
 whimpered and cried, unheard, till I was tired, and held 
 my peace for want of breath. When the sun was quite 
 high, the girl Avice at length appeared. 
 
 ' Be quiet, will 'ee, little wretch ! ' she cried to me ; and 
 went straightway to the table. Her eyes glistened a little 
 as she saw the butter and tea, and she sat down and ate j 
 never casting the smallest morsel to me. 
 
 Beautiful she was by the morning light ; with her fair, 
 rich colour, and her gleaming eyes, and her crown of half- 
 bright, half -dusky hair, like the bronze in which there is 
 much mixture of gold. But I thought I never saw any- 
 thing of so much greed, or so intensely selfish. There was 
 a vivid animal pleasure in the sight of what were dainties 
 to her senses ; but there was no sort of gratitude or feeling 
 at the generous and thoughtful affection which had been 
 thus tender of her in her absence. She ate all there was 
 on the table, seeming to like to draw the pleasure out to 
 its longest span ; when ended, she washed the things and 
 set them away, and did a little housework, all in a very 
 idle slovenly manner, like one whose heart was not at all 
 in her occupation. 
 
 Then she went and fed the poultry, calling them round 
 the door-sill. I could see them fight, and peck, and beat 
 each other over the disputed grain ; and when one helpless 
 little speckled hen, who had scarcely a feather left in her 
 body owing to her merciless sisters' unremitting onslaughts, 
 was finally driven away from the mash-pan without having 
 tusted so much as a barleycorn. I heard Avice laugh, 
 the first good-humoured and amused laugh that I had heard 
 from her lips. 
 
 To feed the martyred hen she made no attempt ; she left 
 it to mope upon a rail. 
 
 When she came within, she drew her spinning-wheel to 
 her, and began that ancient, graceful, classic work, old as 
 the days of Troy. But she only tangled her yarn, and 
 spoiled" her web,' and at last she pushed the distaff im- 
 patiently from her, and took up her piece of mirror, and 
 rell to twining her string of red beads in and cut of he* 
 
UNDER THE ROSE-THORN. 15 
 
 hair, and knotting them round her arms, and wreathing 
 them on her breast above her low-cut leathern bodice. 
 
 This little cottage of Eeuben Dare's was quite alone, in 
 the heart of the Peak country, on the edge of a great wood, 
 chiefly of pines, at the farther extremity of which was the 
 stone quarry where he worked, fair weather and foul ; 
 whilst in his leisure time he reared a few hardy flowers and 
 simple fruits in his damp mossy garden, to which nothing 
 but the indigenous ferns, and burdocks, and coltsfoot, took 
 really kindly. 
 
 At the back of the cottage rose a hill, all grown over 
 with ash, and larch, and firs ; whilst, beyond that, there 
 stretched the great dreary steppes of moorland, with a 
 Roman tumulus, or a Druidic rocking-stone, alone break- 
 ing here and there the monotony of their brown, level, 
 sheep-cropped wastes. Ashbourne was seven miles away, 
 and the nearest hamlet was three ; a scattered farm or two 
 stood on the moors, and the Hall on the other side of the 
 wood, where my forefathers had been reared, was utterly 
 deserted by its owners, and left to the care of three or 
 four superannuated servants, under whose neglect my 
 delicate, high-born mother had perished. 
 
 Eeuben's cottage was pretty ; a square stone place with 
 a pyramidal red roof, the whole enveloped in ivy and 
 lichens, and the shade of spreading yew boughs ; the same 
 yews from which, in Bobin Hood's days, the famous bow- 
 men of England had been served with their weapons. Al- 
 though it was midwinter, the cctfcnge had a rosy glory that 
 depended on no season, for it was covered, from the lowest 
 of its stones to the top of its peaked roof, with a gigantic 
 rose-thorn. 
 
 ' Sure the noblest shrub as ever God have made,' would 
 Ben say, looking at its massive, cactus-like branches, with 
 their red, waxed, tender-coloured berries. The cottage was 
 very old, and the rose-thorn was the growth of centuries. 
 Men's hands had never touched it. It had stretched where 
 it would, ungoverned, unhampered, unarrested. It had a 
 beautiful dusky glow about it always, from its peculiar 
 thickness and its blended hues ; and in the chilly weather 
 the little robin red-breasts would come and flutter into it, 
 and screen themselves in its shelter from the cold, and 
 make it rosier yet with the brightness of their little ruddy 
 throats. 
 
16 PUCK. 
 
 1 Tha Christ-birds do allus seem safest like i' tha Christ. 
 bush,' Ben would say softly, breaking off the larger half of 
 his portion of oaten cake, to crumble for the robins with 
 the dawn. I never knew what he meant, though I saw he 
 had some soft, grave, old-world story in his thoughts, that 
 made the rose-thorn and the red-breasts both sacred to him. 
 
 Avice would only laugh ; and if he went away to work 
 before the little birds had eaten all his gifts, would drive 
 her chickens under the great thorn-tree to steal their oat- 
 crumbs from those shy, pretty, russet songsters. 
 
 Midwinter too had other beauties in that secluded place. 
 At least I heard old Trust say so many times ; and it was 
 true. 
 
 There were such grand tempestuous sunsets, with one- 
 half the sky like a sheet of steel above the brown round 
 hills, and the other half all dusky, red, and gold, behind 
 the driving purple clouds. There were such beautiful 
 wondrous snowstorms, that falling down past the great 
 ivy-covered trunks and the dense net-work of auburn-hued 
 branches, and drifting by the dim, soft, solemn shapes of 
 the hill-sides and the bleak shadows of the fir-woods, 
 mingled so strange a phantasy of dying colour, and made 
 the earth seem dim, and sweet, and distant, even as in a 
 dream. 
 
 Then one could see so easily the coming and the going, 
 the joys and the terrors, the loves and the strifes of the 
 rooks, high above in the tallest trees that stood on the 
 highest crest of the rocks. One could see the foxes' earths 
 under the leafless brushwood, and the rabbits' holes under 
 the withered bracken. The little ouzels, when they found 
 their shallow ponds wid freshets frozen, grew very tame, 
 and fluttered close to the garden wall in hope of catching 
 a stray crumb from the hens or a stray bone from the cat. 
 
 The cat herself an unamiable creature when the weather 
 was warm grew sociable and good-natured when the snow 
 drove her in-doors ; and she shared with Trust and myself 
 a place on the hearth-stone, before the cheery, brightly- 
 burning fire of ' cobbles,' that flamed up under the round 
 swinging kettle into the wide black shaft of the old- 
 fashioned chimney. For if she spit or scratched Trust 
 drove her away from the fire ; and she soon learned what 
 is the rule for us all, from cats to court-beauties. 
 
UNDER THE ROSE-THORN. if 
 
 from dogs to diplomatists that the way to get the warmth 
 of the world (and to give a sly safe pat to your neighbour) 
 is to sheathe all your claws under velvet, and to keep in an 
 excellent temper. 
 
 All living things seemed to draw closer together in the 
 perils and privations of the winter, as you men do in the 
 frost of your frights or your sorrows. In summer as iu 
 prosperity every one is for himself, and is heedless of 
 others because he needs nothing of them. 
 
 The cottage was very pretty at all seasons, as I say, with 
 its two long quaint windows and its wide door, through 
 which the sunshine seemed for ever streaming, and a little 
 brook singing close by, right under the garden grasses. 
 It was very pretty, standing down as it did at the foot 
 of the hill, with the dense green of wood all before it. 
 But it was very lonely, and no sound ever came to it 
 save the sound of the water-freshets, and of the birds in 
 the branches, except when now and then thunder of 
 some louder blast than common rolled faintly from the 
 distant quarry, followed by the rumbling echo of the loosened 
 falling stones. 
 
 It was lonely, certainly; and dull to those for whom thf 
 brown silent moors had no grandeur, the ceaseless song d 
 the brook no music, the old gray hoary stones no story, tho 
 innumerable woodland creatures for ever astir under brake 
 and brushwood, no wonder and no interest. 
 
 And the girl Avice was one of these. The poetic faculty 
 as you call the insight and the sympathy which feels a 
 divinity in all created things and a joy unutterable in the 
 natural beauty of the earth is lacking in the generality oi 
 women, notwithstanding their claims to the monopoly oi 
 emotion. If it be not, how comes it that women nave 
 given you no great poet since the days of Sappho ? 
 
 It is women's deficiency in intellect you will observe 
 Not a whit: it is women's deficiency in sympathy. 
 
 The greatness of a poet lies in the universality o his 
 sympathies. And women are not sympathetic, because they 
 are intensely self-centred. 
 
 As Avice sat one day, when winter had grown into earliest 
 ep ring, pulling her beads about, and gazing at herself in her 
 bit of glass as usual, there came in sight in the distance, 
 imler the arching boughs of the pines, a little old man with 
 
 
 
tS PUCK. 
 
 a pack on his back. I found afterwards that he TC as a pedlar 
 called Dick 'o the Wynnats (i.e., of the gates of the wind,) 
 who joumied about on foot within a radius of twenty miles 
 or so round Ashbourne, and who came through this wood 
 to the IToor farms about once in three months one of the 
 very few new-comers that ever disturbed the solitudes 
 round Reuben's cottage. 
 
 Avice's eyes sparkled with eager delight as she saw him 
 approach, and she darted through the open door and down 
 the glade to meet him with more welcoming alacrity than 
 I ever saw her display, to any living creature. 
 
 I knew nothing about lovers in those days, or I might 
 have thought he had been one of hers, so gleefully did she 
 greet him. But if I had done so I should have been un- 
 deceived on his entrance, for an uglier little old fellow never 
 breathed, and he was over seventy in age, though tough 
 and hard as a bit of ash-stick. 
 
 'What ha' gotten tha morn, Dick?' asked Avice 
 eagerly, longing for a sight of his pack. 
 
 'Eh! ha' gotten a power o' things,' said Dick, leisurely 
 unstrapping it, and letting it down on the brick floor; but 
 m'appen y'ull gie me a drop of summat to wet my throstle 
 *n' first, Avice; canna, my wench?' 
 
 Avice somewhat impatiently, brought him a little jugful 
 of cider. 
 
 'Ben, he wunna ha' ought else to drink i' the house than 
 that pig's swill,' she said, with a sovereign contempt for 
 what she offered. 
 
 'And hanna a mossel o' vittles wi' it?' asked old Dick 
 with insidious softness. 'I darena tak' this stuff a'out 
 eaten of a mossel ; it 'ud turn 'e my stomach, it would.' 
 
 I wished it might turn in his stomach, for I had conceived 
 a great dislike to him, and had a horrid idea that he might 
 take me away in his pack. 
 
 Avice, however, supplied him with the desired 'mossel,' 
 and he appeared to have disowned all idea of danger in the 
 cider, for he drained the jug to its last drop. Meanwhile 
 Avice, fallen on her knees, was swiftly undoing the leathern 
 straps of his portable warehouse, and feasting her eyes on 
 all its wondrous treasures. 
 
 They consisted of glass beads, small mirrors, rolls of rib- 
 bons, gaudy cotton handkerchiefs, many coloured woollen 
 
UNDER THE ROSE-THORN. 19 
 
 fabrics, penny illustrated periodicals, and all things of the 
 cheapest and of the finest that could allure the eyes of 
 country maidens, and the silver coins of their saving- 
 boxes. But they were a million-fold more attractive to 
 Avice Dare than the dainty robin's nest in the ivied wall, 
 or the delicate bells of the dew on the leaves, or the 
 marvellous sunset-colours in the western skies, or the ex- 
 quisite heath on the broad brown fells, or any one of the 
 many beauteous things in her daily life to which her sight 
 was blind. 
 
 She lingered in rapture over every one of the tawdry 
 worthless pieces of apparelling, and laid each aside with a 
 sigh of envious longing. 
 
 The pedlar let his goods work their own charm whilst he 
 enjoyed his 'mossel;' then he sang their praises, and spread 
 them out freshly before her. 
 
 ' Look'ee, lass,' said he ; { here be a many things made 
 right on to please ye. There bean't such a lot as this'n 
 anywhere else our side o' tha Peak. Bless ye, afore I've 
 been half across moor-side I'll ha' emptied my pack o' 'em 
 all, down to the littlest spool o' cotton. But I'd rayther 
 sell 'em to you ; 'cause there bean't such a well-looking 
 lass as ye anywheres i' tha country. Ye set tha clo'es 
 off, that'ee do. Now, what'll 'ee fit on tha morn, Avice ?' 
 
 Avice shook her pretty curly head. 
 
 'I ha'n't gotten no siller,' she said with sullen sadness. 
 ' Tha ten pennies I got for tha eggs ye had last time ye 
 come ; I ha'n't got no more, not a brass farden, an 'twas 
 iver so. Tha things is lovely: but ye wunna let me hev 
 'em on tick, as 'twere ? ' 
 
 To this hint old Dick gave a sturdy denial. 
 
 1 Canna my dearie ; canna, as 'twas iver so. I gies al- 
 lays ready money myself allays ; and if I was kep' out o' it 
 I should ha' to go to workhus. I'd do a deal for ye 
 ye're so pretty wi' yer gowd hair but I darena do that, 
 let alone how wild Ben 'ud be wi' me : ye's aware o' that.' 
 
 ' Ben's a gaby ! ' said Avice savagely, spreading out be- 
 fore her longing eyes a shawl of bright scarlet and orange, 
 and then folding it around her lovingly. ' Lots o' folk go 
 on tick, and why na we ? "We'd be sure to pay sometime 
 when tha garden was forrard, or the hins got well a-laying. 
 What's that there blue ribbon ? That's beautiful ! ' 
 
JO PUCK. 
 
 1 An 'ud look beautiful in yer hair, my pretty,' said the 
 iubtle Dick, holding it up against the light. 'And then 
 there's this red handkercher as 'ud go lovely over it there 
 bean't a nicer 'sortment than blue and red togither. That's 
 a rare bargain too, that there lot o' jew'lry. I get it straight 
 from a born lady, as had come down 'i the world, and was 
 obleeged to part wi' it. Them's real jew'ls, they is, and all 
 dirt cheap only five shillin' for the lot. Eeal dimonds ; 
 ^t for the Queen o' England. "Why, if ye hevthem on at 
 the wakes 'i this summer-time the wunna be a lass as 'ull 
 nold a candle to ye, and a' the lads 'ull be dazed-like wi' 
 yer glory. Pit 'em on, my wench, pit 'em on, even if ye 
 cannatake 'em; I long to sees 'em upo' ye.' 
 
 All this, uttered in a soft sleepy 'tongue 'o the Peak,' 
 that slurs over every harsh word, and rolls its phrases all 
 one in another, took its due effect upon Avice. Intensely 
 ignorant, and honestly believing in her simplicity that she 
 saw real 'dimonds' before her, she yielded to the tempta- 
 tion, and clasped the brazen bands, sparkling with their 
 bits of white glass, on her arms and about her throat, gazing 
 at them and herself entranced. 
 
 Old Dick clapped his bony hands in admiring ecstasy. 
 
 'Lord's sake!' he cried, 'ony look at yerself ! Why 
 lord-a-rnercy, no queen could ekall ye ! ' 
 
 The old hypocrite was most likely half -sincere. Avice 
 was a very pretty picture then. Her arms were too fair 
 by nature to have ever become sun-browned, and they were 
 shaped to satisfy a sculptor; her throat was long and 
 slender, though it denoted physical strength; and her neck, 
 white as the driven snow, was the full blue-veined bosom 
 of a goddess. Nor were these beauties much concealed by 
 the low-cut leathern bodice that enclosed them: and as she 
 breathed, quickly and feverishly, with longing and self-love, 
 her eyes gleamed, her face flushed, and the mock diamonds 
 really lent to her a curious kind of glittering transitory 
 lustre. 
 
 'O, if ony I had 'em!* she cried, tossing her arms above 
 her head, an<3 unconsciously giving more beauty to her dis- 
 closed charms. ' O, if ony I had 'em ! They'd look at no- 
 body else at the wakes !' 
 
 The wakes are the rura] feasts held over the "Peak country, 
 
UNDER THE ROSE-THORN. 21 
 
 ftt every town and village on the anniversary of the building 
 of its parish church. This religious commemoration takes 
 the form of feasting, junketing, drinking, dancing, and eat- 
 ing very thin, round sweet cakes ; and it was the only form 
 of public festivity that Avice had ever in her brief life 
 enjoyed. 
 
 To her the wakes seemed the pivot of the world, and all 
 the seasons rolled only to bring the wakes round again to 
 rejoice the souls of their worshippers. 
 
 * Te must ha' 'em, my dearie,' murmured old Dick be- 
 guilingly. ' Te must, somehow or ither. I should na ha* 
 the heart to see ony body else a-sportin' of 'em now I've 
 once seed 'em on yer bonny brist. Just 'ee think a bit 
 ha' na ye got the littlest hantle o' siller ? ' 
 
 Avice glanced towards me ; and I trembled in my box. 
 
 1 There's tha pup as Ben ha' gi'en he tin week agone,' 
 she said. ' They tell us as how 'tis a deal o' walue. Would 
 'ee tak' it, and sell it i' the town ? ' 
 
 ' Lawk a mussy no ! ' cried Dick in horror. ' I canna 
 abide dogs : niver could. There's that Trust o' yourn, 
 allays a sniffin' and mouthin' at me, if he be by when I 
 come. Think o' some ither way, my lass. Look 'ee ye 
 ha' got dinionds as a princess herseF 'ud be proud to 
 weer. Te'll niver part wi' 'em now ye ha' once pit 'em on, 
 Avice?' 
 
 Mephistopheles, of whom I have subsequently heard 
 much and often, was at his old work with women in the 
 person of the pedlar of the Peak. Only here Mephis' 
 topheles thought the jewels enough without adding the 
 temptation of passion, and substituted Self -Love for Love ; 
 the first is the more potent seducer of the two with the 
 fair sex, which enrols a hundred Avices to one G-retchen. 
 
 Dick o' tha Wynnats knew well that, having once put 
 the things on, the girl would never let them go out of her 
 eight again unpurchased. 
 
 Avice stood with them clasped about her neck and arms, 
 ruffling her hair in her perplexity, and with the great tears 
 beginning to brim over in her eyes, because she saw no 
 means whereby she could make herself mistress of these 
 splendid gems. 
 
 Suddenly she grew very pale; the blood forsook her 
 cheeks and lips ; a sudden thought hope and fear both in 
 
2 PUCK. 
 
 one seemed to leap into her eyes, and burn the tears in 
 lliein dry. 
 
 ' Is it a matter o' five shillin' ? ' she asked ; and her 
 voice was hoarse and lower than usual as she spoke. 
 
 Five shillings were in Reuben's cottage as five thousand 
 sovereigns are in the great world. 
 
 ' Five shinin',' averred the pedlar, * and I would na sell 
 'em for that to ony else than ye, my dearie real dimonds 
 as they be, and wored by a great lady.' 
 
 '"Wait a bit,' murmured Avi<?e. 'Now I think on it, 
 m'appen I can cU> it. Just 'bide a bit, will 'ee ? ' 
 
 And still with her face very pale, and a steadfast, reck- 
 less, yet scared look upon it, she went out of the door, the 
 sunlight catching the ' dimonds,' and playing on them till 
 the poor glass trumpery flashed and glowed, as though it 
 really were some gem of Asia. 
 
 Where she went I did not see ; she had closed the door 
 behind her. Old Dick tarried patiently, putting the con- 
 tents of his pack in order again, and did not even look 
 through the lattice. 
 
 Dick, I suppose, was a worldly-wise man ; and thought 
 that so long as the money was forthcoming for his mer- 
 chandise, he had nothing to do with whence it came. Pretty 
 girls might not care that he should know. 
 
 Presently Avice returned : her face was very flushed now, 
 and she spoke with eager, tremulous excitement. 
 
 ' I ha' gotten it, Dick,' she cried. ' Here it be. It's a 
 s"srftrm of siller, sure, to pay all atonst but the jew'ls are 
 worth it. Here, one, two, three, four, five. All good 
 money. All good ! ' 
 
 The peculiar haste and excitement of her manner struck 
 the shrewd old man, for he rung and bit every coin in suc- 
 cession with care, as though suspecting bad money amongst 
 them from the very volubility of her asseverations. They 
 were all good, however ; and he put them by in a leather 
 pouch, chuckling contentedly as he did so. 
 
 ' I knew 'ee got the money somewhere,' he cried. ' But 
 ye wimrnen allays want so much pressin' and coaxin' to make 
 ee do what ye're dyin' to do ! Sure, and ye have the bravest 
 dimonds i' the country-side, Avice. Nell at the Dell Farm 
 will be main and mad when I tells her. She's allays rare and 
 jealous o' ye, wench. M'appen ye've got a coin or two more 
 lay by, that ye could gie us for this lot of blue ribbi r * ' 
 
UNDER THE ROSE-THORN. *3 
 
 * No, I ha'n't got a penny!' said Avice fiercely, covering 
 her eyes with her hands to shut out the sight of the coveted 
 ribbon. Already her diamonds scarcely contented her. 
 
 * "Well, well, don't 'ee fret. Te got enow on ye neck to 
 make 'em all crazed-like wi' jealousy,' said the benevolent 
 Dick in consolation. ' And look 'ee, I'll put in this lot of 
 pictur' papers, all for good will ; they'll wile ye a bit when 
 ye're dull. They're all about lords and ladies ; uncommon 
 pretty readin', and a power o' murders in 'em too. Them 
 quality seems allus a-cuttin' each other's throats, if one may 
 b'lieve them there pennies.' 
 
 "With which he deposited two or three of the penny num- 
 bers of fiction on the little table, and regarded himself, it 
 was evident, as a person of princely liberality. 
 
 * I hate readin',' said Avice ungraciously, looking, never- 
 theless, at the illustrations. ' I dew spell these here out 
 sometimes, 'cause I like to see how folk live in great houses, 
 How fine it must be to hev gentry a-killin' theirselves for 
 ye, and a-wearin' o' masks to trap*ye, and a-carryin' ye off 
 to palaces i' the dead o' tha night. Do 'ee say as all's true 
 what they tells ? ' 
 
 ' All's gospel truth i' tha pennies,' said Dick promptly, 
 forgetting his previous scepticism. ' It's all dukes what 
 writes in them, and they must know what they does their- 
 selves.' 
 
 * And does they wear masks, and swords, and drive in 
 gowden chariots, and carry off live princesses ? ' asked 
 Avice eagerly, the dulness of her imagination stirred. 
 
 Dick scratched his head thoughtfully. 
 
 1 Well, I seed a duke in these parts onst, long ago,' he 
 said meditatively, * and he was a little old rum-lookin' chai^ 
 I thought, wi' grey hair and yaller gaiters. And he rid^a 
 fat black cob, and he said thank 'ee when I oped the gats 
 for un. And I could na see as he was anything diff rent to 
 Tim Eadly the stockin'-higgler, as was amazing like dim. 
 But them pennies is gospel-true, lass ; niverye go to doubt 
 it. And now I'll bid 'ee good day, my wench ; for I must 
 get over moor-side afore the strike o' twelve.' 
 
 And throwing his pack over his shoulder, and taking his 
 staff, the old man left us, and went out by the rear of the 
 house, and began to climb the steep wooded hill that rose 
 between the cottage and the moorlands that lay beyoncU 
 
24 PUCK. 
 
 Avice scarcely noticed his departure. She was absorbed 
 in thinking of the dukes and in gazing at her jewels, with 
 her elbow resting on the table and her eyes fixed on the 
 glass. Suddenly, however, she darted out and called to the 
 pedlar, as he slowly crept up the lower slope of the hill. 
 I could hear his voice reply from above. 
 
 ' What is 't, lass ? Ha' ye found siller enow for the blue 
 ribbin?' 
 
 ' No ! ' she cried to him. ' Ony ony I forgot to tell 
 'ee if ye see Ben any time don't 'ee say no thin' to him o* 
 tha dimonds. Mind that ! ' 
 
 ' O' course not,' he sung out in answer. ' Wheniver does 
 I say anythin' ? ' 
 
 ' Thank 'ee,' she called back. * Ye knaw he dusna like 
 my layin' out o' money on rattletraps and bits o' brass, as 
 Ve calls 'em/ 
 
 ' Ben's a fule,' retorted the old man from above, amongst 
 the firs. 
 
 CHAPTEE HI 
 
 UVDEE THE APPLE TEEE, 
 
 SHE came into tlic- '.? v ase again and ran to her mirror at 
 once: she was fever U', and little at ease, it seemed, but 
 her ' dimonds ' still afLorded her rapturous delight. The 
 gold was so yellow, and the stones were so big ! 
 
 She seemed never to tire of clasping them on and off, and 
 changing their resting-place, and picturing to herself, 
 doubtless, the admiration, she would draw on her at the 
 wakes, and the bitterness of soul which she would cause to 
 Nell o' the Moor Farm. Hour after hour she spent, gazing 
 at these things and at herself in them, and thinking, idly 
 and purposelessly, yet with a curious mixture of anxiety 
 and savagery, to judge by the shadows that flitted one after 
 another across her face the shadows of desire and of dis- 
 satisfaction. 
 
 ' If I could ony be where them things be wored all day, 
 and dukes be a-swearin' o' love till they kills theirselves 1 * 
 she muttered half aloud, over her precious gems. 
 
UNDER THE APPLE-TREE. 25 
 
 She nad led the simplest and most innocent life possible ; 
 she had been no more touched by whispers of evil than the 
 little blue cuckoo's-eye flowering without ; she had been 
 brought up with the birds and the beasts, the noble moors 
 and the radiant waters, and had had no more to acquaint 
 her with the guilt of the world than the young lambs at 
 play in the dales. But yet these longings were in her ; 
 these senses were inborn and importunate. 
 
 Vision she had not, imagination she had not, ambition 
 she knew naught of, and intelligence was dead in her ; but 
 these she had vanity, and greed, and sensuality, the true 
 tempters of thousands of women. 
 
 After a while she took her treasures up the stairs, to hide 
 them away, no doubt, in some box in her bedchamber, and 
 there she remained till the day had almost waned, when she 
 came down again and put on the potatoes to boil. She 
 threw them into the pat with their skins scarcely washed, 
 and sat down to peruse one of the * pennies,' reading it 
 slowly and painfully, spelling each word out, and tracing it 
 with her forefinger. 
 
 She started a little as Trust entered with the setting of 
 the sun, and after him his master. Ungracious at all times 
 to her brother, her manner changed this evening ; she wel- 
 comed him with more cordial warmth than usual, chattered 
 with a flow of words very rare with her, and busied her- 
 self in getting his supper with much more willingness than 
 she had shown on any night previous. 
 
 Ben himself looked very pleased with the alteration in 
 her, and responded to it with a caressing tenderness that 
 was infinitely gentle and touching. 
 
 ' I'd a run o' luck to-day, my pretty,' he said, sitting over 
 his potatoes and oatmeal. ' There wits c lady as had lost 
 her track i' the big pine wood, and I pit Ler right, and she 
 gi'ed me a shillin' for 't. Aiid soon drier, whiles I was 
 a-working', there kern a man a- tr ampin', you know, as those 
 paintin' chaps and tha fellows as break up the stones wi' a 
 little hammer allays do. They ses they's gennlemen, but I 
 niver b'lieve as gennlemen born 'ud go about wi' nasty oil- 
 
 Eots or bags o' bits o' gritstone. Howe'er, that's neither 
 ere nor there. This un, he spoke uncommon kind, and 1 
 picked him out a atom of cawke and a mossel or two of 
 clue- John, as seemed to please him, and he gi'ed me a 
 
a6 PUCK. 
 
 shillin' tew. So I was rare i' luck tlia morn. And Trust, 
 tew ; for he got a lot of san'widges out o' this here gennle, 
 man's pack. How's ta pup ? He look rare an' brave, 
 Eh, my little 'un, ye'll pull through safe enow, won't e'e ? 
 'Tis a pretty crittur, sure.' 
 
 This was the first praise that I ever heard of my beauty, 
 which has all my life been remarkable : it has been lauded 
 by many lips, but by none more honest and kindly than 
 poor Ben's. 
 
 Avice received his news with unwonted sympathy, and 
 seemed to desire to atone for the general badness of her 
 careless cookery, by an assiduity that should leave him no- 
 thing to desire in his present meal, and induce him to linger 
 over it longer than usual. In this, however, she failed. 
 He cared little what he ate, and he had a design he was 
 eager to execute. 
 
 The supper, and the thanksgiving for it, ended, he rose 
 and took his gardening tools. 
 
 ' Te wunna go and garden tha night, Ben ? * asked Avice 
 rapidly. ' Do 'ee look : tha sun's down.' 
 
 1 There's a lot o' light, lass,' he laughed in answer. ' 1 
 allus garden arter 'tis down or afore 'tis riz. Te knows 
 that well enow.' 
 
 ' But it's so cold, Ben, and so damp,' she urged, with a 
 curious feverishness. ' Ye'll get the rewmatiz, sure as ye 
 live, if ye garden this time o' night.' 
 
 He laughed aloud at this. 
 
 ' Why, Avice, d'ee think I's an old un of sixty year ? 
 D'ee iver know me ailin' of aught ? Stay'ee in if ye feel 
 the damp; but the weather's no been bred yet as can 
 daunt or damage o' me.' 
 
 And he went. 
 
 Trust whispered over my box : 
 
 ' He is going to bury that two shillings with the rest 
 cinder the apple-tree. She does not dream he has saved 
 money there, you know.' 
 
 I said nothing. 
 
 ' And it's all for her,' added Trust ; ' all for that uglv 
 red gown that she cried for last Candlemas.' 
 
 Avice stayed by the hearth, with her hands clasped and 
 her head bent, and the ruddy light of the cobble fire play 
 ing on her bowed head. 
 
L'NDER THE APPLE-TREE. Yj 
 
 A brief space later there came on the night air a great 
 cry, followed by a sudden silence. Trust rushed headlong 
 out ; Avice remained unmovable. 
 
 A little later her brother appeared on the threshold. 
 His face was very pale, and he looked dazed and appalled. 
 
 ( Avice, there's bin a thief here ! " he said tremulously, 
 though his grave voice was very low. 
 
 ' A thief ! ' she echoed, without lifting her head. ' What 
 hev the fowls bin stole ? ' 
 
 * No ; they's in their coops,' he answered, with a tremor 
 still in his voice ; ' but there's bin somebody a robbin' me, 
 for all that ; a-robbin' you, my little lass, a robbin' you ! ' 
 
 'Me! ' 
 
 'Ah, my dearie, ye didna know,' said Ben softly and 
 sadly. * I was wrong, maybe, not to tell 'ee ; ye'd ha' been 
 more heedful o' tramps about. But ye see, lassie, ye was 
 so wishful for that gownd, that I thoct as how I'd surprise 
 ye. And, d'ye see, I says to myself, says I, I'll pit every 
 stiver I can git in a hole under tha old apple-tree, and 
 store it up till Ba^naby Bright, and thin tak her o'er to 
 Ashbourne and gie her the thing she's a-longin' for. That 
 was wot I thoct, ye see, and now it's every shillin' gone. 
 The moss hev been pulled up, and the hole's clean empty 
 as empty can be. If I'd c:ily telled ye, my pretty! And 
 now ye'll have to wait for yer gownd.' 
 
 Avice stood, still unmoved, waving to and fro in the fire ; 
 then at length she spoke very huskily. 
 
 * Lord, how good o' ye, Ben ! Who can it be as ha' took 
 it?' 
 
 He ruffled his fair hair in sorrowful perplexity. 
 
 * Some tramps, a coorse, my dear. Didna ye hear any 
 steps about ? ' 
 
 ' Niver a one. But 'tis true I went up moor-side just 
 "to look as whether the gorse's in bloom. It might ha' bin 
 done whiles I was there.' 
 
 1 1 dessay, I dessay ! But who could tell as I'd money 
 there?' 
 
 ' They might ha 1 seed ye o'er tha fence.' 
 
 ' Dick o' tha Wynnats ha'n't bin by, hev he ? I'm allui 
 mistrustful o' th' old man.' 
 
 ' I ain't seed Dick come Wednesday was a month. It 
 must ha' bin a tramp.' 
 
IS PUCK. 
 
 f 'Tramps don't kim much o' these parts/ said Ben with a 
 sigh. ' It must sure hev been one, though. They might 
 Look ower the fence, as ye say. I'm only sorry for ye, my 
 lassie : it 'ud bin such a joy t' ye to ha' had that gownd.' 
 
 Aviee went up to him, and threw her white arms round 
 Kis neck and kissed him. 
 
 * Niver mind, Ben ; I'll think as how ye hev gi'en it to 
 ne ; that 'ull do jist as well.' 
 
 He returned his caresses fondly, stroking her hair with 
 a tender pitying touch. 
 
 ' Theer's a brave wench ! "Tis rare and good o' ye to 
 bear 't so well, Avice. It dew cut a bit, 'cause ye see I 
 was so set up like wi' content, a bringin' them taw shillin' 
 home just now ; and they'd ha' made sivin, and ther'd a bin 
 but twice that agin to git afore ta simmer-time for ye to 
 ha' the gownd. And now 't 's all to begin o'er agin ; and 
 I canna surprise ye thin, 'cause I've telled ye o' it 
 now ' 
 
 His voice fell suddenly. It was a blow to him to have 
 been robbed of this innocent kindly pleasure ; and five shil- 
 lings are not made every day of a quarryman's life. 
 
 Avice kissed him yet again. 
 
 1 Niver ye mind,' she murmured, with a certain emotion 
 trembling even in her hard changeless voice ; ' m'appen the 
 hins will tak to layin' sune 'tis springtide ; and if they 
 dew, we'll pit the money by to make this'n.' 
 
 ' That's a good lass,' he said tenderly. ' But it wunna 
 be the same to me. The hins' money is allus your'n, my 
 dear ; but wot I thoct on was to gie ye somethin' that ye 
 suld never dream was a-comin'. Howe'er, I'll try and 
 make tha pund up wi'out takin' from yer poultry-purse. 
 Come out and look at tha apple-tree ; ye'll see as how it 
 must have been thieved this day, for th'eer's all the moss 
 pulled-up like, and the marks is as clear as spad could 
 inak' 'em. No dew's fell since 'twas done. Well, we'll 
 leave them as did it wi' G-od. Sure they wunna be tV 
 happier for 't.' 
 
 Ben lived between wood and moor, far from the cities 
 of men ; and he still held the golden belief that stolen bread 
 must be bitter in the unrighteous mouth. 
 
 1 Come and look, my dearie,' he urged again ; and Avice 
 went. 
 
TRUSTS TALE. S9 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 TRUST'S TALE. 
 
 THAT night, when all was still, I told what I had heard 
 to Trust. 
 
 He growled so long and so loud that he awoke B/euben, 
 who threw open the lattice and called out aloud on the 
 night-silence that he had a fowling-piece ready loaded for 
 thieves. 
 
 ' There's no thief save the one as he wears in his heart,' 
 muttered Trust. ' Ah, it's in times like this that dogs wish 
 they had human tongues.' 
 
 4 Why have we not ? ' I asked him. I was a young wee 
 thing, and I did not know. 
 
 ' Have you not heard ? ' said Trust. * To be sure, you 
 are still in the cradle ; but it's a thing you ought to hear, 
 so listen, I will tell you a story. 
 
 ' In the early youth of the world, in the time when men 
 were not weary with the endless roll of the ages, as they 
 are weary now, there reigned in the East a King. All 
 people dwelt then in the East ; the West that is now so great 
 was only a vast dark wilderness, where the lands were all 
 locked in ice, and there only lived the strange and nameless 
 things that we find to-day entombed in the stones and the 
 mines. The East had all the sunlight and all the glory and 
 All the races of men. Do I speak too deep for your baby- 
 age ? I tell this thing as my fathers told it. 
 
 ' Well, this king was victorious and young, and of beauty 
 and stature exceeding. He had great content in his life, 
 and his dominion was the fairest of any that lav under the 
 orient suns. He had many ministers and friends and 
 lovers ; but the one of them all that he loved and trusted 
 the best was his dog the great Ilderim. In those days 
 dogs were the comrades and the counsellors of men. Men 
 knew then how much wiser than they were the dogs, and 
 sought to take profit of their wisdom ; and throughout the 
 breadth of the land all dogs were held in high honour, 
 rhey were guardians of gold, and took no bribes ; they 
 were warriors, and asked no star or spoil ; they were public 
 servants, and made no private purse ; they were counsellors 
 of kings, and trafficked in no nation's liberties. They were 
 (korangely unlike men in all things. 
 
30 PUCK. 
 
 1 Now nderim was the noblest of his race : black, lion, 
 shaped, fleet as the deer, strong as the bear, keen as the 
 eagle, faithful as ah ! what other thing is ever as faithful 
 as a dog ? And he was ever by the side of the king as 
 trustiest counsellor and truest friend. The king loved II- 
 derim, and Uderim loved the king. Their hours were all 
 spent together. Together they chased the tiger and ele- 
 phant ; together they warred with the savage chiefs who 
 ravaged the neighbouring countries ; together they roamed 
 in the balmy rose-gardens and slept under the pleasant 
 palm-groves. 
 
 ' The services that Ilderim had done to the monarch were 
 as countless as the dates on the trees ; and when the heralds 
 shouted forth the great deeds of the great people of the 
 nation, first of all they proclaimed the acts and the prowess 
 of Ilderim. And seven time? lie had saved the life of the 
 king : once from water, once from steel, once from a leo- 
 nard, once from a poisoner, once from an earthquake, once 
 trom an armed foe at midnight. For all these things the 
 king felt that no gifts the dog could ask would be too great 
 to bestow; but Ilderim never asked aught. He wore a 
 collar of gold, indeed, because the ornament pleasured the 
 king ; but he made no account of the bauble, and if ever 
 he preferred a request for anything, it was never for him- 
 self, but only for some poor and starving mongrel whom 
 he had met in the streets. All his own race worshipped 
 Ilderim, and the smallest and meanest dog amongst them 
 had only to tell his woes and his wrongs to the palace 
 favourite to have them ailed and redressed at once. 
 
 ' So Uderiin lived with the king a score years and more, 
 and saved him from evil many a time. Now at the end of 
 that period the king took a new wife to his harem, and 
 made her queen, and adored her accordingly. She was 
 young and of exquisite beauty, and she made a slave and 
 a fool of her lord. "With her words she caressed Ilderim ; 
 but he knew well that she bore him no love ; and once 
 when she set food before him he smelt poison, and did not 
 eat thereof. But he knew that the king loved her, and 
 therefore he said naught of this wickedness ; for Ilderiin 
 was wise, and knew well that a man freshly in love is more 
 blind than the bats at noonday. 
 
 'In time it came to pass, "and this also full scon, that 
 
TRUSTS TALE. 31 
 
 palace and people all saw that the queeii was a wanton, and 
 faithless. Her paramour was a slave at her court. And 
 all the nation knew the king's dishonour, only he himself 
 was still blind. The people murmured, and mocked him, 
 and all the honour in which they held him ceased ; and 
 his very throne was in jeopardy because he was fooled by a 
 traitorous wife. And still his eyes did not open ; still he 
 swore by the pure faith of his queen. 
 
 * None dared to tell him of his own disgrace ; for all said, 
 whoever tells it will die. Then Ilderim spake and said, 
 " Though I die, yet will I tell him ; for his shame will turn 
 his people against him, and they will arise and slay him, 
 not choosing to have a fool for their ruler." " He will kill 
 even you," they urged to him ; " hold your peace, and let the 
 end come." Ilderim made answer, "Whoso holds his 
 peace when it is for his friend's welfare that he speaks, 
 is a coward. He shall no more be the tie of a wanton." 
 
 1 Then he went straightway to the presence-chamber; and 
 he spoke in the speech of men ; and he told his lord of that 
 frail wife's dishonour, and said, " Arise ! cast her off, and 
 be strong as thou ever hast been." But the king, mad 
 with rage, would not hearken ; he leapt down from his 
 ivory throne, and drew his dagger out from his girdle, and 
 thrust it into the heart of Ilderim. " So serve I the foes 
 of my angel ! " he cried ; and Ilderim fell at his feet. " I 
 forgive," he said simply, and died. 
 
 ' Then when the king saw that indeed he had slaughtered 
 the noblest friend that he had upon earth, he was as one 
 distraught, and rent his robes, and bewailed bitterly all the 
 day through, and called unceasingly on Ilderim's name. 
 But Ilderim lay dead in the audience-chamber, and heard 
 no more the voice of his grief. 
 
 ' And that night the king himself was slain by his queen's 
 paramour. 
 
 ' So from that hour all Ilderim's race declared that never 
 more would they utter the human speech of men, since he 
 had perished thus, through man's blindness and woman's 
 sin. The oath was sworn by generation after generation, 
 and gradually the knowledge of this tongue that never 
 passed their lips died out, and has never been learnt again. 
 Wes till know the meaning of men when they speak, but 
 we never speak their phrases in answer ; since death by 
 
33 PUCK. 
 
 the hand of a fool and an ingrate was the only recompense 
 that fealty and truth brought to the great Ilderim, or have 
 brought to his race to this day. For men are still what 
 they were in the days of that king ; and dogs still are the 
 same, only now we are silent.' 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 AMBEOSE OP THE FOEGE. 
 
 THE spring soon deepened into that lovely flush of the 
 early year which is beyond all other seasons in sweetness 
 and in hope. By the time they allowed me to leave my 
 bed and patter about in the sunshine, and wet my little 
 white feathered feet in the burn, it was quite mid- spring, 
 and infinitely beautiful in those north-country woods. 
 
 A delicious living sunshine streamed all day through the 
 wide doorway. The rose-thorn on the walls and roof was 
 moved all day by the wings and the songs of the nesting 
 birds that made their homes in it. Primroses bloomed in 
 great tufts under every moss-grown trunk, and were fol- 
 lowed later on by the wild blue hyacinths and the lilies of 
 the valley. The tender green fronds of the ferns uncurled 
 to new life, and the waters, freshly snow-fed, brimmed over 
 in every rivulet's channel, and bubbled under ever knot of 
 dock-leaves. 
 
 Now and then, when I have been nestled on a satin robe 
 at an opera-supper, surfeited with macaroons, almond- 
 wafers, and truffles, I have remembered that pleasant spring- 
 time, when I was so well contented, playing with a fir-cone, 
 rolling over the kitten, leaving my coat on a wild, briery 
 bough, and dappling my feet in the shallow freshets ; ami 
 I have felt that I have never been so Bftppy as in that 
 ieep old pine wood in the Peak. 
 
 This was thoroughly irrational in me, of course. The 
 happiness of our very early years is quite unconscious; 
 and derives its peace from that very unconsciousness. If 
 a child, or a pnppy. knew he were happy, he would be ana- 
 lytical ; and with the first moment of self -analysis the first 
 shadow of discomfort would fall. 
 
 When I had reached the years at which I ate my truffle* 
 and macaroons, the pine wood would not have contented me. 
 
AMBROSE OF THE FORGE. 33 
 
 When you wonder why you have not the enjoyment of 
 childhood, your wonder is very idle, and the answer is 
 simple ; you have not the sublime supreme selfishness of 
 childhood, which just enjoys, and takes no sort of heed of 
 any woes whatever that go on around it. Childhood is an 
 intense egotist, but an egotist whom every one conspires to 
 gratify and caress, so that it need not take heed for itself. 
 If the world showed the same complacent indulgence to the 
 egotism of maturity, the mature egotist would enjoy himself 
 as much as the new-born one. 
 
 I, being in the season of that serene infantine indifference 
 to any and every sorrow near me, enjoyed myself in that 
 little woodland cottage ; happy, and taking no thought. 
 
 I grew extremely fond of Trust and of Reuben Dare : 
 Avice, and I, and the cat, never liked one another. Ben 
 always fed me before taking food himself, kept me warm 
 with moss and wool, lighted the peat on purpose for me if 
 I shivered, and was indeed incessantly troubled for my 
 wants, and good to me. Avice only pulled my curls, or set 
 the cat on me, or threw things at me for teasing her. 
 
 On the whole, that brilliant and acute social philosopher, 
 "Whyte Melville (whom I am proud to call my friend, for he 
 has a soul that appreciates us), is very correct in his judg- 
 ment when he avers that men have much more genuine 
 kindness in them than women. There is a well-spring of 
 kindliness in the hearts of many men, to which that of 
 women is as a little shallow rivulet, noisy indeed, but of no 
 depth or duration. 
 
 * O, why did you beat him, Fred ! ' cried a peeress I knew 
 once, to her lord, referring to a street-boy who had tried to 
 steal his purse. ' Poor little thing, so worn, so wretched ! 
 And I dare say no mother at home. Tou cannot think how 
 my heart bleeds for him ! ' 
 
 * G-ammon ! ' retorted his lordship. ' I gave him a thrash- 
 ing because he deserved it.' 
 
 The wife with tears in her pretty eyes got out of her car- 
 riage at a great shop for French bonbons, and over the 
 sweetmeats forgot her street Arab, then and thenceforward. 
 
 My lord a crack shot at the pigeons, and a gay man of 
 the world drove down to a club where he generally went 
 for high gaming ; wrote a note there that set his people to 
 trace the child home, paid twenty pounds a-year for him for 
 
34 PUCK. 
 
 seven years at a school where they taught beggar boys- 
 trades, and was thanked a dozen seasons later for a kind- 
 ness he had utterly forgotten, by a steady and rising young 
 ehipwright, in whom he recognised with infinite difficulty 
 the little wretched thief he had succoured. 
 
 There is an illustration of men and women as I have 
 found them. 
 
 "Women's tears flow freely it is true ; but they can so 
 easily be diverted from their course by bonbons. 
 
 Men always say * gammon ' to sentiment, but while they 
 say it, they'feel in their pockets, and ponder what's the 
 best thing to do. 
 
 ' What sail we call ta pup, lassie ? ' Ben asked one day, 
 when I had grown to a tolerable size, that is to say, about 
 as big as a moderate rat, and when the sweet sunshine of 
 young April was beaming through the woods, and the 
 ground was lovely with the ' rathe primrose,' and the air 
 radiant with the yellow butterflies, that seemed as though 
 they were the primroses themselves that had taken wing 
 upon the balmy winds. 
 
 ' Call't ? What's matter to call't aught ? ' said Avice sul- 
 lenly. 'A beast's a beast. Baptisin' of 'em is sich gammon * 
 
 4 Nay, nay/ said Ben softly. * 'Tis allus well to know a 
 crittur as 'ee do love by some name of his'n as sounds home- 
 like and cheery on tha ear. I mind whin I was a lad, 
 * keeping' o' Melchisedec Stone's cows, there was three 
 jn 'em, and the Dun she was Bell, and the red 'un she was 
 Cowslip, and the black she was Meadow-Sweets. Well, 
 thim cows they knew their names like three childer, and 
 they'd come for 'em right across the lees ; and one day whin 
 I was na wi' 'em, but had beefc give holiday an' gone a bil- 
 berry huntin' up o' tha Tor side, I clomb, an' clomb, an* 
 clomb, till I was that high I got dazed like, and lost my 
 feetin' upo' tha rocks, and came a hustlin' down and snap- 
 ped my ankle, so I ne'er could move. Ye'll no mind o' tha 
 time ; ye was but a babe just bared. 
 
 ' It were very lonesome theer, and it seemed to me as it 
 were hours that I had laid theer hitched like among tha 
 bracken, with a great white gleamin' limestone a' above, 
 and the water a purlin' and a moanin' iver so far down 
 below. I thought as how night *ud come, and nobody'd not 
 niver know as wheer I was; and I couldna stir for the 
 
AMBROSE OF THE FORGE. 35 
 
 perishin' anguish in my feet, and it were na good to holloa 
 out, for theer were naught i' sight save tha crows an' daws 
 a skirlin' agen tha Tor side. An' sure my heart it were fit 
 to break, for I were hut a lad, and mither and a' lookit to me 
 for bread, and I thought as how I'd niver see home no 
 more. 
 
 1 "Weel, after awhiles, whin tha sun were gettin' very low, 
 and tha mists was a* creepin' up, I spied a cow beneath, a 
 grazin' on a slip o' turf just atween a rift i' tha Tor. She 
 were a goodish long way below, but I knew her ; she were 
 Cowslip. I dunno why, but tbat sight o' that crittur pit soul 
 i' me; and I shouted all I could, Cowslip, Cowslip, Cowslip! 
 It seemed as if tha poor beastie could ne'er ha' knowed me 
 Jae long, and leave me a' alone theer to dee. And she 
 didna. 
 
 ' Cowslip, when she heared her name, she left off grazin' 
 and listened ; I called agen and agen. What did she dew ? 
 She just kem a toilin' up, an' up, an' up they is rare 
 climbers our hill cattle. She slipt, and stumbled, and fell 
 about sore ; but up an' up she kem, and at last wi' a rare 
 scramble and hurtin' o' herself badly wi' brambles she 
 reached me, and made such a to-do o'er me, an' licked me 
 with her rough warm tongue, and was as pleased an' as 
 pitiful as though I were her own bairn. Thin, like a Christ- 
 ian, she set up a voice an' mourned; mourned sae long and 
 sae loud that they heered her down i' the vale below. 
 
 * To hear a cow mournin' like that, they knew as she were 
 in trouble. Me they'd na ha' lookit for mebbe, even an' 
 they'd heered me ; but Cowslip were worth a deal. So they 
 kem a searchin' an' a seekin' ; an' they could see her white 
 and red body though they could na see me ; and sae they 
 lit on me, and carried me down, an' 'twere Cowslip as saved 
 my life. An' iver after that I hev said 'tis allus well to 
 name the critturs an' love 'em.' 
 
 Avice said nothing ; she was plucking a dead chicken f 01 
 the market, and tore the plumage off lazily, yet savagely, 
 with a curiously characteristic turn of the hand. 
 
 ' What'll I call him ? ' pursued Ben, watching me where 
 I played with the kitten. 'Eor sure he's just like them 
 pucks an' pixies as they dew say still live i' tha green wood, 
 and as I were that longin' ta see whin I were a boy, a? I 
 took ivery white rabbit an' ivery flushed widgeon for 'em 
 
3$ PUCK. 
 
 I'll call him arter 'em I think. Theer's no fear as they'll be 
 franzy,* think 'ee ? ' 
 
 ' It doan't matter an' they be,' muttered Avice. ' Wheer's 
 ase i' 'em ? They ne'er show na gowd, na no treasure, as 
 they do say as a' fairies should ; I've seed the rings where 
 they dances, myself' ; but they're a bad lot, as lives for 
 theerselves an' dunno dew the least leetle o' good.' 
 
 Ben smiled a little dreamily. 
 
 * I dun' know why theer sud na be fairies, for sure theer'i 
 a many o' God's works as wonderful only look at a little 
 green beetle ! "Weel an' the wee people'll na mind we'll 
 call ta pup Pixie or Puck.' 
 
 ' Puck's the short 'un,' said Avice curtly, * an' Puck he's 
 allus i' mischief they say, just like that ere vermin.' 
 
 1 Puck, thin,' consented her brother. 'But as for mischief, 
 my lass, there canna be a more mischievous bairn than ye 
 were i' a' the Peak. It's no a fault i' young things; it's jist 
 the new-born life as works i' 'em like sae much girdin' yeast; 
 and the more it dew work, the better ale we gits, they say 'i 
 arter times, so it dunna dewto pit spike i' bunghole tew soon.' 
 
 "Which was one of Ben's metaphorical flights which 
 massed as high over Avice' s head as the flight of northward 
 sweeping swallows that flew by in the still April noon : and 
 thus in the deep nest of those old green pine woods I was 
 named after the cheery and tricksy sprite who dwelt once 
 by the hearths, as he dwells now in the hearts, of the people 
 of Shakespeare's England. 
 
 As soon as he had named me he took me over, on Satur- 
 day afternoon, across the wood, to a little cottage that stood 
 near the quarry. It was a blacksmith's forge to which the 
 cart-horses at all the little farms, round about upon tho 
 moorlands, used to be taken when they wanted shoeing. 
 
 The work must have been of the scantiest ; for the farms 
 were widely scattered and for the most part poor in cattle; 
 but the big brawny smith looked strong enough to shoe aK 
 the wild horses of the prairies had they been brought to hin? 
 He was leaning over the half-door of his forge as Ben 
 drew near; the ruddy glow of the fire behind him, and 
 "before all the budding green woodland depth in which his 
 workshop was embowered. 
 
 1 Gie ye godden, Ambrose,' said Ben, with that gentle 
 * Angry, irritated. 
 
AMBROSE OF THE FORGE. J7 
 
 archaism in greeting that lingers in the pages of your old 
 dramatists, and the mouths of your north-country peasantry; 
 you never wish heaven's benison to your friends on 
 night or morning now, when you meet witn them ; you only 
 say 'how do you do? how do you thrive how do you 
 prosper how do you employ yourself ?'* 
 
 O terrible age of prose, of hurry, of avarice, and of 
 officious occupation, which colours with its spirit even your 
 careless casual salutation ! 
 
 'Ye're rare and welcome, Ben,' said the Samson of the 
 anvil, his broad face lighting up with a sunny wistful smile. 
 * Be pickaxe snappit, mebbe ? ' 
 
 'fa,' said Ben. '"Wark's na dune i' this'n here smithy 
 that snap i' a score o' year. I kern to axe if so be as ye'd 
 the leetlest mossel o' mittal as 'ud mak a ring f o' tha pup's 
 throssle? I knaw ye'll gie it an' ye hev?' 
 
 ' Sure un I will,' said the good-natured smith/ whom I 
 had seen once or twice down at our place. 'Kern in whils 
 I looks for him; and tak a thoct o' brid and cheese. I'll 
 be glad to hae a crack wi' ye.' 
 
 'I'll set a bit,' answered Ben, seating himself as he spoke 
 on a seat in the porch through whose ivied lattice-work the 
 setting sun was streaming, while a red and green wood- 
 pecker flashed by us in its light. 'But I'll na hev victuals 
 na drink, thank 'ee. I arena' hungered na dry.' 
 
 When I reached in after years the world of afternoon teas, 
 of seltzers and sherries, of flower fete ices, of ladies' 
 luncheons, of coffee and chasses, of Siraudin's bonbons, and 
 Fortnum and Mason's hampers, I remembered this reason 
 of his as one of the most curious I had ever heard given; 
 one entirely unrecognisable in the land of his betters. 
 
 'We'll mak him a brave un,' pursued the blacksmith, 
 catching me by the throat for measurement, and setting 
 to work at once on a little circlet of white metal which 1 
 m my innocence thought was silver. 'Tha spring she be 
 a comin' on finely, aren't she, Ben ? Tha kirrant-bushes 
 theer be all set for fruit a'ready, and tha old apple-trees 
 be all on the bloom. Mebbe y'LL tak a lettuce, and a bit 
 o' cress like, ta Avice?' 
 
 'Thank 'ee kindly,' said Ben, not noticing that with the 
 name there came a glow on his friend's face that was not 
 
 * I think some one has said this before Puck : or ometliing to tfa 
 *a^6 effect at taat ED. 
 
3 3 PUCK. 
 
 from the smithy-fire behind Mm. <Ye niver kem anigh us 
 now how be that? 
 
 ' Weel,' said Ambrose, striking so hard at the little bit of 
 metal that I thought he would shatter it, 'I were wishful 
 to spik to 'ee o' that, Ben. Te see I'd come, and willin', 
 ivery gloamin' an' that was all; but it wunna dew it wunna 
 dew I canna fritten my heart out for tha wench; it 'ull 
 mek a silly o* me, it will, and so I stays awa' like, and 
 m'appen 'tis all I ken dew.' 
 
 Ben stared at him with a stupid amazement, a wondering 
 emotion in his own gray thoughtful eyes. 
 
 'Lord's sake !' he said slowly. 'I niver thoct o' naethin' 
 o' that sort, old chap ! Sure an' I couldna wish for a better 
 lot for tha little lass. Why sud it mek a fool o' ye ?' 
 
 'Why it dew? muttered Ambrose, sturdily drawing his 
 hand across his heated forehead and then hammering with 
 redoubled force. 'An that's all about it, Ben. A man's 
 sure a fule i' sitch things as them. Look 'ee yest'reen was 
 a week tha wench she were up a' G-ood Eest farm ye'll 
 mind? a junkettin' a' St. Mark's Eve. An I've iver been 
 soft on her tho' I warn't free wi' yew as to't and I got a 
 chance like, i' that big close o' theers wheer tha sickies* 
 grow sae thick ; and said a word or tew. I hadna tha gift 
 of the gab them wenches they mak yew sae silly an sae 
 I just axed her to wed wi' me, short like; for I hae luved 
 her, it seems ta me, iver sin she were a little un i' the cradle ' 
 
 He stopped and his strong hearty voice had a curious 
 tremble in it, as you will see in the big sinewy frame of a 
 bullock when they lead him out to the slaughter. 
 
 'And what did tha lass say tew 'ee?' asked Ben softlf; 
 the homely weather-beaten face of him growing infinitely 
 tender and mournful with sympathy. 
 
 'She mocked o' me,' said Ambrose, humbly. 'Well 
 m'appen she were right. A big, hulking, black-visaged 
 lout, like o' me, bean't unco fit ta tak tha fanciful thoct of 
 a friskin' bit o' beauty like o' her.' 
 
 'She made a' mock o' yew!' cried Ben, his calm gentle 
 face lighting up with wrath against even his best beloved. 
 
 'Na, na,' murmured the blacksmith hurriedly, unwilling, 
 it seemed, to stir feud betwixt Ben and his one ewe-lamb 
 
 * Sycamores. The Derbyshire tonguea haye an Italian-like lore fo 
 easy and soft abbreviations. ED. 
 
AMBROSE OF THE FORGE. 39 
 
 even in the pain of his own passions. 'Ony as wimmin 
 will, o' a man that canna tak their fancies. She mint 
 naught o' malice i' that ; she laughed, but tew a bit o' a lass 
 like her it dew allus seem queer to see a big un like me 
 afeard o' her ' 
 
 ' Tew ses how shee'd heer naught o't ? ' 
 
 Ben's face was very darkened and troubled, and from 
 where he sat in the ivied porch his eyes turned on to the 
 face of his friend with a very pathetic, wistful questioning. 
 The giant Ambrose shook his head: shaping and fashioning 
 all the while rny little piece of metal. 
 
 'Naught o't' he said simply, while his rough bronzed face 
 grew a little white. 'Don't 'ee go for ta plague her for't, 
 Ben. A lass canna luve ye an' she canna. I ha' done 
 my best handiwork by her ye're awares o' that, but I'm 
 tew old, and tew big, and tew gruesom, to pleasure a gay- 
 young sparrahawk jest let loose-like on tha wind.' 
 
 Ben set silent awhile, ruffling his hair in sorrowful per- 
 plexity; though he had been used to speak of the 'little 
 lass' being 'safe to wed,' it had always, I think, been a 
 very dim and distant possibility to him, and Avice was still 
 a child in his sight. 
 
 ' I'm dumb-foundered,' he said slowly with a sigh. 'Clean 
 dumb-foundered. I niver drimt as ye'd a' thoct of tha 
 wench niver ! Lack-a-day ! It dew seem queer 'twarn't 
 a day agone as 'twere that she were a little, toddlin', bare- 
 footed bairn, allus at pranks and play ! ' 
 
 'Na that's trew,' assented Ambrose, who was something 
 even older than his frisnd. ' Dunna be fashed wi' her, Ben, 
 for this'n; she canna get tha better jist o' whiles o' a' her 
 craze for fine claes an' gossips an 1 rompin', and sich like. 
 But she is a bonny thing; she'll kern round sure enow 
 eure enow!' 
 
 But though he spoke generously he spoke sadly; and 
 did not, I fancy, believe in his own prophecy over-much. 
 
 'It's strange as she never telled me,' murmured Ben; 
 4 an' ye an' me sich neighbours tew !' 
 
 'M'appen she did na like ?' suggested the tender-hearted 
 smith. 'I looked but a poor fule tew her, ye know ' 
 
 'Wheerfor?' said Ben suddenly and almost sternly. 
 'Wheerfor? A honest maiden wouldna tell ye that: if 
 he med a mock o' ye ' 
 
40 PUCK. 
 
 The blacksmith rested his huge hammer on the iron. 
 
 'She didna, Ben,' he said gently, telling doubtless one 
 of those falsehoods which here and there are even nobler 
 than truth. 'Don't 'ee go for ta think it.' But I were a 
 fule, sure now, to ga dreaming' that a rosy, buxom, gay- 
 hearted, lissom young lass like that 'ud iver care to settle 
 quiet-like aside such a hearthstone as this'n, wi' nothin* 
 to tempt her o' gowd, o' pleasurin', or o' fineries. Dunna 
 ye think more o't, Ben I only telled ye 'cause I thoct ye 
 ehould know why I hanna kem o' Moorside o' late.' 
 
 'Ye've a rare good heart o' yourn, Ambrose,' said Ben, 
 with all his own heart in his voice ; and he stretched out 
 his hand to his old friend's grasp. The other took it, and 
 wrung it hard ; and by common consent there was silence 
 between them on this one subject then and thenceforward. 
 
 The smith pursued his work and finished, in what seemed 
 to me an incredibly brief space, a little dainty shining ring 
 of metal, light as a bent stalk of spear-grass, on whose 
 circlet he had cut deftly with a little tool my newly-be- 
 stowed name of Puck. 
 
 How could his great massive hands, used to deal such 
 ponderous blows, shape such a trifling toy as this ? I can- 
 not tell ; I only^ know that a man who has the strength of 
 the lion very often has also the tender touch of the dove. 
 
 I fancy, too, that though he was perhaps unconscious of 
 it, the geneiusity moving in his heart made this herculean 
 blacksmith of the Peak more heedful that he should plea- 
 sure his old friend now than he had ever been at any other 
 time. 
 
 They said no more words on the theme of his rejected 
 love ; only as Ben rose to go, with a brief hearty phrase of 
 thanks for the toy in which the smith had so willingly 
 humoured his fancy, Ambrose pressed on him the lettuce 
 and cress. Such vegetables grew far better in the little 
 garden of the forge, which was sunny and of good soil, than 
 *:hey did in ours, where the great rose-thorn took all 
 nourishment. 
 
 But Ben stayed his arm as he bent to cut them from 
 the ground. 
 
 'Let be, Ambrose,' he said firmly, 'ye shanna gie o 1 yei 
 substance to a lass as dunna knaw the wuth o' yer heart.' 
 
 And he was resolute to refuse them; it had gone sore 
 
AMBROSE OP THE FORGE. 4! 
 
 with him that the ' little lass * should have dealt a stroke of 
 
 Earn to an honest soul, and should hare withheld a secret 
 rozn himself. 
 
 Ambrose went with him a little way into the wood, so far 
 as he could without losing sight of his cottage and forge. 
 
 ' Dunno ye fash her for't,' were his last words as they 
 parted company under a great oak. ' She's sae young and 
 mirthfu', yer know ; she dunna tell th' arm that she dew.' 
 
 And then he turned away and strode with long strides 
 to his lonely smithy, where the red light was streaming 
 through its mass of twilit green, as an owl's eyes glow, at 
 even, through an ivy bush. 
 
 It was passing strange, I thought, that these two grave 
 strong men should be so gentle over a creature who neve* 
 cared how she wounded, mocked, flouted, or harmed either 
 of them, to please her sport or charm her vanity ! 
 
 When we reached home, the sun had set ; Avice was no- 
 where to be seen ; the house door stood open, and all was 
 silent about the little place. 
 
 All day long the fowls kept it alive with sound and move- 
 ment ; for of all mercurial and fussy things there is nothing 
 on the face of the earth to equal cocks and hens. They have 
 such an utterly exaggerated sense too of their own import- 
 ance ; they make such a clacking and clucking over every 
 egg, such a scratching and trumpeting over every morsel of 
 treasure-trove, and such a striding and stamping over every 
 bit of well-worn ground. On the whole, I think poultry 
 have more humanity in them than any other race, footed 
 or feathered ; and cocks certainly must have been the first 
 creatures that ever hit on the great art of advertising. 
 Myself I always fancy that the souls of this feathered tribe 
 pass into the bodies of journalists ; but this maybe a mere 
 baseless association of kindred ideas in my mind. 
 
 The cottage was deserted and silent, the fowls being at 
 roost. Ben, a little alarmed, strode a few yards up the 
 hill behind his house and shouted his sister's name lustily. 
 Ere long her voice came faintly down from amongst the 
 bracken and firs above. 
 
 * I'm a comin' ! I'm a comin' ! ' 
 
 And in ten minutes or so she did come, rushing hurriedly 
 down the tangled slope ; her eyes were very excited, and her 
 face was very flushed, and her dress was in a careless disarray. 
 
42 PUCK. 
 
 1 Dinna ye hurry, lass/ cried Ben, kindly. ' Why, lawk- 
 a-day! how mauled and muddled ye look. what's a 
 matter ? ' 
 
 ' Naethin ' ! ' said Avice pettishly, as she reached the 
 bottom in safety, and twisted her disordered dress into 
 some neater shape. ' But that beastly bracken, it dew tear 
 ye so ; an' tha blackberry bushes is all prickles.' 
 
 ' Why was 'ee awa' ? ' asked Ben, wonderingly. * It's ta 
 late ta leave tha place by itsell.' 
 
 ' I was only a gossipen a bit, wi' Nell o' Moor Farm,' she 
 answered sullenly. ' Tain't so lively a life, is this'n, that 
 'ee may na hae a bit o' a crack wi' a neighbour in tha 
 haverin.' 
 
 ' Na, 'tis a goodish bit dull I know,' said Ben with a sigh, 
 content with her explanation, though I knew by the growl 
 which Trust gave, that he at least did not believe in the 
 truth of it ; and that he smelt some male ' gossiper ' afar on 
 the evening air. ' But, my lass, I want a word wi' ye why 
 didna ye tell me as Ambrose o' tha forge were wishful to 
 wed wi' ye ? ' 
 
 Avice coloured, perhaps at the simple directness of the 
 question. 
 
 1 Wheer was odds o' tellin' ye? ' she muttered. ' If 'ee 
 wanna a gaby, he'd ha' kepit his counsel himsell ' 
 
 ' But look'ee here lassie,' said Ben very gravely. * Ye 
 might be right or na niver ta till me : I wunna say which ; 
 wimmin be allus queer ta tackle i' such matters. But theer's 
 one thing ye're no right in an' that be i' yer makin' game 
 o' him. Ye're pierced him i' tha quick wi yer feckless 
 ayins. Ye mayna hae mint harm, my dear ; I'm na wishfu' 
 to lay blame ta ye ; but ye may be sure o' this, Avice, that 
 tha wench as do mak sport o' a honest man 'ull surely live 
 ta be the sport o' rogues.' 
 
 A hot dusky anger beamed over Avice's bent face as 
 she heard. 
 
 ' D'ye think/ she muttered in sullen wrath, * d'ye think as 
 how cause Ambrose dunna please me, theer wunna be a 
 braver man than him whin I want ta chuse f ra' 'em ? ' 
 
 'I dun' know that/ said Ben very gravely. l Ye're a 
 poor wench, my bairn, wi' a' yer bonny looks ; an' ye canna 
 tak yer spouse a store o' granddam's siller, and a press fu' 
 o' home-spun linen, as Nell o' Moor Farm 'ull do ; an' ye've 
 
AMBROSE OF THE FORGE. 43 
 
 ,' the wimmin's bad word a'ready, my dearie, cause ye're 
 ae well-favoured, an' sae saucy, an' sae slow at yer chores 
 an' yer distaff ' 
 
 Avice burst into a loud passion of sobs and tears, as hel 
 manner was when argument told against her. 
 
 * Sae ye'd ha' me wed wi' the first lout as ax me, jist ta 
 be rid o' my keep, and ta still tha old mithers* blisterin' 
 tongues,' she cried furiously. ' "Weel ! I wunna thin. I'll 
 na ga bury my sell i' that wretched hole o' a smithy for ye 
 na a' tha min o' Peak- side ! I wunna ! I would na gie one 
 straw ta wed, gif tha brid-groom could na set a gowd ring 
 o' my finger, and a silken gownd o' my back, and take me to 
 Lunnun for my moonin, and spend his siller right and left 
 like a man ! Ambrose ! he'll niver stir out o' this here 
 beast o' a wood a' his days ; I'm as weel wi' ye as wi' him/ 
 
 Ben stood with his head a little drooped upon his breast ; 
 pale under his sunny warm bronze, and hurt exceedingly by 
 the bitter ingratitude of the raging, selfish, unf eeling words. 
 Yet they did not break down the gentle patience of his 
 temper ; she was the * mither's bairn,' and so sacred to him. 
 
 1 Ye're verra wrong ; and ye know't, my lass,' he said 
 slowly and very gravely ; ' ye knoAV weel that tha day as 
 'ud tak 'ee ta anither home 'ud be tha sairest day i' a' my 
 reckonin' ; and ye know, tew, that whin I wish ye to be wife 
 t' Ambrose, 'tis 'cause he's good, core through, an' ud' hev 
 care o' ye a' yer days if tha stones fa' upon me, as they 
 may surely dew ony hour o' my work i' tha quarry. Ye're 
 fractious and fancifu', and ye quarrel as childer will, wi v 
 -a' tha best friends ye hae gotten. Weel ye wunna see 
 yer fault now ! Ye're a woman. But ony tak heed, Avice, 
 that the day dew niver dawn whin, wi' yer beauty, an' yer 
 fancies, an' yer fearfu' craze for riches, ye dunna wish, an* 
 wish in vain, lassie, that ye'd stayed safe i' my heart an' i 1 
 Ambrose's ! ' 
 
 And then, as though he dared not trust himself to say 
 more, lest his voice should break down into a woman's 
 weakness, Ben passed slowly within, across his threshold, 
 with the saddest shadow on his honest face that I had ever 
 een there. 
 
 Their evening meal was eaten in total silence that night 
 but there was a deeper and a sweeter tone than ever in the 
 murmured words of thanksgiving and prayer with which he 
 commended his little household to the care of Q-od. 
 
44 PUCR. 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 THE SABBATH-BBEAKEB. 
 
 was infinitely kind to me. When I got a little older, 
 as the primroses were supplanted by the hyacinths, he used 
 to take me with him to the quarry, Trust carrying me in his 
 mouth if I tired. I think they both knew that, when they 
 were absent, Avice and the cat were too much for me. 
 
 I grew to feel a great deal of respect and affection for 
 Ben in those days by the quarry. To look at him he was 
 like any other labouring man, strong, rough, with his back 
 a little bent, and his hands all over muscle from the daily 
 use of the weighty pickaxe. He was very quiet too, ancl 
 some of his fellows called him stupid. But he was not 
 that j he had a quaint gentle wisdom of his own, though he 
 was utterly unlettered, and so simple in trustfulness that 
 a child could easily deceive him. 
 
 Trust was right, as, looking back on that time, I know 
 now, in thinking that Ben had some touch in him of the 
 
 Eoet. Not of the poet's utterance surely ; I do not think 
 e could have strung a line of words together to save his 
 existence ; but of the poet's temperament, of the poet's 
 feeling. 
 
 He would spend long moments gazing into a little tuft 
 or wood-anemones or of bluebells, with just the same look 
 that your Burns must have had when he gazed at the 'wee 
 criinson-tippit flower.' If a bird were wounded by some 
 scattered stone that flew from under his hammer, he took 
 it up and tended it with the same thought in his face that 
 your Coleridge must have felt when he wrote. 
 
 His fellow-workmen always complained that Ben in his 
 leisure went mooning ?bout ; b t his mooning afforded him 
 more pleasure than their ale and pitch-and-toss lent to them. 
 He would go wandering about in the wood or on the moor- 
 land whenever he had any spare time, with no knowledge 
 whatsoever, but with a curiou comprehension and sym- 
 pathy in him for all living things that were ; from the tiniest 
 spray of the moss under his feet, to the large-eyed oxen 
 that came to rub against his shoulders in homely caress. 
 
 Sunday was a well -beloved day with Ben ; there was no 
 
THE SABBATH-BREAKER. 45 
 
 church within four miles, and he did not cars to go to it. 
 Now and then its pastor found his way to the cottage, and 
 rated Ben as a heathen. 
 
 ' M'appen I be, sir,' Ben would say sorrowfully, not sure 
 in his mind whether he were wicked or not. 
 
 'I canna go to the church,' he said once when much goaded 
 on the subject. ' Look'ee, they's allus a readin' o' cusses, 
 and damnin, and hell fire, and the like ; and I canna stomach 
 it. "What for shall they go and say as all the poor old 
 wimmin i' tha parish is gone to the deil 'cause they picks 
 up a stick or tew i' hedge, or likes to mumble a charm or 
 tew o'er their churnin' ? Them old wimmen be rare an* 
 good i' ither things. When I broke my ankle three year 
 agone, old Dame Stuckley kem o'er, i' tha hail and the 
 snaw, a matter of five mile and more, and she turned o* 
 eighty ; and she nursed me, and tidied the place, and did 
 all as was wanted to be done 'cause Avice was away, waking 
 somewheres ; and she'd never let me gie her aught for it. 
 And I heard ta Passon tell her as she were sold to hell, 
 'cause the old soul have a bit of belief like in witch-stones, 
 and allus sets one aside her spinnen'- jenny so that the thrid 
 shanna knot nor break. Ta Passon he said as how Gk>d 
 cud mak tha thrid run smooth, or knot it, just as He chose, 
 and 'twas wicked to think she could cross His will ; and 
 the old dame, she said " Weel, sir, I dinna believe tha 
 Almighty would ever spite a poor old crittur like me, don't 
 'ee think it. But if we're no to help our sells i' this world, 
 what for have He gied us the trouble o' tha thrid to spin ? 
 And why no han't He made tha shirts an' tha sheets an' 
 tha hose grow theersells ? " And ta Passon niver answered 
 her that, he only said she was fractious and blas-p/ze-inous. 
 jSTow she warn't, she spoke i' all innocence, and she mint 
 4 what sha said she mint it. Passons niver can answer ye 
 plain, right-down nataral questions like this'n, and that's 
 why I wunna ga ta tha church/ 
 
 He did not go ; Avice did, arrayed in all her glory of 
 earrings and of beads, journeying thither in the donkey- 
 cart of their only near neighbour. An old woman, who 
 drove about the country with ferns and greenery of all kinds, 
 and took her poor worn beast eight miles on its only day of 
 rest, for the very good and notable reason that ' ta Passon 
 ware a rare un for ferns and tha like j and if I warna to fa 
 
4 6 
 
 PUCK. 
 
 seed i' my seat 'o Sabbath day, he'd niver buy no more on. 
 me. It's main and particular is ta Passon ; he cannaabid& 
 Sabbath-breakers.' 
 
 And she always beat the tired ass violently and often, 
 that she might reach the church whilst yet the chimes were- 
 ringing. She was a woman who had taken heed to th& 
 * passon's ' counsel. 
 
 Meanwhile the Sabbath-breaker spent his Sabbath morn- 
 ings out of doors, amongst the things of which he was 
 fondest the birds and the beasts, and the trees and the 
 heather. 
 
 It was in a very unlearned, desultory, dreamy fashion, of 
 course, that he studied them : all the divinity that lies in 
 books was hidden from poor Ben ; but he did study them 
 in his own way, and he found many curious things of their 
 lives, and their natures, and their habits, which, if he had 
 only known how to tell his discoveries again, might have 
 ranked him with Audubon and Stanley. 
 
 ' I just am fond o' tha things, ye see, and so they lets me 
 know about 'em,' he would say ; unconscious that he was 
 the exponent of the great doctrine of sympathy. 
 
 The teal in the brake-hidden ponds ; the hen-harrier 
 amongst the sedges ; the timid hare under the ferns ; the 
 pretty redstart on the boughs ; the small dark stoat wading 
 amongst the huge leaves of the burdock ; the corn-crake in 
 the scarce patches of wheat that grew, here and there, on 
 the bleak brown moors ; the tiny chiff chaff flitting under 
 the gorze all golden with legend-loved bloom ; the field- 
 mouse sitting, squirrel-like, by her little home in the ground, 
 where the sweet shady plumes of the meadow-sweet hid her 
 in safety from the eyes of the kite : all these were his friends 
 and familiars ; and he would wander amongsV them all 
 through the hours of the quiet day, when not even the far- 
 off sounds of the quarry, or of the husbandmen above on 
 the moor farms, broke the sweet, restful, morning silence. 
 
 Avice, sitting at church, glancing under her arching brows 
 at the youths beside her, arrayed in her beads and her ear- 
 rings, and gazing with her envious eyes at the manor pew r 
 where the great folks were sequestered, received many 
 praises from the pastor for her assiduity in attending the- 
 service. 
 
 Ben he called hard names, of which a heathen was not 
 &e least. 
 
THE SABBATH-BREAR.ER. 47 
 
 New Avice on her homeward- way beat the donkey with 
 fury and might, because her soul was sore to think of the 
 great ladies up in the Squire's red-canopied pew. But Ben 
 
 foing to the fern-seller's cottage to meet his sister, went 
 rst to the stable and shook down a fresh bed of bracke , 
 and filled a pail with water from the spring, and threw & 
 great arm-load of sweet grasses and juicy thistles into he 
 rusty rack. 
 
 Which of the two would the poor tired beast if he could 
 have given an opinion* have thought the most faithful 
 follower of the teaching of One who walked in the fields on 
 the Sabbath day, and rode on an ass to Jerusalem ? 
 
 These Sundays with Ben were my greatest delight. To 
 scamper over the boundless moorland ; to roll in the short 
 scented thyme ; to watch with wondering eyes the squirrels 
 leap from branch to branch ; then, lying tired, to sleep and 
 dream, and wake in the pleasant drowsy sunlight : all this 
 made a paradise of that old silent pinewood to me, and, in 
 a sense too, to my master himself. 
 
 His eyes used to have a curiously-contented look, half 
 brightness, half sadness, but great contentment for all that 
 as he strode through the yielding spear-grass, or lay at 
 length under the shade of the branches. 
 
 He did not speak often ; but now and then he did, to 
 Trust or to me, or to the cushat in the boughs, or to the 
 rabbit beneath the brushwood, or to some other timid 
 moving thing. And at such times his voice was so gentle, 
 so pitiful, so serious, that it had a sound in it, to my fancy, 
 like that of the evening bells when they rung faintly in from 
 the distance across the broad moors. 
 
 "Whatever good I have kept in me and in the world it is 
 very hard to keep any I owe it to Ben on those still Sun- 
 day mornings, in those deep old quiet green woods. 
 
 There was one spot I specially loved: it was a dell formed 
 by huge boulders of granite and gritstone fallen one on 
 another ; grown all over by ferns and by moss, and by all 
 manner of foliage; and always full of shade even in the 
 hottest noontide. 
 
 * I find our friend Puck is not much more liberal after all than the 
 rest of creation ; and conceives that no race save his own possesses any 
 intelligence ! ED. 
 
48 PUCK. 
 
 There Ben would lie for hours, looking up at the bine 
 ireamful sky, or at the birds moving in the thick leafage. 
 
 'And to think,' he murmured once, ' as the same Hand as 
 shattered down tha mighty stones here, till they lays crushed 
 ind o'ergrowed wi' the grasses, yit fashioned them wee blue 
 wing-feathers of tha atomy of a tomtit i' his nest theer. It 
 is wonderfu ' ! Shanna we niver know how't was done ? 
 niver see the sun a bit nearer? Lord's sake ! I carma but 
 wish that He'd ha thoct of some ither way o' food for keep- 
 in' the varsal world fu' o' his critturs, than tha way o' 'em 
 murderin' one anither, preying on one anither, from tha 
 man on tha ox tew tha sparrow on tha worm. It don't 
 seem right like; as how Him who'd tha power o' rnakin' 
 that sun move i' tha heavens, shouldna' ha bin able to hit a' 
 some better means for keepin' tha life He giv i' us wi' out 
 pittin' tha lusts in our souls to kill tha weakest things aside 
 o' us. It's uncommon queer an' sad tew, as ta seem 
 that tha should na be ony way o' livin' save by dith.' 
 
 And so the dim, wise, tender, untutored mind perplexed 
 itself in sorrowful pondering: and Ben, who could scarce 
 tell one letter from another, puzzled over problems that the 
 sages and the scholars of the world cannot solve. 
 
 If Ben had had education, I think he would have been a 
 man of whom the world would have heard somewhat ; for he 
 had all the strange mingling of acuteness and childlikeness, 
 of fine perception and foolish faithfulness, that are so often 
 characteristic of genius. As it was, never having even 
 learned to read, and having from the seventh year of his age 
 been obliged to get up in the gray of the mornings, and go 
 forth to hard incessant, bodily labour that killed the brain 
 in him, as it were so that wnen he returned at night he 
 had no sense to do more than to creep up to his truckle-bed 
 and sleep the heavy dreamless sleep of over-toil and of over- 
 fatigue he had never had any culture of the powers within 
 him. None could tell what ever they might, under another 
 existence, have proved; and it was only through the fairness 
 of nature around him, and the insight he had by instinct 
 into its beauties and mysteries, that he kept alive at all 
 those tender thoughts which, so sweet to the scholar, or the 
 artist, or the noble, are perhaps only full of a dim bewildered 
 pain to the poor man in whom they exist. 
 
 I did not discern all this myself, of course ; but Trust 
 did, and tlirough Trust I came to see it. 
 
THE SABBATH-BREAKER. 49 
 
 Ben Dare's love for his sister was wonderful; he seemed 
 to see none of her faults, save that ever-craving of gold, of 
 which now and then he so gently warned her. But even 
 his perception of this blemish in her never brought the 
 fact, or the suspicion thereof, to his mind that she had in- 
 deed taken his coins from under the apple-tree. No vague 
 fancy of the truth ever occurred to him ; he trusted Avice 
 with all his heart and soul, and though many times one 
 could observe that she was an anxiety and a disappointment 
 to him, and that her sullen, ungrateful words not seldom 
 wounded him sorely, he never spoke a harsh phrase to her, 
 and only thought her guilty of 'pettishness' such as often 
 besets a spoilt child. 
 
 She was not contented, he knew; but then, as he was 
 wont to say if he spoke to any fellow-workman on the matter, 
 * 'tis ony tha gaiety-like o' girlhood, look you ; they're often 
 like that i' their fust years. 'T 'ill wear off sure-ly wi' time; 
 and m'appen she'll get wed, you know she's sae pretty 
 and thin wi' tha childer comin', an' that, a nursin' 'em and a 
 pratin' tew 'em, an' a tidyin' o' 'em, she'll f orgit a' these little 
 maggits o' fancies an' fineries, and sittle down good an' 
 quiet ; I'm sure o' it.' 
 
 But he was not quite sure in his own heart ; and he was 
 disquieted oftentimes for Avice ; and took blame to himself 
 because he did not make the house 'alive* enough to amuse 
 a young girl; and worked extra hours, early and late, that he 
 might earn more money to replace that stolen from him, and 
 give her some gift or some treat with it some fairing, some 
 daintier food, or some new bit of apparelling. 
 
 ' I allays feel, ye know, as if tha mither was a watchin' o* 
 me/ he said once to his only friend, after Ambrose of the 
 Forge, a man like himself, in the quarry. ' She axed me a* 
 dyin', poor soul, to hae a care o' that little 'un ; and I dew 
 think if anythin' went wrong wi' Avice, 't f ud vex mither 
 sore, where'er she be, for tho* they may gae to heav'n, I'll 
 niver b'lieve as they f orgits all us down here, or gets hard as 
 stones to what happen till us.' 
 
 ' Maybe no, Ben,' retorted his brother-in-labour pokinf 
 his hands ruefully among his tumbled yellow hair, all white 
 with the powder of the shattered limestone. ' I often won- 
 ders as how them as is a singin' wi' tha angels as they says 
 they be can sing i' tune an' time like, whin they knows all 
 
50 PUCK. 
 
 as is a happenin' to their frinds and their childer below. I 
 suppose they dunna fash theirselves about it; but : ee hev to 
 git main aii' hard like, afore 'ee can be a angel.' 
 
 Thereon he finished his noon-day bit of bacon and bread, 
 and sent his pickaxe with ringing strokes into the stone: 
 he lived on the other side of the wood, three miles nearer 
 the village church, at which he was a leader in the quire. 
 
 ' I s'uld niver do for a angel,' he muttered, as he lifted 
 the axe. 'Why t'other Sunday when my old tirrier, Bee, 
 as you'll well mind un, died o' that lump i' her throat a 
 Sunday mornin', I couldna git my voice at all for thinkin' 
 o' tha good old crittur ; and I had to gie o'er afore the 
 "G-lory be," and go outside aneath tha yew, and I was 
 a cryin' like a child there 'cause 't old Bee was stiff an' 
 cold. If you'd seen her look, Ben, her look at me till tha 
 verra last ! ' 
 
 Ben was too much a pagan to rebuke his friend ; or to 
 insist that the ' Glory be ' should have been too solemn and 
 awful in its nature for any thought of the dead terrier to 
 have intruded on it, and spoilt the mellow notes of its best 
 bass singer. 
 
 In this simple, healthful, open-air life I throve apace, and 
 became exceedingly beautiful and graceful, as I could tell 
 by looking at myself in the clear mirror of the bright run- 
 ning water. If my forefathers and brethren had all died at 
 the Hall, I can only imagine that their lamentable decease 
 must have been caused by velvet cushions and meat-surfeit- 
 ings. I have often witnessed the melancholy results of 
 epicureanism on members of my noble race. 
 
 I throve certainly, and grew to my full size ; which never 
 exceeded that of a small rabbit ; nor ought indeed to hav( 
 exceeded it, for the virtue and worth of my people lie ix 
 their diminutiveness, as do those of Elzevirs and of Parlia- 
 mentary consciences. 
 
 Even old Dick, the pedlar, who ' could na abide dogs,' ob- 
 served me when he came again in Ben's absence one day in 
 the summer; and remarked that I was a rare nice un 
 surely, an' wurth a sight o' siller,' he guessed. Ever after 
 that unhappy speech, Avice regarded me with more favour, 
 but with a glance excessively like to that with which a 
 hawk surveys a lark. 
 
 Once she asked her brother, 
 
THE SABBATH-BREAKER. 51 
 
 1 "Wunna ye niver sell ta pup, Ben ? 'Tis pretty, ar.d sae 
 glossy an' white, I believe ye'd get a pund for't, an 1 'twere 
 well chaffered for ' 
 
 Ben glanced at her with a grave look in his eyes, under 
 which she was silent and restless. 
 
 ' I shall niver sell ta pup, lass,' he said. ' I dunna mak 
 a thing fond o' me and rear it wi' trouble, jist to barter it 
 awa' to strangers, who might tormint it for aught I might 
 tell.' ^ 
 
 Avice said no more ; she knew that there were things on 
 which her gentle and patient brother was inflexible, and 
 even obstinate, however yielding he might be usually to her 
 varied caprices. 
 
 I myself heard this decision with infinite gladness, for I 
 knew nothing then of the great world, and I loved the 
 pinewood and the moor. I had my liberty, I had kindness, 
 and I had sunshine : a young thing would be very envious 
 indeed that asked, or desired, more. 
 
 So the whole, long, golden summer passed ; the drowsy 
 bees humming over the countless flowers ; the white and 
 rose heaths covering the turf with a maze of soft colour; 
 the limestone rock flushing under the red glowing rays of 
 the sunsets ; the water-birds floating all day long in the 
 amber light over the beds of the waving sword-reeds ; the 
 trout darting by in the clear shallow water, and hiding 
 their pretty white backs under stones. 
 
 The summer was delightful to me ; and to Ben it had a 
 dim divine charm, that made the mere sense of living 
 sweet to him, despite all his toil. 
 
 Even Avice loved the 'summer-time,' as your G-erman 
 singers call it fondly ; it broke the monotony of her life ; 
 it brought stray wanderers over the moors ; it sent an 
 artist or two into the heart of this old dusky fragrant wood; 
 it was the season of harvest homes, and of several wakes 
 in the villages that lay nearest. Aiid Avice, although so 
 idle with her 'chores' (i. e. housework), and so indifferent 
 to exertion, would walk ten miles any day on the chance ot 
 a dance at night, and a supper in some little outlying farm, 
 or some village alehouse where, Ben not being by, 'she wore 
 her 'dimonds/ and eclipsed every girl who might foot it 
 there. Whenever she returned from one of these pleasur* 
 ings she was trebly sullen, and ill at ease always afterward? 
 
 E2 
 
5* PUCK. 
 
 But we were the sufferers from that, not she ; and BO the 
 consideration of the 'hard stone in the sweet date' no more 
 deterred her from seizing and devouring her date, than it 
 deterred her stx in the early days of the East. 
 
 Ben used now and then to offer some gentle remonstrance 
 against this absolute devotion to gaiety, when its god was 
 worshipped undei the questionable roofs of pot-houses; 
 but Avice always made out that she was going with some 
 good old dame whose presence would have sanctioned the 
 very revels of Bacchus or of Priapus themselves, and he 
 had not the heart to restain her from the few enjoyments 
 that broke the monotony of her years. 
 
 A well-dressing, a wake, a dance, a wedding feast, were 
 such delight to 'the lass,' he reckoned; it would have been 
 'unked' to have begrudged her those little mirthful frivolities 
 of a girl's earliest youth. To go with her himself was im- 
 possible; he had to be at his labour by sunrise, and did not 
 leave it till sunset, whether he were at the quarry, or, when 
 stone work was slack, at the farms. He could onlv trust 
 her; and he did trust her, with that entire faith wnich all 
 loyal natures give until they are paid with the coin of 
 deceit. 
 
 'I fear as how the wench is a goin' wrong,' said the man 
 who had lamented the loss of Bee once, at the quarry, to his 
 wife when she brought him the noon-day 'bit and sup.' 
 'She's allays a junkettin' somewheres, or if she bean't 
 junkettin' she's a mopin' ; which is m'appen worser of the 
 tew. And they do say as how she's a gay 'un ; and as how 
 voung Isaac up a tha flour mill and she be arter no good, 
 feut I doubt'n of fashen Ben about it. I might dew more 
 harm na good ? ' 
 
 * Dinna ye meddle, Tarn,' said his wife, who was a shrewed 
 woman. 'It's niver no good a threshin' other folks' corn; 
 ye allays gets the flail agin i' ye own eye somehow.' 
 
 'Mebbe,' said her lord, 'I would na mind gettin' hit if I 
 eaved ta corn by threshin' it ; but I dunna see how I suld 
 rightly. The lass ud say na, and Isaac ud say na, o'course, 
 and Ben ud niver change a word wi' me agin.' 
 
 So not even Friendship dared to tear the band off Ben's 
 eyes. 
 
 Friendship, when it is not a bully, 10 yery commonly 
 a toward. 
 
THE SABBATH-BREAKER. 53 
 
 When the summer had passed, and it was the first warm 
 mellow touch of autumn that flushed the leaves, and made 
 the waters flow faster, and shook the brown cones off: the 
 fir-trees, one of Avice's beloved days of junketing came 
 round with unusual honours. 
 
 It was 'wake-week' at a little town some twelve miles 
 away, and in addition to the wakes' singing and dancing 
 and feasting, there were a fair and a circus and various other 
 wonders. So at least old Dick o' tha AYyimats, making his 
 quarterly visit with Michaelmas, informed her with mucli 
 unction and imaginative description in reward for the 
 money she laid out with him three whole shillings veritably 
 her own from her poultry-yard ; the hens being the only 
 things of which she took any real care, because they brought 
 her in some silver with the outlay of which Ben never 
 interfered. 
 
 Ben dearly liked a Bmoke of his pipe, out-of-doors in the 
 still twilight in summer, or by his hearth in the winter. 
 But of late he had not smoked at all, because it ' pit wings 
 to the siller, my lass,' as he told her ; because, as Trust 
 told me, he was trying hr,rd to make up by Michaelmas that 
 sovereign's worth which the thief's appropriation had pre- 
 vented his possessing at Midsummer. 
 
 * It's all in a hole in the timber under his bed,' said Trust; 
 'he don't put faith in the apple-tree money-box any more. 
 And even she does not know of this, or it would not be long 
 quiet in his old stocking in that wood cranny.' 
 
 For whichever purpose it was, however, that he saved his 
 tobacco money, he went without his one enjoyment all 
 through the soft hot summei. Avice knew it, and saw him cast 
 now and then a wistful glance at the unfilled pipe. There 
 was abundance of tobacco in old Dick's pouch ; but she did 
 not purchase three-penny-worth of it out of her egg-money. 
 She only bought some yards of bright scarlet ribbon, some 
 yards of common lace, some mock amber beads for her 
 throat, and a very small jaunty straw hat. 
 
 * Ye'll come ower, sure ? ' pressed old Dick. * Why, law'k 
 a mercy, 'fill be sich a sight as hanna be seed i' the country 
 sin th' old King o' the Peak wint to glory hundreds of years 
 agone. There is a lot o' play-actors a comin' and ye 
 niver seed a play ? ' 
 
 ' Nay ! ' assented Avice with a sigh, * I niver ^id : what 
 does they dew?* 
 
54 
 
 ' Lord sake, my dearie, I could na tell 'ee,' said Dick, 
 with much solemnity. 'It's all lyin' all lyin', iviry bit f 
 most butiful ! There's fallers a cryin' their hearts out as 
 was laughin' fit to kill theirsells a minit afore. There's 
 kings wi* crowns o' gowd on as was jist common men, wi' 
 pipes i' their mouths, tew seconds agone. There's ugly 
 trapezin' mawthers o' gals, as one would na ha' picked out 
 o' street, all smilin' and rosy, and jew'lled and lovely like; 
 wi' the people a clappin' an' a cheerin' on em' like mad. 
 'Tis all lyin', ye knaw ; theer's tha beauty on it ; and tha 
 folks they goes and take on so as niver was, and b'lieve it 
 like Scriptur they do. Why, I've seed un a kickin' a 
 woman as laid on doorstep i' tha open street (a' least the 
 constable he got a kickin' o' her, and tha crittur moaned, 
 and tha folk about laughed at it as a rare good joke; she'd 
 a been clemmed by the way, she could na get a bit o' bread 
 nohow); weel! and I seed 'em that self-same night, tha 
 self-same folks i' tha playhouse, a cryin' and a ckmourin', 
 and a rockin' theersells to an' fro wi' grief a' cause a queen 
 on the stage had pisoned herself out o' rage and jealously. 
 O' tha lyin's uncommon good, 'tis sure to move 'em a deal 
 more'n ony tha fac' itsell.' 
 
 Avice listened intently. 
 
 'But 'ee sed,' she began eagerly, 'as how ugly mawthers 
 were took i' tha play and med beautiful. "Weel-favoured 
 wimmin thim must be must be ' 
 
 'Dazzlin' like the sun, my wench!' said Dick em- 
 phatically. ' O' course tha beauties allus looks tha best. 
 Lawk-a-deary me, why if a pretty gell git o' tha stage, 
 she'll go wed a duke afore Christmas ! ' 
 
 'But how does 'ee git theer!' asked Avice with panting 
 breast. 
 
 Dick looked very thoughtful, but he winked his eye with 
 dull unction. 
 
 ' Eh, ma dear, I dun' know. I is na a pretty gell. But 
 I think as how if I was un I'd jist go wheer a playhouse 
 were ; and I'd walk in and I'd ax to see the gintleman aa 
 kips it ; and I'd show him ma bonny face and my bonny 
 fute, and a* tha gowd o' ma hair, and I would na doubt 
 much as he'd pit me on tha boords.' 
 
 Avice listened breathlessly. 
 
 ' A'out money ? ' she aske'd. 
 
HIS FIRST BETRAYAL. 35 
 
 'Well,' said Dick, 'there & some as pays money to git 
 theer, I know; but a handsome wench she ha' got her 
 siller i' her eyes and her lips. If I were ye, Avice, I'd hev a 
 try, that I 'ud, i' tha wake-week. He could na but say ye nay.' 
 
 She listened thirstily, and with longing, wondering gaze. 
 
 'But I is na bright?' she said, sullenly. 'Clever, ye 
 knaw I canna read but a bit or tew.' 
 
 Dick snapped his fingers. 
 
 'Wimmen as good-lookin* as ye, lassie, need na larn 
 tlu'er ABC! But m'appen ye would na like to leave Isaac/ 
 he .added slily. ' He's a strappin' lad, sure-ly.' 
 
 ' I'd leave him this rninnit ! ' she said savagely, twisting 
 to and fro her yards of new scarlet ribbon. 
 
 'Ye'r wispin' tha, ribbon, ma dear,' said Dick calmly; 
 then he bent towards her and whispered in her ear : ' Ben 
 dinna know o't ? * 
 
 She coloured scarlet as her ribbons over her face and 
 bosom, as she murmured back a faint negative. 
 
 * Thin, my wench, git awa' soon, to playhouse o' some- 
 wheres if ye're wise,' muttered Dick, still in her ear, witt 
 a chuckle and a grin. Avice, still with the hot flush on her 
 face and tingeing still her swelling breast, shook him off 
 and went within. The old man, still chuckling to himself, 
 climbed slowly up the hill to the Moorside. 
 
 ' She'll go ta playhouse,' I heard him mutter. ' And tha 
 dukes will rin mad ower Isaac's cast-off! Lawk-a-day! the 
 lords' Ught-o'-loves is allus a honest man's leavin's!' 
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 HIS FIEST BETBAYAL. 
 
 IT was autumn-time ; and work being slack at the quarry, 
 Ben went 'a ploughin',' to the various farmsteads lying 
 around; little clusters of white or gray buildings, with 
 roofs of thatch or red tile, that broke here and there the 
 dark blue of the distant pine woods, the purple of the LillSs, 
 or the green of the woods and meadows. 
 
 Mounting the slope behind our cottage to its highest 
 point, where it became moorland, and shelved down again 
 n the other ride, you could see for thirty milea about on 
 
$6 PUCK. 
 
 every side, and many of these little homesteads caught you* 
 sight, nestled in the dip of a valley, caught in the clift of a 
 rock, or perched on the brow of a hill. Some few of these 
 were far too distant to allow him to go and come to them 
 in the day, and he slept where his work chanced to be. At 
 such times I missed him greatly; and Trust sat with a grave 
 anxious countenance on the doorsill, ev^ry now and then 
 awaking the echoes with a short woe-begone howl. 
 
 He was going for six days' agricultural work to a farm 
 near Ashford-in-the- Water on the same week that the 
 * wakes,' so strongly eulogised by the pedlar, were to take 
 place ; and Avice, on the Sunday night before his departure, 
 pleaded hard with him for permission to go thither for the 
 great day of all. Old Dame Smedly, the fern-seller, was 
 going, she urged, and would take her. 
 
 * It's tew far for tha donkey to kem and go i' twelve hours, 
 my lass,' he objected, * and I dunna like for ye to sleep fra' 
 hame. Least o' all, tew, i' that town where I dunna knaw 
 a soul.' 
 
 ' But Dame Smedly dew, Ben,' persisted his sister. ' She 
 hev a half-cousin, an unco' decent man, as own a Public 
 theer, and we culd sleep i' his house tha night, and thin 
 back agen wi' marn. Te knaw ye've axed her to he wi' me 
 here whiles ye're on tha tramp.' 
 
 1 I'm no' goin' on tramp, lass,' said Ben, a trifle annoyed. 
 ' I'm a goin' tew Ashford i' tha "Water; ye mind it right on 
 well. A Public bean't tha sort o' place for ye, my dearie ; 
 there's allus a lot of men a' skittles, and bad wimmim a 
 trolloping about.' 
 
 * It's a very 'spectable house, Ben! ' moaned Avice. ' And 
 I think it shame to cast foul words agin the old dame's 
 folks, as is a main deal better off than us aren't.' 
 
 ' 1 dinna cast no words at 'em,' said Ben patiently. * I 
 ony ses, as I allays ses, that a Public ain't a place for sich a 
 wench as yew.' 
 
 'It's tha ony roof I can sleep under, Ben! and to lose 
 this wakin' will kill me, it well ! There's a fair, and merry- 
 go-rounds, and play-actin', and conjurin', and lots o' 
 dancin'; an' I didna think ye'd be so cruel as to do me 
 out o't ! Whin I sees nothuV in this lonely hole fra one 
 year's end to t'other !' 
 
 And Avice burst into tears ; using the great weapon of 
 ber sex without stint or scruple. 
 
HIS FIRST BETRAYAL. 57 
 
 Of course Ben gave in, and let her have her way ; the 
 more quickly, though not the more readily, because he 
 knew well that if he did not let her have it, she would take 
 it, the moment his back was turned. 
 
 ' Grie me a kiss, my lass,' he said sadly, when the storm 
 had passed, and she consented to smile through her tears. 
 1 Mebbe ye wunna be up afore I'm off to-morroV 
 
 She kissed him willingly; with pretty caressing ways 
 and words. 
 
 Surely Judas must have been a woman disguised ? 
 
 "With the first gray streak of the morning, he went on 
 his way, over the hills to the "Wye-watered dales, where his 
 labour lay, among the golden-brown woods of the autumn. 
 
 He signed Trust gently back with his hand, and bid him 
 etay and mind the place ; my head he touched lightly and 
 fondly. 
 
 ' Grood-bye, little un,' he murmured kindly ; ' I'll soon 
 be wi' ye agin.' 
 
 Then he went ; through the gray, damp, vaporous air, 
 that was like clouds of steam over all the hills, and whitened 
 as snow all the valleys. There had been no one up to set 
 his breakfast, or to bid him Grod speed. 
 
 As he drew the door after him, and left us alone in the 
 feeble, sickly light of the solitary rush-candle by which he 
 had groped his way to the poor meal he had eaten, Trust 
 threw up his head and gave his Ion** wailing agonised howl. 
 
 ' That won't bring him back ? ' I nazarded, for the noise 
 made me feel so miserable. 
 
 ' I know that ! ' said Trust sharply. * Howling won't 
 bring a dead sheep to life, but many are the dead sheep I 
 have howled over ; where they la.v stiff and frozen, down in 
 a snow-drift, poor fools. Though we can't help things, we 
 grieve for them. If you never do that when you are grown 
 up, you will be as hard as a stone or a woman ! * 
 
 Alter which answer, he recommenced his lamentations, 
 with much seeming relief to himself ; until Avice opened 
 her door, and called to him to be quiet, or ' she'd bang his 
 head off his shoulders.' 
 
 His reply to this was another howl, only louder, shriller, 
 and more prolonged than ever. She sent a piece of heavy 
 wood flying at him, down the stairs. 
 
 Trust watched it coming, got out of its way, and with 
 much contentment saw it shiver the little angle of looking- 
 
58 PUCK. 
 
 glass on the wall. Then, satisfied with his vengeance, he 
 composed himself into a "ball, and was silent. 
 
 Trust and I had a bad life for the next three days with 
 Avice, and the old woman, Smedly ; we should have had a 
 worse, only that they were fearful of him when he growled,, 
 and this he did, very nearly unceasingly, from morning till 
 night. 
 
 On the third day, the husbandman on the Moor Farm 
 borrowed Trust to help him bring in some sheep from a. 
 distant part of the moor on which they had been turned 
 out for the late summer graze, and I saw my only friend 
 leave me, with a sinking at my heart a foreboding of what 
 ill I could not tell. 
 
 The fourth morning was that on which Avice and the 
 dame were going to the wakes ; and the donkey-cart was at 
 the door by six o'clock of the dawn. 
 
 I had understood that ' Nell o' the Moor Farm ' had pro- 
 mised to look after me, in recompense for the loan of Trust 
 at the sheep-fetching. So I was amazed and frightened 
 when Avice wondrous to behold in the diamonds, and the 
 lace, and a very bright blue print dress, and the morsel of 
 a hat, all aglow with the scarlet ribbons jammed me into- 
 one of those quaint brown willow-baskets, peculiar to that 
 district, shut the lid with only a peep-hole for air, and set 
 me up on the cart with her bundles and the old woman's- 
 red cloak. 
 
 I moaned, I whined, I yelped, I made all the uproar I 
 knew how ; but it was of no avail j they did not heed me ;. 
 the cart went jogging on its way. 
 
 Through the chinks of the basket I looked at the little 
 cottage, n'ke a robin's-nest in an ivy bush, with the white 
 morning mists hovering above it on the great hill slope, 
 and the bright brown brook running by its loor. 
 
 Alas ! I never saw it again. 
 
 The road which the cart took was not up the hill and. 
 across the moors; it penetrated the whole width of the 
 wood, and then went through a shallow * sough '* of water, 
 which was in winter too swollen to allow of any thorough- 
 fare that way ; and then passed over the brow of a steep 
 stony slope, and so got at last into a high road, called, like 
 a score of others in the country, the Derby road. 
 
 * A small lagoon, such as is called in Norfolk *a broad.' 
 
HIS FIRST BETRAYAL $$ 
 
 My heart died utterly, as we were dragged this weary 
 ength, in a progress only interrupted by the dead pauses 
 of the donkey, and the loud blows rained upon his back. 
 I thought of Trust, running, leaping, barking, so joyously, 
 so excitedly, so full of eagerness and of importance, on the 
 far-away purple moor bringing home the sheep if he only 
 had known ! 
 
 For I had no sort of doubt or hope left in me ; I knew 
 that she was going to sell ' tha pup/ as well as though I 
 had heard her proclaim aloud her wicked intent. 
 
 The journey seemed endless to me ; we jogged at last 
 into a little clean, old-fashioned, stone-built town, shady 
 with many trees, and with a noble ancient church in the 
 centre of its market-place. I should think it was usually as 
 quiet as its own graveyard ; but now in wake week it was 
 thronged with men and women and children from all the 
 outlying villages. Its church bells were ringing merrily and 
 madly ; its market-place was thronged with booths, and 
 shows, and sports, and flags ; and outside a wooden build- 
 ing, on a platform, there were the play-actors of the pedlar's 
 legend, strutting to and fro in all the glory of gold, and 
 silver, and velvet robes, and waving plumes, while one gor- 
 geous creature in scarlet and amber blew his trumpet 
 loudly, and proclaimed the performance of the night. 
 
 1 Lawk a mussy, look ! ' I heard Avice cry out , * O, ain't 
 it beautiful ? What I 'ud give to ony be that girl wi' the 
 short pink skirt, and the silver shoon, and that crown upo* 
 her head! 1 
 
 I could have told her that she had looked a thousand 
 times prettier herself, washing in the burn, with her linen 
 kirtle tucked up to her knees, and her white arms and 
 bosom coming forth from the brown leathern bodice like 
 white moss roses out of russet autumn leaves. 
 
 But if I could have spoken, what use would it have been 
 to have told such a truth as that to a woman ? "With all 
 their egregious vanity voracious of flattery as a fish of 
 food they are always distrustful of themselves when 
 arrayed in the garment of simplicity. 
 
 At another time I should have thought the market-place 
 a gay scene enough, in its way, with its colour, movement,, 
 noise, and mirth ; and that rich blue sky of the dying sum- 
 mer over all the quaint peaked roofs. 
 
60 PUCK. 
 
 As it was, I was wretched. 
 
 "We stopped at a dirty tumble-down little ale-house, which 
 a gaudy sign proclaimed as the ' Miners' Joy ; ' there were 
 lead mines the other side of the town in the heart of a 
 luxuriant woodland, once a royal chase. Here Ariee and 
 her companion were noisily welcomed ; and she. for that 
 matter, embraced by a knot of men before the ' Public's * 
 door, of whom one was her host. 
 
 She laughed a little with them ; drank a draught o spiced 
 ale, then took me up-stairs in my basket to her room. 
 When she had put the finishing touches of finery to herself, 
 she went out of the attic with a loud slam to the rickety 
 door, and left me to my meditations, which were none of 
 the brightest. 
 
 It was now near the hour of sunset. 
 
 Through the thin wattled walls of the * Public,' and 
 through the open lattice, I could hear the various voices 
 now of a man and a woman who seemed husband and wife, 
 and were in the adjoining garret now of the persons 
 gathered drinking in the wide thatched porch below. 
 
 ' Thar go the wench/ said one of the former, the wife I 
 think by her voice, by which I suppose Avice was meant. 
 ' She hev trim limbs o' hern, she hev kiver ground like a 
 Polly- wash-the-dish-up.'* 
 
 ' Esau bean't a losin' time,' said the man, with a grin in 
 his voice. ' Theer's his arm about her a'ready.' 
 
 ' She's a willin' un,' sighed his wife sadly. ' She dunno 
 let grass grow a'neath her shoon i* courtin.* 
 
 t She's abuve Esau, tew,' said the husband. ' She axed 
 jist now how many dukes theer was i' England * 
 
 'What did tell her? 1 
 
 * Sed as theer warn'a but one. An* there is na. Ony 
 our duke, old woman.* 
 
 1 No, for sure. But what could gell want wi' dukes ? ' 
 
 1 She's franzy wi' her bit o' oat-cake ; an' mad for a plum 
 'un,' answered the other allegorically. 'It's thim chip 
 news-sheets as dew mischief ta gells and lads ; makin' em' 
 quar'l wi' their lot, and git sae cock-a- whoop and fulish as 
 theer's nae standin' 'em.' 
 
 ' And that's trew. But un mun knaw how world wags ? ' 
 
 ' Why mun ye ? ' grumbled the man. ' 'Taint naught 
 * A water- wagtail. 
 
HIS FIRST BETRAYAL. l 
 
 t'ye. Ye mind yer kittle biles, and yer bin s lay, an' yer 
 cabbage dunna get worums, and yer cnilder dunna tell lies 
 to 'ee that's wot ye've gotten ta dew. "World dunna want 
 'ee, 'tis big enow to take care o' itsell ' 
 
 'Sure I'm allus slavin' for childer,' said his wife, with 
 something like a sob. 
 
 'Ye lets 'em lie,' growled the other. ' Littlest 'un, he 
 told me a wopper yest'reen. I gie him a rare crack o' rate 
 for 't. Beddin' news-sheets an' pratin' o' world, whiles 
 worums gits at yer greens, an' lies comes pat ta yer bairns 
 that's just screeching at neighbour's chimbley- smoke, 
 an' lettin' yer ain place burn ta ashes.' 
 
 Here the conjugal discussion was drowned by the tonea 
 of the men in the porch, who were talking political econo- 
 mies after their light. 
 
 * Times is bad i' Suffeck ?' said one voice with an inquiring 
 accent in it. 
 
 ' Main bad,' concurred another which had not the north- 
 country speech that is Chaucer-like and full of a curious 
 unconscious poetry, but had instead the whine of East 
 Anglia that is as like the New England whine as the call of 
 one chaffinch is like to another. 'Six shillin' a week is 
 a'most all as iver ye git. Theer won't be no corn growed 
 soon, if pipple starve-like a-farmin' as we does.' 
 
 * Six shillin' a week ! ' ejaculated the miner. ' Women git 
 as much at mill ? ' 
 
 * Hey ? ' said the Suffolk man. ' And a shillin' or ten- 
 pence every week out o' that for landlord. "We niver gits 
 a taste o' meat, years end t' year's end. And when flour's 
 riz, it's all as ye can dew to kip body and soul tegither.' 
 
 ' Wliere's Suffeck ? ' asked some other person. ' I' Ame- 
 ricay ? ' 
 
 1 Americay ! Ye're a born nat'ral. It's somewheres i f 
 tha south, ain't it, G-eorge ? ' 
 
 1 Iss,' assented the Suffolk Greorge. * 'Tis all buiifull 
 and flat as yor hand theer, none o't broke up into these nasty 
 mounds o' yourn as is ony made to lame man and beast. 
 Ye may walk hunderds o' miles i' Suffeck, and hev it all as 
 smooth and as nice asamawther's ap'on wi' the starch in.' 
 
 'But ye dunna get good wage?' said the miner with 
 practical wisdom. 
 
 ' "We doan't,' confessed the East Anglican, ' we 4oan't 
 
6a PUCK. 
 
 And that theer botherin' machinery as do the threshin', 
 and the reapin', and the sawin', and the mowin', hev a 
 ruined us. See ! in old time, when ground was frost bit 
 or water-soaked, the min threshed indoors, in barns, and 
 kep in work so. But now the machine, he dew all theer is 
 to dew, and dew it up so quick. There's a many more men 
 than theer be things to dew. In winter-time measter he 
 doan't want half o' us ; and we're just out o' labour, and we 
 fall sick cos' o' naethin' to eat; and goes tew parish able- 
 bodied min strong as steers.' 
 
 'Machine's o' use i' mill-work/ suggested one of the 
 northerners. 
 
 1 O' use ! ay o' coorse 'tis o' use tew tha measters,' 
 growled the East Anglican. ' But if ye warn't needed at 
 yer mill cos the iron beast was a weavin' and a reelin' and 
 a, dewin' of it all, how'd yer feel ? Wi' six children, mebbe, 
 biggest ony seven or eight, a crazin' ye for bread. And ye 
 mayn't send 'em out, cos o' labour-laws, to pick up a half- 
 penny for theerselves ; and tha passion be all agin yer, cos 
 ye warn't thrifty, and didn't gev a penny for the forrin 
 blacks out o' the six shillin' a week ? "Would you think 
 iron beast wor o' use thin? or would yer damn him hard ?' 
 
 ' He speak up well,' hallooed one of the miners, with a 
 thump upon the table. 
 
 'I'll speak agin Urn any day,' said the Suffolker with 
 fierce emphasis. ' Why, look'ee, I'm better off nor most. 
 I'd some schoolin' when I was a brat ; and I scraped and 
 scraped till I got a cow, and I can make ends meet a bit, wi' 
 the butter in summer-time. But there's a swarm o' men in 
 the parish as dunno more'n tha beasts in stye. Dunno 
 their Grod ; dunno their letters ; never heard o' tha Queen; 
 never put a mossel o' mutton in their mouths dunno no- 
 thin'. Field-work is sickly-like, 'cos o' the wind and 
 Weather; and when yer comes to trampin' six mile out, 
 and six in, and ditchin' and ploughin' all day i' tha wet, it 
 stan' to reason as how tha rheumatic come hot and heavy 
 arter a bit, wi' min and wimmin tew. Farmers, they kip 
 theer greyhounds t' run for cups and that loike ; and kill 
 sheep for 'em 'gainst their coursin-meetens ; but their min 
 they dew starve mostly ; and tha cupboard he's empty and 
 the churchyard he's full. You see the lands is too small and 
 min they're too many. That's wheer it be,' 
 
HIS FIRST BETRAYAL. 63 
 
 'Q-entry take up sa mucli o't wi' woods for shootin', 
 grumbled the miner in answer. ' I ye was ta till a' the 
 grown' wheer's wood ' 
 
 'Nay, nay,' objected the Suffolker. 'That woan't dew. 
 "Woods is health to land ; in field-work ye maun gie an* 
 take, as wi' yer fellows. I ye doan't gie timber elbow- 
 room, yer soil '11 be parchin' wi* dry loike a duck in a hay- 
 loft. If ye fell yer wood ivery wheers tha land she'll gape 
 wi* cracks, like a trollop's gound wi' holes f 
 
 * Thin theer' s nowt f or't but t' immigrate ?' 
 'To dew wot?' 
 
 * To gae beyant seas, to new countries.' 
 ' Never heerd on 'em.' 
 
 1 Lord sake ! Why, my brither he's theer in Australy 
 and he ses as how tha land's jest' bustin' like wi' plenty, 
 an' ye can hae mutton for a f arthin' a poun', an' ye can get 
 a fat ewe for sixpence, and ye don't never see naebody 
 chilled, nor clemmed, nor tatter'd.' 
 
 * Lawk-'a-mussy ! Well 't 'ud come cheaper to Parish 
 to sind us all theer, I'm thinkin', than to kip so many on 
 us all starvin' and rottin' at whoam ?' 
 
 1 They dew send a many.' 
 
 * Mebbe. Never heard o't in our parts. They s'uld come 
 and spik about it ; and shove us a bit and get us off right 
 away : ye know we're rare and like the blow-flowers in pots. 
 We'd stick in pots for iver, a'out blowin' nor neathin' ; and 
 jist gie up tha ghost along o' theer bein' no mould, and no 
 room, and our roots a clingin', and a clingin', a'out nought 
 to feed 'em. But pit plant in bigger pot pot him out o' 
 doors, whether he like 't or not and he'll get strikin' agin, 
 and blowin' like mad. He will ; and so 'ud we. I'd loike 
 to hear more o' these new lands ?' 
 
 ' I'll git Sue to read tha letter to ye if 'ee come o'er to 
 my place,' rejoined the Peak miner. 'She read rare. She 
 don't hev to spell out not more'n ivery ither word or so, 
 Be 'ee long in these parts ?' 
 
 ' I kem 'scursion. First time I was iver out o' Suffeck. 
 But my aunt she hev done well, a marryin' this Public ; 
 and I tho't I'd see her for onst. Te're main and queer, 
 wi' yer land all muddled like into these ups and downs. Ye 
 must ha' rare big moles to throw up sich sky-high mouns ?' 
 
 This was uttered with no sense of humour, but in a very 
 grave spirit of wonder and of inquiry. 
 
64 PUCK. 
 
 I did not catch the miner's reply, as the men moved 
 within, no doubt to get fresh tobacco and more beer ; and 
 instead of their conversation I heard again the grave, grum- 
 bling tones of the husband and the more plaintive ones of 
 the wife in the attic near me, whose lower voices had been 
 drowned by the loud arguments of the East Anglian. 
 
 ' Ben will ha' trouble i' that gell,' I heard the Toice of the 
 man say. ' She's off trapezin' about a'ready; crazed-like to 
 gape at ta play-actors.' 
 
 ' "Well-a-day ! that's ony nat'ral,' said the softer female 
 Toice, with the tender exclamation that has lingered in those 
 parts since the days of your Shakespeare. ' G-ells sud bide 
 by hearth, I know that right well ; but when they're 
 young, and hanna na mother like, they gets dazed wi' 
 lookin' i' tha glass, and hearin' tha lads crack o' theer gude 
 looks. And for sure 'tis a bit dullish for Avice, all along 
 o' hersilf i' tha quarry-wood, and she's just a bonny, feck- 
 less thing, wi' na mind in her.' 
 
 ' She hev as good a home as ony jade can want,' growled 
 the man ; ' Ben's that douce tew her, and that f earf u' o' 
 crossin' her, that she live, she dew, like a mouse i' a corn-bin. 
 But theer it is pit mice i' corn-bin, pit 'em i' a barn 
 wheer theer's a score o' coombs i' sack, and a score o' 
 coombs a' lyin' loose, why, ye know, Jess, as I know, 
 mice they'll niver go eat tha loose corn, they'll jist gnaw 
 holes i' tha sackin', for sheer sake o' thievin' and reivin '.* 
 And wimmen they's just like mice ; giv' 'em their 
 pleasure easy to come by, they'll nashen and fritten their- 
 selves till they can run aside and gnaw the sackin' of some 
 joy as G-od and men hev forbid to 'em. It's queer it's 
 awfu* queer. But m'appen tha A'mighty knew Himself 
 what He med tha vermin and tha gells for it's more nor 
 we dew, I reckon. 
 
 And with that sorrowful reflection, sadly uttered, his 
 roice ceased, and his heavy nailed boots clanged slowly 
 
 * I alao have heard farmers say this of mice in a barn ; but in 
 justice to the maligned rodents I must say that I have had two mice 
 in my rooms for the last six months, which, being well fed, never have 
 touched food not given them, even when left alone for hours. The 
 theft of all animals comes from hunger. I do not believe any of them 
 care to steal for stealing's sake except perhaps monkeys, to whom 
 theft is charming because it is xrdschief. ED. 
 
HIS FIRST BETRA*. 65 
 
 down the wooden stairs. I never knew who, it was that 
 spoke, but I conclude it must have been some miner, or 
 quarry cutter, or ploughman, who thus addressed his wife ; 
 in that utter oblivion that she must have been once a 'gell' 
 herself, which seems a natural result of the bonds of 
 marriage. 
 
 I was left alone all the day, evening and night ; and 
 whimpered and sobbed myself to sleep as best I could, with 
 the big autumnal moon glowing through the little leaded 
 lattice, and the shouts of the township's revelry coming 
 faintly on the soft night wind. 
 
 It was dawn when Avice Dare returned : full dawn. Her 
 face was deeply flushed ; her hair dishevelled ; her dress 
 disordered ; she laughed vacantly as she moved about, and 
 she threw herself half undressed upon the bed, and slept 
 soundly, without a single movement, several hours through, 
 lying face downward with the air blowing in upon her. 
 
 I had once seen a man drunk at the quarry ; it seemed to 
 me that she laughed, and moved, and slept very much as 
 he had done, under the potency of liquor. 
 
 Yet when at noon she awoke, and bathed herself in the 
 cold, clear water, and shook out all her tresses, and dressed 
 herself in a white bodice and a scarlet kirtle, she looked so 
 charmingly, thanks to her youth, and her health, and her 
 wonderfully perfect beauty, that I felt as if my suspicion 
 was hateful and full of shame. 
 
 She stopped in her attiring once : and leaned her head 
 on her hand ; and stared at her face and form in the piece 
 of mirror, which was much larger than her little bit of 
 glass at home. 
 
 She seemed to survey herself quite mercilessly, with all 
 her love for herself ; and to be taking stock, as it were, of 
 her capital of physical loveliness. The scarlet lips, the 
 glowing brown eyes, the round white arms, the bosom that 
 rose above the edge of the bodice that only rivalled it in 
 whiteness; the tender tints and the soft curves of her 
 limbs she studied them all with a curious mingling oi; 
 vain worship, and of mercantile foresight, fused in one. 
 
 Then she dressed herself in haste, clasping about her a 
 quantity of fresh tawdry trinkets new gifts, no doubt, 
 from the fair and turned her attention to me, whom she 
 seized with a sharp and feverish srce j as though I wore 
 
 r 
 
56 I UCK. 
 
 fii some manner the talisman whereby she would suinmoi 
 the magic of Fortune. 
 
 It was a lovely morning ; through the open window the 
 Rutuinn air blew strong and sweet ; the sun shone ; the 
 rooks in the high trees cawed ; the bells of the churches 
 chimed merrily ; but Avice heeded none of these. 
 
 She consigned me afresh to my basket : and as this time 
 I was permitted no peep-hole at all, I could only surmise 
 that I was carried downstairs into the little dirty porch of 
 the house. This porch, with oak settles fixed against it, 
 was a favourite drinking-place of the miners, I believe ; and 
 more spiced ale, and toast, and mulled elder wine with crab 
 apples bobbing in it, and possets of various kinds made 
 with honey and milk, and cloves and apples, and all the old 
 Elizabethan drinks that are still brewed in the ]N"orth, 
 were being eagerly called for, with the sweet circular wake- 
 cake always in vogue on such occasions. 
 
 To all these, Avice, it seemed, rendered full justice; aa 
 the men kept crying to her, 'Well drained, my lass.' 
 ' Take a sup o' this.' ' That's a good un to drink, aren't 
 she? ' ' Ye suld kip a public, my wench ; ye're jist tha one 
 for't.' But if she drank much she did not tell what was 
 in her basket, and she went, at length, forth, decorously 
 enough with the old woman Smedly, into the streets and 
 the market-place. 
 
 For myself I was too terrified to do anything, even to 
 moan ; and the close confinement of the basket made mo 
 feel very faint. 
 
 I suppose she met some one by appointment, for she 
 stopped in a lonely by-street, and a man's voice addressed 
 her a small, thin, wiry voice, that I hated. 
 
 ' Am I /ight, ma'am ? I think I must be ; Dick told mo 
 *o look for the prettiest lady in all the town.' 
 
 Avice laughed ; a laugh of pleasure, at the coarse stupid 
 compliment. 
 
 1 Are ye the genleman as w ants a dog ? ' she said ; ' least* 
 ways a pup ? ' 
 
 * I am, ma'am. I always want pups ; I deal in 'em.' 
 
 'Well, thin I hae brought 'ee un. Brither Ben he 
 dunna know ; he'll be mad like : I'll hev to tell him as 
 how I took ta pup wi' me, 'cause I feared as how Nell o' 
 Moorside' ud forgit to gie it its meals, and i' the press o' 
 
HIS FIRST BETRAYAL. $7 
 
 market-place I lost it. I sail hevto tell him some gammon 
 like, surely, for he's rare and fond o' ta pup' 
 
 'Ah, I see But you, ma'am, naturally do not like dogs 
 about the house ? ' 
 
 ' O, I dunna care for that. 'Tis a teasin' little wretch, 
 for sure ; but they dew say as how 'tis a deal o' valew, and 
 \ want rfia gowd, as Dick tole ye, avd so ' 
 
 ' I see ! Allow me ' 
 
 'Allow me,' meant opening my basket, and taking me 
 out by the skin of my neckj a barbarous custom too 
 prevalent. 
 
 They were standing, quite alone, under an archway that 
 connected a malting-house and a meeting-chapel a droll 
 metaphor in stone, of the Church leaning on the "World. 
 
 This part of the town was entirely deserted ; the noise 
 and merriment were but dimly heard ; no one was near. 
 
 He examined me with the most minute and detestable 
 attention, and looked very shrewd and avaricious as he did 
 6t). Finally he replaced me in the basket. 
 
 ' Tour price is high, ina'am : very high. I doubt if 1 
 shall ever see it back again. The pup is not of the value, 
 you suppose ; nothing like it, still as I promised Dick ; 
 and as you need the gold ; and as the dog is certainly 
 pretty, to say nothing of its mistress's beauty ; I will pur- 
 chase it for what you asked.' 
 
 ' Three pun'/ said Avice thirstily. 
 
 ' Three pounds including basket ? ' 
 
 ' O, ye may have tha basket,' said Avice, with feverish 
 haste. ' Hand o'er the gowd, theer's a good crittur! ' 
 
 He counted three sovereigns slowly into her hand ; it 
 clutched and closed on them, and without even a word of 
 thanks or farewell, she drew her skirts up about her, and 
 flew off down the street like a lap- -iring. 
 
 The man stood and gazed after her, bewildered at her 
 &udden flight. 
 
 ' She's a queer one,' he muttered. ' No good I fear, for 
 all her Handsome face. But the dog's worth twice his 
 money, anyhow. 
 
 With that he heaved u niy basket, and bore me away 
 to his lodgings. 
 
 I was his henceforward. 
 
 F 2 
 
PVCF 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 
 Iff THE MABKET-PLACE. 
 
 IT is of no use now, to recount all the misery I suffered. 
 
 I can recall it as though it were yesterday ; and I cried 
 my very heart out like a baby as I was. The man was not 
 at the first unkind to me, though he struck me some few 
 times sharply with a riding switch when I would not cease 
 from my moaning and sobbing. He was rough too, and 
 hurt me in handling, but he did not starve me. He chained 
 me, indeed, by my light collar to the leg of a chair, and 
 kept me prisoner in his little sitting-room upstairs that 
 looked out on the market-place ; but he was out a great 
 deal, and I was left chiefly alone. I might be there but a 
 day, I might be there for a week ; I cannot recollect. I 
 only know I was miserable. The first thing that recalled 
 me to consciousness was the sharp sting of a whip across 
 my back. I shrieked with the pain ; in Ben's house even 
 Avice had never dared to be at me. The only response to 
 my cry was a sharper blow than the first ; and this was re- 
 peated till I was literally blind and stupefied, and was 
 quiet because numbed with anguish. 
 
 Then evil woke in me under my torments, and I bit and 
 foamed, and flew like a mad thing ah, how often your 
 1 mad dog ' is only a dog goaded by torture till he is beside 
 himself, like a soldier delirious from shot-wounds ! 
 
 The perfection of your scientific training is to make us 
 either cravens or furies ; what a fine result ! 
 
 For this defence of myself I was thrust in a dark closet, 
 and locked in there for the rest of the day and the night. 
 
 Over that time of misery I will pass ; I hardly care even 
 now to recall it. 
 
 With the next morning my new owner called me out, 
 and gave me some bread-and-milk. He did not beat me 
 this time ; I believe he was afraid he might kill me, as I 
 was very delicate, and thus he might never realise his lost 
 three sovereigns. 
 
 After I had eaten this, he left me, chaining me again to 
 the leg of a chair under the window, and locked the door 
 of the little parlour upon me. 
 
IN THE MARKE-i-rLACE. 69 
 
 Once again alone, my grief was unrestrained ; EO much 
 so that the woman of the house came and hammered at the 
 door and swore at me for a ' dratted yelping beast,' which 
 only made my cries the louder. As several hours went on 
 however, and my solitude remained unbroken^J cried my- 
 self so hoarse that I was unable to emit any s#rt of sound 
 at last, and thought I might as well vary my imprisonmeni- 
 by looking out of the casement. 
 
 It was a deep old lattice-window, shut ; but by jumping 
 on the chair I could see perfectly down into the market- 
 place, and, in spite of all my woe, I derived a certain 
 amusement from watching the varied life and mirth that 
 were to be seen below. There was one little pane open, 
 too, for air; and as the window was low down, like the 
 upper windows of all country dwellings, I both saw and 
 heard with ease. 
 
 It was now fully past noon by the height of the sun, ana 
 the fun of the wakes was mounting high also its perihe- 
 lion of course was not till the dances and the ' play-actin' ' 
 of the night. 
 
 There were numerous tawny-coloured booths filled with 
 cheap toys, and sweetmeats, and spar-ornaments, and wear- 
 ing apparel, and all manner of tawdry little fineries. There 
 were the roundabouts, in which men and women and chil- 
 dren went gravely circling on wooden horses till they were 
 giddy. There were all sorts of quacks, vending everything, 
 from medicines that cured every disease in the pharma- 
 copoeia to knives with a hundred blades for twopence. 
 
 There were Cheap Jacks screeching themselves deaf over 
 deS-plates from Staffordshire, and earthenware pans, and 
 copper saucepans, and pewter pots, and shiny black kettles; 
 all these valuable articles being literally given away, they 
 averred, for a song. But when a lusty ploughman took 
 one of them at their word, and carolling forth a stave of 
 'G-affer Grey,' claimed one of the black kettles for his 
 'missus' as the recompense of his musical performance, 
 the Cheap Jack loudly protested against such literal inter- 
 pretation of his figurative language, and a very pretty bout 
 frith fisticuffs was the result, the innocent kettle ultimately 
 being battered to pieces in the fray. 
 
 Such is men's justice; in all their quarrels there ia always 
 
70 PUCK. 
 
 some poor luckless kettle which, sinless itself , gets the blowi 
 from each side ! 
 
 Besides all these amusements, there were itinerant musi- 
 cians playing in and out of tune ; there were wandering 
 organ-boys with monkeys, who had strayed out of the cities 
 *dth the ending of summe 1 *; there were red-cheeked country 
 lasses, staring open-moutfced at all the wonders, and tleir 
 sturdy lovers from mine and farm and quarry and marble- 
 works, treating them to all these sights with broad jokes and 
 uproarious laughter. And lastly, there was the crowning 
 glory of the whole the mimes outside the wooden theatre, 
 who were strutting again to and fro, in all the spangle and 
 silver lace, and cotton velvet, and pink calico, of their 
 royal adornment. And over all the scene there arose one 
 loud and continuous hum and rage of eveiy noise ever 
 heard under the sun from braying trumpets, penny 
 whistles, screaming infants, brawling men, shouting 
 vendors, untuneful brass bands, and screeching women's 
 shrill incessant laughter. 
 
 Eor the spiced ales, and the mulled wines, and the sweet 
 possets, were driving a brisk sale ; and even at this time 
 of the day the larger half of the crowd, male and female, 
 had already taken far more than was altogether good 
 for it. 
 
 I looked everywhere in the tumult of the market-place 
 for the scarlet ribbons of my cruel tyrant and traitress; 
 but Avice was nowhere to be seen. 
 
 I recognised Isaac of the flour-mill a tall, well-favoured, 
 flaxen-headed fellow of twenty-two or so but she was not 
 with him. I thought he seemed wholly devoted to a pretty 
 little brown modest-looking maiden, whom I thought I had 
 once seen in the wood, and heard of as the blacksmith's 
 sister. Was Avice inside the theatre, I wondered ? had 
 she joined herself to the 'play-actors' in pursuit of the 
 pedlar's counsel? 
 
 The afternoon sped fast, even in my captivity, with all 
 this throng below me to wa',ch, in its coming and going, 
 its ebbing and flowing. The deep warm glow of the late day 
 spread itself over earth and sky, making mellow the gray 
 of the old stone buildings, and tingeiiig with a richer purple 
 the line of the circling pine-clad hills. 
 
 Suddenly near on sunset I heard a voice that mada 
 my heart leap. It was asking, 
 
IN THE MARKET-PLACE. 7* 
 
 *Hev ony o' ye seed iny Avice?' 
 It was the voice of my dear old gentle Ben ! 
 I stretched out as far as ever I could, but my head woulfr 
 not go through the tiny aperture alone left unclosed. J 
 could see him standing almost under my casement, but ho 
 could not see me. I yelped, and barked, and screeched, in 
 the longing to attract his attention; but my voice was 
 feeble, and he never heard. 
 
 * Hev ony o' ye s'jed my wench ? ' he asked again. ' She's 
 i' the town, I know, wi' tha owd woman Smedly.' 
 
 * I seed Aviee somewheres about,' said one of the women 
 rather hurriedly : the others were silent. 
 
 Ben looked very happy; he had a little rose in his bosom, 
 and was dressed in his best fustian suit. 
 
 ' I got ower work quick at ta Ashford Farms,' he said, 
 with a ringing and cheerful voice to the woman who had 
 spoken a poultry-seller by trade, bright-eyed, and with a 
 pleasant elderly face, an old friend of his, and of his mother's 
 before him. ' I know'd tha little wench 'ud be here, and I 
 kem ower to gie her a treat like. I've pit by a pund's wuth 
 o' siller as she dunna guess aught about ; and she can ha' 
 what she likes wi' it a gownd, or a shawl, or a lot o' 
 fairins, or jist whativer she fancies. She telled me as how 
 tha public tha dame was to tek her tew was called tha 
 " Wheatsheaf ;" but I canna find " Wheatshcaf " nohow.' 
 
 'Theer's no "Wheatsheaf" i' tha town nowheres,' said 
 the poultry-woman, in a very low voice. 
 
 ' Nowheres ? ' said Ben, astonished. * For sure thin tha 
 lass is so careless, she'll ha' forgat the right name. But. 
 howe'er sail I find her if I dunna knaw tha public? I' 
 such a throng as this'n, 'tis like lookin' for a needle i' a 
 bottle o' hay. Ha' ony o' ye seed her ? Te sed ye had.' 
 
 * We seed her yisternight,' muttered a man in the group 
 about him. 
 
 ' Well! wheer was that, thin? Canna ye say? 
 
 T tha porch o' "Miner's Joy." ' 
 
 'Ta "Miner's Joy"? Is't that the public? Wheel 
 dew it stand? I'll go straight tew it. It'll git lew dusky 
 for tha lass to see to git her fairins, and I hev to gae bach 
 wi' tha oarn.' 
 
 Tl?c poultry dame laid her hand gently on his arm. 
 
 'Dinna gae to "Miner's Joy," Ben.' 
 
 * Why na ? ' he asked quickly. ' Why na ? ' 
 
7* FUCK. 
 
 None of them spoke. He looked swiftly and fiercely 
 from one to the other. 
 
 ' What is't ye kip fra me ?' he said, in a very low voice, 
 while his fair, ruddy face grew white. ' Is tha little ixiss 
 dead?' 
 
 ' Na, na, Ben ! * cried a score of voices. * She's well enow 
 trust her tha minx. It's ony ' 
 
 ' Ony what ? And how dares ye to call her names ?' 
 
 His mouth was set, his face white as death, his gray sad 
 yes flashed fire. 
 
 The old poultry-woman still kept firm, pitying hold on 
 his arm. 
 
 * Dunna ye tak on, Ben. I'd na say a harsh word o' yei 
 inither's child ; but tha lass is no worthy o' a' that. She'e 
 a bad un!' 
 
 Ben flung off her hand with a fierce oath. 
 
 ' If 'ee was ony a man as sed that ! Wheer's my lass ? 
 "Wheer's Avice? I'll hev tha truth out o' ye, sin I wring 
 a' yer throttles for it ! ' 
 
 They were frightened at his gesture and his tone : they 
 called out as with one voice : 
 
 ' She sold ta pup tew days agone, Ben ; and she's gaed 
 wi' tha gowd she got to Lunnon town ; and she's telled tha 
 play-actors she's meanin' to be one o' them i' that great 
 city; and ye suldna tak on so ; for everybody knowed 'cept 
 yoursell that she's been a gay un iver sin she cud cock her 
 eye at a man. Theer stan' Isaac o' tha corn-mill as was 
 her sweetheart this summer-time through ; ax him he'll 
 tell ye what a light-o'-love she was; and wi' more'n na him 
 for sure if 'ee ony know'd all.' 
 
 Ben stood still and rigid, with his face like a dead man's, 
 and his teeth clenched on his lower lip till the blood gushed 
 from it. 
 
 Isaac was loitering near. 
 
 He flashed his gray eyes over the youth. 
 
 'Isaac Cliff e, be this'n tha truth? '"he said slowly. 
 
 Isaac grinned a half-sheepish a half -victorious laugh. 
 
 'Tis trew,' he muttered. ' And I'd ha' wed her, and med 
 a honest woman o' her, I would, Ben ; ony ye sees she waa 
 bad, core through/ 
 
 The words were scarcely uttered ere Ben had sprung OD 
 him and seized him, and flung him up in the air. The lad 
 was strong, and a famous wrestler; he struggled, and fought 
 
JACOBS' CHURCH. 73 
 
 ftiid dealt back blow for blow ; but he had no force against 
 the violence of passion and of agony. 
 
 The people shrieked aloud that they were killing one 
 another, and tried to tear them asunder, and threw them- 
 selves on the wrestling arms and heaving forms; and at 
 length by sheer conquest of numbers dragged Ben away off 
 his prey, and held him motionless amongst them, while 
 others who had come to the rescue, hurried the youth, 
 swooning, and bruised, and bleeding from every limb, into 
 the shelter of the nearest ale-house in the market-square. 
 
 All the hearts of the dense throng were with the dis- 
 honoured and forsaken man ; they closed around him and 
 craved his pardon, and oried out rough tender words of 
 sympathy and sorrow ; while the women, with tears coursing 
 down their cheeks, left booth, and mart, and show, and came 
 about him and sought to comfort him. 
 
 ' Dinna tak' on so,' they murmured, c sure tha wench is 
 no wurth it. An' she ha' gone to play-actin' and sin ; and 
 ye'll see her na more i' this life ; and we knows as ye ha' 
 done a' yer duty by her ; and wimmin ha' got the deil in 
 'em sometimes; and theer's na man strong enow to copewi' 
 the deil an' a wench together. Dinna ye tak' on so; ye've 
 aniaist killed the poor lad, as was na so much to blame whin 
 a's been said.' 
 
 But he heard no word that they spoke. He stood upright, 
 rigid as a stone; gazing straight before him like a bull 
 wounded unto death, but with the power to slay still in him. 
 Then he threw his arms above his head with one loud crv : 
 
 1 Tha little lass ! tha little lass ! ' 
 
 And fell forward like one dead ; his face striking the 
 stones of the street. 
 
 The people closed around him as mourners close round a 
 grave. 
 
 They hid him from rny sight : I knew no more. 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 JACOBS' CHTJECH. 
 
 but dimly recall the nights and days of Li'sery that 
 followed on my betrayal by Avice Dare. 
 
 They are all in a blurred mass of blows, and oaths, and 
 dark closets, and starvation, and brutal teaching of antics 
 
74 PUCK. 
 
 lhat were styled pretty tricks, and nothing stands out clearly 
 to me save the one remembrance of how utterly wretched 
 I was. 
 
 I think nothing in the world is so intensely unhappy as 
 an unhappy dog. "We are of such vivid natures, of such 
 lively imaginations, of such constant affection ; and as WG 
 tan never tell our woes, but are almost sure to receive a 
 cuff or a kick if we only murmur at our weary lot, we ara 
 beyond all other creatures miserable. 
 
 I wonder now that I did not die ; but if everything died 
 that is full of wretchedness, your world would soon have 
 but a sparse peopling. 
 
 If the brutal treatment my purchaser looked on as 'train* 
 ing,' had long endured, I dare say my young and tender 
 frame would have given way beneath it ; my spirit certainly 
 would have been broken. Happily for my safety he soon 
 deceived an offer of a few guineas for me, in a month's time 
 from his purchase of me, which he immediately accepted 
 Ihis offer transferred me to a new home, in which, at least, 
 I found peace and repose, although these were accompanied 
 by a rider which too often goes with them i.e., dulness. 
 
 It was in a dower-house, amidst the flatness and unloveli- 
 jiess of that * fen country,' whither the man who had bought 
 me of Avice had taken me when he had sped by ni^ht out of 
 the little Derbyshire town, fearful no doubt of Ben's ven- 
 geance if he should be discovered. Here I became the 
 property of an old and rich woman, who was the owner of 
 this melancholy though peaceful hermitage. 
 
 She was good to me in a general way, though often precise 
 and severe, and I suffered but little whilst with her. But 
 there was nothing there to call my affections into play, and 
 nothing that was of sufficient interest to mark out those 
 years in my remembrance ; nothing that could make me for- 
 get the loss of my dear friends, Ben and Trust. 
 
 No doubt this period was beneficial to me, for they were 
 two years in which I was well fed, well cared for, and taught 
 all those gracious and highly-bred manners which have ever 
 eince always distinguished me. They were good years for 
 me, morally and physically, I am well aware ; but they were 
 dull ones, nevertheless, and bear to my mind all the hazi- 
 ness and dreariness that your earliest school days commonly 
 wear to yours. They were quite uneventful, as life in the 
 bouse of an aged, wealthy, and eccentric recluse usually is; 
 
CHURCH. 75 
 
 and bey oiid the liours I spent in the trim, high-walled, damp 
 gardens, or in the big, yellow carriage, like a state cabin on 
 wheels, I had absolutely no diversion except listening to the 
 interminable readings with which my old mistress had her 
 hours occupied. 
 
 She had been a woma:i of the world, in her time, I be- 
 lieve, though I know not what trouble had made her now a 
 solitary in her dull jointure-house ; and she was very liberal 
 in her range of literature. All languages being equally in- 
 telligible to us (though we can never comprehend why you 
 have not all one and the same, as we superior animals have), 
 I derived considerable entertainment from hearing the in- 
 numerable works, in various tongues, which her companion 
 read aloud to her almost from morning to night. 
 
 To my thinking, it seems as dreary work for any person 
 close on her grave to stuff her brains with new knowledge, 
 as for an artist to elaborately fashion a piece of pottery that 
 he knows will be broken on the morrow ; but she appeared 
 not to feel it so. Besides she was very fond of French 
 memoir*, and of all sorts of fiction, on the principle, I fancy, 
 on which an actress, no longer up on the sta^e, likes to read 
 over the old comedies that she once played in, when flowers 
 were showered at her feet, and all the gay gladness of tri- 
 umph was around her. 
 
 And thus my own mind, as I listened week after week, 
 month after month, to these continuous and versatile read- 
 ings, became stored with a vast and varied human know- 
 ledge. The depth and width of it will, no doubt, astonish 
 you as you peruse my autobiography, though I endeavour to 
 Suppress all evidence of my scholarship as much as I can, 
 since I am aware that to ask one's reader, or one's spectator, 
 to think, is the direst offence that either author or actor can 
 ever commit. 
 
 Perhaps also, if you find any touch of egotism, as of vanity, 
 in these pages, you will kindly remember that in these early 
 days of my education I heard a great number of religious 
 autobiographies. It is remotely possible that their influence 
 may still colour my style ; thougL I had excellent counter- 
 infusions of all kinds, ranging from Martial to Mantespan, 
 and trust that the latter sway is the stronger. 
 
 N o doubt these two years were salutary for me, in body, 
 and in mind ; and the wondrous tales that I heard read, 
 filled me with all the rash, eager, longing of youth for a 
 
7 6 PUCK. 
 
 closer sight of this marvellous great world. Alas ! it came 
 in a manner I had little looked for : I chanced one day tr 
 accidentally break a very fine Vernis Martin vase, of which 
 my old mistress was extravagantly fond ; and as I had been 
 often before denounced as a mischievous, tiresome, frivolous 
 little creature, because my animal spirits and childish joy- 
 ousness would ill-tone down to the gray monotone of an 
 aged invalid's desires, I was forthwith sentenced to exile. 
 A green and red parrot as monosyllabic a creature as & 
 mechanical toy, and as greedy as a Director, or the Liqui- 
 dator that invariably comes after him was purchased in 
 my stead ; and I was consigned to the butler, to be sold 
 wherever, and for whatever, he chose. 
 
 I need not say that in this place I had never ceased to 
 passionately regret my dear old master in the noble pine 
 woods of the Peak. Indeed, I had sometimes lamented for 
 him aloud in a grief that brought on me angry words, and 
 even angry strokes ; so little sympathy have men or women 
 ever with our woes, although for theirs we feel so keenly, 
 and fret ourselves so ceaselessly. Twenty times at least 
 had I endeavoured to run away, with the full intent of try 
 ing to find my road back alone to the well-beloved littlo 
 cottage under the rose-thorn. But I had been alv 
 thwarted, overtaken, and punished for what they called 
 straying,' though it was but the simplest and most' natural 
 exercise of fidelity. 
 
 My anxiety, therefore, was tenfold increased at the pros- 
 pect of a new removal, which seemed to consign me still 
 farther from him, and might plunge me into still greater 
 wretchedness. Yet, like all youth, hope mingled with my 
 fear, and I vaguely trusted that if the coming change dia 
 not take me back to my first beloved home, it would, per. 
 chauce, lead to some brighter, gladder, more sympathetic 
 existence than that which I had spent in the old, dull, 
 moated dower-house amongst the marshes. My little brain 
 was teeming with a myriad of visions dogs have very vivid 
 fancies, as you may tell by the excitement of our dreams, 
 I scarcely knew whether I hoped most, or dreaded most, 
 from the new adventures into which I should be cast, when, 
 sold to a metropolitan dealer, the butler bore me forth, for 
 the last time, from the gloomy gates of the place where, if 
 I had not known joy, I had at least been safe, and well, and 
 innocent. 
 
JACOBS' CHURCH. 77 
 
 It was midwinter. 
 
 The fens were half -covered with ice. The water-fowls 
 were dying of cold and of starvation by the thousands. 
 The bitter winds were rushing in from the northern ocean 
 across all those desolate marshlands and reedy still lagoons. 
 Farther towards the east the sea was rushing over the 
 dykes and piers, and the salt water was flooding coppice 
 and meadow, killing the river fish, and drowning the river 
 birds, till fisher and farmer were dumb with despair. 
 
 It was a very cold, cheerless season. It was a very long 
 And terribly weary journey in such weather up to the Great 
 City : a journey on which I verily think I should have died, 
 had it not been for the goodness of the railway-guard, who 
 took me with him in his van, and wrapped me in a bit of rug. 
 
 "We arrived late at night, and there was no one to meet 
 me at the station. The guard was off duty till the next 
 morning came round ; he pitied me, and tucked me under 
 his arm, and carried me away. 
 
 ' I'll take you round myself,' he said to me, looking at 
 the parchment label on my collar. I like men who speak 
 to me as to a creature of reason and of feeling. * You're 
 going to a rare rum bad lot, you are.' 
 
 The din, the tumult, the gas-glare, the wild uproar of the 
 London streets drove me almost mad with fright ; and, but 
 for the strong detaining hand of my guard, I should have 
 flung myself under the wheels in sheer terror and been 
 crushed to atoms. 
 
 O, how could people live and breathe and endure existence 
 in such holes as this, I wondered ! Hundreds of small houses 
 crowding on one another ; story on story mounting to the 
 murky smoke-veiled heaven ; the stench of candle and soap 
 and bone-boiling and manure factories, steaming over all 
 the place ; the only light the flare of the vellow gas, through 
 the leaden fog, on faces haggard with misery, hideous with 
 debauch, vile with crime, or death-like with starvation 3 
 My very blood curdled in me as I saw and heard, and 
 . turned blind and sick with the fetid odours of this G-ehenna. 
 
 Once I had heard my dear friend Ben talk to the work- 
 men at the quarry of the cities and their foulness. 
 
 ' I went to Lunnun once, Tarn,' he said, ' you'll mind the 
 time ; I was a fule, and the 'scursion he was so cheap-like ; 
 I was tempted. "Well, I'm glad I went. I niyer know'd 
 till I did how vauch I had ta tb*^ G-od for i* bein' country. 
 
78 PUCK. 
 
 born and bred. They're stifled, Tarnjust stifled. Th 
 air's all smoke and reek ; an' the windji is all pison ; and 
 whin ye look up'ards there's a great black hand like a divil's 
 wing a' stretchin' far o'er atween ye and tha sun. There 
 bean't a mossel of grass as is grass ; there bean't a leaf 
 as don't look sick and swounded ; there bean't a bird as 
 dew sing ; not a child as dew laugh ; the birds fight and the 
 childer screech. They're all jammed togither, like turf- 
 sods when ye pack 'em close ; theer's allus a horrible noiso 
 i'their ears ; and a horrible stench i' their nostrils. Now 
 how should un grow up decent, and Grod fearin' like, whin 
 they niver see the blue sky, nor smell a flower as blows, 
 nor feels tha sou'-wester sweep agin their faces ? Ta 
 Passon he talk a deal of divils and sich like : weel ! if 
 theer be 'em anywheres, for sure it was they as fust drew 
 min into cities, that they might forgit their Grod i' tha 
 stenching drouth, and be ready to be swept i' ta hell, all o' 
 one muck an' one heap ! ' 
 
 I remembered Ben's words when I also entered that 
 abomination of desolation the eastern half of the City of 
 Labour. 
 
 In the little cottage in the pine-wood, even in the dreari- 
 ness of winter and under the drag of poverty, there had 
 been beauty beauty in the w r hite, smooth, glittering snow ; 
 in the branches all silvered with the hoar-frost ; in the leap- 
 ing flame on the hearth that played on the lattice panes ; in 
 the beautiful clear steely skies with the northerly stars 
 turning through them. 
 
 But here ! I shuddered as I saw the gray, dust-strewn, 
 mouldy tenements ; the tawdry f rightfulness of the few 
 attempts at ornament, the ghastly tumult of the choked 
 street choked with thieves and beggars, and tally-men, and 
 ballad- sellers, and prostitutes, and costermongers, and, 
 wretched horses starving in the^'ast years of age, and ghoul- 
 like children quarrelling with the poor stray dogs for offal. 
 Poverty is bitter in the country ; but it is keaven beside 
 hell compared with poverty in the city. 
 
 The way seemed to me interminable through these most 
 hideous streets. "Where the guard stopped was before a 
 little low row of filthy crowded houses, all alike, and all 
 hemmed in on one another, with gas flaring about on either 
 side, and stalls of horrible-scented fish, of coffee, and of 
 oranges, standing down the narrow way with little oil-lampe 
 
JACOBS' CHURCH. 79 
 
 flaring above them under shades, and miserable children 
 gathering round. 
 
 My protector knocked at one of tfie low- doors. 
 
 ' Bill Jacobs ? ' he asked. 
 
 ' Bill Jacobs, yer are/ growled a beer-thickened voice as 
 the door unclosed. 
 
 A hand clutched me savagely by my throat. 
 
 ' O-ah ! this 'ere little beast ! ' he muttered. ' Anythin' 
 to pay ? ' 
 
 * Nothiu' to pay,' answered the guard. ' 'Tis a pretty 
 critter you've got there. I wouldn't mind standin' ten bob 
 for him.' 
 
 The other man, still holding me by the neck, growled 
 out a sardonic laughter. 
 
 * I dessay yer wouldn't. Ten sovs, my lad, or nothin.' 
 And with that he slammed the door in the guard's face ; 
 
 and I felt, with a fearful sinking of the heart, that my only 
 chance was gone for ever. 
 
 This new home of mine was in a hideous little house, and 
 consisted of only one room, with the cellar immediately 
 below. 
 
 The room was black with dirt and smoke ; there were two 
 cupboards in it, one occupied by two badgers, the other by 
 two small dogs. The cellar beneath appeared full of dogs, 
 to judge by the howling and moaning that proceeded from 
 it. There was a miserable bed in the chamber ; a rickety 
 table ; a few cages filled with miserable choking throstles 
 and larks, half dead with stench and captivity ; and there 
 was beyond, seen through a little window in the back wall, 
 a yard of which I knew the purpose ere I had been, many 
 hours there. 
 
 Such was the abode of Bill Jacobs and his wife ; the 
 latter a wan, gentle, broken- spirited creature, whom he kept 
 black and blue with bruises, and who sought, I found, to 
 do all the little she was able to mitigate for us the horrors 
 of this Black Hole. 
 
 The first thing that Bill Jacobs did with me was to fling 
 me at the woman with a curse ; the next was to turn all 
 smile to two youths who were waiting his advent. They were 
 slender gentleman-like boys, about seventeen, and, as I 
 imagine now, must have been public school lads. They had 
 come for some pleasant pastime, it seemed by their looks 
 and words ; it proved to be the baiting of a badger. 
 
8o PUCK. 
 
 I will not sicken my readers with the narrative. They 
 probably know all the details of how the poor, brave, stout- 
 hearted animal holds his own against the terrible odds, till, 
 foe on foe being sent against him, the agony of his wounds 
 and the loss of his blood cow even his fearless spirit, and he 
 submits to be dragged forth, a mass of torn fur and ragged 
 flesh, helpless, blind, and shivering. 
 
 In this instance the sport was doubly horrible, because 
 neither badger nor bull-dogs had any heart or zest for the 
 fight ; they both shrank back, and had to be scourged and 
 pricked and dragged to the encounter ; and when it was 
 all over, the limping, bleeding dogs were kicked back to 
 their cellars, and the badger was thrown in his hole to re- 
 cover from his injuries, only to again go through the same 
 ordeal of torture. 
 
 And the slender-limbed boys, with their pleasant voices, 
 were charmed, and left two sovereigns with the exhibitor 
 of the spectacle, and went out in glee and gaiety, having 
 enjoyed a favourite sport of Young England. 
 
 It made me very ill and sick at heart ; it wns the first 
 bloodshed I had ever seen, and the sight had been very 
 hideous to me, and had made me shudder greatly. 
 
 How could I tell myself that I might not be torn in 
 pieces next ? 
 
 It seemed hell itself, this place to which they had con- 
 signed me. 
 
 The man's horrible curses ; the howls of the dogs in the 
 cellar; the wailing of the puppies in cages; the sight of 
 the blood and the torture ; the shrieks of the animal that 
 he kicked or beat, or forced into some wretched hole too 
 small for it to turn in ; the sad filmy eyes of the poor birds 
 sitting moping with their feathers all in disarray ; the pite- 
 ous terrors of the woman every time her husband's savage 
 glance lit on her, as though with every look she feared a 
 blow : all this was more dreadful to me than I can ever 
 describe. 
 
 Almost all day long I was shut up in a cage lest I should 
 roam away a cage of wire about a foot square, in which 
 my limbs became so cramped, and my sight so stupefied 
 from being set away on a dark shelf, that I almost ceased 
 to keep any account of the passage of the days, and hardly 
 knew when night fell and dawn began. 
 
JACOBS' CHURCH. 8* 
 
 How and then, by urging that such confinement would be 
 my death, his wife Jenny got permission from, him to let ma 
 run loose a little in the yard; but even then I was so 
 terrified lest evil should happen to me, that I hardly dared 
 to go from underneath the folds of her cotton gown. 
 
 I was sorry for her too ; she had such an utterly wretched, 
 colourless, woc-begone life, that it seemed frightful that any . 
 one of God's creatures ever should be condemned to live 
 such. 
 
 She never stirred out ; she was the butt and scapegoat of 
 her brutal husband, and she had nothing to do from morn- 
 ing until evening, save to dress the wounds of the torn and 
 baited creatures, and revive enough vitality in them to 
 enable them to go forth again to meet the torture. 
 
 She was a tender-hearted woman too, which made her lot 
 an agony scarce less than that of the martyred beasts. I 
 have known her stretch her arm between a dog and her 
 husband's whip, though the cruel lash cut into her flesh 
 like a knife; and I have seen her seize his hand, and scream 
 for pity, when he was thrusting a red-hot needle into a 
 canary's eye to blind it (on the fancy that it sang better in 
 blindness), though with the next moment his huge fist surely 
 levelled her with the boards. 
 
 I daresay many such problems have puzzled bigger heads 
 than mine ; but I have often marvelled whatever compen- 
 sation could ever be found or given for that long, unre- 
 warded, stricken life, which was spent unseen of men, 
 subject to the brutalities of a drunkard, and racked by the 
 witness of cruelties that it was absolutely powerless te 
 prevent ? 
 
 An old dog, Punch by name, who had been there many 
 vears (and to whom this tyrant was alone not cruel, because 
 he had once seen Punch strangle a man that strove to beat 
 him), told me that in a bygone time she had had a little child, 
 and that, though the child had only lived two years, it had 
 lived long enough for its blue eyes to grow pale and dilated 
 with fear at its father's steps long enough for its mother 
 to say that she thanked G-od when she laid it down at rest 
 within its little quiet grave. 
 
 This ruffian was indeed one of the greatest brutes that the 
 world ever held. 
 
 Dog-fancier was in his case, as in most others, a delicate 
 
 o 
 
8? PUCK. 
 
 synonym for <log-stealer ; and the society that met in his 
 <len was composed of some of the very worst blackguards in 
 London. These men smoked and drank ; and swore and 
 gambled, in the lowest and coarsest fashion that they could; 
 and were especially hilarious when one of them had brought 
 in a valuable animal, for whom its master would be certain to 
 offer fabulous rewards, or a priceless little pet dog, that 
 could be slipped in a pocket and carried out of the country 
 before its owner had scarcely discovered its loss. 
 
 The big dogs they drugged, lest their bark might be heard 
 and recognised, until such time as a reward high enough to 
 satisfy their own cupidity was advertised; when they would 
 put on a clean shirt and a virtuous face, and take the captive 
 home, with many declarations of their own tenderness to- 
 wards him, when they had found him astray 'right away by 
 Barnes Bridge, sir 'alf starved as I'm livin' man.' Which 
 fable, if the dog had a mistress and not a master, usually 
 brought about an extra sovereign to the good Samaritan. 
 
 The small ones they generally sent on to the Continent ; 
 and one little fellow, only four years old, told me he had 
 been stolen fourteen times by Bill Jacobs' emissaries, on 
 each of which occasions they had never sold him for less 
 than twenty guineas, sometimes for more, and always in 
 different cities of Europe. 
 
 He was called ' Cosmo,' ' short for cosmopolitan,' he ex- 
 plained to me. 'You know that means a citizen of the 
 world one who has seen many countries and many minds. 
 But myself I hate the title. It means, as far as my ex- 
 perience goes, that you have a smattering of everything, 
 and a knowledge of nothing; a bill at every inn, and a home 
 in no country; everybody claims you, and you can claim 
 nobody ; your standing point is on a see-saw, and you are a 
 tennis-ball for all rackets.' 
 
 And he was certainly extravagantly bitter on the subject 
 of his cosmopolitanism. To have been sold and bought a 
 dozen times always sours a dog ; though I have known men 
 who have been sold and bought a hundred times, who have 
 only got very fat and very comfortable in the process of 
 exchange. 
 
 But, then, you see the men pocket the money ; and the 
 dogs don't. 
 
 Anything more utterly degraded, wretched, and desolate 
 
JACOBS' CHURCH. 83 
 
 than I was at this prison of Eill Jacobs', I could not sup- 
 pose ever had the unhappiness to exist. If it had not been 
 for Jenny Jacobs, I should not have lived a week. 
 
 She did all she could to better my condition, and to com- 
 fort me in my misery, and whilst 1 was with her she in a 
 measure succeeded. But she used to be sent out by her 
 husband ' charing,' and was half the day away ; and in her 
 absence I was consigned to the cellars, where all the 
 hapless animals which Jacobs had stolen, or purchased 
 cheaply, were immured with scarce any light, foul water, 
 clanking chains, and tV_;> scantiest food that would suffice 
 to keep breath in their bodies. 
 
 You think you have no slaves in England ! Why, half 
 the races in creation moan, and strive, and suffer, daily and 
 hourly, under your merciless tyrannies ! No slaves ! Ask 
 the ox, with his blood- shot agonised eyes, mutilated for the 
 drovers' gain ere he is driven to his end in the slaughter- 
 house. Ask the sheep, with their tiroid woe-begone faces, 
 scourged into the place of their doom, bruised and bleeding 
 and tortured. Ask the racer, spent ere he reaches his 
 prime, by unnatural strains on strength and speed, that he 
 may fill the pockets of your biggest blackguards with mis- 
 begotten gold ; old whilst yet he is young, poisoned in the 
 hours of his victory, caressed by princes in the moment 
 that he ministers to their greed, cast off to street hire and 
 hourly misery in the worthless years of his weary age. 
 Ask the cart-horse, doomed, through a long life of labour, 
 to strive and stagger under burdens, to bear heat and cold, 
 >nd hunger, and stripes, without resistance; fed grudgingly, 
 paid for willing toil by merciless blows, killed by doing the 
 work of men as the Egyptian slave died in the lifting of 
 the last stone to the King's Temple, or consigned, as the 
 inly recompense for years of usefulness and patience, to 
 the brutalities of the dissecting-room or of the knacker's 
 yard. Ask us ! 
 
 "What ! You tell me this is but the issue of an inevitable 
 law ? Ay, so it is ; of the law of the stronger over the 
 weaker. But whilst you thus follow out that law on 
 millions of chained and beaten and tortured creatures, have 
 conscience enough, I pray you, not to br?_# aloud that you 
 keep no slaves, not to bawl from the housetops of your 
 reverence for freedom 
 
 62 
 
84 PUCK. 
 
 "Wiien will you give a Ten Hours' Bill for horses a Pro- 
 hibitive Act against the racing of one and two-year-olds ? 
 a Protection Order for cattle? and an Emancipation 
 Movement for chained dogs ? Nay when will you do so 
 much as remember that the coward who tortures an animal 
 would murder a human being if he were not afraid of the 
 gallows ? When will you see that to teach the hand of a 
 child to stretch out and smother the butterfly, is to teach 
 that hand, when a man's, to steal out and strangle an 
 enemy ? 
 
 The time passed, as I have said, very monotonously, verj 
 miserably, the chief part spent in the cage upon the shelf, 
 or in the cellar I have named. I believe that Jacobs failed 
 in his efforts to get a purchaser for me ; for sometimes he 
 would wash me and comb me, and carry me forth, through 
 many streets and past grand white mansions, and into 
 green carriage-crowded parks. He would offer me now to 
 one, now to another of people passing by ; and when we 
 reached home again he would curse me and pinch my flesh 
 and forbid his wife to give me any supper, alleging that I 
 ate my head off as indeed I almost could have done, so 
 ilevoured with hunger was I oftentimes. 
 
 The only day that Bill Jacobs was at all in decently 
 .human temper was upon the Sundays of each week. 
 
 At this lodging of his there was a back-yard ; and in the 
 back-yard was a rat-pit. On Sunday mornings there used 
 to be grand spectacles of rat slaughter. And there were 
 numbers of young men very gentleman-like men, some of 
 them who would pay half-a-guinea for admission, and a 
 seat to see the rats being killed, and the rat-dogs torn and 
 worried in the conflict ; and the prices ranged as high as a 
 sovereign a seat when, in addition to its ennobling sport, 
 there was one of the badgers brought out from the cupboard 
 to be drawn. 
 
 'Jacobs' Church* was a byword amongst a certain 
 sporting community; and I have seen men whom I sub- 
 sequently saw in the House of Commons, and at the 
 celebrated Clubs, come thither on a Sunday morn after a 
 late breakfast, to assist at the precious spectacle of dogs 
 and rats fighting, tearing, and slaughtering one another, 
 till the pit was red with blood. 
 
 What did the police do ? 
 
JACOBS' CHURCH. 8$ 
 
 0, nothing. Jacobs paid them well to be quiet. They 
 took up an old man for selling periwinkles during divine 
 service, and they locked up a little beggar child for sitting 
 sobbing on a door-sill, both just outside Bill's house ; but 
 they knew better than to come to lords and gentlemen, 
 nnd members of parliament, and disturb the Sabbath circle 
 round the rat-pit. 
 
 Most of our race, kept here thus, of course were beagles, : ; 
 rat-catchers, bull terriers, and the like ; and by the way, 
 how sharp, how hard, how full of concentrated cunning and * 
 ferocity combined, become the countenances of your rat- 
 catching dogs ! They are exactly like the faces of your 
 men on the turf : of a surety debasing pursuits mould 
 the features as the hand of the sculptor moulds the mask 
 from clay ; or else why should your bull-dog, who is for 
 ever drawing badgers or chevying vermin, get that look 
 for all the world like that on the face of your prize- 
 fighters ? And why should your young lordling, who 
 spends all his patrimony on ' yearlings', and all his time on 
 the * flat,' approximate so closely in tone and aspect and 
 countenance to the bookmakers, and blacklegs, and trainers, 
 and jockeys, who between them contrive to rob and to ruin 
 him? 
 
 It is needless to say that I was very frightened and 
 miserable in such society. They made dreadful mockery 
 of me and my white silky curls ; and they were perpetu- 
 ally fighting and swearing amongst one another. Their 
 conduct was fearful; their language I happily did not 
 comprehend. 
 
 There was one old bull-dog, who looked the most savage 
 yet the most honest of them all, who protected me from 
 their violence, and was, in his own hard rcugh way, kind' 
 to me. 
 
 He was by name Tussler, and was, I found, the hero o 
 a hundred fights. He deigned to talk to me a good deal, 
 and tried to enlighten my ignorance ; but I did not under- 
 stand much that he said : I only felt that life seemed, by* 
 his showing, a constant rough-and-tumble affray in which 
 the weakest always went to the wall. 
 
 Tussler told me he had belonged to a bruiser who had 
 but recently departed from the scene of hia earthly 
 combat. 
 
86 PUCK. 
 
 1 They made me chief mourner with a bit of crape < 
 he continued. ' I don't know why they thought crape 
 
 on, 
 
 ne- 
 cessary, for I was really very sorry that he died. The 
 world thought Jemmy Brown he was called the G-ame- 
 Cock always : you must have heard of him ? Never ! 
 damn it, where have you lived ? 
 
 ' "Well, the world always thought that the Cock was a 
 brutal bloodthirsty fellow. You know he had a very neat 
 way of pounding his man's face into a jelly ; and when he 
 got him doubled up at the ropes he always went into him 
 awful. He killed Old Swipes that way an Irish bruiser 
 Swipes was, and only twenty when the Cock smashed him 
 as dead as a door-nail but it was only in the way of busi- 
 ness. It was a job, and he liked to go through with it. 
 
 1 Outside the Ring Jemmy was the best-natured creature 
 goin<*. "When a badger half-murdered me, the Cock nursed 
 me like a woman. And there never was a man that stuck 
 as the Cock did to a friend. There was one in particular 
 he was fond of one he'd been with at school as a child, 
 and one he had never lost sight of ; a poor devil that never 
 came to any good because he was such a soft-hearted thing, 
 and ended at last as a super a man you know that goes 
 on the stage to carry a flag, or a torch, or a sword, and say 
 nothing. 
 
 ' "Well, one day Jemmy was engaged for a private match 
 in a gentleman's rooms at Oxford ; and if he failed to be 
 there punctually, he'd agreed to pay the bruiser whom he 
 was to meet forfeit stakes of twenty-five pounds ; and 
 vou must know that the money was a deal to the Cock, for 
 he lived fast and was often out at elbows. Just as he was 
 starting for the fight there came a letter by morning mail : 
 it was only a line or two scrawled by this super, to say he 
 had been taken bad in his lungs as he was acting as stan- 
 dard-bearer down in Cornwall, and the doctors had told 
 him he'd die ; and he begged to see Jemmy before he went 
 to his grave. 
 
 ' "What did the Cock do ? never paused a second, just 
 tossed the forfeit stakes to his friend, and started that 
 minute for Penzance. The poor super died an hour after 
 Jemmy got there ; but he begged of the Cock to take care 
 pf his son, a little un with no mother, and a pretty puny 
 five-year-older. 
 
JACOBS' CHURCH. 87 
 
 'The Cock took that lad, and ho sent him to a goo 
 school; and he laid him up in lavender, as it were, and 
 never let him hear a harsh word. He never let him see? 
 the Ring, because he thought as the dead wouldn't like it ; 
 but he had him trained up for a glass-stainer, and the boy 
 is at it now : very quick at his art, and quite steady. Now 
 I call the Cock a good man what do you say ? And yet 
 the world called him a precious villain ; and they were very 
 near swinging him on a gallows when he pummelled tka 
 breath out of Swipes.' 
 
 I could say nothing : all moral and mental perception 
 were too utterly confused in me with this combination of 
 virtue and murder. 
 
 ' There's a deal of goodness that the world never sees/ 
 said Tussler in conclusion, ' as there's a deal of viciousness 
 it never guesses. Now, myself, I love worrying rats, and 
 cats, and badgers I am never so happy as when I lay a 
 dozen dead all round me but I should scorn to hurt a 
 lame dog, I wouldn't kill a cat that fought for her kittens, 
 and I would have let the Cock beat me to death if he'd 
 wished just because he was my master and I cared for him.' 
 
 I T entured to hint that, with so much natural goodness 
 of character, it might be as well to be merciful even to 
 rats and to badgers. 
 
 1 O, damn it, no ! ' he replied with considerable acerbity. 
 ' They are one's foes by nature. A badger would kill me 
 if I didn't kill him. I choose as men choose, I just nip 
 his neck. . Don't get preachee-preachee ! Did you ever 
 hear of a rum lot called Quakers across the Atlantic that 
 were always pricing of peace ? well, my dear, they burnt 
 everybody that didn't agree with them. That is what the 
 peacemakers always do.' 
 
 I was silent out of deference : conscious that he could 
 nip me in the neck if I differed. 
 
 Much the same motive lies at the bottom of most of the 
 reverence that this age sees rendered to kings and queens, 
 creeds and codes. 
 
 Such conversations as this did not make me less miserable, 
 less terrified, at the prospect of this world into which I was 
 plunged ; or less regretful of that happy, innocent, playful 
 life that I had led in the little cottage under the pines. 
 
 Old Trust would have, felt every hair on his head stand 
 
58 PUCK. 
 
 on end at the enormities I heard and witnessed ; and that 
 humane creature, who had sorrowed over a frozen lamb, 
 would have howled in disgust at the conversation of this 
 sporting community, conversation exclusively of the num- 
 'bers slaughtered, and of the prowess of the slaughterers. 
 
 Subsequently, I have often been present at hot luncheons 
 in manorial woods after battue-shooting, and once also at 
 an Imperial hunt in the forest of Compiegne ; and the talk 
 at both has borne the closest possible resemblance to that 
 heard in the bull-dogs' cellar at Bill Jacobs'. But I did not 
 know this then ; and I was only immeasurably frightened 
 and horror-stricken. 
 
 CHAPTEE X 
 
 HE IS LATTN'CIIED OX LIFE. 
 
 some little time at this wretched place ; the 
 anly things that solaced me being the poor woman's great 
 sare, and the rough kindness of Tussler, whose conduct was 
 far better than his language, which, I must say, was awful. 
 The winter was merging into spring, and I had been there 
 about three months, when Tussler was sold to a sporting 
 baronet, and I became aware that some change was about 
 to take place in my own affairs. 
 
 I had been washed, combed, made smart, and dressed in 
 a little scarlet jacket that Jacobs, in his good humour, was 
 wont to aver made me look just like an Ascot post-boy ; I 
 still wore the little bit of a white metal chain collar, graven 
 with my name, which had been forged for poor Ben by the 
 burly smith at the forest-forge in the pine-woods, who, 
 though his chief labour lay in shoeing the huge cart-horses, 
 yet had shown so light and facile a touch at little pieces of 
 metal work, that could pleasure a maiden in her fancy, or 
 a child at his play. 
 
 When I was thus dressed, Jacobs bore me out with him ; 
 lie chuckled, and seemed content ; I wag thrust into a small 
 dark wicker den, that was tied down over my head ; and I 
 knew no more. ' Hold yer jaw, yer beast,' he said once 
 with a shake of my cage, ' what are yer yelping at ? ' 
 
HE IS LAUNCHED ON LIFE. 89 
 
 I was ye'ping because, as he carried me into the street, 
 and I thrust my head a little forth from my basket, in the 
 damp, chill March morning, a girl went by us with a basket 
 full of little penny-bunches of country-born violets, blue 
 and white; and the sweet familiar fragrance of them brought 
 back to me, so vividly, the clusters that purpled all the 
 moss-grown ground under the trees of my lost but unfor- 
 gotten home. 
 
 "When your dog, lying near you, gives a sudden cry, aa 
 though of pain, you kick him ; ah! my good sirs, is it only 
 because he is troubled with too much memory ; a disease 
 which you, who are of the world, worldly, you who forget 
 with such pleasant ease all disagreeable trifles, from your 
 marriage vows to your unlimited liabilities, are little likely 
 to catch from him by contagion. 
 
 Bill Jacobs carried me swiftly through his own hideoua 
 quarter of the town towards open squares and spacious 
 streets, and masses of what looked to me like palaces ; and 
 palaces they were, as I knew later on, castles of Indolence 
 wherein the Kings of Clubs reigned supreme. 
 
 He turned up one of the by-streets leading out of the 
 chief of these great thoroughfares ; and after some little 
 delay was admitted into a building bearing the inscription 
 of 'chambers,' and passed up the staircase to a room on the 
 second floor of this, to me, mysterious domicile. 
 
 It was a very pretty little room, all rose-hued and gilded, 
 and bright with gay chintz, and with manifold ornaments, 
 not in the very best taste. I thought it must be the apart- 
 ment of some fair feminine thing ; but there was no one in 
 it, save a man of about thirty years ; small, handsome, 
 and bearing about him somewhat the air of that class which 
 I have later on heard characterised as the ' would-be swells ' 
 of society. 
 
 He was exquisitely attired in a morning dress of mulberry 
 velvet ! and had coffee and brandy beside him on the dain- 
 tiest of inlaid stands ; and he was glancing through & 
 yellow-covered novel, which he slashed idly with a pretty 
 paper-knife, as he looked up and spoke. 
 
 ' Brought the beast, Jacobs ? Let's have a look at him.* 
 
 *A perfect animalfora lady quite perfect, sir,' my owner 
 responded, handing me over as roughly as though I were a bit 
 of wood, for inspection. ' You want hi for a Russian 
 princess, sir, I believe you said ? ' 
 
90 PUCK. 
 
 The young man nodded assent ; and asked if I should stand 
 the climate, to which of course Bill Jacobs gave an un- 
 qualified affirmative ; and the next fifteen minutes were ein 
 ployed in one of those minute and merciless analyses of me, 
 which dogs hear made in their presence, and human beings 
 only behold in their critics' newspaper articles. 
 
 But it comes to very much the same thing with both 
 and whether it be a dog-fancier inspecting a terrier, a dog- 
 buyer staring at a mastiff, a leader-writer dissecting a 
 statesman not of his party, or a reviewer passing judgment 
 on a poet not of his clique, the whole quartette equally 
 ignore all the excellences that stare them in the face, and 
 only dwell on the one fault they can find in breeding OP 
 training, in strain or in style. 
 
 The moments seemed centuries to me, nor was I in the 
 least reassured at the prospect of being bought for a woman. 
 Little Cosmo, at Jacobs', had told me, that parasol handles 
 could rap fearfully hard, and small, high-heeled embroidered 
 boots kick with exceeding asperity and severity. 
 
 Ah ! you people never guess the infinite woe T7e doga 
 suffer in new homes, under strange tyrannies ; you never 
 heed how we shrink from unfamiliar hands, and shudder 
 at unfamiliar voices, how lonely we feel in unknown places, 
 how acutely we dread harshness, novelty, and scornful 
 treatment. Dogs die oftentimes of severance from their 
 masters ; there is Grey Friar's Bobby now in Edinboro'' 
 town who never has been persuaded to leave his dead owner's 
 grave all these many years through. You see such things, 
 but you are indifferent to them. ' It is only a dog,' you 
 say ' what \aatter if the brute freb to death ?' 
 
 You don't understand it of course ; you who so soon f or 
 jet all your own dead, the mother that bore you, the mistress 
 "Jiat loved you, the friend that fought with you shoulder 
 to shoulder ; and of course, also, you care nothing for the 
 measureless blind pains, the mute helpless sorrows, the 
 vague lonely terrors, that acte in our little dumb hearts 
 
 I am a dog of the world now, yes, just as your best 
 men are men of the world. But I think to most of us cynics 
 the world is only a shield of bronze, held before us to hide 
 the breast-wound. "What do you say ? the sentiment is 
 fcot new I am well aware ; but it is emphatically the truth. 
 
 I have seen BO many of these shields, so brilliant and 
 
HE IS LAUw^rfED ON LIFE. gi 
 
 polished and proven, which rang so hard and so keen, re- 
 pelling the sharpest spearheads ; but the hearts that beat 
 under them throbbed throbbed in pain till they were 
 quiet in death. If you have not, where have you lived ? 
 
 "Well, my barter this morning in the little rose-coloured 
 room was soon effected, and the purchaser paid for me in 
 four crisp five-pound notes, Jacobs of course protesting 
 that I was worth quite treble the amount. 
 
 I was thankful when he was gone ; no fate could be worse 
 than the durance I had undergone in his cellars. 
 
 The young man soon after passed into his bed-chamber 
 adjoining ; and I was left alone with a very big dog whom 
 I had noticed asleep in the window. 
 
 He reared himself up, and surveyed me ; I liked his look ; 
 he was a kingly creature, called indeed King Arthur, and I 
 thought he would fight my battles for me whilst I was there. 
 
 I am brave enough in my way ; but I have necessarily far 
 more mind than matter ; and a little Maltese dog can no 
 more find courage of use against a hound's fangs or a brute's 
 boot, than your chivalrous soldier, with all the blood of the 
 cavaliers in him, can find his avail him aught against your 
 4aiuty, devilish, thirty-inch shell, with its pretty steel 
 tominoes of slaughter. 
 
 He stared at me, and growled a little ; 
 
 * Humph ! so you are for her /' 
 
 ' The Eussian Princess ? ' I asked timidly ; feeling that 
 he growled ai her, and not at me. 
 
 ' The Eussian Princess ! ' he echoed. ' Fiddlesticks ! ' 
 ' Shall I stay here, then ? ' I inquired. 
 
 * No, I know who you are bought for ; but I don't want 
 to say. I have lived long enough to learn discretion.' 
 
 I found King Arthur, when I knew him better, the 
 frankest, blindest, most easily cheated creature in creation ; 
 but it is always this sort of character that shakes its head 
 most sapiently, and believes most implicitly in its own 
 politic reserve ! ' 
 
 ' Who is that gentleman that buys me ? ' I ventured to 
 ask him. 
 
 ' His name ? Leopold Lance.' 
 
 ' And is he your owner too ? ' 
 
 ' Goodness no ! I belong to Derry Denzil ; he only left 
 me here while he went to Paris. He'll be back to-night 
 Belong to little Lance ? *u>. thank you ! I hate this room ? 
 
9 PUCK. 
 
 one can't turn in it without knocking something down. 
 You should see Denzil's rooms, big as barns, with nothing 
 less solid than oak, and bronze, and marble in them. This 
 place is for all the world like a woman's stall at a fancy- 
 fair. Women do send him some of the nicknacks actresses 
 do when they want a puff in the Mouse, and would-be 
 fashionable ladies do when they want a line as a leader of 
 society but for the most part he buys them himself ; and 
 then hints with a smile or a word that they come from the 
 Countess of somew r here, or pretty Mrs. Thingamy. Leo's 
 weakness is bonnes fortunes; and when he don't get an^ 
 he makes them to his fancy; metamorphosing how d'ye 
 does into appointments, and dinner cards into letters of 
 Intrigue, just as your costumiers turn a girl out of the streets 
 into a superb Anonyina, till a man spends his whole fortune 
 on the very same creature he gave a penny to twelve months 
 before at a crossing.' 
 
 Of this peroration I did not comprehend one word ; but 
 it sufficed to make me the reverse of comfortable as to my 
 own future prospects. The good-natured, gallant King per- 
 ceived my perplexed dismay, and hastened to comfort me. 
 
 ' You will be well enough where you are going,' he said. 
 ' If you were a man she would pluck you as bare as the 
 back of her hand ; being a dog a kick of her boot thirty 
 guineas a pair her boots are, real silver-gilt heels that go 
 click-clack like a cavalry-man's ! or a mouthful of cayenne 
 pepper instead of biscuit, or some little trifle of that sort, 
 will be the worst she will do for you. And Panfreluche is 
 there ; Eanfreluche is a good little soul, good at the core 
 you know: though she's a little devil with her teeth at 
 times, and the vainest creature living, she is as staunch as 
 steel, and as game as a bantam-cock, and can be a very good 
 friend when she likes. Besides I will have a care for you 
 myself ; I sometimes come there with Denzil. And Pearl 
 can never look me straight in the face, isn't it odd ? An 
 honest dog's eyes always daunt those women. They seem 
 to think that we scent them out as thieves ; though their 
 crowbars may only be cast from the metal of barefaced greed ; 
 and their skeleton keys made of men's broken honour ' 
 
 * Pearl ? who is Pearl ? ' I interrupted him. 
 
 * You will know soon enough,' he said curtly ; at that 
 moment my purchaser returned from the inner room, caught 
 me up, and fastened with great care on my collar & pair of 
 
HE IS LAUNCHED ON LIFE. 93 
 
 Exquisite filigree ear-rings, slipped me and them into a 
 basket, and gave it to a man in waiting, who departed with 
 me without a word. 
 
 Of course of where we went I had no knowledge : I was 
 m almost total darkness. The ear-rings I would have 
 scratched to pieces willingly ; "but the exceedingly narrow 
 space in which I was confined prevented my cramped liinba 
 from any indulgence in such vengeance. 
 
 The journey seemed endless to me. 
 
 At length, by the sounds I heard, I concluded my tem- 
 porary abode had been carried into a house and into a room. 
 I thought I had been hours in that wicker-work dungeon ; 
 and when, on the lid being thrc-yn sharply open, I sprang 
 out on a piece of blue velvet, I gave a sharp prolonged 
 howl of misery. 
 
 For that I got a sharp box on the ear from the hand of 
 a woman, and, looking up, I saw that I was on the lap of 
 one of the most magnificent persons it has ever been my 
 fate to behold. 
 
 But O ! how hard her hand had slapped me ! 
 
 She read a note that laid beside me with some effort, aa 
 though reading were unfamiliar to her, laughing a little 
 grimly as she did so ; then, tossing it aside, clutched eagerly 
 at the ear-rings to which I suppose it had drawn her atten- 
 tion, and tore them off, utterly regardless of the curls of 
 my hair that she plucked away with them. 
 
 The ornaments were very elegant, and their G-enoese fili- 
 gree was all enriched with jewels. She examined them 
 with the keen intentness of a testing jeweller j then put 
 them aside in a mosaic box on a table near. 
 
 The apartment was a small octagon chamber, all blue and 
 silver, and exceedingly luxurious in its appointments 
 genuine luxury moreover, and not the affectation of it that 
 had been visible in the meretricious rooms of the man who 
 had sent me hither. She herself was simply superb 
 attired in blue velvet that harmonised with her chamber, 
 and was relieved by rich old lace at her bosom and elbows, 
 and a single large diamond at her throat. 
 
 The tearing out of my hair had hurt me inexpressibly ; 
 aad I shrieked aloud with the pain, hiding under a couch. 
 
 vShe gave a gesture of intolerant anger ; pulled me from 
 my hiding-place, shook and slapped me till I had no senses 
 
94 PUCK. 
 
 left, and than flung me aside with a brutal violence so thaj 
 I fell heavily on the sharp edge of the ormolu fender. 
 
 Then without even a glance at me, she swept out of the 
 dainty boudour with the mosaic box in her hand, leaving 
 me half-stunned to recover as I might. 
 
 I was routed from my stupor by the touch of a very 
 slender cold nose ; and looking up timidly, I saw a tiny 
 fairy -like form, clad in blue, with a gold circlet of bells 
 round its throat : a ' toy terrier/ in point of fact, who 
 ranks in our species much as your petits creve's and your 
 pretty cocodettes rank in yours. This was evidently the 
 little worldling of whom King Arthur had spoken. 
 
 I 1 am called Fanfreluche,' said the small creature, who 
 had very bright eyes, and a very keen, coquettish, sharp 
 little face. ' I shall be sure to go now you are come. She 
 changes us almost as often as she changes them.' 
 
 ' Whom ? ' 
 
 ' Never mind, my dear. You are a child ! She hurt you, 
 I am afraid ? She can be very violent if you rouse her ' 
 
 * Indeed, she can,' said I with a shudder. * Who is she, 
 pray ? Can you tell me ? ' 
 
 Fanfreluche grinned significantly. 
 
 ' My dear I know as much about her as most people, 
 but I can only tell you what she calls herself, and that is 
 Laura Pearl.' 
 
 ' And what does she do ? ' 
 
 Fanfreluche showed again her little sharp white teeth. 
 
 ' Everything, my dear, that was ever invented by the 
 devil and improved on by women.' 
 
 I shuddered again ; even in that little market town in the 
 Peak the people had seemed to take it so uncomfortably 
 for granted that the devil and the fair sex were always in 
 partnership and good accord ! 
 
 ' Is she a lady ? ' I inquired timidly. 
 
 ' My precious innocent she has some of the finest jewels 
 in the world. That makes a lady, don't it ? She has fine 
 dorses ; fine servants ; fine wines ; the best cook, the best 
 laces, the best everything. A lady ? O yes ! the girl 
 that sells cigars, the ballerina that dances in gauze, the 
 housemaids that sweep the steps, they are all ladies now, 
 thanks to jargon and the penny press.' 
 
 I did not understand, but Fanfreludhe evidently con- 
 sidered she had said something very witty. 
 
HE IS LAUNCHED ON LIFE. 9$ 
 
 'Are you worth much ? I doubt not : you coine from a 
 very bad lot,' she continued a little superciliously. * I 
 wonder what Beltran will think of you. Anything he 
 praises is chic directly. He said my shape was exquisite 
 one morning ; and 1 went up instantly from twenty to 
 fifty-five guineas.' 
 
 The little wicked thing looked so immeasurably vain and 
 self-conscious, as she twisted her head askance to get a 
 eight of her tiny cora! collar with its row of gold bells, that 
 she disgusted me; pretty and worldly-wise though she was, 
 
 ' You cannot be so very much more cine than I, 1 1 growled 
 sulkily, ' since you confess you are to be sent away now that 
 I have come.' 
 
 Eanfreluche sneered a little ; with an indulgent good na- 
 ture however. 
 
 ' Bless the baby ! ' she cried, as though ehe had been a 
 matron and a mastiff at the least. ' "What an ignoramus it 
 is ! Why, my dear, she will sell you as soon as she shall 
 have had you a month or two. She sells us all; and the 
 more we are worth the quicker we go provided she can do 
 it decently. They don't know that, you see. O no ! we 
 are always " stolen " or " lost " she tells them. And they 
 are such out-and-out fools they believe it ! And then 
 they send her others to replace us ; and the game goes on 
 again ; and altogether she makes a very pretty annual per- 
 quisite out of her " pets ! " 
 
 * She must be a very wicked woman ! ' I said indignantly, 
 in my hurry. 
 
 '.Not much good ! ' said the little creature carelessly. ' I 
 don't know that she's vrorse than scores of others, though. 
 There was Eredegonde, that I lived with last year in Pari 
 why Eredegonde would eat up a hundred men a quarter, 
 and all the youngest and the brightest and the best too ; 
 and no end of them boys, well nigh young enough to be her 
 own sons ! ' 
 
 ' Are they cannibals, these women ? ' I cried, utterly be- 
 wildered. 
 
 Eanfreluche grinned sardonically. 
 
 ' Yes, my dear ; all cannibals. And they eat bones and 
 all ; crunch crunch crunch ; and get rich, and laugh, 
 and fare gailv over the brainless skulls they have sucked 
 dry, and the hearts they have torn out and devoured ! ' 
 
9& FUCK. 
 
 I had ft dim perception that Fanfreluche was speaking 
 metaphorically, but I was not sure ; and her words made 
 me very ill at ease. It was horrible to be in the possession 
 of a man-eater. 
 
 1 There comes Lizzie. I have to go out with her, but I 
 will see you again,' said the little lady, as a pleasant- 
 visaged maid appeared at the doorway. 
 
 ' Why are you going out ? ' 
 
 'To be " lost," I daresay. But I don't intend to be lost 
 to-day ; I want to see more of you. You amuse me ; you 
 are such an iwaocent ! You will soon lose all that, to be 
 sure. This is a capital place for learning the world and its 
 tricks. Does my blue jacket sit right ? I can't bear it to 
 wrinkle. Beltran admires my figure so much.' 
 
 'The jacket's all right,' said I peevishly, scarcely looking 
 at the little tight-fitting azure Bilk coat that she wore. 
 * .And who's Beltran ? ' 
 
 ' I'll tell you when I come back. Ta-ta, little one,' cried 
 Fanfreluche, hastening away to the chime of her tiny 
 golden bells. 
 
 I was very sorry she was gone ; there seemed a certain 
 kindliness in her despke her assumption of cynicism, and 
 her unf cininine chatter ; and though she scoffed at a good 
 deal, I thought she sorrowed also for some things. 
 
 Left alone, I glanced timidly round the room where I 
 lay curled under a sofa : I was looking everywhere for the 
 bleaching skulls, and the broken bones, of all the poor 
 wretches whom she declared had been devoured here. I 
 saw nothing of the kind, and I began to think that she 
 must have been fooling me when she talked of this elegant 
 boudoir as a slaughterhouse. 
 
 I saw, indeed, golden tazze, costly china, exquisite pic- 
 tures, oriental stuffs, silks and satins, and furs, a malachite 
 vase, a jasper table, a little ivory prayer-book, with the 
 twisted monogram in turquoises and pearls upon the cover. 
 Were these what the skeletons and the skulls had been 
 transmuted into by the modern crucible of venial passion 
 jind unscrupulous greed ? 
 
 This solution of her mystery did not occur to me then ; 
 but now I know well that it was the right one. 
 
 For several hours Fanfreluche never returned. I wan 
 if it wholly to solitude. I became fearfully hungry, but no 
 
HE IS LAUNCHED ON LIFE. $7 
 
 one brought me anything to eat : and in the end, like a child, 
 as I was still, I sobbed myself to sleep, thinking that I 
 would give all the world to exchange the broidered-satin 
 cushion into which I sank, for a bed of moss under Ben's 
 old pines. 
 
 It was nearly dark when I awoke by a dainty chime of 
 fairy-like bells, and beheld Eanfreluche by my couch. 
 
 * Well, my dear,' she began in her pert patronising way, 
 'how have you been? Dull enough, poor little wretch. 
 I have had no end of fun. I have been out driving with 
 her, in the carriage, shopping and flirting all this time. I ' 
 love to go to the shops ; we are first-rate customers, you 
 know ; we always pay our bills, we do indeed. You see we 
 can afford to be honest ; it's always one of them that writes 
 the cheques! And how splendidly the silk-mercers, and 
 the jewellers, and the milliners, and the florists, and the 
 fruiterers serve us : you see we pay very much better than 
 the great ladies do ; we've got the great men's money, and 
 their wives have not. That's how it is. Why! when I go 
 into the bonbon-seller's, they stuff my mouth full with 
 sweetmeats, and macaroons: they wouldn't pay all that 
 attention to a mere Duchess's dog ! ' 
 
 1 Is it such a great thing to be a Pearl ?' I asked, hesi- 
 tatingly. 
 
 1 A magnificent thing ! ' said Fanfreluche, with a smack of 
 her lips. ' All the fat of the land, my dear. And all the 
 cream of the milk. There was a time, you know, I've 
 heard my grandmother talk of it, when it was a great 
 thing to be a great lady ; one of the heads of the nobility, 
 you know. You set the fashion ; you ruled the tone ; you 
 shaped the society ; you could ban with a frown, or elevate 
 with a smile ; you were besieged for your ball tickets, and 
 you were the cynosure of all eyes in your dress. But now 
 bless your heart! if your are agrande dame, you are just 
 nowhere. Nowhere at all, except for wretched little pud- 
 dling political purposes, if you belong to a " Party." As 
 for all the rest, Pearl and that lot have it. If you the 
 great lady, bore men with exclusivism, they levant, and go 
 off to Pearl et Cie. ; if you want to rule them with a light 
 hand, they kick over the traces, and laugh at you with Pearl 
 et Cie. ; if you won't be a dowdy, out of the fashion, you 
 must f oUow the modes that Pearl et Cie. set ; if you buy a 
 
98 PUCK. 
 
 fan, if you go to an opera, if you drive a new-fashioned 
 equipage, if you adopt a costly costume, whether you like 
 it or not, whether you know it or not, you are merely obey- 
 ing the lead of Pearl et Cie. I have heard old Lord Brune 
 talk of the rules and regulations of Almack's when he was 
 a youth gracious ! the men of our day wouldn't stand one 
 of them. They'd leave the Patronesses to dance a minuette 
 in solitude, and come and make chaff of the old women over 
 Pearl et Cie.'s claret and chicken ! ' 
 
 And Fanfreluche stopped to take breath, having fairly 
 preached herself out of it. 
 
 I was very much bewildered, and not at all clear as to 
 what she might mean. 
 
 ' Then these Pearls are the real sovereigns of the world ? ' 
 I ventured to suggest, glancing at the turquoise-studded 
 prayer-book, which looked made for a Chapel Royal. 
 
 Fanfreluche followed my glance and grinned, till what 
 with her red lips, her white teeth, and her coal-black eyes, 
 she looked for all the world very much like a very small 
 devil. 
 
 ' O yes ! We go to church, my dear, we are very reli- 
 gious, I assure you ! Sovereigns, did you ask ? to be sure; 
 and sovereigns you know always did have a nice knack of 
 pillaging everybody right and left, and then dying in the full 
 odour of sanctity. We^ now and then, die in a hovel, it's 
 true, after all our brilliancy, if we lose our beauty very 
 early ; but then so do the sovereigns by the way, if they 
 happen to lose their crowns. So the parallel fits both 
 ways. Tes ! they rule, do Pearl et Cie. If they only 
 saved their money oftener and lost their tempers less often; 
 if they only didn't dissolve their diamonds in vinegar as it 
 were, and fly into passions with their very best friends and 
 paymasters, they might rule the world. They do rule the 
 'ibigger half of it as it is.' 
 
 1 But why do men ? ' 
 
 Fanfreluche interrupted me, turning up her small thin 
 nose. 
 
 * My dear ! Men like to be cheated and pillaged, and 
 sworn at, and made fools of, and ruined; they do positively 
 relish it. Or if they don't, how should Pearl et Cie. possess 
 the power men let them possess ? A fact is a fact, you 
 know. No good being blind to it. The sun will stay in 
 the heavens however you may blink at him ' 
 
HE IS LAUNCHED ON LIFE, 99 
 
 4 "Then you think ?' 
 
 * That the devil himself drilled women : and capital for- 
 agers he made of them P snapped Fanfreluche. ' They don't 
 stand steady fire, they won't fight on the square, and they 
 never can carry out a campaign logically ; but for sharp - 
 shooting, and pillaging, and skirmishing, there are no guer- 
 rillas like them. Hungry are you? Poor little fellow! "Well 
 they will be dining in a couple of hours ; then I'll take 
 you downstairs. We live very well here ; very well indeed. 
 I never touch a bone on principle ; we give them all away 
 to the poor of the parish. Ah, my dear ! you don't dream 
 how religious we are ! ' 
 
 And the tiny creature she was very much smaller than 
 1 grinned again so diabolically that it positively frightened 
 me to be in her presence. 
 
 ' When I say we live well,' she resumed, seeming dearly 
 to love her own chatter, 'of course I speak with a reserva- 
 tion. Men and women spoil all they eat with their barba- 
 rous fashion of cooking it. Hams boiled in Madeira, pigeons 
 stewed with champignons, chickens smashed up with toma- 
 toes, ducks ligorres with Seville oranges, lobsters drowned 
 in oil and sauces, oysters crowded with truffles and mush- 
 rooms bah ! it makes you mad to think of it. Every dog 
 knows better thanto spoil two good things with one another; 
 we like the simple flavour, each rich in itself. Who ever 
 saw a dog put two things in his mouth at one time? But 
 these barbarians put a hundred the flavours of a hundred 
 at the least. And then they call that Babel of contra- 
 dicting essences and anomalous tastes "good cookery," 
 and the concoctor of it is dubbed a " chef." Bah ! I long 
 to bite the legs of every one of the cordons bleus ! ' 
 
 I answered nothing: of course milk and bread and a trifle 
 of cold meat had been my only food, and I knew no more of 
 what she meant than of the flavours of the dishes she men- 
 tioned. 
 
 But, like everybody who cannot tell a truffle from a 
 tomato, I kept a discreet silence, and determined to show 
 myself a thorough gourmet by liking nothing when I 
 tasted it. 
 
 ' Of course,' continued the Lilliputian lady, with intense 
 spite. ' Laura Pearl never, I will be bound, having eaten 
 any thing except cabbages and black bread in her early days 
 
100 PUCK. 
 
 will never now be content with anything except the brands 
 that are a guinea the bottle, and eatables that are six months 
 at least before their due season. Her dinners and suppers 
 have every vice of the fashionable school stuffed into them, 
 That fellow in the kitchen gets a hundred and fifty a-year ; 
 and all he does is to turn good food into claptrap compotes, 
 while his gravies are all glaze and his pdtes all pepper. 
 But, goodness ! you know nothing about all this ; you are a 
 baby. Hold your tongue and let me lie quiet, or Beltran 
 will tell me my eyes are red, and say I mustn't have any 
 chicken.' 
 
 ' Is Beltran omnipotent here ?* 
 
 Fanfreluche showed her teeth. 
 
 ' Just now, my dear yes.' 
 
 * Who is he ? You said you would tell me.' 
 
 ' Beltran ? O you little ass ! I thought everybody from 
 Paris to Patagonia knew Yere Beltran. There aren't a 
 creature better known. Where on earth have you lived ?' 
 
 'Not in the world/ I said humbly, feeling fearfully 
 ashamed, like the little coward I was, of my dear old Ben 
 .and his little cottage. 
 
 ' One can guess that, innocent, without your telling one. 
 Well, since you don't know anything, expect to be pretty 
 considerably astonished. We're enough to take the hair 
 off the head of any uneducated being.' 
 
 'Are you so very wicked, then ?' 
 
 ' Wicked ! What a silly old-fashioned word. My dear 
 child, vre're only a trifle fast and very intensely fashionable. 
 Wicked ! good gracious, no ! And if scandal-mongers say 
 that we play a trifle too high, why it is very malicious of 
 them : and our roulette-wheel is only a pretty toy that any- 
 body may buy for a guinea.' 
 
 And Fanfreluche grinned afresh. 
 
 1 But who is Beltran?' I pursued. 
 
 * You'll see him,' said Fanfreluche pettishly. 'He's a 
 very good fellow, though the world don't think so. He 
 owns the Coronet, you know ' 
 
 ' The public-house ?' I asked ; for opposite Bill Jacobs' 
 there was an inn with that sign, very much frequented by 
 thieves and dog-fanciers and blackguards of all sorts. 
 ' Public-house ? Grood heavens, no ! Our theatre !' 
 *A theatre! Does he dress in green and spangles and 
 
HE IS LAUNCHED ON LIFE. IOI 
 
 carry a long white whip ?' I demanded breathlessly, think- 
 ing of the magnificent persons I had beheld outside the 
 booth at the wakes in the Peak, and believing that I should 
 how that I also knew the world. 
 
 Fanfreluche screamed till she choked herself. 
 
 ' O you dear little simpleton ! you're as good as a play 
 yourself. Why Beltran is a Viscount, you little fool ; and 
 he only keeps the Coronet as he keeps his horse and his 
 valet and hia cigar-case. His name don't show, you know. 
 Old Aaron is the only man the public ever hears of the 
 acting manager, you know. Villainous old screw ! ' 
 
 ' Lord Beltran is very rich, then ? ' 
 
 1 He ought to be ! ' and she gazed into the fire with an 
 expression that was plaintive and very serious for this 
 cynical worldly-wise, frivolous young lady. 
 
 ' But he is not ? ' I ventured to infer. 
 
 ' Who says so ? It's no business of yours or of mine if 
 he isn't ! ' retorted Fanf reluche quite fiercely. 
 
 I perceived that with all her wickedness, she was a loyal 
 . tttle thing to her friends, amongst whom this Beltran seemed 
 to stand foremost. 
 
 'Was it he who bought me and sent me here?' I in- 
 quired, to change the subject. 
 
 Whereon Panfreluche became her own sardonic and 
 scoffing self once more. 
 
 ' Pooh ! no. He's an awful fool ; but he's not quite such 
 a fool as to purchase a thing of Bill Jacobs. Any dog Bill 
 sells he steals again in a month or two. Don't look so 
 frightened. Laura will sell you herself most likely before 
 Bill gets a chance. Set a thief to foil a thief, you know.' 
 
 'A thief!' I murmured, unable to reconcile such lan- 
 guage with a lady of whom I had just heard as one of the 
 Bovereigns of the world. ' But who is that man, then, who 
 lent me here ? * 
 
 ' Leo Lance, my dear. Only an author.' 
 
 ' But he gave twenty pounds for me. 1 
 
 1 Did he ? Oh ! and the ear-rings we*e two hundred fhe 
 pair. Yes, I know; that's just the price he got Bel- 
 tran gave it him for that new little thing they are going 
 to play. And he spends Beltran's money so ! Chuff 
 
 And the small dame clicked her little white teeth like the 
 teeth of a trap. I saw something was wrong, but I wag not 
 aware what it might be. 
 
102 PUCK. 
 
 * Beltran's suca an awful fool, you know,' she explained. 
 ' He's one of tl c cleverest men on earth, and keen as an eagle 
 in some things ; but where there's a question of money, or 
 women, or play, or kindliness, pooh ! he's a downright blind 
 bat, an idiot ! He pays Leo Lance for a burlesque he didn't 
 want out of pure good-nature do you suppose he dreama 
 that the Mouse lays the gold out in trying to steal his 
 mistress ? ' 
 
 * I don't know, I am sure, 5 I muttered vaguely, not having 
 an idea what she meant. 'The Mouse what have mice to 
 do with burlesques, and what may burlesques be, pray ?' 
 
 ' A burlesque, my sweet little daisy,' explained my pa- 
 troness, ' is an epitome of the tendency of this age to reduce 
 everything of heroic stature to pigmy proportions, and to 
 render ridiculous all that other ages have venerated. A bur- 
 lesque is the resource of writers without wit ; the grinning 
 mask whereby they conceal their inability to laugh the laugh 
 of humour; the juggling of words and phrases with which 
 they counterfeit the Huclibrastic strength and the Rabe- 
 laisian mirth that is not in them nor in their times. There ! 
 that is not mine ; I heard Derry Denzil say it ; so take it 
 for what it is worth. As for the Mice that is a name we 
 give Leo Lance, and Derry, and a few others. They've a 
 paper they call the Mouse, a sort of burlesque itself, 
 only Denzil pours real acid into it, and they are all Mice 
 that write for it ; and there's nothing they don't nibble at ; 
 and the trap's not set yet that can catch them. But for 
 mercy's sake, do hold your tongue, and let me be quiet and 
 get some sleep. "Wake me when the clock strikes eight 
 and don't say a syllable earlier.' 
 
 And she curled herself up and slept, and no efforts of mine 
 could arouse her. As for me, I sat the whole time bolt up- 
 right, quivering all over with excitement; mice, actors, 
 thieves, sovereigns, cheese-baited traps, and ivory prayer- 
 books, chasing each other in wild confusion and discord 
 through my brain. 
 
 Into what a world I had alia Mel \ 
 
103 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 E rfEES SOCIETY. 
 
 PRECISELY as the timepiece chimed eight hours, Fan*. 
 freluche awoke and shook herself. 
 
 ' Coine down/ she said. ' They will be soon at dinner. 
 It's an off-week at the Coronet, Easter you know. Tou sea 
 we're so pious ; we keep the feasts and the fasts of the 
 Church! Now don't you mind if she raps you hard with he* 
 fan-handle, or if the Mice hit champagne corks at you ; if 
 you make an atom of noise you'll be turned out of the room. 1 
 
 ' Are the Mice always here ? ' I inquired, dreading these 
 untrapable rodents. 
 
 1 Tou silly ! of course not. But they come pretty often 
 with the others. Beltran's wines are excellent ' 
 
 'But is it Beltran's house, then?' 
 
 1 you little donkey ! of course not,' cried my chaperone, 
 exasperated. ' Of course it's not his house only he pays 
 for it and for everything in it. Can't you put two and two 
 together? Come along! You will find the dishes burn your 
 mouth ; that cook, though they think so much of him, has 
 only one idea of seasoning and that one lies in the pepper- 
 pot!' 
 
 "With this she trotted through the half-opened door, and 
 down the pretty staircase with its gilded balustrade and its 
 bright-hued carpets, and into the dainty hall, mosaic paven, 
 and filled with hothouse flowers and small orange-trees. 
 
 She led the way into a room that literally dazzled me as^E 
 entered it ; it seemed one sheet of light ; a miniature sun 
 in the blue arc of the ceiling shed down its rays, the atmo- 
 sphere was heavily scented with pastilles and flowers, the, 
 table seemed a-blaze with gold and silver, and the hangings. 
 9f the walls were azure satin, silver- starred. 
 
 There were seven or eight people round the table ; and a 
 voice called Eanfreluche. She obeyed its call, and I crept 
 timidly after her, and gazed around from a safe position 
 under a chair. 
 
 There, taking courage, I glanced round the room. I re- 
 cognised my purchaser, and I recognised my mistress. Tha 
 latter dazzled my -eyes like the sun- chandelier above head. 
 
104 PUCK:. 
 
 She seemed literally on fire with the superb rubies that 
 glittered all over her, and shone like sparks of flame upon 
 the exquisite whiteness of her skin. Flame-coloured robes 
 gleamed under the black shower of her laces ; her scarlet 
 pomegranate-like lips, the rich flush on her cheeks, the lustre 
 of her great brown eyes all were full of colour glowing 
 like the hues in a stained-glass picture when a red autumn 
 sun streams through it. It was a perfect beauty of its 
 kind. 
 
 The splendid lips had a cruel sensuality; the splendid 
 yes had a hard rapacity ; the splendid ruddy-tinted hair 
 shaded a brow that had the low brutal ignorance of the 
 savage set on it But with all that youth, that colour, 
 that"magnificence of loveliness, who remembered that ? 
 
 Not they, certes, who sat around her board. 
 
 Ah, fools ! when you gaze on the l flower-like face' of a 
 woman, do you ever pause to notice where the animalism 
 speaks through it ? the greed, the cruelty, the lust, the 
 ignorance ? 
 
 1 Animalism,' do I say ? I have lived now so long in your 
 world and its cant, that I have caught up all its jargon. 
 
 ' Animalism/ forsooth ! A more unfair word don't exist. 
 When we animals never drink only just enough to satisfy 
 thirst, never eat except when we have genuine appetites, 
 never indulge in any sort of debauch, and never strain ex- 
 cess till we sink into the slough of satiety, shall ' animalism* 
 be a word to designate all that men and women dare to do .' 
 
 ' Animalism !' You ought to blush for such a libel on our 
 innocent and reasonable lives when you regard your own. 
 You men who scorch your throats with alcohols, and kill 
 your livers with absinthe, and squander your gold in the 
 Kursaal, and the Circle, and the Arlington, and have thirty 
 services at your dinner betwixt soup and the ' chasse,' and 
 cannot spend a summer afternoon in comfort unless you be 
 drinking deep the intoxication of hazard in your debts and 
 your bets on the Heath, or the Downs, at Hurlingham, or 
 at Tattersall's Rooms. You women who SP!! your souls for 
 bits of stones dug from the bowels of the earth j who stake 
 your honour for a length of lace two centuries old ; who 
 replace the bloom your passions have banished with the 
 red of poisoned pigments ; who wreathe your aching heads 
 with purchased tresses torn from prisons, madhouses, and 
 
HE SEES SOCIEfY. 105 
 
 coffins; who spend your lives in one incessant struggle, 
 first the rivalry of vanity and then the rivalry of ambition ; 
 who deck out greed, and selfishness, and worship of station 
 or of gold as * love,' and then wonder that your hapless 
 dupes, seizing the idol that you offer them as worthy of 
 their worship, fling it from them with a curse, finding it 
 dumb, and deaf, and merciless, a thing of wood and stone. 
 
 * Animalism/ forsooth ! God knows it would be well for 
 you here and hereafter, men and women both,were you only 
 patient, continent, and single-minded ; only faithful, gentle, 
 and long-suffering, as are the brutes that you mock, and 
 misuse, and vilify in the supreme blindness of your egre- 
 gious vanity ! 
 
 From beneath my chair I surveyed with some interest 
 and with more trepidation the society around the banquet- 
 ing-table of Laura Pearl, while Fanfreluche, kindly squat- 
 ting- near me, drew my attention to each personag-e in turn. 
 
 'Look yonder, at that tall slender man farthest from 
 Pearl, ' she murmured to me in that language which, like the 
 utterances of the fairies, cannot be heard by the gross ears 
 of human creatures. By the way, with all your vaunted 
 superiority, a fly can eclipse you in sight, a bird in volita- 
 tion, a wasp in architecture, a bee in political economy and 
 geometry, a water spider in aquatic science and subtlety, 
 a good heavens ! one could spread the list over ten pages ! 
 
 < Do you see that tall fair man with the white flower in 
 his coat ?" pursued Fanfreluche ; ' the one with the hand- 
 some, contemptuous, weary face, the grey eyes, and the 
 dark straight eyebrows, who looks ll aristocrat" all over 
 him, and has made his face as expressionless as a colourless 
 piece of repouss6 work that's Beltran. You're afraid of 
 him ? So are most people at first sight, and a good many 
 of them ever afterwards for that matter. I don't know 
 why 5 it's only manner with him. The fools toady him so ; 
 he's obliged to give them a good sound kick with his boot- 
 heel of insolence as it were.* 
 
 'Why does he keep the society of fools?' 
 
 ' Little donkey ! He lives in the world, don't he T cried 
 Fanfreluche with immeasurable sarcasm. ' It's very easy to 
 get into ditch-water, but not so easy to get out. Besides, a 
 man as rich as Beltran has been pshaw ! is, I mean can't 
 find a world quit of a flood of parasites, any more than a 
 
io6 PUCK. 
 
 salmon can swim in rivers free of minnows. Look there 
 that little fellow with the brilliant eyes, and the full lips, 
 and the crisp brown hair isn't that he who bought you ? 
 Yes ? I knew it. Well, that's the Mouse, Leo Lance. He 
 was the son of a tobacconist, they do say, somewhere down 
 south ; but had a classic education, and uncc nmonly sharp 
 wits. He writes well and he talks well in his own way ; 
 cribs right and left ; but wears his stolen clothes so that 
 they look like his own skin. Anyhow, he is in society to a 
 good extent, and lives with the " swells," whom he copies 
 and worships, because they're of use to him ; and damns 
 and detests, because they only admit him on sufferance, 
 and don't take him amongst their own women.' 
 
 1 He did buy me,' I murmured ; ' why does he not notice 
 me now ? ' 
 
 ' Pooh ! he's never seen vou before, my dear,' said Fanfre- 
 luche, with her peculiar grin of significance ' never ! Don't 
 be so indiscreet as to recognise him. The great art in society 
 is to be able to stare our oldest friends in the face as if we'd 
 never met them in all our lives before. It's an art that's 
 always handy ; for nine times out of ten you do really want 
 to cut them ; and if you don't, it only looks good style to 
 have forgotten people, and makes them feel themselves of 
 no consequence in such a great world as yours * 
 
 ' But with real friends ? ' I began, my mind reverting to 
 my dear old Ben. 
 
 ' Pshaw ! my little daisy,' scoffed Fanf reluche. ' There 
 are no " friends " now-a-days ; there are only acquaintances, 
 Beltran is " friends " with ever so many men, whom yet he 
 pills with black balls every time they're put up for his clubs. 
 
 ' That bright, fair-faced, curly-haired boy is the little 
 Marquis of Montf errat,' she resumed. ' He has been of 
 age a year, and is half -ruined already. What by ? O, year- 
 lings, and women, and big coups at the tables the old 
 etory! Yonder's Evrecombe, his well-beloved Mentor, 
 who, -with the women as his assistants, decoys him into 
 what nets he pleases.' 
 
 ' A swindler ? ' I inquired tremblingly. 
 
 1 A swindler ? G-ood gracious, no ! ' cried the little lady. 
 'Uvrecombe is a perfectly well-born gentleman. Did you 
 ever see a more elegant person ? And the day little Monti 
 ehoots himself, or rushes out of Europe with worse dishonour 
 
HE SEES SOCIETY. l&f 
 
 than death at his heels, his Mentor will sip on ice drink in 
 Ms club, and murmur serenely, " I warned him ! " 
 
 'Do you see Deringham Denzil, there?' she pursued 
 after a brief pause. ' Berry, as they call him ; a big fellow, 
 awfully handsome ; bearded and bronzed like an Asiatic ? 
 Looks like a guerrilla chief, doesn't he ? with his reckless, 
 devil-may-care, picturesque face, and those great sinewy 
 drabs of his ? well, he is one of the Mice, too ; and for a 
 caustic piece of incisive irony, or a wistful tender touch of 
 thought, there is nobody equal to that stalwart debonair bri- 
 gand, He has a story too, but I'll tell you that some other 
 time That man, with the superb golden-haired head, there, 
 is the painter Marmion Eagle (he's a colossus in the studio, 
 and mad as a March hare out of it ; all great artists are) ; 
 and the delicate handsome creature next him, with a face 
 -ike some pretty brunette's, is a cavalry- soldier, St. John 
 Milton. He has been cut all to pieces a hundred times, 
 and has seen more service, and killed more men to his own 
 hand, than any man of his years in the army. Hear him 
 tell how he set the skulls or all the Asiatics he had ever 
 killed in a row on the top of the flat roof of his house, one 
 illuminating night, in Calcutta, with the skulls all filled up 
 with clay, and a candle stuck into each, and lighting up the 
 fleshless jaws, and shining through the orbless eyes ! it 
 will make your very blood run cold. But he never does 
 talk of himself hardly your great soldiers are always very 
 modest over their own bits of derring-do. There, I don't 
 see any one else to tell you about ; of the other two, one is 
 TO guardsman, and the other a member of parliament ; both 
 pleasant fellows, gentle as women, and wild as the grouse 
 in November. But listen ! there's Beltran calling me.' 
 
 She trotted up to her hero, who stroked her and gave her 
 a sweetmeat from the gold bonbon-stands on the table ; 
 doing this he caught sight of myself, and asked when that 
 new white dog had come. 
 
 ' I bought him,' said Laura Pearl carelessly ; and I won- 
 dered her voice did not break the spell of her beauty for 
 all of them, it was so harsh, so coarse in fibre, so metal- 
 like in its resonance. 'A man offered him to me to-day in 
 the Park for a guinea, collar and all, as you see him.' 
 
 1 Stole him, then?' 
 
 'Well, that warn't my affair if he did.' 
 
 She distinctly said ' warn't.' 
 
io8 PUCK. 
 
 'Yes, it w as. What do you buj dogs for? You can 
 have dozens given you.' 
 . ' It's a pretty beast, Beltran ? ' 
 
 > ' ! pretty enough. Looks awfully miserable too. 
 Hungry eh ? ' 
 
 He addressed the last phrase to me, and in the anguish of 
 my feelings I could not restrain a piteous howl. He laughed, 
 and set me down some croquettes of chicken on his own plate 
 
 ' I hate the dogs messing and feeding in the rooms/ mut 
 tered the Pearl sullenly. 
 
 ' Better take care they're fed out of it, then,' said Bel- 
 tran, in his negligent, indifferent fashion: she looked 
 angered, and struck Fanfreluche a sharp blow with the 
 ivory sticks of her fan. 
 
 I wondered if these gentle amenities were the custom be- 
 tween lovers in the fashionable world of Pearl et Cie. 
 
 * Worth twenty sovereigns, if he be worth one,' murmured 
 Beltran, surveying me as I ate. ' Pure Lion-dog, eh, Lance ?' 
 
 ' Looks so,' responded the Mouse, putting up his eye-glass 
 to study me. 
 
 'Would you know the man that you had him from, 
 Laura ? ' asked Beltran. 
 
 ' G-ood gracious, no ! I am sure I shouldn't ! ' 
 
 ' And why on earth did you buy him ? ' 
 
 ' 'Cause he seemed dirt cheap at a guinea. What a heap of 
 fuss and nonsense, Yere, you make about that little wretch ! ' 
 
 I turned hot and cold, and trembled over my croquettes : 
 I had only been up at the table one minute and a half, and 
 already I had heard four gigantic, and apparently utterly 
 meaningless, falsehoods ! Was this inevitable in ' high 
 society ? ' 
 
 Beltran laughed a little ; it seemed to amuse him to be 
 accused of making a fuss about anything, as it did, indeed, 
 appear utterly irreconcilable with the extreme quietism, and 
 half -cynical, half -languid weariness of his habitual tone 
 and manner. 
 
 The moments that followed were not sweet to me ; for 
 they passed in my being handed about from one to another 
 until I had run the gauntlet of the whole circle. Happily 
 their verdict was favourable ; and all of them, Leo Lance the 
 most emphatically, congratulated the Pearl on having so 
 cheaply obtained such a thorough-bred. All, indeed, save 
 
HE SEES SOCIETY. 109 
 
 Beltran, who having affirmed again that, if she got me for a 
 guinea, the man had stolen me, shut his lips, and vouchsafed 
 no more on the subject. 
 
 The Mouse and those loudest in my praises offered me 
 nothing to eat; Beltran, to whom rny presence seemed 
 scarcely satisfactorily accounted for, remembered me, and 
 gave me a slice of a duckling and a handful of almond cakes. 
 After this they forgot me ; except when Laura Pearl, with 
 Lance and the little Marquis, amused themselves in frighten- 
 ing me out of my wits by letting off rose-water crackers in 
 my eyes, and pelting me with crystallised chestnuts, till I 
 was both deaf and blind. 
 
 1 Monkeyish malice, my dear/ murmured Fanf reluche, as 
 an enormous hard bonbon hit me sharply on the eye. * Boys 
 and cads, and women have it. G-o under Beltran's chair.' 
 
 I was so confused, and indeed so hurt, though their mis- 
 siles were only rose-water and chestnuts, that I heard little 
 of all that passed at the table. 
 
 Pearl laughed very often, laughed long, and laughed 
 loudly, showing the most magnificent teeth in the world ; 
 and some stories were told, which, if not over-decorous, 
 were to a surety wittily, if wickedly imagined. Beyond 
 these the proprieties were in no way violated ; and if it was 
 all laughable chatter enough, mere gossip of the day lightly 
 told, there were none of those brilliant scintillations which 
 outsiders are given to imagining as coruscating perpetually 
 in such spheres as this. 
 
 Men, as I know now, do not take the trouble to be 
 amusing in the society of Pearl's sisterhood ; they pay, and 
 think the purse-strings quite enough to draw, without 
 being wearied to draw also on their mental capital. 
 
 "What good things there were said, came from the merry 
 mouth of Lance. 
 
 ' If that Mouse hadn't sung, and didn't sing, he wouldn't 
 feast in this cheese,' Eanfreluche metaphorically explained 
 to me ; and when I asked further explanation, added : 
 
 ' Little goose ! Beltran gives him dinners ; and he is t<> 
 amuse Beltran. It's a fair exchange. Do you suppose ou* 
 Stuart princes don't keep their "Will Somers to jest for them? 
 In old times, you know, the noblemen's fools wore motley, 
 and jingled bells atop of their caps ; now they wear dress- 
 coats, and half -guinea rosebuds in their button -holes. But 
 
no PUCK. 
 
 the class hasn't changed a "bit. And their lord's whip'is ac 
 insolent word ; and their lord's wage is paid out to them ic 
 dinners, and suppers, and -ater parties, and race-weeks; 
 and mayhap, if they're very prese table fools indeed, in 
 elub ballot and an autumn shooting.' 
 
 ' The poor fools ! ' I murmured, for fellow-feeling makes 
 us wondrous kind, and I had just been the butt of crackers 
 and marrons-glaces. 
 
 ' Poor indeed ! ' sneered Eanf reluche. ' It's the poor 
 princes, I think ! paying all they do for dull wit that they 
 could eclipse in a second themselves if they only weren't 
 too indolent to talk ! The fools make pretty perquisites, I 
 can assure you, and run up all the rungs of the ladder in 
 no time. I've seen a fool in the end sift aloft, looking 
 sanctity and decorum itself, and gripping his money-bags 
 tight, while the prince sank below in a bottomless sea of 
 ruin, with the sharks of Debt and the vultures of Venality 
 tearing him asunder between them ! ' 
 
 ' It is his own fault ? ' I suggested. 
 
 ' Not at all ! ' snapped Fanfreluche. ' He has been ten 
 to one too heedless to watch, and too generous to distrust, 
 like but you know nothing about it, you are so young ; 
 and youth is always as obstinate as it is ignorant, and as 
 illiberal as it is illiterate. I hate youth ! 
 
 ' But you are not old yourself, surely ? ' I demanded. 
 
 ' Pooh ! ' scoffed Eanfreluche, ' I am feminine ! And 
 into every feminine thing, my dear, the Devil, before it is 
 born, instils the knowledge of evil : for he still keeps the 
 apples by him with which he tempted poor Eve ; only there 
 is but the juice of evil left beneath the rosy velvet skin, for 
 the golden side that held the knowledge of good is all 
 shrivelled up, withered by the winds of sin that blow for 
 ever through the universe.' 
 
 And having said this she would say no more, but sat 
 watching with her black and brilliant eyes ; and looking so 
 fearfully like a very little but very terrible devil herself, 
 that I trembled, and thought that indeed through the warm 
 fragrant air of the banqueting-chamber I heard and felt 
 the passing breath of that sirocco of guilt which, daily 
 and nightly sweeps over the sick and weary world, and 
 burns it with consuming fever, and will not let it lie ID 
 peace, and rest. 
 
HE SEES SOCIETY. Ill 
 
 The dinner lasted long ; there were some thirteen services 
 -I counted them in amaze ; at its close there was the scent 
 of variously-scented smoke, and the laugh of Laura Pearl 
 rang louder. 
 
 From the table they passed to the drawing-room up- 
 stairs ; which glowed with ten times more light, ten times 
 more colour, ten times more brilliancy than the other apart- 
 ment, and was indeed one mass of scintillating gold, and 
 silver, and amber ; not a large room, everything in the house 
 was small and bijou, but intensely luxurious and very costly. 
 
 They had not been there many moments before they 
 gathered round a table on which stood a pretty little appa- 
 ratus, made of rosewood and ebony and ormolu ; a sort of 
 plate, it seemed to me, in which her hand, with its rings 
 blazing forth bright rays, was for ever carelessly tossing a 
 little ivory ball. 
 
 "What they were doing I could not tell ; it engrossed 
 them entirely. Some grew very pale, some very flushed ; 
 all were intent, silent, breathlessly eager : and they rarely 
 moved, save when one or other of them went to a marble 
 stand on which claret-cup, and cognac, and effervescing 
 waters were placed, kept cool amongst great glittering 
 rock-crystals of square cut ice. 
 
 Their faces wore a curious look, I thought. I have seen it 
 often enough since then at half the gaming-tables of Europe. 
 
 I had gazed at them, amazed and entranced, for half-an- 
 hour or thereabout, when Eanfreluche approached me. 
 
 * Come away, child,' she whispered. ' It's midnight, come 
 to bed.' 
 
 * I want to stay here ! ' I remonstrated. * I want to see 
 them ' 
 
 * O, do you ? They're not attractive to see. Some of 
 them must lose, you know ; and some will be drunk when 
 the morning finds them. Beltran won't, but three or four of 
 the others will. There is no drinking now-a-days we're told 
 O no ! and no gaming-houses either. "What a precious 
 clever thing is Legislation ; it bars men out from doing a 
 thing in public, and so they go and do it ten times more in 
 private ! But then nobody guesses it, you see, and that's 
 all Legislation cares. They've shut up the silver hells, and 
 the gentlemen lose an estate in a night at the Cocodes Club, 
 and stake hundreds on the. Red in their mistresses' drawing- 
 
PUCK. 
 
 rooms. So Law means to shut up the pubiifi-house ; anc 
 the working men will soak themselves in gin and rum in 
 their own cellars all Sunday long, and pay twenty pei cent 
 more for the liquor because it will be supplied at a risk. O 
 Law is wondrous clever ! But do come away, little one , 
 you're only a baby, and this house isn't edifying after mid- 
 night.' 
 
 * Your Beltran can't be so very good, then, since he is so 
 fond of it ! ' I retorted, angry to be treated so childishly. 
 
 ' Pooh, my dear ! Beltran seeks what he scorns ; and 
 caresses his own ruin. He's not uncommon there. I tell 
 you he's an awful fool, and I never said anything at all about 
 nis morals. The world thinks very badly of him ; and so 
 may you if you like. Come away that's all.' 
 
 And by dint of threats and persuasions she half drove 
 and half 'coaxed me out of the room, and into the little, 
 dark, deserted boudoir we had previously occupied. 
 
 ' Gro to sleep, child ! ' she cried, pushing me on to a soft 
 silk mat ; and I was too sleepy in truth to disobey. 
 
 Once I awoke myself in my vivid dreams to ask her a 
 question. 
 
 1 Is that woman really a sovereign, Fanfreluche ? ' 
 
 I could see even in the moonlit darkness the grin of 
 her little white teeth. 
 
 ' O yes, my dear honour bright. If you doubt it, just 
 go and look in at the fashionable photographic shops : 
 you'll see her between Queen Victoria and the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury ; and she sells better, they say, than either 
 the ermine or the lawn. Good-night, and for gracious 
 sake don't chatter ! ' 
 
 CHAPTEE XH. 
 
 AT THE COBOSET THEATBE. 
 
 I awoke the next morning, I certainly found 
 myself in a blue velvet-hung apartment ; I stared at myself 
 repeated a dozen times in as many mirrors ; I wore on my 
 collar a beautiful azure satin rosette nearly the size of my 
 head ; and the man who brought us our breakfast served us 
 minced chicken on a very exquisite]/ painted china plate ; 
 
AT THE CORONET THEATRE. 1IJ 
 
 but I had been more joyous by far on the rough rod bricks 
 of Ben's cottage kitchen. 
 
 ' These fine things don't make one's happiness/ I mur- 
 mured pensively to Fanfreluche. 
 
 ' No, my dear, they don't ;' the little worldling admitted. 
 ' Thev do to women* the^' 1 * so mut^^nl ^cu. 2**" Th"" 1 * *'"" 
 angels O yes, of course ! but they're uncommonly sharp 
 angels where money and good living are concerned. Just 
 watch them watch the tail of their eye when a cheque is 
 being written or an eprouvette being brought to table. And 
 after all, you know minced chicken is a good deal nicer than 
 dry bread. Of course we can easily be sentimental and 
 above this sort of thing, when the chicken is in our mouths 
 where we sit by the fire ; but if we were gnawing wretched 
 bones out in the cold of the streets, I doubt if we should feel 
 in such a sublime mood. All the praises of poverty are 
 sung by the minstrel who has a golden harp to chant 
 them on ; and all the encomiums on renunciation come from 
 your l)on viveur who vere denied himself aught in his life I*" 
 
 ' Then everybody is a hypocrite ? ' 
 
 Not a bit, child. We always like what we haven't got: 
 and people are quite honest very often in their professions, 
 though they give the lie direct to them in their practice. 
 People can talk themselves into believing that they believe 
 anything. When the preacher discourses on the excellence 
 of holiness, he may have been a thorough-going scamp all 
 his life ; but it don't follow he's dishonest, because he's so 
 accustomed to talk goody-goody tali that it runs off hi* 
 lips as the thread off a reel ' 
 
 ' But he must know he's a scamp ?' 
 
 ' Good gracious me, why should he ? I have met a thou- 
 sand scamps ; but I never met one who considered himself- 
 so. Self-knowledge isn't so common. Bless you, my dear, 
 a man no more sees himself, as others see him, in a moral 
 looking-glass than he does in a mirror out of his dressing- 
 box. I know a man who has forged bills, run off with hia 
 neighbour's wife, and left sixty thousand pounds odd in 
 debts behind him; but he only thinks himself "a victim of 
 circumstances " honestly thinks it too. A man never is 
 so honest as when he speaks well of himself. Men are 
 always optimists when they look inwards, and pessimists 
 when they look round them.' 
 
ii 4 PUCK. 
 
 I yawned a iittir* : nothing is so pleasant, as I hare known 
 later, as to display your worldly wisdom in epigram and dis- 
 sertation, but it is a trine tedious to hear another person 
 display theirs. 
 
 When you talk yourself, you think how witty, how 
 original, how acute you are; but when another does so, you 
 ire very apt to think only What a crib from Roche- 
 foucauld ! 
 
 However, of course I did not think this then ; I only 
 thought that I wished Fanfreluche was not quite so much 
 given over to the love of her own chatter, and inquired of 
 ner how we were to spend the morning. 
 
 * It's a chance, my dear,' she responded. ' She's always 
 Amusing herself ; but she'll leave me to split my very throat 
 with yawning ail day long sometimes.' They're awfully 
 egotistical, those women especially this class. You see all 
 their girlhood through, they lived hardly ; and were beaten 
 and worked, and half-starved ; and thought a scrap of bacon 
 or a scrag of mutton a feast for the gods ; and could hardly 
 pin their rags together enough to look decent, or keep the 
 wind and the rain from their shivering bodies. "Well ! 
 when they come into this world, and are dressed like em- 
 presses, and stuf sweetmeats all day long, and drive hither 
 and thither, and eat and drink of the best the earth gives, 
 why naturally they can't have enough of it. And their 
 necklace stones are as big as walnuts ; and their wines are 
 poured out in floods ; and their dishes are all over seasoned ; 
 and their horses all step up to their very noses ; and their 
 houses are gilded from the area gate to the attic. They over- 
 do it all in fact, just because they are in love with it ; and in 
 the same way they are in love with pleasure, and exaggerate 
 the pretty prancing creature till her laugh is a roar, and her 
 dance is a breakdown, and her smile is a grimace, and her 
 rosebud is a peony, and her bright frolic is a frenzy.' 
 
 And Fanf reluche snapped her teeth together, with the air 
 ehe always wore when she thought she had said something 
 that was especially clever. 
 
 I listend bewildered and awed. 
 
 'But she never came out of hard life and starvation?' I 
 breathed scarcely audibly. 
 
 1 1 don't know where she cam 8 from, child,' returned Fan- 
 Creluehe pettishly. ' I declare you spoil all generalities by 
 
AT THE CORONET THEATRE, US 
 
 dragging them down to personalities you are almost as ba4 
 as a woman. As for starvation may be not. That was a 
 figure of speech. But she came from obscurity, my dear, 
 she can hardly read : she can hardly write ; she don't speak 
 common grammar even now ! She'll get awfully drunk on 
 her Jules Mumm and her Pomery ; and she's as common and 
 vulgar a creature, in all save her beauty, as any Irish fish- 
 wonian that ever swore at old Billingsgate. You know she 
 was playing in burlesques at a horrid little East-end theatre, 
 when we first heard of her (I lived with Eredegonde then) ; 
 Freddie is dead now ; killed herself with absinthe, and too 
 many truffles. Old Lord George picked Pearl out of the 
 East ; and first set her going in this sort of style, in a little 
 villa, with a pair of cream ponies and all the rest of it. 
 Lord G-eorge died, in less than three months, of apoplexy, 
 in at White's one night; and Laura had two or three adven- 
 tures, picking up no end of jewellery, and gold, and 
 nicknacks on the road as it were. Einally she threw herself 
 at Beltran's head ! and he took her to Baden; then brought 
 her out here in the burlesque of Corinne and the Crowner, 
 last Christmas. Act ! JSTo, she can't act a bit. She has no 
 talent. But she can look amazingly striking; and she poses 
 wonderfully well ; and as at our house we have chiefly those 
 burlesque or extravaganza pieces, good looks and attitudes 
 are perhaps the chief things that we want. Besides, she 
 don't depend on that: if Beltran broke with her, which he's 
 scarcely likely to do, and if she didn't take another engage- 
 ment, she'd have her handsome face and that dear little 
 innocent roulette wheel ! Pearl, so long as she is only the 
 fashion, can make her thousands as fast as she pleases ' 
 ' But had she really nothing then, two years ago ?' 
 ' Pshaw ! Those Pearls never do have anything while 
 they live in their oyster-shells. That is, till they've broken 
 a man or two. When Lord G-corge he was an old virtuoso, 
 you know, my dear, and poked about in very queer places 
 after his brie a brae ! first lit on her in Honndsditch, or 
 Shoreditch, or some ditch or another, she was drinking gin 
 and eating tripe in a little kennel of A rcom on 5 her music 
 hall, where she showed for two shillings a night, and lived 
 in an attic with a lo comedy man. He took a ten-pound 
 note for giving her up, and said he'd never sold a bit of 
 trash half so profitably in all the days of his life ' 
 
116 PUCK. 
 
 1 What was her real name ?' I pursued, haunted by this 
 vague fancy, which yet seemed to me utterly incredible and 
 insensate. 
 
 1 I'm sure, my dear, I don't know,' scoffed Fanfreluche, 
 * They never have any real names. There may be women 
 who have no alias ; but there are no women who have only 
 one ! She called herself " Laura Pearl" when she came 
 ' amongst us. If a mare win the Blue Ribbon of the Turf, 
 j what on earth does it matter whether she has been chris- 
 tened Venus Anadyomene, or Sally, in the stable where she 
 was foaled ? She has won the Derby ; and nobody cares a 
 straw what her name is. They pile their money on her ' 
 
 ' But they do care what her race was ?' I hinted with an 
 acuteness that surprised myself. 
 
 ' Ah, to be sure they do/ assented the little lady. ' But 
 then, my dear, men are much wiser about their horses than 
 they are about their women. They look for vice in their 
 racer's eye, but they never heed it in their mistress's ; and 
 though they wouldn't bet a single shilling on a screw, they'll 
 squander tens of thousands on a vixen ! ' 
 
 ' Since she was this vile low creature, why did you teh 
 me she was a sovereign ?' I grumbled in reproachful wonder. 
 
 ' Because she is one, you daisy,' said Fanfreluche, with 
 curt acerbity. ' The good people are afraid of " mob-rule" 
 in Europe just now, the fools Ithe very dregs of the mob 
 rule already ; the Mob Feminine raised on high from the 
 gutter, with its hands clutching gold, and its lips breathing- 
 poison, and its vices mimicked in palaces, and its lusts mur- 
 dering the brains, and the souls, and the bodies of men !' 
 
 I made no reply ; I was a little impatient of her exordium y 
 and I was pursued with this strange thought which had 
 risen in me, and which I rejected as madness. 
 
 I remembered the girl in her russet bodice with her 
 . yellow glass beads round her throat, chaffering in the ivy- 
 nung porch over the open pack of the little withered old 
 pedlar ; I remembered the woman who had blazed in her 
 rubies, and her flame-hued radiance of colour, under the 
 fiery glow of light in her supper chamber ; it was not 
 possible that these twain could be one ? 
 
 I felt blind and giddy, and sick at heart. 
 You are ill, you little simpleton,' said the sharp yet 
 kindly voice of my monitress. ' If you can't stand the sight 
 
AT THE CORONET THEATRE. 117 
 
 of evil in this world, lick up some arsenic at once, my dear! 
 All ! there's Lizzie come for us for a walk. She is a good 
 creature ; yes though she serves a Pearl. A woman may 
 be virtuous in any atmosphere if she like. Lizzie hates evil 
 with all her soul to he sure she is ugly, poor thing, which 
 makes innocence come easier! but she was once brought 
 by accident into the service of the Pearls, and now nobody 
 of another class would take her, and she must work and get 
 her wages, or her old mother would starve. So she stays. 
 There is good to be found everywhere, my dear, if you only 
 look for it and excellence in nothing.' 
 
 With which she trotted out of door into the Park, which 
 was nigh at hand ; and I followed her, very sad at heart still. 
 
 For no young thing can be consoled by the negative 
 comfort that good only barely balances evil on earth ; and 
 the assurance that excellence is as unattainable a the four- 
 leaved shamrock. When we are very young we could better 
 bear evil in extremes if thereby we could only obtain good 
 in extremes likewise. 
 
 It is the certainty that vice and virtue are so fearfully 
 even ; so perfectly weighted and measured in the same 
 scales ; so entirely impotent one against each other ; which 
 makes their drawn-battle through all the ages, for which 
 no end is perceivable in the future, so dreary, so depress- 
 ing, so hopelessly melancholy to all creatures that possess 
 the chivalries of an innocent youth. 
 
 ]n the latter half of the day we went out again ; and this 
 time I was promoted to the dignity of the front cushion in 
 the dainty little equipage which Laura Pearl drove herself, 
 with a tiny groom standing behind her, and two of the 
 handsomest grey ponies on the town in her silver-platac? 
 and red-ribboned harness. 
 
 She did not drive with any sort of skill, and she used the 
 whip unsparingly ; but she drove with fury, and without 
 any fear whatever, so that her science appeared considerable 
 and her narrow escapes were many and startling. 
 
 It was raw chilly spring weather, the Easter week falling 
 early that year, and there were not many people in the 
 Ladies' Mile ; but she never stopped under the leafless trees 
 without being surrounded by a bevy of good-looking, well- 
 bred men; and she did not sweep round the turning at full 
 trot without all the eyes that were there following her in 
 
n8 PUCK. 
 
 admiration. Indeed so great was the homage she received 
 for even some women in splendid carriages gazed at her 
 with intent interest that I began once more to think that 
 she must be a crowned queen of some kind, and that Fan- 
 freluche had only been laughing at me when she talked of 
 two shillings a night, and the Argyle Rooms, and the Low 
 Comedy lover who took ten pounds. 
 
 ' Look, how they stare after her, and how the men bow ? * 
 I whispered to Fanfreluche. ' She must be very eminent 
 and powerful in some way ? ' 
 
 * Never said she wasn't, my dear,' returned that cynic with 
 a grin. ' She's one of the best chaff-cutting machines for 
 chopping up men's fortunes and souls in double quick time 
 that has ever been wound up and set going on earth ! ' 
 
 ' But they can't worship wickedness ? ' I expostulated. 
 
 She grinned again. 
 
 ' Can't they, my dear ? "Will you tell me what they do 
 worship then ? The greed of the capitalist, the fraud of the 
 diplomatist, the time-serving of the statesman, the lies of 
 the journalist, the cants of the author, the chicaneries of 
 the merchant, they are all worshipped if only successful. 
 And why then object to the successful vice of a woman ? 
 You know the Ark of Israel, and the calf of Belial, were 
 both made of gold ; Eeligion has never since changed the 
 metal of her one adoration.' 
 
 I did not understand, and kept silence, watching the 
 scene that to me was so strange and beguiling ; though 
 [Fanfreluche turned up her nose at it, because, being Easter 
 week, there was nobody in London, as she said with much 
 scorn : even her beloved Beltran having gone with that 
 noonday to Paris. 
 
 After the Park, we drove to the shops ; and my im- 
 pression that our charioteer was a regal ruler, and that 
 the chatter of Fanfreluche was untrue, was deepened by 
 the excessive deference with which the bowing shopmen 
 treated her. 
 
 They came out, and stood bareheaded in the sharp east 
 wind, listening reverentially to her commands ; or when she 
 descended, and entered their establishments, welcomed her 
 with that hideous subserviency of the snob-mercantile to a 
 good customer, which can only be equalled by his equally 
 lideous brutality to a penniless debtor. "We followed her, 
 
AT THE CORONET THEATRE. H9 
 
 Fanf reluche taking the initiative, and nothing could exceed 
 the civility of the business people ; in one place they gave 
 me a ball, in another they fed me with macaroons, in a third 
 they let my little dusty feet trample a new amber satin 
 dress unchastised, in a fourth they kissed me. 
 I became quite puffed-up with pride. 
 
 * You little idiot ! ' sneered Fanf reluche. * You think it's 
 for yourself ? My dear, if Laura Pearl liked to go through 
 the town with a boa-constrictor, every shopkeeper would 
 fondle the Jieptile, and stuff him with rabbits. She pays 
 better than anybody going you see she's so astonishingly 
 honest ! If they get arrested she'll only shrug her shoul- 
 ders ; but she'll always keep well to windward of 'White- 
 cross-street herself ! ' 
 
 I did not answer. My mouth was full of my red-leather 
 ball, and I thought some jealousy lurked in the cynic, 
 because when they gave me a macaroon they only offered 
 her a very plain biscuit. 
 
 I did her wrong in this. But whenever yet did any living 
 creature not prefer to imagine ill-natured envy in a friend, 
 than to suppose a compliment to himself insincere ? 
 
 By the time we had been through half-a-dozen of these 
 establishments, the pony-carriage was piled high with 
 scores of tempting packages, covered with the crimson- 
 lined tiger-skin. 
 
 ' What can she do with them all ? ' I asked, getting over 
 my anger. 
 
 1 She don't want one of them.' said Eanf reluche curtly, 
 as though the plain biscuit still rankled in her mind. ' But 
 she likes to get them, and strew them round her, and break 
 them, or burn them, or toss them to her maid. Ah, my 
 dear, you little dream the ecstatic delight that exists in 
 Waste, for the vulgarity of a mind that has never enjoyed 
 Possession, till it comes to riot at one blow in Spoliation ! ' 
 
 ' I do wish you would answer me plainly,' I said sulkily, 
 without without ' 
 
 * Epigrams ?' she added sharply; 'I dare say you do, my 
 dear. Epigrams are the salt of life ; but they wither up 
 the grasses of foolishness, and naturally the grasses hate 
 to be sprinkled therewith.' 
 
 At that moment we had reached our home, which was an 
 elegant little bijou house, near the Park; and Laura Pearl 
 
120 PUCK. 
 
 as she was about to put her jewelled whip in the rest, hit 
 me a sharp crack with the long white lash as I jumped oub 
 eagerly to the ground ; I shrieked, and she laughed : I 
 felt sure then that she was no sovereign, but only a rexy 
 vile woman. 
 
 1 What had I done ? ' I asked piteously of Fanfreluehe ; 
 wishing now that I had given her the macaroon. 
 
 ' Nothing in life, my dear,' she replied. ' She hits you 
 as she ruins them because she finds fun in the sport. But 
 you see she never hits me why ? Because the first time 
 ehe did I bit her. To show your teeth, and make them felt 
 too, is the only way with women like her. She whips you, 
 and you crinch to her she'll hit you a dozen times in a 
 day. She flies at them, and they give her a cheque, or a 
 diamond, or a oarriage-horse ; she'll have her ruries a 
 dozen times in a week. If you treated her to your teeth, 
 and they to a few sound curses, she would trouble neither 
 you nor them any more ' 
 
 ' Is Beltran even afraid of her? ' I whispered. 
 
 1 Well, he is ' ' said Fanf reluche, with a sigh. ' He's as bold 
 *s a lion with men ; hard as nails in the hunting field ; 
 rought two duels abroad in his young days ; and saved five 
 sailors from a sinking ship last autumn. But he is afraid of 
 the Pearl. Not afraid of Jierjou know, but afraid of a 
 scene, which he hates ; afraid or her temper, which is the 
 devil's ; afraid of her vengeance, if ever he left her. Afraid 
 well ! afraid, as the boldest men are of a woman whom 
 they know is bad to the core, yet whom they love for her 
 beauty, and fancy is faithful to them, and have trusted with 
 more secrets 01 their lives than they care to remember. 
 Why do these connections often last all the years that they 
 do ? Love ? Pooh ! Very little of that ; but very much of 
 the force of habit, and very much of the dread of annoyance.' 
 
 * But why put themselves in the power ' 
 
 ' Tut, my dear ! Why does a lad climb a walnut-tree when 
 fee knows a spring-gun is underneath ? He only thinks of 
 eating the walnuts ; and always trusts that this one parti- 
 cular spring-gun is unloaded.' 
 
 ' Well, some guns are rusty and will not do harm ? ' I 
 had heard Ben Dare say that the guns in the preserves 
 fcrere thus sometimes after heavy rains, and I thought the 
 allegorical allusion came in neat and pat. 
 
AT THE CORONET THEATRE. 12 1 
 
 Possibly, my dear, said my lady, who did not like other 
 people to be epigrammatic. 'But if a gun ever rusts 
 enough to prevent explosion, no woman ever lets her power 
 of ev3 rust long enough to get out of use ! And now scam- 
 per upstairs to Lizzie ; I want my dinner. There'll be no 
 tun to-night ; Pearl goes to dine with a Whig Duke (the 
 Privy Seal), at one of the big inns.' 
 
 ' Why does a Duke have to dine at an inn ? ' I asked in 
 wonder ; my only notion of an inn being derived from the 
 'ittle public of the Miners' Joy in Derbyshire. 
 
 * Why, you simpleton, he don't invite Laura to dine with 
 his Duchess at home, does he ? Besides, these huge hotels 
 are charming. Last season I belonged to the G-uards ; and 
 I went every Sunday with them to their crack dinners at 
 the Leviathan.' 
 
 ' I thought the G-uards had a mess ? ' I had heard the 
 bull-dogs talk of these things. 
 
 ' You goose, so they have. But they can't take Pearl et 
 Cie. to it ; and they like Pearls on a Sunday. Pearls are 
 their way of keeping the seventh day holy ; so they dine at 
 the Leviathan, or Eichmond, or Greenwich. G-et upstairs ! ' 
 
 We spent a quiet evening, when the mistress of our des- 
 tinies had swept down to her brougham at nine o'clock, 
 gloriously apparelled in a marvellous glimmer of hues, and 
 fountain spray of laoei. Panf reluche looked after her with 
 a grin. 
 
 ' If she only never drew off her gloves and never opened 
 her lips, who on earth could tell her from the proudest 
 grande dame of them all ? She'll come home in good humour, 
 fcrivy Seal has a very grand, gracious fashion of doing things, 
 She'll be sure to find a big sapphire drop in her bonbon- 
 cracker, and a jewelled holder with a rare flower or two 
 by her plate, and very likely a mechanical humming-bird to 
 fly out of the epergne, and nestle in her bosom, witfca choice 
 ring in his mouth. His grace has very pretty inventive 
 ways. But he's cut down all the woods round his noble old 
 castle : and he won't pay one of his son's debts at Ch. Ch.' 
 
 ' Does he pay his own ? ' 
 
 ' My dear ! a Duke and a Privy Seal never is asked to 
 condescend to such a commonplace ! ' 
 
 * Is Beltran jealous of him ? ' 
 
 ' Pooh ! Jealous isn't his form at- all. 
 
12 * [PUCK. 
 
 indifferent of mortals, though he is in love with her in his 
 way. Besides, he thinks she's faithful to him. Hecouldn'* 
 do more if he were a husband ; and she a G-riselda and at 
 Arria Paetus ! ' 
 
 And Fanfreluche grinned again with the look which al 
 ways made my blood run cold, and made me believe that 
 after all this good-natured, bitter-tongued little black thing 
 might prove in the end a limb of Satanus. Which was an 
 uncomfortable thought of the only friend that I now pos- 
 sessed in the width of the world. 
 
 ' The Coronet's open to-night,' said Fanfreluche to me a 
 few evenings later. ' There's the new extravaganza coming 
 on. When she goes do you follow me, and nip into her 
 brougham, and hide yourself as I do under the silk mat 
 She won't notice, ten to one, or if she do notice she won't 
 care, so long as we make no noise. I often go myself ; it's 
 awful fun. They quarrel fit to kill themselves.' 
 
 And with much trepidation of soul I prepared to follow 
 my daring leader. At a little before eight Laura Pearl 
 passed out to her neat night-brougham ; and with rare good 
 luck we eluded all vigilance, and were concealed among the 
 curls of the friendly mat and covered by the flow of her 
 velvet skirts without any one being aware of it, or at least 
 attempting to eject us. 
 
 I shivered and trembled ; of where I was going I had no 
 gort of conception. And from what I had seen of the stage 
 at the Wake-feast I was firmly persuaded that ' play-actors ' 
 were chiefly armed with whips and swords ; and that there 
 was always first and foremost amongst them one red-and- 
 white devil, in a motley-painted skin, with a mouth grinning 
 from ear to ear, who thumped everybody right and left, and 
 sat down upon babies till they were flattened to pancakes. 
 
 If there should be a clown here ? and if he should sit 
 me ? 
 
 However, curiosity is, generally speaking, a stronger pas- 
 sion than even cowardice, and it proved to be so with myself. 
 
 The Coronet, as I learned subsequently, was a very 
 fashionable theatre. It had ruined everybody that had ever 
 had anything to do with it j and had therefore made good 
 its title to fashion as strongly as Pearl had made hers. 
 
 It had been erected some dozen years ; and in that space 
 of time had brought to grief no less than fourteen various 
 
AT THE CORONET THEATR . 113 
 
 proprietors. The veritable owner of it was, oddly enough, 
 a country clergyman, to whom it had been left by his father, 
 a metropolitan contractor, who had first built it, and then 
 claimed it for debt. His Eeverence was a strictly Evan- 
 gelical per son, and, as I have heard, denounced the autumnal 
 fair held in his south-country village with fearful anathema. 
 But he did not sell the theatre ; and every half-year his 
 lawyers transmitted him six hundred pounds, the biannual 
 rental of those hapless mortals who had been severally 
 trapped into becoming lessee. The good lessor drew the 
 money, but always ignored the source, and spoke vaguely 
 thereof to his agents as ' my late father's properties in the 
 west-end of town.' 
 
 I have heard also that the defunct contractor left him 
 two gin-palaces ; but of this I am not sure : at any rate, 
 this reverend person had so many thousands a-year in 
 addition to his piety, that his bishop presented him with a 
 living of very high value, feeling it apostolically incumbent 
 upon himself to obey the precept of ' to those who have 
 much shall much be given.' 
 
 The first lessee of the Coronet had been a man in the 
 Guards, whom it had ruined in one winter season. It 
 brought him so deeply into the Jews' hands, that he had to 
 sell at a ridiculous loss. 
 
 The person who succeeded him, being an actor himself 
 with some capital, should have known something of what he 
 was about. He was fool enough, however, to attempt high 
 art, and was smashed utterly in a twelvemonth ; exquisite 
 scenery, for which he had paid 700Z., going at auction for 
 101., and genuine buhl cabinets, purchased in Paris for 200Z, 
 apiece, being knocked down for a 51. note. I believe he 
 died very miserably in a wretched estaminet in the north 
 of France, as a man deserved to do who insulted the Lon- 
 don public by offering to improve its taste. 
 
 It would fill pages to recount the various adventures of 
 the various proprietors of the theatre, which I heard by 
 degrees from the omniscient little Fanfreluche. Eew 
 escaped with only a scorch from its furnace that smelted 
 their gold so fast : none escaped with entir e impunity ; many 
 tursed it loudly and deeply. One pretty boy (although so 
 roung, already in your parliament, and of great promise 
 {here), the younger son of a great peer, took it for an actrese 
 
124 PUCK. 
 
 whom he adored a beautiful brown foreign singer, fot 
 whom on his little stage he brought out the delicate, de- 
 licious Venetian louffe opera, that was caviare to the En- 
 glish musical world. In two short seasons, the boy-politician 
 spent so much over this miniature opera and over her, and 
 plunged so hopelessly into the abyss which money-lenders 
 dig for the young and the rash, that on a stilly June mid- 
 night, just as the hour the House was closing to the public 
 and opening to its privileged few, a shot was heard in his 
 own little brilliant supper-chamber ; and when the people 
 flocked thither, they found him stretched across its thres- 
 holddead. 
 
 Some said that a scene he had by chance witnessed be- 
 tween his dark lady and one of his own comrades in hei 
 retiring-room had more to do with it than even his losses 
 in money. It might be so ; at any rate, the Israelites put 
 in claims for thirty thousand pounds, spent in those two 
 seasons when he haJ kept the Coronet open. They said also 
 that when the beautiful brunette found him lifeless, with 
 his own bullet through a heart that had scarcely beaten 
 three-and-twenty years, she shrieked and wept, and tore 
 tier hair in agonising grief; but all the same she drew in the 
 big onyx ring off his left hand, and unhooked from his 
 watch-chain the jewelled locket that held her portrait. 
 
 All these things, of course, I heard later. At the moment 
 we drove up to the stage-door, the Coronet was leased by 
 our friend, Vere Essendine, Viscount Beltran, who had 
 owned it for the last two years or so, and who (as it was 
 whispered) had lost as much as any of his predecessors, 
 even in that brief space, only that he would probably 
 choose to show longer fight, and would not so quickly pre- 
 vail on himself to relinquish a favourite amusement. 
 
 ' Keep close to me,' whispered Fanfreluche. ' Close I- 
 or else you'll get stolen.' 
 
 As we descended, the glow of the countless gas-lamps, 
 the pressure of the waiting crowds, the huge letters on the 
 glaring posters, the noise and the confusion, and the glittel 
 of the cross-lights so dazed and terrified me, that I was in 
 danger of forgetting her injunction, and being trampled to 
 death in the street. However, by some miracle, I escaped 
 destruction, and followed my patroness through what ap- 
 peared to me the most hideous dark passages I had erei 
 beheld 
 
AT THE CORONET THEATRE. 125 
 
 'She goes to dress. I will show you over the house/ 
 said Fanfreluche in her pertest manner, as she trotted 
 along through this seemingly interminable maze. 
 
 I heard loud gay "bursts of music; I was blinded by alter- 
 nations of sooty darkness and of blazing light ; huge walla 
 of canvas trembled like the shaking walls of an undermined 
 house ; vast barriers of timber and of iron loomed above- 
 head and around ; loud shocks of sound reverberated 
 through the melody-filled air, as men in paper caps pushed 
 to and fro, in grooves, enormous masses of wood and metal. 
 I was surrounded by devils, imps, fairies, butterflies, pea- 
 sants in white muslin, shepherds with ribboned crooks ; 
 woolly lambs standing on two legs and sucking their 
 thumbs; green and white water-lilies with their arms 
 akimbo, and their tongues thrust in their cheeks at a joke ; 
 a winged sylph drinking from a pot of porter, and a golden- 
 haired wood-elf smoking a cigarette. In a word, I was in 
 that mystic region commonly known as 'behind the scenes.' 
 
 My first impression was, that it was a Pandemonium 
 amidst an earthquake of canvas and timber; my second, 
 that it was extraordinarily commonplace with all its bizar- 
 rerie, and intensely vulgar and dreary with all its glitter. 
 
 The time was an entr'acte; the previous piece was 
 ended ; the burlesque not begun. From the body of the 
 house, of which I caught an oblique glimpse, there came at 
 intervals, above the music, hideous shrieks, hisses, and 
 stamping noises. 
 
 1 The gods are impatient for a break-down/ said Fanf re- 
 luche to me ; though why gods were there at all, and why 
 they desired any one to break down in their performances, 
 was not within my comprehension. 
 
 She hurried me hither and thither with breathless rapi- 
 dity. I could only catch flying speeches, and passing 
 glimpses. 
 
 'My old man's in front. He'll be good for a necklace 
 when he sees me in this here,' said a "Water-lily, twisting 
 herself round in the shortest and most transparent of gauze 
 tunics. 
 
 ' A necklace of brass f arthins, then ! ' sneered the gold- 
 kaired "Wood-elf. ' A ugly old cove like that, as is a filthy 
 Jew-pawnbroker, by the looks on him ! ' 
 
 ' He ain't ! ' screeched the Lily. ' He's a real live lord, 
 and you knows it. He's Lord Algernon Vereker he is ! 
 
ia5 PUCK. 
 
 It's only yer spite, 'cause the stalls don't care a dam f$ 
 yer cellar flip-flap ! Did ever you get a boo-kay, Miss, 13 
 all yer born days ? Leastways, since yer mother sent yei 
 out to sell yer pennorths o' tripe and greens?' 
 
 What the injured "Wood-elf might reply, and what fear, 
 ful and veiled sarcasm might lie in the tripe-and-greens 
 allusion, I never knew, for I was hurried away to a little 
 dirty bare room, where three Fairy Princes were eating hot 
 kidneys and drinking bottled porter. 
 
 The three Fairy Princes were gorgeous in bright satins 
 and gold lace, and showed elegant legs in white silk stock- 
 ings ; and would have been all three really very pretty 
 girls, but for the terrible red paint round the mouth, and 
 black paint under the eyes, and greased white powder on 
 their foreheads and arms. 
 
 * Who's in front ? ' asked Prince Azor, with her mouth 
 full of kidney. 
 
 'O, all ker swells/ said Prince Silvertongue savagely, 
 'and all the Press lot. First nights is always just alike. 
 Packed!' 
 
 'I see your little chap in the stalls, Mary Ann,' said 
 Prince Charming. 'You oughter do business with him. 
 Uncommon soft ; good for a bracelet a-night ; if you keep 
 him well in hand ' 
 
 'Better nor that!' said Prince Silvertongue scornfully 
 and mysteriously. 'Ain't there no hysters? I hate 
 kidneys, leastways unless I'm at Evans's.' 
 
 ' A cursed bad piece this here,' grumbled Prince Charm- 
 ing. 'No; there ain't no hysters. A cursed bad piece- 
 The Mouse have spiled it out and out, just to give her her 
 dances and attitudes. He's awful spoons on her. I've a 
 good mind to pay forfeit, and go to Alhambra.' 
 
 ' O, lawk ! Do take care, you stupid ! You've upset all 
 the rouge, and it's a-runm'ng among the gravy !' 
 
 4 Stupid yourself ! ' retorted Prince Azor, who was the one 
 apostrophised. 'You've addled your head along of that 
 gin sling. You've only got two lines to say, and I'll 
 swear you'll say them upside down ' 
 
 The call-boy's shrill treble was at this instant shouting, 
 'Miss Delany, Miss Visconti, Miss Yilliers !' And answer- 
 ing to these patrician names, away the Fairy Princea 
 rushed, leaving the rouge to fraternise with the kidneys^ 
 
AT THE CORONET THEATRE. 127 
 
 8nd their quarrel to wait over till the next pause in the 
 performances. 
 
 ' Curtain's up ! ' said Fanf reluche curtly, as a storm of 
 Applause greeted the appearance of the three Princes, who 
 Appeared to be prime favourites with the audience, and who 
 were smiling with radiant sweetness before the 'floats.' 
 
 The shrill treble vociferated afresh : 
 
 'Madame de Rohan! Miss Plantagenet-Courcey !' 
 
 I gazed breathless, to behold the representatives of those 
 historic and time-honoured races, so dear to me through my 
 favourite Trench Memoirs. The two who responded to the 
 call were my friends Water-lily and "Wood-elf, as they in 
 their turn sprang on with light pirouettes and fond embraces 
 before the footlights. 
 
 Away after them went pell-mell the imps, and the lambs 
 and the shepherds, in what appeared to me inextricable 
 confusion, though they kept perfect step to the music, and 
 soon formed figure dances out of the chaos. 
 
 ' What in the world is this ? ' I asked, in a very agony of 
 amazement. 
 
 Fanfreluche turned her little nose in the air. 
 
 * The merest business, my dear ! The sort of senseless 
 whirligig all these things open with. Grive the public 
 twenty pair of good legs a side, and you may treat it to just 
 what hash of puns and balderdash of verse you like. But 
 "we do do the thing better than most houses. Beltran has 
 all the dresses from Paris ; and he sent over the imps 
 themselves from the Folies-Marigny. English children 
 always have too much flesh to make into sprightly demons 
 and a heavy glum devil's a dreadful thing.' 
 
 With that she rushed under a white-bearded, ruby-robed 
 king's legs, and darting round at the back of the scenes 
 brought me out on the other side of the stage. 
 
 'Look at him!' said my chaperone. 'He only comes 
 early first nights. How indifferent he is ! And yet there's 
 over a thousand gone clean in this blessed burlesque to- 
 night, not to speak of all the expenses afterwards !' 
 
 She referred to Beltran, who leant with his back against 
 an iron girder, and a cigar in his mouth, talking to two 
 other men ; with a look of that utter indifference, and of 
 that curious quietude, with which such men as he are 
 pleased to cover the natural restlessness and recklessness of 
 kheir gamester's temperament. 
 
128 
 
 PUCK. 
 
 * Nearly a thousand pounds gone to-night,' I cried aghast, 
 * and he can look like that ! ' 
 
 'Pooh, my dear,' scoffed Fanfreluche. 'Last season, 
 when I belonged to him, he lost three thousand one night 
 at a certain club where they don't play money down 
 more's the pity ! and he walked out of it just as calm as 
 he is now, and smoked, and read a new story of Derry 
 Denzil's through before he went to bed.' 
 
 ' He must be enormously rich ? ' 
 
 Fanfreluche grinned. 
 
 ' My dear, I've seen a millionaire bemoan himself for days 
 over a five-pound note left in a railway carriage ; but if a 
 man bears troubles and losses easily, why, I know he's a 
 gentleman and a beggar ! ' 
 
 ' But how can a beggar nave thousands to lose ? ' 
 
 ' Don't take one so literally ! You literal people are the 
 bores of society and the murderers of wit. Look there 
 that tall big fair man with him is one of his pet freinds, 
 Paget Desmond, of the First Life ; and that other one with 
 the stoop in the shoulders and the red beard is the great 
 censor morum, Dudley Moore, proprietor and editor of the 
 Midas. All social sins shrink under his scourge ; what a 
 pity they haven't that alliteration in the burlesque ! and 
 all social sinners are mercilessly exposed under his search- 
 ing lantern. There is no one comparable to him for stoning 
 a man of genius in his virtuous fury; there is no one 
 touches him for moral lessons, conveyed with a scholarly 
 asceticism that utterly ruins the transgressor whom it 
 rebukes ' 
 
 1 And yet he is here to-night ? ' 
 
 ' O yes, to see the forty pair of legs ! And has in town 
 a meek-eyed mistress to whom he is moderately faithful 
 because she " stands being sworn at " so well ; and keeps 
 down in the south a charming little abode that bears the 
 closest family likeness to the Pare aux Cerfs. His virtues 
 are nobly printed on fair white papjfer ; his vices are only 
 written on the dusky rags of broken honour.' 
 
 * He must be a very bad man ? ' 
 
 ' Pooh ! He is a great man ; and wields a great power 
 in its way. Why, my dear, if the Midas condescend (which 
 is doubtful, for it is aesthetic and highly intellectual) to say 
 that our forty pair of fine legs have placed us at the very 
 
AT THE CORONET THEATRE. 129 
 
 tip-top of high art and of moral excellence, why the public 
 will say so after it. Other ages gabbled their paternosters 
 because they were priest-ridden; ours gabbles its platitudes 
 because it is press-ridden/ 
 
 But I was tired of hearing her chatter, and looked around 
 me. 
 
 Close by was a door that stood a little open ; beyond it 
 was a very comfortless sort of dressing-room ; not much 
 better than that in which the fairy princes had eaten their 
 kidneys ; and out of it, as a butterfly from its dingy chry- 
 salis, emerged at that moment Laura Pearl. 
 
 She was exquisitely arrayed in golden tissues, that floated 
 about her like sunlit air, and showed all the curves of her 
 form, all the grace of her limbs, while a girdle of real 
 sapphires flashed fire beneath her breast, and a coronal of 
 the wondrous blue lilies of the western world glowed above 
 her brow. 
 
 ' She's about as much as they'll stand,' muttered Dudley 
 Moore. 
 
 I surmise that he alluded to the transparency of her 
 draperies. 
 
 Beltran nodded to her, without removing his cigar. 
 
 ' Knew those blue lilies would tell,' he murmured. 'You 
 look very well, Laura.' 
 
 * Thank you for nothing ! ' she responded graciously, with 
 much scorn. * I go on now, don't I ? ' 
 
 1 In a minute. Little Courcey is encored in that forest 
 song.' 
 
 The Pearl's brow lowered and darkened : the first scene 
 had taken about ten minute* ; the audience had not yet 
 beheld herself ; and yet t^ej yrare stopping to encore the 
 Wood-elf (who was certainly charmingly pretty) in a little 
 snatch of a ballad of ten bars ! 
 
 1 What a fright that Courcey girl always makes of her- 
 self ! ' she muttered. ' Who saw her dress ? she's like a 
 bundle of green twigs and grass ! ' 
 
 'I should be very happy to see her dress/ responded 
 Beltran. ' Unluckily, she locks her door.' 
 
 The Pearl flashed a savage glance at him. 
 
 ' Well, if Paris couldn't give you better nor that in cos- 
 tumes,' she laughed viciously, ' you might just as well have 
 gone to ataHy-shop. What do you say, Mr. Moore?' 
 
i$0 PUCK. 
 
 1 My dear lady ! I buy so many second-hand articles 
 when I pay my staff for their written opinions, that of 
 course I stand up for tally-shops with all my heart and 
 soul!' 
 
 Beltran laughed ; and Laura Pearl glanced rapidly yet 
 stupidly from one to another, as though suspecting them of 
 making fun of her. 
 
 At that juncture the Mouse rushed in from the back ; 
 tremulous, agitated, flushed, eager. 
 
 ' You should be on, you should be on ! ' he cried to her. 
 ' For mercy's sake don't keep them waiting ! ' 
 
 1 O, gammon ! They'll wait as long as I choose !' she re- 
 torted; but however she thought better of it, and as the 
 elves, and the lambs, and the imps, and the devils rushed off 
 the boards in two opposite armies, she glided herself on to 
 the stage in her character of an enchanted water-queen j 
 with whom the three fairy princes were destined to become 
 wildly enamoured. 
 
 From where we stood, an oblique view of the stage, and 
 of a little piece of the stalls, and of the stage-box on the 
 opposite side of the house, was obtainable. The fury of 
 applause was great ; even the stalls clapped their delicately 
 gloved hands ; and she was received with tumultuous 
 welcome. 
 
 Tc me she looked only a very scantily-dressed woman, 
 going through strange antics in a labyrinth of wooden beamu 
 and flapping sails of painted canvas ; but I supposed she 
 looked very different from the 'front.' 
 
 That is just the difference that makes everything BO 
 curiously altered to different spectators. And your stall- 
 lounger always thinks your stage-carpenter sucn a prosaic 
 dolt ; and your stage-carpenter always thinks your stall- 
 lounger such a consummate fool; and will so think, no 
 doubt until the end of time ; at least so long as stalls and 
 ^ies shall have their being. 
 
 AH that followed only bewildered me more utterly than 
 ever. 
 
 It seemed one endless succession of wild rushes hither 
 and thither on the part of the elves, and lambs, and shep- 
 herds, and devils : and of the most unaccountable conduct 
 in the fairy princes, who combined the most mediaeval of 
 dresses, and the most chivalrous of heroics, with the broadest 
 of street slang, and the wildest of casino dances. 
 
AT THE CORONET THEATRE. ijf 
 
 There was a romantic minstrel, love-born and desolate, 
 with curls that hung to his waist, yet who bore a banjo and 
 sung a yelling negro melody. There were river gods, with 
 a noble old Neptune and a beauteous young Aquarius, who 
 yet at a certain point discarded all dignity, and abandoned 
 themselves to the Cancan in a manner worthy of students 
 <&f Paris. There were charming delicate nymphs who at a 
 jignal became living aisles of roses, or blossomed severally 
 into glowing azalea shrubs, yet who after realising all the 
 Greek dreams of Dryads and Hamadryads, burst all at once 
 into a comic chorus that made the delighted house literally 
 shriek aloud with laughter. 
 
 [Finally, there was the enchanted princess herself, who 
 looked like a poem and moved like a picture/with the bright 
 azure lilies, and the blue flashing sapphires ; yet who, at the 
 very moment in which she was rescued from her captivity 
 and betrothed to Prince Silvertongue, broke forth into a 
 doggrel declamation, and danced with all the vigour of a 
 sailor, and all the license of a debardeur, first the hornpipe 
 and then a breakdown ! And O shade of outraged 
 Thalia what applause she got ! 
 
 ' 1 think it's a success,' said Beltran quietly, when, the 
 piece having come to an end, thejhouse shouted for her, and 
 for the Princess, and for the Wood-elf. 
 
 ' Not a doubt of it,' answered Dudley Moore. 
 
 'I'm glad little Courcey's got a call,' said Paget Desmond. 
 ' She's a jolly little girl.' 
 
 ' She's the best lot amongst 'em,' assented Derry Denzil. 
 ' That little rat's as honest as the day.' 
 
 ' They seem to take to it, don't they ?' asked Leo Lance, 
 pale and breathless. 
 
 'Yes; I think your're pretty safe this time, Mouse/ 
 assented Beltran. ' But for heaven's sake don't make them 
 talk such awful nonsense, next thing you do.' 
 
 'Nonsense,' echoed the Mouse. 'Why that's just what 
 makes it swing smooth. If there'd been ten ounces of 
 sense in it you'd have heard nothing but hisses.* 
 
 'He's quite right,' said^Dudley Moore gravely. 'The 
 lucky knack of combining the most perfect scenic effect 
 with the most utterly unredeemed vulgarity in speech and 
 gesture is the great essential of dramatic success. Here he 
 DAS very fittingly wedded Undine and the Belle au Boi* 
 
 K 2 
 
Dormante in his story, two of the most delicately poetic 
 legends in their different manners that we possess ; and 
 he has mixed with them break-downs, balderdash, casino 
 dancing, street jargon, countless execrable puns, and occa- 
 sional indecent allusions. The result is success. The 
 barbarism and ^izarrerie of the whole thing is undoubtedly 
 rather funny, and precisely hits the popular tastes and 
 desires. I congratulate Mr. Lance immensely myself. The 
 wisest man possible is the man that knows his own age.' 
 
 The poor Mouse looked dissatisfied and chagrined at thia 
 questionable form of felicitation : but he did not dare to 
 complain of the almighty Censor's sarcasm. 
 
 Beltran laughed, a little impatiently. 
 
 ' What a patriotic task, then,' he said with a dash of self- 
 contempt, 'to supply the sinews of war to those barbarians !' 
 
 Dudley Moore shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 ' My dear Beltran, you must be patriotic, for you amuse 
 the people at a loss, I believe, of some fifty pounds a-night 
 every season. But that isn't your fault. You supply them 
 with what they like best. Our ancestors performed their 
 mysteries and their mummeries at different seasons and on 
 different stages ; but we, who don't believe in the one and 
 are fearfully bored by the other, mix them both together, 
 and take the decoction, indifferently, both in Lent and at 
 Christmas. 
 
 ' But we are not so bad after all?' said Denzil. ' I sus- 
 pect that sort of cry has been raised in each century. Look 
 at those gospel parodies, those religious plays you speak of, 
 in the Middle Ages. Were they really anything so very 
 much better in taste, do you think, than these burlesques 
 and pantomimes of ours ?' 
 
 ' Perhaps not better. But I say they were duly distinct 
 from the fooling ; and the fooling too' was more genuine 
 jlian ours, 1 am convinced. Pantomime was once the 
 genius of gesticulation: the Pulcinella, the Stenterello, the 
 Scaramouch, the Arlecchino, required talent of no siit/ht 
 dort in the mimics who represented them. To tell a whole 
 tale solely by the means of gesture and facial expression 
 that was ingenious at the least. But what ingenuity is 
 there exhibited by a man's louping about in woman's 
 elothes, spouting bad puns ; or in a girl's casting herseK 
 aitp the violent and ungraceful postures of the Cancan I 
 It is simply vulgar, unredeemable* vulgar-' 
 
AT THE CORONET THEATRE. 133 
 
 ' Well, the modern public likes it,' hinted the discomfited 
 House. 
 
 ' Of course. You know the Eoman story of the people 
 rating the pantomime plays a thousand times higher than 
 those performed by "only" the living personaggi. Well, 
 your public, Mr. Lance, is much like the Italian populace. 
 They will have the scene painter, the sensational realism, 
 the Lancashire clog-dance, the pot-house jig, the wooden 
 puppets, in point of fact, bobbing upon wires, sooner than 
 they will have the living flesh and blood ; pathos, and pas- 
 sion, and genius.' 
 
 Beltran threw his cigar away, right into a heap of tinfoil 
 and muslin. 
 
 'You're quite right; it's awful stuff/ he murmured. 
 'But when I tried classic art with that wonderful French 
 woman you remember? the gallery was crammed full, 
 but the stalls yawned awfully the first night, and never 
 came afterwards. Now look at the stalls; we've had tr 
 add three rows to them. And what's done it ? Nothing 
 but Laura's breakdowns.' 
 
 Dudley Moore took snuff out of a tiny box. 
 
 ' My dear fellow, people don't want to think after dinners 
 of a dozen services. High feeding and comet wines induce 
 a frame of mind in which good ankles and bad puns are far 
 preferable to anything that displays intelligence in the ac- 
 tors, and requires intelligence in its auditors. Pray don't 
 attempt to return to high art while you've those forty pairs 
 of fine legs and the Pearl's cellar-flap dancing.* 
 
 1 Hang you cynics ! ' said Beltran. ' Come and have some 
 supper/ 
 
 At that moment Laura Pearl came off the boards, she 
 and Prince Silvertongue, literally covered with bouquets ; 
 the little Wood-elf had only one, a mere cheap knot of 
 early roses, deftly tied with a blue ribbon, probably the gift 
 of some boy-artist or young musician. 
 
 'You did that amazingly well, Laura/ said her lover 
 going up to her ; ' I'm really very much obliged to you/ 
 
 ' bother ! ' she responded graciously. * It's a wretch of 
 a piece, little Mouse; you should have given me all the 
 breakdowns, and I've only that beggarly one at the end. 
 Vere, do send me something to drink into my room. I'm 
 dead-tired, and as thirsty as pigs on a market day/ 
 
i$4 PUCK. 
 
 1 So you had a call at last ? ' said Beltran kindly to the 
 little Courcey, as the Pearl disappeared in her dressing- 
 room, * And some flowers too, I see.' 
 
 The "Wood-elf's blue eyes sparkled. 
 
 ' It was that little song, my lord, as Mr. Denzil put in 
 for me. Mayn't I sing it every night ? Do let me ! ' 
 
 ' Of course you may. It is in your part.' 
 
 1 But but,' whispered the Wood-elf, who seemed shyer 
 than any other of this astonishingly voluble and dare-devil 
 sisterhood, ' if you won't be angry, she said as how she'd 
 have it cut out. She couldn't abide me being called along 
 of her ; and if I don't have the song they'll hiss me.' 
 
 ' Confound her ! ' muttered Bel trail, as the poor little 
 Wood-elf turned hot and cold at her own temerity in ad- 
 venturing a remonstrance against the person \vho was om- 
 nipotent with the lordly owner of the Coronet. ' You shall 
 have the song, never fear. I'll speak to "Wynch myself 
 about it.' 
 
 Wynch was the acting and ostensible manager ; and the 
 Wood-elf's soul was comforted. 
 
 * What he says he'll do, he'll do,' she murmured, cherish- 
 ing fondly her knot of roses, while the costly bouquets 
 showered at Pearl were first stripped of any bracelet, note, 
 or other article they might contain, and were then cast aside 
 to wither as best they might. 
 
 At this instant Prince Silvertongue, passing me hastily to 
 get across to the room on the other side where the porter 
 and kidneys had been indulged in, kicked me sharply with 
 her scarlet boot, and tore some of my hair out with her gilt 
 spur. Naturally I shrieked loudly with the pain, which for 
 the time was very severe. 
 
 Beltran heard and took me up under his arm as he went, 
 followed by Fanfreluche, to his own supper room ; a very 
 pretty apartment, hung with amber, and uniting in it the 
 elegance of a boudoir, the luxurious ness of a smoking-room, 
 and the artistic disorder of a studio. The same room, I 
 heard afterwards, where the boy-politician had shot himself 
 six years before. 
 
 * Why will you bring these dogs here, Laura ? they are 
 always getting kicked, or snubbed, or stamped on by some 
 one or other,' he asked her impatiently, as she appeared in 
 this chamber, having changed her attire with marvellous 
 
AT THE CORONET THEATRE. 133 
 
 celerity, to the velvet and lace of her home dinner- 
 dress. 
 
 ' I bring 'em because I choose to bring 'em/ she answered 
 him sullenly. * That big brute of Denzil's is often enough 
 in the place.' 
 
 Now, she had not known that we had been with her, and, 
 as Eanfreluche had averred, might have kicked us out of 
 her brougham had she done so. What then could be her 
 motive for this speech ? Simply, I imagine, to disagree with 
 him, which was a form of amusement that seemed to afford 
 her never-failing refreshment. 
 
 'Denzil's dog can take care of himself. These little 
 things can't,' he answered her. ' By the way, Derry, that's 
 a charming little song you put in for that Courcey girl. 
 Lance is awfully in your debt for it, and so am I.' 
 
 Laura Pearl's arched eyebrows lowered, and her eyes 
 beneath them grew full of flame and gloom. 
 
 'Little Courcey has a pretty voice,' Denzil answered. 
 ' If she were well taught she'd come out wonderfully. The 
 girl's a game little thing too keeps straighter than any 
 one of them.' 
 
 This last phrase he muttered sotto voce. 
 
 1 She squeaks like a penny trumpet,' the Pearl observed 
 with savage scorn. ' And what you stuck in tliem ten bars 
 for, DenzS, beats me. I'll have 'em out to-morrow.' 
 
 ' 3To you won't,' said Beltran quietly. 
 
 * "NV'on't I ? ' she cried furiously. ' Then all I says i 
 Beltran, you may find who you can for my part, for I' 
 never go on your stage no more to have calls and bouquets 
 and thingumbobs flung at that little minx aside of me.' 
 
 ' Very well,' said Beltran carelessly. * There are lots of 
 people can do the breakdowns ; and you know that's all you 
 do do, Laura,' 
 
 ' I'll write a song for you too/ added Denzil, with wicked 
 intent. * That's easy enough : and the Mouse can make 
 room, I daresay ' 
 
 ' When you know I can't sing ! ' she shrieked in a gust of 
 passion. * And as for you, Lord Beltran, if you could get 
 people so easy out of casinoes to fill your hole of a theatre, 
 vhy wasn't you successful with 'em before I come? 
 dmswer me that! And as to insulting of me for that 
 vretched little toad of a Courcey, I'll see her and you ' 
 
 But I had better not record the foul language with which 
 
'30 FUCK. 
 
 she polluted her handsome quivering lips, and transformed 
 one of the most beautiful women Nature ever created into 
 a h is sing, mouthing, furious virago. 
 
 Beltran sat quite unmoved under the tempest, employing 
 himself in concocting a continental drink with ice, forced 
 strawberries, and a little Chambertm wine. Indeed, for 
 aught any one could have told, he might have been as deaf 
 as a stone. 
 
 ' I wouldn't agitate myself if I were you,' he said very 
 quietly, when the hurricane of her words was exhausted. 
 ' There's your favourite ris de veau en demi-deuil ; hadn't 
 you better eat it ? ' 
 
 And she did eat it. The men round the table, of whom 
 there were some eight or ten, could not help smiling at this 
 anti-climax. 
 
 Beltran still devoted himself to his ice with the gravest 
 face possible. But I fancy that Laura Pearl knew, some- 
 how or other, that she would not be permitted to carry her 
 point about the "Wood-elf's ten bars of song. 
 
 ' He cares nothing about little Courcey, my dear,' Fanfre- 
 luche explained to rne under the table. ' But he cares a 
 deal about keeping his word. Won't she make him pay a 
 price for it, just ! ' 
 
 Apparently her good-humour was restored by the ris de 
 veau; at any rate her murmurs were drowned by Derry 
 Denzil, who had one of the mellowest and most flexible o*f 
 voices, and who, sitting down to the piano that occupied a 
 nook in this pretty supper-room, chanted, with gay music 
 of his own, some camp-songs of the Austrian army, in 
 which he once had served. 
 
 The Mouse came in, radiant because the carriages were 
 standing thick in two ranks down the street, and because 
 the doorkeeper had averred that every one had gone away 
 delighted with the entertainment. He was genuinely hungry 
 also, from anxiety and suspense, and could in verity eat the 
 dainty things provided, which the other men who had 
 hurriedly left their dinner-tables to be present were not. 
 In consequence the}' had only trifled with claret, or drunk 
 brandy and seltzer, whereas he really was thoroughly ready 
 for the larded game and the mayonaise and the oysters ; 
 and he managed to devour very nearly as much as Laura 
 Pearl herself, chattering with voluble mirth all the rime, and 
 
AT THE CORONET THEATRE. 137 
 
 bringing an element into the society which was very much 
 wanting there ; since the conversation, having commenced 
 in disputes, had declined into ennui. 
 
 After a little time they all began to smoke the Pearl 
 included, though she threw away much more of her cigar 
 than she consumed. While the Coronet's lights were out 
 in every other part of the house, the players gone home, 
 and the great doors shut to the street and locked, laughter 
 reigned in the bright amber-hung room ; and the chimes of 
 a neighbouring clock were tolling two in the morning when 
 they all sauntered forth by the stage-exit and went into 
 the cool white moonlight to their waiting cabs. 
 
 * It's a success an out-and-out success ! ' I heard the 
 Mouse mutter to Denzil as they lounged out to the air. 
 
 1 For you, yes ! ' 
 
 1 Well ! Why not for him ? ' 
 
 ' Why ? ' replied Denzil slowly, with a big cheroot in his 
 teeth that resisted all attempts to light it. 'Why? O, 
 because it never makes any difference to him whether the 
 Coronet pays or loses. Old Wynch will tot up your half 
 of the profits correctly, because you've very bright eyes, 
 my dear Mouse ; but Beltran well, Beltran may be per- 
 mitted to see that his gallery brings him in a surplus of 
 something like eighteenpence halfpenny a week. That will 
 be about it, I fancy.' 
 
 ' He's a confounded ass ! ' muttered the Mouse. 
 
 * Yes, he is. He trusts Wynch and you.' 
 
 And Denzil, with a short good-night to them all, strode 
 away in the moonlight alone, while Leo Lance waited to 
 murmur farewell to the Pearl and to close the door of her 
 brougham. 
 
 4 Are you coming, Vere ? ' she asked sharply of Beltran. 
 
 1 No, thanks. I'll go and see what they're doing at the 
 Cocodes.' 
 
 And he turned away to get into a hansom and drive 
 rapidly to that fashionable night-club, where the highest 
 of high play was to be obtained all through the early hours 
 of the dawn. 
 
 The Mouse had his rejected seat in the brougham. 
 
 ' A lift ' was the least she could give, I suppose, in return 
 for my ear-rings and me. 
 
138 PUCK. 
 
 CHAPTEB XIII. 
 
 BROSZE. 
 
 LET attempting to jump into the brougham my feet slipped, 
 and I fell heavily to the ground. No one perceived my 
 accident, and the carriage moved on quickly, while a shrill 
 little yell from within it told me that my faithful little 
 chaperone and cicerone alone had witnessed, and was 
 powerless to help my misfortune. I was stunned for a 
 moment or two by the sharp concussion, andlay panting and 
 scarcely sensible on the hard stones of the deserted street. 
 
 A good Samaritan, who was the only passenger past the 
 loneliness of the darkened and melancholy theatre, saw my 
 plight and paused by me. He was a rather large, rough, 
 brown dog ; his coat was very shabby and tangled, as if 
 worn by wind and weather ; and he had a very sad tender 
 face, that made me think of old Trust's. 
 
 He stopped and sniffed me, and drew me gently out of 
 the roadway with his teeth. I was, or fancied myself, too 
 much hurt to move, and lay right in the way of all passing 
 carriages, indifferent to all danger from their wheels. 
 
 ' You are a poor tiny thing to be all alone at this time of 
 night,' he said to me kindly. l What are you doing ? Have 
 you lost yourself ? ' 
 
 I told him my adventures. 
 
 He was not a dog of the world evidently, for he knew no- 
 thing of Pearl, or Fanfreluche, or even the name of the 
 theatre under whose porch he had drawn me: consequently 
 it was not in his power to lead ine aright, or indeed to help 
 me in any way, save to shelter me with his bigger body from 
 the wind, which he did with much care and tenderness. 
 
 ' Will you take me home with you ? ' I ventured to ask. 
 emboldened by his honest kind eyes. 
 
 ' I have no home,' he said mournfully, ' otherwise I would. 
 I .sleep .under bridge arches, or doorways, or anywhere I 
 can ; where I am not hunted away * 
 
 ' But that must be very miserable ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, it is miserable. But there are tens of thousands ofc 
 human creatures that do the same. I must not complain 
 Sometimes I am allowed to lie in an empty basket, in that 
 
BRONZE. 
 
 great market where they sell vegetables and flowers ; there 
 it is very warm and safe, and the sweet scents of the thyme 
 and the lavender, and all the cool wet leaves, make me dream 
 I am in the country once more.' 
 
 * You carne from the country ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' his eyes grew unutterably sad. 
 ' "Why did you leave it ? ' 
 
 * "Well I followed my master. He was but a lad, barely 
 twenty ; his people were poor, and he was restless at home, 
 and he had dreams of wondrous things that he could do in 
 the great world, if only his steps should once wend thither. 
 It was a sweet, happy, fragrant place that little farm 
 where we lived ; all in the heart of the green fresh pasture- 
 lands, and the apple-orchards, and the blossoming high 
 hedges, with the little brooks singing beneath them. But 
 Harold was ill-content there. He had music in his eyes, 
 and fever in his voice ; do you know what it is that I mean? 
 "Well, he would leave them the father, and the mother, and 
 the little girl Gladys and would go forth on his own path 
 to some greatness. I do not think he ever knew what ; 
 but dreamt of all impossible beautiful things. They wept 
 sorely ; but he he came smiling away. I followed him. 
 I had been his in his childhood, and he had always been good 
 and gentle to me ; my heart nearly broke at quitting that 
 fair green place of my birth, but what could I do ? I could 
 not let him wander alone.' 
 
 He pauzed ; there was no sound save of the night winds 
 stealing sadly through the empty portico of the deserted 
 theatre. 
 
 * "Well he came straight hither ; came out of the pure 
 free country, and from the sight of the sun, into this fur- 
 nace, where men's souls are for ever consuming, and the 
 smoke of their passions and woes is spread, like a veil of 
 darkness, between them and heaven's light. The lad had 
 dreamed divine dreams, that I know ; I have seen the look 
 on his face when he walked under the summer stars, or saw 
 the moon burn through a night of frost. And he came 
 here here ! to squalor, and vice, and manifold miseries, 
 and ceaseless greed, and a fathomless gulf of unmeasured 
 iniquity ! ' 
 
 * "What he really strove to do I cannot tell. He strove 
 hard, whatsoever it was. He wrote all the day long in that 
 
140 PUCK. 
 
 little, dusky, "blackened attic, in the roof under the smoke* 
 cloud, which he had chosen instead of the bright, broad, 
 wooden chamber, under the great oak boughs, with the birds 
 singing against the lattice, that had been his at his home. 
 He wrote wrote wrote, all day and all night too, till 
 all the colour died out of his face, and all the light out of 
 1 his eyes. 
 
 'At times he would go abroad, and wander amongst 
 strange crooked streets, and enter first one house and then 
 another. And in one he was met with derision ; and in a 
 second with coldness ; and in a third with a rebuff ; and so 
 on in every one of them ; so that he left each with his bundle 
 of papers clenched in his hand, and the broken bent look 
 of an old man on his lithe young form. Yet he never seemed 
 wholly to lose courage. He would write, and write, and 
 write again ; and go again to these houses, or to fresh ones, 
 with his eyes all aglow with hope ; and again come forth 
 from them with the glow quenched, and his steps dragging 
 slowly over the stones. And all this time he had but little 
 money ; and it grew less and less ; and soon we all but 
 starved. 
 
 ' Many tender letters came to him from the little farm iq 
 the orchard-country, but I do not fancy he ever answereV. 
 them. If he did he was too proud to tell them that all then 
 fears were true, and all his dreams were dead. For if he 
 had only once hinted to them of his want, I know that they 
 would have stripped themselves to the last coin to send him 
 help, and the child Gladys would have worked in the fields 
 as a reaper rather than ever have let him need unaided. 
 
 'Well each day grew worse than the last ; and his check? 
 grew hollow, and his eyes wild, and his hand when it 
 touched me, burned like flame. He still wrote O yes 
 but he wrote at night only, and all the other hours through 
 he wandered to and fro, to and fro, in the endless maze of 
 streets. It is sad to be young, and alone, and utterly miser- 
 able, in a great city that has no time to think of you, nc 
 glance to give you, no ear to lend to your sighs ! 
 
 * And at last one evening he would go out alone ; he 
 would not have me with him. He stooped and kissed me 
 on the forehead, and I felt great hot tears fall on me as he 
 did so ; but though I begged and prayed, and moaned and 
 entreated all I could to go with him, he put me back into 
 
BRONZE. 141 
 
 the room, and closed the door on me, and 1 neard his steps 
 go swiftly down the staircase, and out into the street. Well 
 from that hour he has never returned.' 
 
 ' He is dead then ? ' I asked, awe-stricken. 
 
 ' Ah ! that I cannot tell. I am looking for him always, 
 dead or alive. After a little while the people of the house 
 drove me away with blows, when they found that he did not 
 come back. I used to lie in the street before the door day 
 after day, night after night ; they would throw wood and 
 stones at me: they wounded me sorely often, but they could 
 not make me leave the spot while there was a chance of hia 
 coming there. It is so horrible to lose a creature you love, 
 into darkness like that. Men can speak and explain, and 
 other men pity and aid them. But we we can only suffer 
 and wonder, and be wretched and dumb !' 
 
 I listened, awed and full of sorrow this loyal, faithful, 
 tender-souled preature, Humanity in its besotted arrogance 
 called a lower beast than Laura Pearl ! 
 
 ' Have you never seen him again ?' I asked softly at 
 length. 
 
 * Never again. But I look for him still. I must find him 
 still. I must find him at last. One man was good to me 
 and would have given me a home, and fed and caressed me; 
 but I could not stay with him ; I could not go to comfort 
 and rest whilst the boy was unfound. I seek him every- 
 where. Sooner or latter I shall know where he is ' 
 
 1 But you must suffer greatly ?' 
 
 * Suffer ? Yes. But so did he. I have hunger and thirst 
 continually ; a drop of muddy water, a scrap of offal, is aH 
 I can get without stealing, and I never will steal. The peo- 
 ple beat me and kick me, and the boys stone and hoot me 
 you see, I am nothing but a stupid stray dog to them. 
 And they are cruel.' 
 
 ' But could you not find your way home to that country 
 ace that you love ? ' 
 
 * O yes. It is fifty or sixty miles from this city, but I 
 could find my way well ; I should know the road, and I 
 could walk in less than a week. But how can I go home 
 whilst I leave him here ? How can I see them all again 
 without him ? If I knew he were dead indeed I might go ; 
 they love me, and perhaps in some sense I could comfort 
 them ; but until I do whilst there still is a chance that he 
 
14 * PUCK. 
 
 lives and may want me I have no right to tarn my face 
 homeward. If I went and forsook him, do you think I could 
 Bleep one moment in peace, though I were to lie in my old 
 nest among the sweet hay in the apple-loft under the oak 
 boughs?' 
 
 I was silent. The greatness of this unselfish elevation 
 appalled me. This rough country dog could feel such fidelity 
 and nobility as these, whilst the men and women I had 
 quitted 
 
 ' Forgive me, little one/ he said kindly, imagining that he 
 had wearied me. ' In babbling of myself I have forgotten 
 your troubles. What can I do for you ? I have nothing 
 in the world, and not even a kennel to share with you.' 
 
 ' What was your master called ? ' I asked, still haunted by 
 the story, to the exclusion of my own woes. 
 
 ' Harold. His people's name was Q-erant, but we always 
 called him and his little sister Harold and Gladys. But do 
 not let us speak more of them. I want to aid you if I can.' 
 
 I could not tell him how, for I saw no possible issue to the 
 dilemma ; but I begged and prayed of him not to leave me. 
 I had such a dread of Bill Jacobs', finding and seizing me. 
 
 ' Ah, you are afraid of the thieves r ' he said gently. ' They 
 never touch me. See what a protection it is to be worth 
 nothing ! A valuable dog and a rich man, have no true 
 liberty in their lives, for they are for ever being hunted and 
 trapped by the spoilers. I will not leave you ; and I can 
 still keep a rabble at bay, though I am old, and my teeth are 
 not strong. We are as well here as anywhere; the portico 
 keeps the wind off a little.' 
 
 So we sat there while quarters and hours were several 
 times tolled from the neighbouring churchy and he warmed 
 me with his rough, curly body, and tried to his uttermost 
 to shelter me from the unaccustomed exposure of the night. 
 Carriages flashed past; now and then a foot-passenger went 
 by ; but no one took any notice of us. 
 
 Now and then there came by us a man of distinguished 
 appearance, walking slowly, with his hat over his eyebrows, 
 and his face very pale. When I saw such a one I guessed 
 that he had been playing at the Cocodes, or at some other of 
 the night card-clubs of this fashionable quarter, and had lost. 
 Now and then such a one would be accosted and pestered, 
 and cursed horribly wken *xe put her aside, by some wretched, 
 
fcaggard, painted phantom of a woman that made one's 
 blood run cold by even a look at her wolfish leering, hungry, 
 eyes. 
 
 * Poor creature ! ' I said involuntarily, as one of these 
 the worst of any I had ever seen came by us. 
 
 ' Poor indeed ! ' said my good Samaritan. ' And yet, after 
 all, this is rather a sham sentiment that we are guilty of 
 when we pity these women so profoundly. For they call 
 our brothers, the lions, beasts of prey ; but how holy are 
 their ways, how continent, how innocent, how merciful even 
 the worst that they do, beside these women ! These women 
 murder the young of their own kind. What lion, what 
 animal, ever did that ? ' 
 
 I But they have been tempted ? ' 
 
 4 "Well yes,' he said thoughtfully. ' And how ? Look 
 you here. A few nights ago, as I was seeking Harold in 
 all likely and unlikely places, I strayed into a Casino not 
 very far from here. It was one where gay, rich, foolish 
 youngsters go to see dancing women, and specially to see 
 one now who is a sort of empress there they call her Lillian 
 Lee. She " shows herself nightly to the populace for gold " 
 that was a line I heard Harold quote so often. 
 
 I 1 took a long look at this Lillian of theirs before they 
 saw and turned me out. I knew her then. The last time 
 I had seen her she had been hop-picking in our fields some 
 five years ago at harvest-time. 
 
 'That girl had as good a mother as ever breathed; a 
 widow-woman, but full of thrift and cheerfulness and virtue. 
 They lived in a pretty little cottage, hard by the water-mill ; 
 the mother bred poultry, and took the fowls and ducks to 
 market, with herbs and a few vegetables that she grew, and 
 she washed linen for the old vicar and two or three other 
 people. She was always a contented woman, and loved her 
 daughter well, as only mothers can love. If the girl had 
 been but like her, they might have been very happy. But 
 you know it is of no use to sow wheat upon stone and sand. 
 
 * Letty that was her name Letty had nothing of her 
 mother's temper in her. She was for ever sulking, and fret- 
 ting, and refusing to work, and squandering her pence OE 
 finery, and mooning away her days in the sun. The only 
 thing she would do was a little hop-picking in the season, 
 because there were many men about, and idle play, and 
 
f 44 PUCK, 
 
 licence that was worse than play, in the hop-grounds, where 
 all the wild Irish and the labourers on tramp came, and 
 wasted far more than they worked for most of the time they 
 were there. One day at the middle of the hop-getting, 
 when Gerant came in to the noonday dinner, his face was 
 very grave. He was a quiet Q-od-f earing man, and it was 
 but seldom that he allowed anger to stir in him. " Lettice 
 Dean must never darken these doors again," he said to hit 
 wife the children were not as yet in from the fields. " She 
 is vicious and vile; she turns to sin as bees to sugar. Have 
 a care that she comes no more nigh to Gladys." 
 
 ' The mistress asked trembling what the girl had done, 
 and he answered her that Letty had wanton ways, and he 
 had surprised her love-making with one of the drunken 
 Irishmen, where they stood under a hedge. A little while 
 after that the poor woman Dean came weeping sorely to 
 G-erant and his wife, and told them how the child had left 
 her without a word, ( aking all she owned with her. She had 
 stolen even her dead father's old pinchbeck watch from 
 under her mother's pillow whilst the old woman slept, and 
 had carried off even the few little bits of silver spoons, and 
 salt-pots, and such like, that had belonged to her great 
 grand-parents, and were the pride and treasure of the 
 cottage. "Well, they traced her to London, I believe, and 
 there they altogether lost her. I only found her the other 
 night as Lillian Lee at this Casino/ 
 
 1 And you think her temptations were ? ' 
 
 ' Greed, and vanity, and discontent. No others. She 
 loved wickedness and pleasure; she robbed her mother 
 whilst sleeping ; and she went to vice because she desired 
 its wages. 
 
 * By the way, the old woman died ; lost all heart and 
 strength, and could no longer labour for her own support, 
 and would have gone to the workhouse but for Harold's 
 father and mother, who, in the press of their own poverty, 
 tended and succoured her to the end, which indeed was not 
 long in coming. Now, wheref crre should we pity this crea- 
 ture Letty Dean or Lillian Lee ? ' 
 
 1 The flowers hang in the sunshine and blow in the breeze, 
 free to the wasp as to the bee. The bee chooses to make 
 his store of honey, that is sweet and fragant and life-giving; 
 the wasp chooses to make his from the same blossoms, but 
 
BRONZE 
 
 of a matter hard and bitter and useless. Shall we pity the 
 wasp, because of his selfish passions he selects the portion 
 that shall be luscious only to his own lips, and spends his 
 hours only in the thrustiug-in of his sting ? Is not such pity 
 
 wasted upon the wasp an insult to the bee who toils sc 
 
 wearily to gather in for others, and who because he stings 
 not man, is by man maltreated? Now, it seems to me, if 
 I read them aright, that vicious women, and women that are 
 of honesty and honour, are JT'Uch akin to the wasp and to 
 
 the bee.' .. , 
 
 I was silent. His grave gentle speech recalled to me my 
 old familiar friend Trust, and seemed so strange and yet 
 so simply-wiseafter the satiric sharpness and the acidu- 
 lated worldiness of Ear. f reluche. The one was so tenderly 
 thoughtful, probing to. the core of all things ; the other was 
 so contemptuously ID different, skimming the surface of all 
 truth* And yet <hcu all was said the Samaritan ami 
 Satirist alike pointed to the same deduction ! These words 
 of his moreover, recalled to me the vague fancy that had 
 moved me as to the past of Laura Pearl. 
 
 Ah ! these women may well be rough to us, and shrink 
 from our eyes, when we remember so many things that they 
 have consigned to the grave of oblivion, and which they 
 believe they have sealed down for ever, because they have 
 rolled to the door of the sepulchre a burial stone of gold! 
 
 ' It is very cold for you,' said Bronze kindly, waking me 
 from my half-sleepy reverie. ' Bitterly cold for spring. I 
 do not mind it ; I have been houseless all the winter, which 
 was a hundred times worse than this ; but you how you 
 shiver'' 
 
 'It is nothing,' I tried to say valorously; 'you have lost 
 Harold long, then?' 
 
 'All the winter, and all the autumn; and he lived in 
 wretchedness here about a quarter of a year rather 
 more. That makes eight, or ten, months. Gladys will 
 Boon be getting into womanhood.' 
 
 'Is she a pretty girl?' I asked him, wondering if she 
 also would ever be transformed into a Pearl or a Lillian 
 Lee. 
 
 'More than pretty. Letty Dean was pretty. Q-ladys 
 has a beautiful little face, like a white crocus of the spring. 
 She was a strange child too so silent, so gentle, so dreamy, 
 
 L 
 
146 PUCK. 
 
 and some said not very wise. But her eyes would blaze 
 like stars when Harold read poetry to her, and I fancy my- 
 self that she thought over-much for her years ; and that she 
 had what do they call it ? genius ; and that it was only 
 because she was silent that people fancied her simple. It 
 was odd : those two children led such quiet, ordinary lives : 
 rising with the sun ; eating food of the plainest ; always ic 
 the open air ; rained on by summer showers ; blown on by 
 autumn winds ; seeing nothing except the animals and the 
 birds on the farms, and having no books except their Bible 
 wid their Pilgrims Progress, and the plays of a man they 
 called Shakespeare: and yet there was something noble 
 and uncommon about them ; and they seemed always to be 
 hearing such wonderful things when they lay on the grass, 
 or wandered under the trees.* 
 
 I understood what he meant. I had seen something of 
 the same thing in poor Ben. 
 
 But by this time I was so tired that I ceased to hear him 
 speak, and I fell sound asleep, and forgot that my cushion 
 was only the stone step of the Coronet theatre. The wind 
 and the rain did not come upon me, for Bronze lay down 
 by me in such fashion that his brown curly body was a firm 
 barrier between myself and the elements. 'There is a 
 wondrous deal of kindness in men and in doge women, I 
 do not think, have much of it. 
 
 ' O woman ! in our hours of ea?e 
 So smiling, soft, and glad to please, 
 And steadfast-rooted as the oak, 
 And patient-tempered as the moke, 
 Let only cash and stiff be failing, 
 An awful tongue hast thou for railing I' 
 
 This elegant parody had been sung by the three fairy 
 princes in the Mouse's burlesque, and had been received 
 with exceeding applause; and it was wandering still through 
 my brain as I sank to sleep under the portico of the 
 Coronet. 
 
 When I awoke it was dawn one of those cheerless grey 
 dawns that early spring brings in cities. 
 
 In the Peak these mornings had been beautiful; by 
 reason of the seas of white cloud-like mist, the sweet damp 
 dewy scents, the water-drops that glistened on every leaf 
 u^. ^4ade, the purple glimpses of the half -hidden hills, the 
 
BRONZE. 147 
 
 soft unearthly hush that reigned over all things, till the 
 low twittering of the little nest-birds broke its silence. 
 But here here it was only cold, ugly, impressibly dreary 
 and dispiriting. I woke in consequence sorely frightened 
 and sorrowful; and the tender-hearted Bronze had much 
 ado to console me. 
 
 'I ain so cold !' I moaned. * And so hungry too !' 
 
 ' How long is it since you had food ? ' he asked. 
 
 1 Ever since six last night ! ' 
 
 'Ah! And I have been two days without picking up 
 anything, save a piece of mouldy bread that lay outside an 
 area-gate ! But then I am old, and very hardy, and you 
 are helpless and young; that makes a great difference. 
 Well, I suppose if we wait long enough, the theatre people 
 will come, and they will know you will they not ? ' 
 
 At that moment, through the dim light in which the day 
 and the gas feebly struggled for dominance, there approached 
 the form of a man, looming large through the dusky and 
 yellow steam of the fog. 
 
 It was Lord Beltran. 
 
 He was walking slowly, with his great-coat thrown back 
 as though he sought the chilly air ; his head was bent, his 
 face was pale, and the stephanotis in his button-hole 
 drooped dead. 
 
 I sprang out on him, and managed to arrest him. He 
 paused and raised me. 
 
 1 Is it vou, you little atom ? ' he said kindly. ' Has sho 
 left you here on purpose ? Not likely though, as you're of 
 value!' 
 
 And with that lie took me, thrust me kindly and care- 
 lessly into his pocket, and moved onward. I struggled, 
 and whined, and contrived to call his attention to Bronze, 
 who was looking on with wistful and patient endurance of 
 oblivion. 
 
 He whistled Bronze to him. 
 
 'You look stray and starved, my friend. Come along 
 too if you like. 
 
 Bronze understood ; and came timidly near, and touched 
 his hand with a grateful motion of his own rough tongue ; 
 but he did not move after us, and the last thing I saw of 
 him were his two sad, kind eyes, gleaming with their soft 
 hazel light from out of the portico darkness 
 
M PUCK. 
 
 My heart was full at leaving him thus. But what could 
 I do ? 
 
 I was horribly cold and hungry ; and this is a combina- 
 tion which lulls sentiment in bigger people than mysell 
 The emotions, like a hot-house flower, or the sea-dianthus, 
 wither curiously when aired in an east wind, or kept some 
 hours waiting for dinner. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 SUNDAY MORNING. 
 
 Ix ten minutes or less I was comfortably installed in 
 Beltran's chambers, which were but at two or three streets' 
 distance from the theatre. They were the two prettiest 
 rooms I have ever seen in my life, connected with an arch- 
 way, and decorated with imperial blue ; they were the abode 
 of a refined gentleman, or a connoisseur too moreover; 
 things of great antiquity and much beauty were scattered 
 about; ivory, bronze, marble, china, enamel, metalwork, 
 gleamed out of the prevailing hue of deep azure ; and here 
 and there nestled a mirror, and here and there hung a 
 picture. 
 
 Beltran set me down on the hearth-rug, and cast himself 
 into an easy-chair, having changed his dress for a velvet 
 emoking-garb that his man brought to him. 
 
 ' Give the little beggar something to eat, Terrors,' he 
 said of me to his servant; and then composed himself to 
 read and to smoke. 
 
 I liked his face better than I had hitherto done. It was 
 very delicate and thoroughbred, with that handsome profile 
 which seems to mark like a brotherhood your English aris- 
 tocrats. It was cold and contemptuous indeed in expres- 
 sion, but by the kindliness that came, when he smiled, into 
 his calm languid eyes, I thought that much of this cynical 
 mdifferentism was only surface deep, and much of this 
 serene insolence was only a trick of manner. 
 
 "When I came to know him well I found, indeed, that 
 Vere Essendine, Lord Beltran, was one of those persons 
 very hard for men and very easy for dogs, to read. There 
 
SUNDAY MORNING. /49 
 
 were, to mislead his own kind, the Blighting languor of 
 habit, the contemptuous serenity of manner, the listless 
 fatigue of tone, the continual suppression of all feeling 
 beneath phrases of half-sardonic and half-ridiculing brevity, 
 that are common among those of his order. He was not 
 a little reckless, moreover ; was given to seeking his own 
 amusement, without reckoning its cost either to himself or 
 others; and although no one ever remembered to have seen 
 him out of temper, he could be very merciless with his 
 quiet indolent speech on occasion. 
 
 "But dogs saw much more than these : dogs noticed that 
 he was never ungentle to them ; that he never forgot them ; 
 that he smiled with his eyes as well as with his mouth; and 
 that he, like themselves, took punishment without com- 
 plaint, not from insensibility, but from the courage of 
 breeiij and the endurance of training. And the stray ones 
 of our kind would know this, by that peculiar prescience 
 of our own which you are pleased to call ' instinct ' because 
 you cannot in the least comprehend it; and they would 
 follow him home, and trust themselves to his pity 
 and shelter: will you have anywhere a surer witness to 
 character ? 
 
 I imagined that he had some punishment to bear just 
 now ; the novel dropped on his knee as he sat, and his eyes 
 were fastened on the fire that burned brightly within his 
 pretty porcelain-panelled stove. 
 
 Once he took from his waistcoat pocket an old letter, 
 with some figures jotted on it in pencil; studied them, and 
 thrust them back with a muttered word that sounded like 
 a curse. 
 
 The figures, I doubt not, were those of his play losses 
 that night at the Cocodes. 
 
 Soon after that he drank some soda-water, and went to 
 bed. I did so too, and I shame to confess slept soundly, 
 unhaunted by so much as a dream, of the poor patient 
 Bronze, whom we had left in the chilly bleak dawn, alone 
 with his hunger and sorrow. 
 
 We hear a very great chatter of 'sympathy' in this 
 world : is there aught of it, I wonder, that is anything be- 
 vond fellow-feeling ? 
 
 When I fairly awoke on the morrow it was noon ; and 
 there were four or five men in the inner room, where a table 
 was laid out with breakfast. 
 
150 
 
 It was Sunday, i knew, "by the clanging of the dissonant 
 bells with which you herald your periodical fits of devo- 
 tion; and Sunday breakfasts, as I learnt later, are a 
 favourite form of distraction with such men as thes 
 amongst whom I had fallen. 
 
 The guests were waiting for their host ; and the silver 
 dishes were still covered. 
 
 They were talking of the previous night at the Coronet. 
 
 * Safe to run/ said one, in whom I recognised Paget Des- 
 mond. ' Ought to make money by it ? ' 
 
 'Humph !' said Derry Denzil, who was there without his 
 big dog. 
 
 'What do you mean by that, Derry?' asked another, a 
 slender, fair languid man, whom they all called Ned, and 
 whom I found was, in rank, Earl of Gruilliadene. 
 
 'Paper!' returned Denzil briefly, with much scorn. 
 
 * Paper ? O, hang it, no ! Stalls were full of fellows 
 one knows ; and the private-box women were all in good 
 form.' 
 
 Denzil laughed grimly. 
 
 ' "Well don't you know how she does it, Ned ?' 
 
 ' She ? Not an idea ! ' replied the Earl, 
 
 'I'll tell you, then. Nine-tenths of those men get her 
 pass get it all through the season, and, when she takes 
 her benefit, what charming big cheques the lovely Laura 
 receives as a quid pro quo ! House is full : she explains to 
 her friend that it's all orders ; he believes her ; so it is in a 
 sense; only the money that should have gone in at his box- 
 office goes instead at the end of the season to her. Thing 
 is perfectly simple. You see ? ' 
 
 'I can't say I do exactly,' muttered the fair earl. ' Old 
 Wynch must know ? ' 
 
 'Of course old "Wynch knows. But when it suits his 
 own book to net gains in like manner, of course it don't 
 pay him to check hers. Besides they understand one 
 another; and Wynch is a wise man in his generation. lie 
 knows that she'll be worth her ten thousand a- year for a 
 "very much longer spell than Beltran will.' 
 
 ' She don't do anything except those breakdowns,' mur- 
 mured Lord Guilliadene. * I'd get a score just as good as 
 she out of Hoi born Casino any night.' 
 
 'That's nonsense,' said Denzil calmly, 'She's the hand- 
 
SUNDAY MORN I NO. 151 
 
 Bomest creature about the town. I hate her, but I must 
 admit that. Besides, you know old George made her the 
 fashion.' 
 
 1 O, she's chic ; if the clubs saying so can make her so ' 
 
 'As of course they can,' cried Paget Desmond. 'No 
 woman can hold her own against the clubs for any length 
 of time. You remember Mrs. D'Eyncourt? "Well, that 
 woman was superb ; and a wonderfully fine actress too; but 
 you know she was confoundedly honest, and had awfully 
 queer notions ; and when old Beaujolais enclosed her a set 
 of diamonds she sent them back sent them back, by Jove ! 
 as if he'd been a pot-boy offering her a pennyworth of peri- 
 winkles. Beau, you know, never forgave it, and he got her 
 talked down in the clubs and other places till she hadn't a 
 ghost of a chance. She was a very plucky woman, fear- 
 fully plucky woman ; and thought she was strong enough 
 to beat him. But of course she wasn't ; of course she went 
 to the wall. She was fairly driven off the London stage, 
 you remember ? ' 
 
 ' Yes,' added Mark Mountmorris, a man in the 9th 
 Lancers, ' and I saw her stitching shirts as hard as ever she 
 could sew, in a little garret window, in a beggarly German 
 town. That's always the way women come to grief if they 
 defy clubs ' 
 
 ' And diamonds ! ' concluded Derry Denzil, with that 
 laugh which was too grim for his handsome sun-browned 
 features. 
 
 ' "Well Pearl will never sin that way,' said the narrator 
 of Mrs. D'Eyncourt's misfortunes and mistakes. ' Day 
 before yesterday she came to muffin-worry in Fred Orford s 
 rooms you know he always has a lot of women in at five 
 o'clock well, he'd just been getting things at the Brial- 
 mont sale ; china chiefly, and some queer old Moyen-age 
 jewelry ; and it had all come in from Christie's, and was 
 lying about there loose. He didn't offer her a thing, on 
 my soul he didn't, for I was there and heard every word he 
 eaid ; but the deuce ! if she didn't ask for all the Saxe 
 and Sevres that took her fancy, and carried the best of 'em 
 off with her before Fred had got a word in edgeways! 
 He was awfully savage ; the best of it was, too, that he'd 
 promised all the Saxe cups and saucers to the Duchess de 
 Vistaherilla, and he has had to write Lord knows what lies 
 to account to her for 'em as broken ! * 
 
15* PUCK. 
 
 f I wish she'd come to my rooms, and asked me for my 
 bronzes,' said Deuzil, with a curt significance that suggested 
 the reception which the frcabooter would receive amonp 
 his Antiques and Barbediennes. 'Don't you think you 
 were dreaming, Mount, when you fancied you saw Mrs. 
 D'Eyncourt in Germany ? Germany too ! Such an in- 
 definite word ; you forget we've left one Teutonic Empire 
 behind, and haven't yet come up with another.' 
 
 'I did see her,' said Mountmorris decidedly. 'Saw her 
 in a beastly little place off Homburg. One knows that 
 woman in a second just by the way her head's set on her 
 shoulders. If she hadn't been a fool and sent back old 
 Beau's diamonds, she'd have been ' 
 
 1 When was it you saw her ? ' 
 
 * Deuce! I don't remember,' answered Lord Mark. 
 1 Yes stop last autumn surely. I recollect now, because 
 I'd lost over a monkey at Homburg, and was dead lame for 
 want of remittances, and had nothing to do except go 
 mooning about. I wonder you don't know what's become 
 of her. You admired her awfully when she first came out. 
 Always were about with her too.' 
 
 1 She was a very good actress/ said Denzil briefly ; and 
 said no more. 
 
 'Yes, she was,' said Beltran, at that moment entering 
 from his bedroom. ' What did that woman disappear for, 
 Derry ? It was a mystery to me at the time.' 
 
 ' No mystery at all. Beaujolais had her run down, I 
 believe/ 
 
 ' O, nonsense ! That wasn't it all. Beau can do a good 
 deal, and kill an actress with a sneer as well as anybody ; 
 but he couldn't drive a woman away out of the world, and 
 make her vanish into space as she vanished. I always 
 thought you were at the bottom of that ?' 
 
 ' Did you ? It's four years at least since Gertude 
 D'Eyncourt left the stage ; how should one remember 
 anything about her ? It*a time enough to welcome and 
 bury twenty Eachels ; and she wasn't a Eachel by a very 
 long way. 
 
 'Perhaps not. But she was in thorough-bred form 
 always and a very good actress too. Where's that brute, 
 by the way?' 
 
 ' Her husband ? I don't know.' 
 
SUNDAY MORNING. 153 
 
 * You used to know all about them, Derry ? 
 
 4 Of course I did. But I've lost sight of them both long 
 ago. You hear what Mount says, he saw her stitching 
 hirts near Frankfort. That's later news than any of 
 mint.' 
 
 He spoke indifferently, but his face grew a little paler 
 under its bronzed tinting, and he dashed a good stoup of 
 brandy into his breakfast glass of seltzer. 
 
 4 She was very good actress. I wish the Coronet had 
 her,' said Beltran meditatively, tossing me a plover's wing. 
 The attention drew all eyes on me ; and they recognised 
 me with one voice. 
 
 * Yes, it's Laura's dog,' he answered them. * I picked 
 him up in the street last night. I've half a fancy to keep 
 him.' 
 
 * She'll weep her eyes out for him," said Denzil curtly, 
 1 unless you find him worth thirty guineas ! ' 
 
 * O, we'll square it, of course,' said Beltran, with a touch 
 of annoyance. I'll send her that pink Dresden tea-set 
 there that she's longing for ; it's worth twice as much as 
 the dog. I don't think she'll mind the exchange ; it'll be 
 a good one for her, as the little beggar only cost her a 
 sovereign. ' 
 
 ' How did Jacobs let him go for that ? ' 
 
 ' She didn't get him of Jacobs.' 
 
 1 O, didn't she ? Well, I saw the very model of him 
 there a month ago, only with a sooty coat instead of a 
 snowy one.' 
 
 But Beltran was not attending and missed the hint con- 
 veyed to him. 
 
 For myself I nearly wagged my tail off with gladness at 
 the prospect of escape from the Pearl's brodequin-kicks 
 and parasol blows. 
 
 Emotions are quite as detrimental to a dog's tail as they 
 are to a lady's complexion. Joseph Buonaparte's American 
 wife said to an American gentleman, whom I heard quote 
 her words, that she * never laughed because it made 
 wrinkles ; ' there is a good deal of wisdom in that cachin- 
 natory abstinence. There is nothing in the world that 
 wears people (or dogs) so much as feeling of any kind, 
 tender, bitter, humoristic, or emotional. 
 
 How often you commend a fresh-coloured matron with 
 
i54 PUCK. 
 
 her daughters, and a rosy-cheeked hunting squire in his 
 saddle, who, with their half -century of years, yet look so 
 comely, so blooming, so clear-browed, and so smooth- 
 skinned. How often you distrust the weary delicate crea- 
 ture, with the hectic flush of her rouge, in society ; and the 
 worn, tired, colourless face of the man of the world who 
 takes her down to dinner. Well, to my fancy, you may be 
 utterly wrong. An easy egotism, a contented sensualism, 
 may have carried the first comfortably and serenely through 
 their bank-note-lined paradise of common-place existence. 
 How shall you know what heart-sickness in their youth, 
 what aching desires for joys never found, what sorrowful 
 power of sympathy, what fatal keenness of vision, have 
 blanched their faded cheek, and lined the weary mouth of 
 the other twain ? 
 
 The breakfast was a long but by no means tedious affair. 
 There were curious old wines and quite new dishes to be 
 tried ; and with the due leisure taken over these, and some 
 pauses betwixt them, filled up by music from Denzil and a 
 magnificent buffo singer of the Blues, who amused theiv 
 minds with trying over a new score of an unpublished 
 comic-opera lent him by its French composer, the hours 
 from noon till four o'clock sped away with sufficient 
 rapidity ; in a dusky atmosphere of aromatic smoke, through 
 which the singers' clear full notes came oddly, like a 
 carillon ringing through a misty Flemish dawn. 
 
 ' That's a capital opera,' said Beltran musingly, as DenziTs 
 hand crashed out a lusty riotous chorus from the big Kirk- 
 mann. ' Who'll do it ?' 
 
 1 0, it's written for Schentach, of course,' said the player, 
 naming a famous French songstress. ' They are keeping it 
 for next New year.' 
 
 ' "What if one had it at the Coronet ? bringing Schentach 
 over of course.' 
 
 ' Grood gracious ! aren't you near enough ruin already ? 
 Schentach refused half -a-mill ion francs a-month from the 
 Sultan last week.' 
 
 1 And she's an ugly woman,' said Beltran, contentedly 
 resigning his idea in its birth. ' But we must do something j 
 an everlasting breakdown, and an eternity of negro 
 melodies, is not a very lively prospect.' 
 
 'Pays,' said Denzil curtly, with a crash of the chorda. 
 
SUNDAY MORNING. I$5 
 
 Does it ? Ask old Wynch.' 
 
 ' Ask an auditor at the year's end,' responded the other 
 with brief significance. 
 
 Beltran blew away a ring of smoke. 
 
 1 Couldn't do that. "Wynch would think one suspected 
 him.' 
 
 ' The best thing he could think.' 
 
 ' I don't fancy so. Trust people wholly or not at all.' 
 
 ' An excellent rule. But why do you never practice but 
 the first half of it ! 
 
 ' Go on playing, Derry, that chorus is charming ; but it 
 eeenis to me that I've heard something very like it before. 
 It's the same measure as the old Rataplan.' 
 
 1 Of course it is. It's borrowed body and soul. The 
 originality of men and monkeys is only variations upon 
 imitations.' 
 
 1 Don't get epigrammatic in the daytime. There's a 
 season for all things ; and you're not writing musical 
 critiques for the Mouse? 
 
 ' By the way, did you see that poem in this week's num- 
 ber ? It's out of the Mouse's line utterly.' 
 
 ' A poem ! Never read one.' 
 
 ' "Well, read that. It has a kind of grandeur in it, and is 
 worth something/ 
 
 4 Do you mean " Demeter " ?' 
 
 ' Yes. It's only a fragment.' 
 
 Beltran stretched his hand for the paper, glanced through 
 it while Denzil and the guardsman recommenced their duo 
 from the sparkling Frenchman's score. 
 
 Beltran began to read indifferently, but with more 
 gravity and interest as he proceeded. The verse occupied 
 about a column and a half of the Mouse's thick toned 
 paper. He threw it aside a little wearily when he had 
 ended. 
 
 ' Is your sixpenny sheet going to make us think ? I 
 claim my back subscription.' 
 
 1 Don't you like the thing ?' 
 
 ' Like it ? Pooh ! One likes a burlesque, a pigeon- 
 match, an American oyster, a number of the Mouse. One 
 doesn't like Samson Agonistcs or Prometheus Unbound' 
 
 ' You class that bit with the latter?' 
 
 4 Pretty nearly It is crude, indeed, and overwrought* 
 
156 PUCK. 
 
 but it haa the conflict of strength and suffering iu it that 
 they have. The idea of putting such a poem as that pell- 
 mell in your pot-pourri of nonsense verses, club-scandals, 
 whipped-cream wit, sublime self-sufficiency, and fashionable 
 philistinism ! It is to place a chained god in a smoking- 
 room a fallen Titan at an Arlington whist-table. For 
 heaven's sake, since you must be court- jesters, don't fetter 
 a desert-chief beside you to make your motley fouler. Be 
 consistent, even in your foolery.' 
 
 Denzil laughed, leaning over the piano. 
 
 ' Come, the poem's done something. It's made you say 
 actually what you think for once ! Don't you want to 
 know who wrote it?* 
 
 ' No, indeed. When I was a boy strong on such mat- 
 ters I traced &o many philosophers into snuffy back par- 
 lours, and discovered so many philoinels in curl -papers, 
 that I never feel the faintest tinge of curiosity in literary 
 personalities.' 
 
 ' Who did write it. Berry ? * asked the guardsman, look- 
 ing over the verse with a mixture of good-natured wonder 
 and contempt, just touched with a vague admiration. 
 
 * Well,' answered Denzil slowly, striking some wistful, 
 solemn, minor chords with his left hand as he spoke. 'You 
 see the name there, Harold G-erant. It's not a feigned 
 name, as you're thinking. The manuscript came to little 
 Lance just twelve months ago ; was put aside and forgot- 
 ten. A week or two since I lit on it, in looking over old 
 copy that was to be burnt. I thought I saw stuff in it, 
 and told him to put it in type. The address on the page was 
 a street in Whitef riars. I wrote there, and had no answer. 
 I asked some publishers if they knew the name ; one of 
 them told me it belonged to a boy who was always pester- 
 ing them to accept his rubbish. They had a consummate 
 scorn for him : he asked them for no money, only begged 
 they would print what he wrote. I found out the place 
 yesterday, quite by chance. The people of the house said 
 a lad of that name had lived with them three or four weeks, 
 but had gone out one day and had never returned. Some 
 iozen days after his disappearance a body had been found 
 in the Thames, at low water, just beneath Westminster- 
 bridge. They had gone to see it, and had recognised it "by 
 the long fair curling hair. The features had been difigured 
 
SUNDAY MORNING. 151 
 
 beyond all knowledge by striking on the piles of the bridge. 
 That is the history of the poet of "Dometer." He will 
 not make us think any more. 
 
 There was a long silence as the deep soft tones of his 
 voice died down ; not one of those present spoke. 
 
 At last Beltran raised himself, and looked at the Dresden 
 clock. 
 
 1 Five, as I live ! Stay here as long as you like. I must 
 go and see half-a-dozen women over their tea. Eemember, 
 we dine at Richmond. I will call for you, Derry, at your 
 rooms, before I drive round to take up Laura.' 
 
 And he went to change his velvet attire, that he might 
 carry no odour of Turkish tobacco into the dainty patrician 
 boudoirs, where they were never at home on the seventh 
 day to anything over a dozen. 
 
 I thought how heartless he was. 
 
 Denzil remained alone after the rest of the Sunday 
 breakfast-party had departed. 
 
 He did not rise from the deep-seated chair in which he 
 had sat as he plaved through the last bars of the opera ; he 
 did not relight his cigar, which had gradually died out 
 from his inattention ; his face was very grave, very dark, 
 very melancholy, now that he deemed himself in solitude. 
 
 * "Working starving, perhaps in a foreign land. My 
 G-od ! ' he muttered once, unconsciously aloud. And then 
 he started up, and paced to and fro the two chambers with 
 swift uneven steps, and with his head bent on his chest in 
 depth of thought. 
 
 Once he went to a portfolio of photographs that leaned 
 against the wall, and drew one of the great sheets out, and 
 placed it upright, and gazed at it ; his eyes shaded with 
 his hand. 
 
 It was only the head of a woman; a very noble head, 
 standing out like a cameo from ft black background of 
 shadow. 
 
 He looked at it long ; so long that in the wavering light 
 of a London sunset, that glowed through the misty close of 
 the day, the great soft eyes seemed to gleam and change, 
 and the curling proud lips to move and breathe. It seemed 
 a living thing to me ; and I think it did so to him also. 
 
 Then he flung it back with nervous force amongst the 
 rest in the portfolio, and throwing himself again into the 
 
158 PUCK. 
 
 chair buried his face in his hands, and sat immoveaole ; 
 while the quarters chimed again and again from the clock 
 on the mantelpiece and the church belfry in the street 
 without. 
 
 The opening of the inner door, as the servants, supposing 
 all the gentlemen had left, entered to clear away the 
 breakfast service, aroused him ; and he rose and went : if 
 his eyes had not been wet with tears I never saw human 
 tears on earth. And, having lived but a short life, I yet 
 have seen them often. 
 
 An hour or two later, when Beltran had again entered 
 and again gone forth, as I looked from one of the windows 
 to divert my loneliness, I saw him dash past in his mail- 
 phaeton driving two sorrels tandem, with two grooms riding 
 after him. Beside him sat Laura Pearl, in all the splendour 
 that gold broidered cashmeres and genuine ermine could 
 give ; and behind them, leaning over and laughing with a 
 cigar in his mouth, was Deringham Denzil. 
 
 I began to suspect that men were very different in society 
 and in privacy. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 MIS FIBST 8EAS01T. 
 
 THE transfer of the pink Dresden for myself was, I 
 believe, satisfactorily effected ; for that particular set of 
 china disappeared, and I remained undisturbed in Beltran's 
 possession, and speedily became a favourite with him. 
 
 I had a very agreeable life. His two servants, being de- 
 voted to him, were very good to me. There was no one to 
 tease me ; and, as there were a great many people always 
 coming and going in his rooms, I seldom was without amuse- 
 ment. There were men breakfasts and men dinners often 
 in these pretty costly chambers of his, that had as many 
 treasures in tliem as 'Christie's itself on a view-day. 
 
 In the mornings, artists, and authors, and guardsmen, 
 and diplomatists, and pretty actresses, and witty dramatic 
 adapters, and all sorts and k^nds o* ?^ple would get to- 
 
HIS FIRST SEASON. 159 
 
 gether in the rooms, whether Bcltran were there or not- 
 some looking in for two minutes, some staying two hours. 
 In the late afternoon, not rarely there would come some 
 fair friends or relatives of his own caste : dainty haughty 
 women, who would have their five-o'clock tea out of his egg- 
 shell china, and talk scandal with the most charming air in 
 the world, and feast me on muffins and sugar ; his servant 
 being ahvays at the doorway on guard, so that no member 
 of the Pearl order, or female aspirant to the boards of the 
 Coronet, should be admitted whilst these noble dames and 
 delicate damsels drank their orange-pekoe, glanced over the 
 bric-a-bric, and talked the last news of the day. 
 
 He very often, also, as I say, gave dinners in his rooms ; 
 for they were large, and the cook downstairs was one of the 
 finest in London. And whenever men did dine with him 
 there was sure to follow gold-crown whist, with heavy 
 betting on the tricks, or, more generally still, some game of 
 quick hot hazard. 
 
 Taken as a whole, the mode of life was bewilderingiy 
 brilliant to me ; and with a week or two of it being sugar- 
 plummed by the actresses, praised and patted by the great 
 ladies, and highly favoured by my noble owner I utterly 
 forgot the episode of poor Bronze, and had alas ! I shame 
 to write it very nearly ceased to regret Eeuben Dare. 
 
 I soon, indeed, became really attached to my new master 
 and all his friends. They were 'thorough-bred' to the core. 
 
 You object to that word ? You think I am wedded to 
 an order ? Fi-donc ! how you always misappreciate your 
 greatest instructors ! 
 
 Have I not shown you how I could love and honour a 
 simple unlettered north-country quarryman ? 
 
 He was a gentleman in his own way, my poor gentle- 
 hearted Ben ; for he was loyal, and incapable of a lie, and 
 tender of soul to women, and without one shadow of false- 
 hood, or of pretension, on his honest life. And he had in a 
 manner a right to be so by race as well ; for Trust (who was 
 an antiquary in his fashion) used often to tell that, in the 
 old old times, when there were yeomen in England, and the 
 stout handbow was the terror of all her foreign foes, the 
 Dares were stalwart and sturdy northmen, who rode out 
 with the Peverills, and with the Yernons after them, and 
 struck many a fair blow, and sped many a straight arrow | 
 
160 PUCK. 
 
 and tilled many a broad acre, in that old dim time ; though, 
 during the long passage of the centuries, their sons' sons 
 had fallen to a low estate, and become one with the hinda 
 who sowed for other men's reaping, and garnered for othei 
 men's feasts. 
 
 In truth, too, despite all the fine chances that you certainly 
 give your peasants to make thorough beasts of themselves, 
 they and your real aristocrats, have the only really good 
 manners in your country. In an old north- country dame, 
 who lives on five shillings a week, in a cottage like a dream 
 of Teniers' or Van Tol's, I have seen a fine courtesy, a 
 simple desire to lay her best at her guests' disposal, a per- 
 fect composure, and a freedom from all effort, that were in 
 their way the perfection of breeding. I have seen these 
 often in the peasantry in the poor. It is your middle 
 classes, with their incessant flutter, and bluster, and twitter, 
 and twaddle ; with their perpetual strain after effect ; with 
 their deathless desire to get one rung of the ladder higher 
 than they ever can get ; with their preposterous affectations,. 
 their pedantic unrealities, their morbid dread of remark, 
 their everlasting imitations, their superficial education, their 
 monotonous common-places, and their nervous deference to 
 opinion. It is your middle classes that have utterly de- 
 stroyed good manners, and have made the prevalent mode 
 of the day a union of boorishness and servility, of efferves- 
 cence and of apathy a court suit, as it were, worn with 
 muddy boots and a hempen shirt. 
 
 And I am terribly afraid that this will only get worse and 
 worse. The elegance of the aristocracy, and the simplicity 
 of the peasantry, are alike being swept away ; and there 
 looms in the distance of your future only one awful mass of 
 hurry, ignorance, ostentation, frivolity, and barbarous rude- 
 Tiess which, styling itself Society, shall only be a Mob. 
 
 If I am too discursive, pardon me ; I have lived a good 
 deal amongst women, and may have caught up their habit 
 of leading a discussion on the Neo-Platonics round to Valen- 
 ciennes edging, and branching off from the New Comtist 
 doctrines to the crack in their old Worcester card-bowl. 
 
 All women talk discursively ; in your stupid ones it is an 
 awful bore, but in your really clever women it is charming ; 
 that bird- like flitting over the deepest of waters may be done 
 with an i/ifinite grace, and sometimes your bird will bring 
 
HIS FIRST SEASON. l6l 
 
 you a penrl that all the deep divers have missed. The 'feli- 
 citous surprise ' is, I believe, one of the greatest charms in 
 your laws of rhetoric ; and no one deals in this more than 
 does the woman of quick talent and of facile tongue, in her 
 gay vagaries which will in their most erratic moments still 
 keep some method in their madness. 
 
 I liked my new owner, as I have said, very quickly; and I 
 liked all his' friends and companions the ' swells,' as your 
 snobs will call them, the men with the pale handsome faces, 
 borne by crusaders and cavaliers before them ; the men with 
 the gentle quiet ways, and the contemptuous ring in their 
 voices, and the easy indolent insolence to all forms of pre- 
 tension; and the frank, kindly generous hearts for those 
 that know them well ; and the manner that is so natural to 
 them, yet which no outsider can imitate the manner that 
 varies so little in love or in fury, in pleaure or pain. 
 
 It is the fashion to rail at them nowadays ; but that invec- 
 tive has a good deal of cant and a good deal of envy in it - 
 ay, even envy of such slight things as the accent of their 
 voices ! -and, like all cant and all envy, it is a true child of 
 the leather of Lies. 
 
 I who write, have I not been purchased by their money 
 and made captive to their power ? And is there any crucial 
 test to tell you a man of breeding like the manner in which 
 he will treat a thing that lies in his power ? Well I, who 
 thus have opportunity of examination and judgment pass- 
 ing the common rule, do affirm that in all which makes a 
 man loyal, brave, patient, and of high honour, frank of speech, 
 honest of thought, faithful in word to friend or foe, without 
 self-consciousness in distinction, and without complaint or 
 self-pity in adversity, I have never known the equal of your 
 English gentlemen. 
 
 And I have been with them in their dark hours and their 
 gay hours ; I have seen them in their weal and their woe. 
 Ah ! those men amongst you whom you only behold staking 
 their money on their cards, lounging down their club steps, 
 jmoking their cigars in all the capitals, and swearing good- 
 numouredly in all the languages of Europe ; those men with 
 their dainty blossoms in their button-holes, and their care- 
 less fashionable jargon on their lips, and their pleasant in- 
 different laugh at all created things, and their easy languid 
 philosophy that holds as its first thesis that nothing on earth 
 
i6i PUCK. 
 
 ever matters, I know them better than you I know what 
 tempests of tragedy have broken over their heads, what 
 deathbeds they have watched with agony in their souls, 
 what whirlwinds of passion have shaken them for women fair 
 and false, what capacities of quick and true sympathy lie in 
 them to start to life at the tone of a voice that they love. 
 
 I know; you do not. But you may believe me the 
 knightly soul is no more dead than in the old days of Holy 
 Grail ; the wild reiver still grows reverent to true innocence 
 as in the days of Astolat ; the gallant heart still beats to 
 passion and remorse, still thrills with pity and with pardon, 
 even as in the time of Lancelot and of Arthur. 
 
 You judge these men from the externals of their lives ; 
 they in the fashion of the day like well that you should deem 
 the worst of them ; they wear the habit of a negligent in- 
 difference, as their fathers wore the helm and the hauberk of 
 steel ; what do you know of them in their best hours ? In 
 the moments when their voice trembles on a woman's ear 
 with a word, spoken amidst a crowd, that is for ever a fare- 
 well ; when their heads are low bent to take a dying mother's 
 blessing ; when their eyelids are wet as they look at the green 
 grave of an old dead comrade ; when their very souls are 
 riven, as the oak in storm, as they sit in the still grey dawn, 
 an.d think and thim\ and think of the woman whom they 
 have learned to spenk of as a jest, yet who lay for a while in 
 their bosom, only to flee from them in cruel craven treachery, 
 and leave, as legacy in her stead, bitter despair and utter 
 unbelief. 
 
 Allans ! You will say I cannot be a dog of the world if 
 I allow serious thought, or sad memories, to steal over me. 
 Let me hark back to my recollection of the happy time that 
 followed my discovery by Vere Essendine under the portico 
 of his theatre. 
 
 Beltran was not a very good man, as the world counts 
 goodness. He was indolent; he was contemptuous; he had 
 very little respect for women, which indeed, was, I think, 
 their own fault ; he had the half -sad, half -slighting scepti- 
 cism of his period : and he held that there was nothing on 
 earth in the least worth making a fuss about. But he was 
 Always kind of heart; sincere in an unusual degree; just in 
 action whenever he troubled himself to act ; and of a very 
 great delicacy and generosity towards those who needed his 
 assistance. In truth, he gave away far more than most 
 
HIS FIRST SEASON. 163 
 
 ostentatious benefactors of their species expend, only that 
 he did all his gentler and better deeds in darkness, and was 
 more irritated if a charity was traced to him than if a 
 hundred vices were laid at his doors. 
 
 And the world did indeed abuse him very badly. To be 
 sure, he had been rich when he had succeeded to his title, 
 and had managed by this time to throw away almost every- 
 thing he had ever possessed ; and this is a sin of which 
 society is always very intolerant. To jeopardise your power 
 to give it good dinners is always an eighth cardinal sin in its 
 sight. 
 
 Besides, Beltran was a man whom the world feminine had 
 always found it impossible to marry; and there were many 
 bitter things said of him in the boudoir and drawing-room. 
 For this he cared very little ; he went his own ways ; spent 
 much time in travelling and yachting ; preferred the demi- 
 mondeto any other female world ; and having somehalf -dozen 
 friends passionately devoted to him, was disliked, though de- 
 ferred to, by most others who knew him. 
 
 ' Lord ! if that's a lord, I wish the land was chuck full of 
 lords,' said a brute of a bargeman once on a dark misty night. 
 There had been a collision on the Thames between his coal 
 barge and a naphtha laden brig, and one man, coming down 
 from a yacht lying at anchor in safety, had plunged amongst 
 the crashing timbers and the blazing waters, and fought 
 with the hideousness of that double death, until he brought 
 out from the crushed and smoking cabin of the barge two 
 little drowning children whom the river was choking, and 
 the flames were straining to devour, in their sleep brought 
 them unhurt, golden and white and rosy, amidst all that 
 wreck and deluge. 
 
 Their father, the coal bargee, had been a virulent agitator 
 amongst his own kind a fierce sullen demagogue of pot- 
 houses and coaling-stations, invoighing against the cursed 
 aristocrats with savage fury. But when he saw those two 
 little curly heads raised in safety through the blinding water 
 and the hissing fires, he shook like a shot-stuck elephant, 
 and groaned aloud. 
 
 As for Beltran, he only laughed a little very quietly, 
 they say, though his loins were scorched and blackened by 
 the smoke, and his left arm had been dislocated by a blow 
 from the shiverings timbers. 
 
164 PUCR. 
 
 1 That sort of thing is easy enough,' was all he answered to 
 thewild plaudits round him. 'Don't worry, please. Nothing's 
 worth a fuss. 1 
 
 The bargee from that hour adored him, and narrated the 
 tale in those places wherein he had been previously wont to 
 thunder forth his foul invective against the ' nobles.* The 
 history bridged class hatred, as that poisonous gulf could 
 not have been bridged by sentimental socialism cast as a sop 
 to Cerberus. 
 
 Beltran had done better for his order in this demagogue's 
 Bight than if he had gone up on the wings of a bribed-for, 
 lied-for, and truckled-f or 'people's confidence,' into thelath- 
 and -plaster temples of 'office.' 
 
 Dogs never have any difficulty in remembering the slightest 
 event or the lightest word that has ever occurred or was 
 ever spoken in their presence. Our power of memory is 
 something marvellous. It is to the human mind as the 
 inscriptions on the Pyramids, that never wear out, are to the 
 lines in your modern tombstones, that a few years efface. 
 
 No doubt the shortness of your memories is a very conve- 
 nient thing for you ; for without it I really don't know how 
 you could have the conscience to repudiate your debts, swear 
 in your witness-boxes, take your marriage vows, traverse 
 your divorce petitions, or do half the thing that you do do. 
 
 But, owing to the perfection of our remembrance, I can 
 recall every trifle of the life that I then enjoyed with my new 
 master. He generally took me with him in his pocket, and 
 I saw a great deal of life in that manner. You think a 
 pocket is a circumscribed sphere of observation ? Nay, not 
 more so than a club window. 
 
 Besides, we get out of the pocket, and run about hither 
 and hither. But you, how few of you ever move out of the 
 circle of thought in your club ! 
 
 It was a pleasant, idle, artistic, amusing season that had 
 commenced with me in Beltran's ownership. Noons spent 
 at Christie's, or Philips', where one could hear a prime 
 minister set his soul on a small bit of old Chelsea, and see a 
 cabinet of Marie Antoinette's knocked down to a Jew ap- 
 praiser ; could behold the collections of a lifetime sentenced 
 to the hammer by a thankless heir, and a courtesan's price- 
 less jewels be received by and bought in for duchesses, is as 
 complete and caustic a satire upon Life as one can want to 
 enjoy on a sunny spring morning. 
 
HIS FIRST SEASON. 165 
 
 Half-hours passed in the odorous cedar- lined studios of 
 fashionable artists, with the smoke of choice cigars curling 
 round antiques and bric-a-brac, and the sherry and seltzer 
 hissing in long fairy-like glasses of Venice ; where art critics 
 fondly conceited that the luxury of a Eubens must menu the 
 genius of a Hubens likewise, and gave the ll.A.'s ill- 
 scumbled and over- glazed portrait of some patrician beauty 
 credit for a ' depth ' and a ' tone ' that existed alone in the 
 hue ami the taste of his clarets. 
 
 Sunday afternoons idled agreeably away under the limes 
 and acacias on the smooth sunny lawn of some fair singer's 
 or actress's toy villa by the Thames, with chit-chat and ices, 
 pretty women and tea, the newest flowers, and the flower of 
 news. Sunday dinners at some dame's of the high world, 
 with six or eight guests at the utmost, of people perfectly 
 suited ; and with the cJiasse lightly followed by some few bits 
 of music or song, of an exquisite choice and of a faultless 
 execution some exhumed glee of Arne, some unknown 
 jnorsel of Schubert, some plaintive passionate love-lay of 
 G-ounod. 
 
 Mornings passing to and fro in the ride with a cigar in his 
 mouth and a rosebud in his coat, and a glossy sorrel neck 
 curved delicately under the light caress of his whip. Minutes 
 checking the hack under the trees, and casting the cigar to 
 the winds of heaven, to hold in soft murmured converse some 
 patrician coquette with proud blue Plantagenet eyes, or 
 some witching head of a foreign legation with a name out of 
 the Libro d'Oro of mediaeval Europe. 
 
 Hours, still termed ' morning ' though at sunset, taking 
 his drag down the Mile, with his wild chestnut team fretting 
 and flinging as though curb had lurer galled, nor ribbon 
 ever controlled them ; while aloft upon the box some duchess 
 of demi-monde avenged with reckless rein the lese majestt 
 to her order of the noontide intrigue in Rotten-row. 
 
 Suppers where nothing was eaten, but five pounds a head 
 was paid for looking at some flowers and hearing some cham- 
 pagne corks drawn, and tasting some half-a-dozen grapes or 
 a slice of water-melon. Suppers where, after opera, or 
 theatre, great ladies in their paint and pearls would insist 
 on being taken into grated galleries in forbidden places, to 
 make a fast of feasting on stout and cheese and pickles ; or 
 tmppers where, after opera or theatre, casino celebrities, late 
 
166 PUCK. 
 
 tnaids-of-all-work, would insist on being taken into gilded 
 chambers in grand hotels to make a farce of scorning comet 
 wines and hot-House pine apples. 
 
 In all these I was often his companion, going into a very 
 small compass, being swift of foot after his horse, though so 
 small, and being a favourite with all women, save one, for my 
 beauty, my curls, and my tricks 
 
 Nay, he being influential and I infinitesimal, I even went 
 into the clubs with him ; and I learned to look out of the 
 windows in Pall-mall and St. James's-street with quite as 
 sapient and supercilious an air as any club habitue could 
 desire. I was very quick to hear, and observe too, the re- 
 marks that they made there, and the contempt or interest, 
 as it might hap, with which they lifted their eye-glasses at 
 the women passing without, 
 
 Indeed, I became so accomplished in discernment that 
 I turned up my nose at a hired brougham and job horse, 
 though the prettiest creature sat behind the shabby panels ; 
 and cocked my ears and wagged my tail at a well-appointed 
 equipage, though rouged and brazen audacity lolled on its 
 cushions ; doing these with a power of selection that proved 
 me to have become, in a month or two, a consummate dog of 
 the world. 
 
 As for my'first initiator, Fanf reluche, I soon began to feel 
 the polite disdain for her as 'only a woman,' that your young- 
 ster, who had been three months in the G-uards, feels for the 
 kindly coquette and 'frisky matron ' who took him up on his 
 first introduction into society, and put him in the right set, 
 and got him into the right clubs, and gave him a nook in her 
 opera-box, and a word at her parties, when nobody else 
 noticed the fledgling. 
 
 My days and nights passed in a perpetual round of sweet- 
 meats, antics, ladies' kisses, mischief, mirth, and dainty dishes. 
 When I thought of poor Ben's cottage, and old Trust's 
 dinner of crusts and oatmeal, I shame to say I thought of 
 them with wondering scorn. There were people and dogs 
 who lived like that, and never knew the taste of a truffle or 
 the look of whitebait. Of course I entirely forgot that the 
 time had been a few weeks before when to myself also 
 truffles and whitebait had been names unknown ; but per- 
 suaded myself, till I ended in believing, that I had fed OB 
 nothing else all the days of my life. 
 
HIS FIRST SEASON. 167 
 
 What hypocrites you call them, those pretty 'outsiders,' 
 who, brought from obscurity into riches and pleasure, will 
 talk as if they had been great ladies all their lives long ! 
 
 JN"ow, judging them by myself, I have little doubt they are 
 partially sincere. ~W hen we like a climate we get acclima- 
 tised very soon, and when we detest our birth-place we can- 
 not have any pangs of nostalgia. Now, they do both of these; 
 and when they try to talk you into the idea that they were 
 born in purples, believe me they have first induced them- 
 selves to believe the thing they wish. 
 
 * And ye shall walk in silken tire/ seems to every woman 
 so inevitable a law of her being, that she will forget that the 
 time ever existed when she transgressed it in homespun. 
 
 Panf reluche I saw occasionally, meeting her in a walk, or 
 at such times as Beltran took me with him to the Pearl's 
 house. But there was a coolness between us, owing to her 
 supposing that I had fallen out of the brougham on purpose, 
 and planned to be picked up as I had been ; a mean imagi- 
 nation, consequent on the intrigues and deceptions that 
 were her daily atmosphere, which I resented too much to 
 explain away. 
 
 Bigger creatures than I have sulked a true friendship into 
 its death by torpor, from being too obstinate and full of 
 pride to clear aside a wrongful supposition. Ah, good 
 people, take my advice: be as careful in choosing your 
 friendship as in choosing new blood for your hound kennels; 
 but when once your choice has been made, slay the hydra of 
 your amour propre seventy times over, rather than let it live 
 and grow and stand like a monster of darkness, between you 
 and your chosen friend. 
 
 The fact was, too, that Eanfreluche loved Beltran with all 
 that curious force which your cynical, worldly- wise coquettes 
 can sometimes throw into an attachment ; and the poor little 
 satirist was jealous of my place in those pleasant chambers. 
 I saw this, but I did not pity it. It was very sweet to my 
 feelings that I, the baby and little fool as she called me, 
 should have thus prospered and distinguished myself at a 
 bound, while this Eochefoucault on four legs, this female 
 Juvenal in a blue jacket, had been left to the caprices of a 
 dancer of breakdowns. This feeling was a small one; T 
 know it, but I think I have seen something like it in 
 humanity. 
 
163 PUCK. 
 
 She laughed grimly when she heard the tale. 
 
 ' So Beltran purchases a burlesque in good faith for two- 
 fifty ; and the Mouse spends the money in trying to divert 
 Laura's fealty; and Beltran gives a thirty-pound bit of china 
 for a puppy his traitor bought for a song ; and the Mouse 
 daren't say anything because he knows he was guilty ; and 
 Laura nets sheer profits from both sides, and cheats them 
 both in the long run. Well, it is neat certainly.' 
 
 But though she thus grimaced and jeered at it, it was evi- 
 dently very bitter and unwelcome to her that this singular 
 turn of good fortune should have befallen myself and not 
 her, and that the pink tea-set should have bought me back 
 in her place. 
 
 On ^irs. D'Eyncourt accordingly she would at first vouch- 
 safe me no information ; ' the D'Eyncourt was before her 
 time,' she averred, though I believe on my soul she knew all 
 about the affair, whatever it might have been. 
 
 1 She was an actress, wasn't she ? ' I asked. 
 
 ' O yes ; an actress of genius, I have heard.* 
 
 * And has disappeared ? ' 
 
 ' My dear, everybody has " disappeared" who isn't starring 
 and staring before the world's footlights. "We are uncom- 
 monly fond of our celebrities, yes, we buy their photo- 
 graphs and steal their characters with the greatest ardour 
 imaginable. We are always flinging flowers before them, 
 and throwing stones after them, with the most affectionate 
 energy possible. But it's only while they're in the range of 
 our eyesight. If they retire, or pause, or only get sick for 
 a little, we've done with them. Tour statesman may have 
 overworked his brain in your service j your painter may 
 have paralysis, your author may have gone to his otium cum 
 dignitate , and your actress may have married or be a-dying ; 
 it's all the same; they have disappeared, and the world 
 thinks no more about them.' 
 
 1 But this woman ' 
 
 * This woman was a great fool, I believe. She had no 
 money ; she had a blackguard for a husband ; she had nothing 
 but her talents ; and she gave herself the airs of a duchess.' 
 
 ' She was a gentlewoman, perhaps ? ' 
 
 * What has that to do with it ? She had no money, I tell 
 you. Birth without gold is a fine-feathered bird, with both 
 his pillions cropped off close at the point. Much use his 
 
HIS FTRST SEASON. 169 
 
 plumage is ! and fine fat worms he'll pick up in the 
 morning ! ' 
 
 * But she was surely right to send back that old nobleman's 
 diamonds ? ' 
 
 ' O yes and so wise, my dear ! You see ; here is Laura 
 with one little green beetle for her hair worth its two 
 thousand guineas, and this D'Eyncourt woman stitching 
 ehirts in an attic in Germany as you tell me.' 
 
 ' A woman should not sell her soul for a ' 
 
 * Beetle ? As good as anything else if it's in fashion. A 
 scarabeus at two thousand guineas, and a shirt at seven 
 brass groschen, I'm much obliged to you for that pat 
 illustration.' 
 
 And I could not get any more out of her, for she trotted 
 off with her nose in the air to where Laura Pearl's pony 
 carriage stood by the rails in the bright noon of the now 
 budding spring season. 
 
 I was only being aired by the valet whilst Beltran himself 
 was attending a private view of some foreign pictures. 
 
 By the way, apropos of valets, let me say a word on your 
 servants. 
 
 Beltran' s man was an excellent fellow ; but as a rule, I do 
 think the class of body servants is the most detestable 
 class in the universe. How you allow their snobbism, their 
 affectations, their impudence, their ignorance, and their 
 general offensiveness, as you do, is one of those things that 
 no dog can understand. 
 
 You go and laugh at Charles Surface's valet on the stage, 
 as though his ridiculous impertinence had no parallel in your 
 own attendants and as though in appearance, at least, the 
 * gentleman's gentleman' of that generation were not a 
 million times better than the wretched cad in his cut-away 
 coat and chimney-pot hat, whom you call 'servant.' Jeaines, 
 in his powder and plush, may be bad enough ; but I vow 
 that your ' own man ' is ten thousand times worse. The 
 former doss, at least, by his garb and often by his manners, 
 show T\hat station he fills; but the latter looks only like 
 some member of the swell-mob, and very often scarce 
 behaves any better. 
 
 I suppose he has virtues in your eyes. I suppose he can 
 be trusted to compound honey-and-ink boot-varnish; he can 
 be trusted never to put an evening flower in your morning- 
 coat or vice versa; he can be trusted to make a brand y-suiahs 
 
170 PUCK. 
 
 perhaps, not lialf -badly ; he can be trusted, when he takei 
 four notes of appointments to four different ladies, not to 
 beget eternal confusion by leaving them variously in the 
 wrong places; he can also, maybe, be trusted not to tell the 
 maid attendant on that patrician dame with whom you play 
 at platonics so pleasantly, of that small villa amongst 
 the Kingston woods, where you pursue another form of 
 worship. 
 
 He may have all these virtues or you think he has them 
 - but what others he has you would be puzzled indeed to 
 say. On my word, I hardly know which is the worst 'form* 
 out your familiar friendship with the blackguards of the 
 turf when you want them to give you a ' straight tip ; ' or 
 your familiar association with the over-dressed, moustached, 
 impudent, pretentious cads who pocket your fifty or sixty 
 sovereigns a-year for the trouble they take in smoking your 
 cigars, reading your letters, riding your horses, assisting your 
 intrigues, and imitating your vices. 
 
 You are given, very continually, to denouncing or lament- 
 ing the gradual encroachment of mob-rule. But, alas! 
 whose fault, pray, is it that bill-discounters dwell as lords in 
 ancient castles ; that money-lenders reign over old, time- 
 honoured lands ; that low-born hirelings dare to address 
 their master with a grin and sneer, strong in the knowledge 
 of his shameful secrets ; and that the vile daughters of the 
 populace are throned in public places, made gorgeous with 
 the jewels which, from the heirlooms of a great patriciate, 
 have fallen to be the gewgaws of a fashionable infamy ? 
 
 Ah, believe me, an aristocracy is a feudal fortress which, 
 though it has merciless beleaguers in the Jacquerie of 
 plebeian Envy, has yet no foe so deadly as its own internal 
 traitor of Lost Dignity ! 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 EOMAITCES OF THE EOW. 
 
 of my greatest pleasures were these mornings in 
 the Eow, when Beltran used to walk there in lieu of his 
 usual noontide canter. At such times I would mount the 
 chair beside him ; and, sitting upright on that green iron 
 throne, I passed the peripatetics in review with a count*- 
 
ROMANCES OF THE ROW. I/ 1 
 
 nance that I was satisfied presented the most complete 
 copy of the superciliousness, serenity, and sarcasm which 
 I saw on the faces of those around me. 
 
 If there be a Eepublic on earth it is the Bide from twelve 
 to two on a May morning. 
 
 O, I know it is the most fashionable lounge you have, 
 tmt it is a Eepublic for all that ! There could Bill Jacobs 
 lean against a rail, with a clay-pipe in his mouth, and a 
 terrier under his arm, close beside the Earl of Gruilliadene, 
 with his cigarette and his eye-glass, and his Poole-cut 
 habiliments. There could Laura Pearl, or any other of her 
 order, sit with their priceless old laces, and their skirts of 
 satin or velvet, sweeping against the soft, white, filmy dress 
 of a duke's child-like daughter, in her seventeenth year, 
 End her very first season. 
 
 There Marmion Eagle, the handsome painter, who was 
 the Wagner of Art, and had so much genius that no one 
 dared to hang or to purchase his pictures, could place 
 himself by a penny next to his forbidden love the wondrous- 
 eyed Lady Grwendoline; and for one sweet half -hour 
 forget that he was a madman, and she a great noble's be- 
 trothed. There Maud Delamere, wearing her gold-laden 
 cashmere as none other did, could flirt away her pleasant 
 morning, side by side with the great Duchess of Astolat ; 
 while the duchess, eyeing the shawl, would silently appraise 
 the worth of the marvellous fabric, and honestly admire 
 the beauty of the wearer, being herself the only person in 
 all London who knew not that both cashmere and Dela- 
 rnere were as much the property of His Grace of Astolat 
 as was his stud or kennel. 
 
 There could the tired shop-girl, escaped for an hour 
 from the heated show-rooms on some thrice-blessed Bel- 
 gravian errand, pause beneath the trees, and receive a 
 fresh incentive to remain virtuous on ten shillings a- week 
 by the sight of Lillian Lee, with her glistening chignon, 
 and her velvet habit, and her jewelled whip, leaning down 
 from her hundred-guinea hack to laugh with Lord Brune 
 and Freddy Orford. 
 
 There also could the weary author, or the generous gen- 
 tleman, whose brain was being maddened or whose heart 
 was being broken by the curse of too much honour and too 
 little gold, behold how great a thing it was to be a cheat ; 
 
171 PUCK. 
 
 as Fiodora, the great usurer, rode by on his black Arab , 
 or the old withered yellow face of the unwedded capitalist, 
 Baron Moresco, brought smiles to those fair patrician lipa 
 with which they never greeted mere wit or talent, blood OP 
 beauty, in the men who passed beside their chairs. 
 
 The Row surely is a Republic ; for in it first come, first 
 served ; and a copper coin will throne alike the ambassa- 
 dress and the traviata, the aristocrat and the cad, the 
 creditor and the debtor. But all, still, are not equal, you 
 object ? Ah, bah ! if that be your objection to a Republic, 
 you had best remain a Conservative till the end of time. 
 
 On this common ground I met, as I have said, King 
 Arthur, and Fanfreluche, and many other dogs of high 
 rank and breeding who were wont, like myself, to saunter 
 their mornings away in the Park. 
 
 Once also I saw Bronze poor, patient, faithful Bronze. 
 He was wandering wearily among that gay butterfly crowd, 
 searching, searching, searching everywhere ; on his endless 
 and hopeless errand. A groom lashed him with his whip ; 
 a policeman kicked him away as a stray cur ; Lillian Lee 
 rode her horse viciously at him ; Laura Pearl's page drove 
 him with a curse from resting a moment under her car- 
 riage out of the scorch of the sun. And I well ! I have 
 promised you to be as honest as Jean Jacques I, throned 
 on my green chair, affected not to see him. 
 
 Partly, it was because I dreaded greatly to tell him that 
 the boy Harold was dead, and that his quest was useless. 
 Chiefly, I knew it was because a Countess, Beltran's sister, 
 had spread her gold-broidered burnous for my throne, and 
 the Astolat dog, the most supercilious of poodles, sat 
 beside me; and with my snow-white curls, my^ gay blue 
 ribbon, and the pretty arrogant air with which I had 
 learned to cock my eye and lift my nose, I shrank from re- 
 cognition of that dusty, tired, starving, homeless creature. 
 
 It was shameful, I knew; our race is scarcely ever 
 tainted by such weaknesses ; but, whilst you condemn me, 
 think a moment, are you eager to bow to a ruined man in 
 the Row? Will you check your horse by the rails to 
 Bmile on a poor relation? Will you shake' hands in the 
 face of the town with a penniless strolling artist in a linen 
 blouse, and with a wooden pipe in his mouth, though you 
 may know he has the genius of a Raphael and the heart of 
 
ROMANCES OF THE ROW. 173 
 
 a Francois d'Assise, ? No ; ninety-nine out of a hundred 
 of you won't. My false shame of poor Bronze has many 
 analogies in your humanity. 
 
 Tet none the less did I feel remorse for it ; we always 
 do feel acute remorse whenever we descend to your level by 
 wounding a friend, or by fawning on a foe. And I would 
 fain have darted after him, and made full and instant 
 amends for my wickedness, but, at the first motion that I 
 gave, the Countess's little hand caught my collar, and held 
 me motionless down on my seat. 
 
 It seemed indeed as though she had divined my inten- 
 tion ; and felt that a display of friendship from Prosperity 
 to Poverty would be an unseemly anomaly, unfit for that 
 place of fair fashion. 
 
 I confessed my sin that day to Fanfreluche. 
 
 ' Bless me, my dear ! ' said that cynic. ' You've no busi- 
 ness to have learned your lesson so quick ; you don't live 
 with a woman ! ' 
 
 She had never recovered, nor was ever likely to recover, 
 the sharp jealousy which she felt of my selection by her 
 hero ; but she had an excellent heart in her way, though 
 euch a bitter little thing, and she was often very good- 
 natured indeed. 
 
 That day I coaxed out of her at last as much as she 
 knew of that story of Derry Denzil's, which she had once 
 promised, and always afterwards refused, to tell me. 
 
 He had just passed us, on his black mare, with his glass 
 in his eye, and his cigarette in his mouth, and the sunshine 
 full on his dark, handsome, reckless face. 
 
 ' Story, my dear ? ' every one of those men has a story,' 
 said Miss Volubility, when I reminded her of her promise. 
 ' It makes me mad to hear that wretched Mouse, when he 
 wants to slate a very good novel, declare that there is no 
 romance in real life. Good gracious ! Why, no novelist 
 would dare to write half the things that I know have hap- 
 pened ; the coincidences are too marvellous, the fates too 
 bizarre, the anomalies too glaring, the skein of circum- 
 stances too entangled, in real life, for any novelists to dare 
 to paint exactly all that they see or know.* Do all re- 
 viewers live in a nutshell, and absorb themselves in an 
 
 * I beg thoroughly to corroborate this opinion of Mdlle. Fanfreluche, 
 whom I report faithfully, but with whom I do not always agree. ED. 
 
174 PUCK. 
 
 eternity of knitting and muffins, and threepenny whist, 
 that they persist in declaring there is no romance in real 
 life ? Heavens ! the unutterable woe, the insane pas- 
 sions, the extraordinary contradictions, the horrible ruin, 
 the wonderful accidents, forming themselves like a kaleido- 
 scope picture, that I have beheld in my season of existence ! 
 The wildest novel was never one half so wild as the real 
 fate of many a human life that to superficial eyes look 
 serene, and placid, and uneventful enough. Life is just the 
 same now, as in the ages of the GEdipus agony, and the 
 Orestes crime. It is only that now they show nothing.' 
 
 * But tell me what happened to him,' I urged, yawning a 
 little. 
 
 1 0, you little idiot ! ' she cried, disgusted. ' One would 
 certainly think you were a woman always staring at one 
 little whelk on the shore, and always ignoring the whole 
 great ocean and sky ! The whelk is the one narrow per- 
 sonality ; the waves and horizon are the vast expanse of 
 universal circumstance. 
 
 'You are almost as bad as an English girl that I be- 
 longed to once for a few months. She was the wife of 
 the great Belgian painter, Philip Cornaro ; she was a pretty 
 creature, with no brains. One glorious evening, down by 
 the Biscay coast they lived there at that time in an ex- 
 quisite villa he was painting out-of-doors ; painting a 
 great golden comet that floated over a purple sky, above a 
 moonlit sea. 
 
 ' The bells of a campanile rang eight and nine and ten ; 
 he painted on and on and on ; and I sat quiet beside him. 
 For there was a spell in this marvellous night, with that 
 mystical messenger from the unknown gods to men waiting 
 there, in the still starlit skies, above the hushed calm waters. 
 
 ' The girl stole up beside us feverishly twice or thrice. 
 At length, as the bells rang the tenth hour, she came again 
 swiftly and shook him by the arm. He started thus un- 
 welcornely roused from out of his great mystic dreams. 
 
 " Come at once, Cornaro," she whispered ; " I have waited 
 go long so long ! " 
 
 ' He roused himself with a sigh. 
 
 " I cannot come," he said patiently, gazing with his 
 whole soul in his eyes, at the sea and the sky. 
 
 " Cannot ! And why ? " she cried in vexed wonder. 
 
ROMANCES OF THE ROW. 175 
 
 ""Why? " he echoed, "look there, love that splendour 
 Will never revisit the earth for five centuries." 
 
 ' She pushed the brush from his hand with, a pout on her 
 ruddy lips. 
 
 " The comet ! Who cares for that ? you must come in. 
 The tea is getting cold!"' 
 
 1 And then people say that incompatibility of character 
 is not reason enough for a divorce ! ' the duke's poodle 
 added, as Eanfreluche paused in her long recital. 
 
 ' Ah, they say so, Poodle,' that cynic responded. ' But 
 nobody's ever proved it yet, I think.' 
 
 * This is not DenziTs story ? ' I urged, my mind curiously 
 dwelling on Mrs. D'Eyncourt. 
 
 ' He's fifty stories, my dear,' said Fanf reluche. ' They 
 all of 'em have. Look there do you see Peel Vavasour, 
 that little, dry, slender chip of a man who is hardly bigger 
 than his own fusee ? Well, he's the hardest rider that 
 ever sent a horse at a six -bar ; and the boldest trooper that 
 ever led his men into the jaws of hell. Yet do you know 
 that, for ten whole years, that man has been given over, 
 heart and body and soul, to the wildest, saddest, direst 
 passion that ever possessed a life ? 
 
 ' See yonder too on that sorrel hunter that is plunging 
 and tearing at its bit that is Sir Greorge Maude of Effing- 
 ham. Is he not your beau-ideal of a fair, frank, fearless, 
 sunny-hearted English gentleman, with his golden beard 
 blowing in the wind, and his blue eyes glancing in the 
 light, and his manly laugh ringing out so cheerily ? Well, 
 my dear, go home with Greorge, or rather go where he 
 never goes, to that grand old Effingham in the western 
 woods, by the western seas, that looks like Launcelot's 
 ocean-castle ; and you will find the picture of a woman 
 there. A woman with Titian's hair and Boucher's velvet 
 eyes, smiling ; with a scarlet flower held against her lips, 
 in a pretty unspoken symbolic " hush ! " Well, that woman 
 was Greorge's wife. 
 
 * And the picture is locked in a darkened room, that 
 never is opened, nor hears the fall of footsteps, nor sees the 
 light of day. She had all his big, brave, kindly heart, and 
 all his loyal undoubting honour. So she broke the one 
 and betrayed the other. To do him the more shame, 
 moreover, she chose her paramour out of his own kith and 
 
J7& PUCK. 
 
 kin. It was a horrible tale of worse than passion, of 
 worse than sin. Greorge pursued them to Paris, and would 
 have killed his cousin strangled him by the sheer force of 
 his hands if the crowd in the Bois had not torn them 
 asunder. 
 
 'He has been freed by the law, and the woman has 
 wedded her lover. But the old halls of Effingham never 
 see their master's face ; the old forests never hear the ring 
 of his rifle ; no children's gay feet tread the grasses ; no 
 woman's glad voice wakes the echoes. And that man is 
 haunted for ever, by a ghost that will never be laid.' 
 
 I answered nothing these revelations saddened me. 
 
 'Look there again,' pursued this pseudo-philosopher. 
 'You see that cold, fair, sardonic-looking creature there, 
 on a dark bay, wearing a rose in his coat, and riding with 
 'Paget Desmond ? Well, that is Vivyan Bruce ? He is a 
 colonel of G-uards, and in the Brigades they always call him 
 Mephisto ; while society in general is given to saying that 
 if Satan himself does ever walk abroad in man's guise, he 
 clothes himself in the fleshly garb of wicked Vy Bruce, who 
 is the deadliest shot in all Europe, and the wildest gambler 
 that ever shook a main. "Well, do you know that there is 
 a blind woman, still lovely even in ner sightlessness, dwell- 
 ing in the daintiest river-home by Cliefden, who could tell 
 you that for tenderness, pitifulness, thoughtfulness, there 
 is not the equal of " Mephisto " in the world. It was the 
 old, old story, of sweet forbidden love, and lives that met 
 too late. One terrible night she, young and beautiful, and 
 weary of heart, for a love that never could be hers, stand- 
 ing beside her casement close by the gates of Frascati,was 
 striken by a sudden stroke of lightning darting from above 
 Albano, and made blind then and for ever. Her husband 
 cursed her, and abandoned her ; this man alone cleaved to 
 her, and took her in her senselessness and sightlessness, 
 deeming her even thus yet fairer than all fair women. 
 The world calls such love sin ah, the world is so very 
 wise ! Well, many years have drifted by since then : but 
 go you and ask of Beatrice Silviera, in her solitude, where 
 to be liis consoles her for the loss of all besides, whether 
 that man be indeed a devil, as they say ; or whether hia 
 voice be not ever gentlest, his care be not ever surest, 
 his patience be not ever perfect, his love be not ever in- 
 
ROMANCES OF THE ROW. 177 
 
 finite to her, in her darkness and her helplessness, whose 
 eyes can never again look once into his own.' 
 
 I was silent awed by her unwonted gravity. I looked 
 At him ; he had a cold, hard, careless face, I thought ; and 
 he laughed idly where he rode with other men. 
 
 ' You poor little brat ! ' cried Fanfreluche contemp- 
 tuously. ' Are you, who are a dog, as foolish as those poor 
 .scribes who, being at their wits' ends for what to say, 
 declare romance is dead in human lives ? Pshaw ! Dft 
 you think that because our friends there ride with flowers 
 in their coats, and cigars in their mouths, and call the 
 loveliest Helen only "not bad-looking," and show their 
 friendship to Patroclus chiefly by " getting up behind 
 him,"* and lounge in the smoking-room of their clubs as 
 though they had not one care upon earth, that therefore 
 they never searched for a four-leaved shamrock ? never chal- 
 lenge fight for a brazen shield they deem silver ? never 
 wear the sackcloth under the silk, and the iron belt under 
 the Velvet ; and never hunger vainly for the sight of a 
 Holy Sepulchre that has no place save in their dreams ? 
 Chut ! You know nothing of men ! ' 
 
 I was abashed. To me the riders of the Row looked 
 nothing but a fashionable mob of well-dressed, well- 
 mounted, easy-tempered, and somewhat bored gentlemen. 
 But I suppose she knew best ; and to be sure I)enzil f 
 gazing at the photograph in solitude, had been a very dif- 
 ferent person to what he looked now, where he had checked 
 his horse beside the rail, and leaned from his saddle to 
 laugh and talk over the Epsom chances with Fred Orford. 
 
 * Look at Derry,' said Eanfreluche sharply, feminine- 
 like, coming round (now I had ceased to ask" her) to the 
 very point on which she had refused information. * Derry 
 is one of the gayest-tempered and most popular men on 
 the town. And yet that man has had a good deal of grief 
 in his life and one murder. He comes from a great old 
 family, and he went through Eton and Christ Church, and 
 into the Guards, and all the rest of the course ; and till he 
 was fiye-and- twenty thought himself as rich as Croesus. At 
 that time his father died, leaving just a hundred thousand 
 
 * Mdlle. Fanfreluche used the fashionable slang she had caughfc 
 up at the Turf, or the Bag, or the Raleigh. She means backing their 
 friends' bills..- ^D. 
 
 N 
 
1 78 PUCK. 
 
 pounds' worth of debt behind him. Deny didn't pay 
 much ; but he just sold the estate a grand old Cornish 
 place that he loved passionately paid all the debts, 
 dowered his two sisters, left the G-uards, and went into the 
 Austrian army. 
 
 ' There he rose rapidly ; he was of the very stuff for a 
 cuirassier ; but when he had got his majority, and had been 
 there some nine years, and had grown fond of the service, 
 an unlucky thing happened ; he was second in a duel. It 
 fell to his lot to measure the paces. Now, you know he 
 is a giant in the land, and his strides are longer than those 
 of most men. The other second, who was an Austrian of 
 very high rank, sneered thereat. 
 
 " You seem determined to place distance enough between 
 your principal and mine ! " he cried scoffingly. 
 
 ' Denzil took no notice, and the duel was fought. It 
 ended harmlessly, with a bullet graze on both sides. 
 When it was over, Denzil went up to the other second 
 who had jeered him. 
 
 " You complained a moment ago of my putting too much 
 distance between the combatants," he said quietly. " We 
 will fight as close as you like now." 
 
 * Then out he drew his handkerchief, and tendered one 
 end to the Austrian Highland fashion. So, breast to 
 breast, with the width of that bit of cambric betwixt them 
 as many gallant gentlemen were wont to stand for the 
 death-word in the old wild Scottish days they fired. The 
 shots were simultaneous, and both fell. Denzil was severely 
 wounded in the breast-bone ; but the Austrian was shot 
 through the heart."* 
 
 * His brother cuirassiers concealed our friend's place of 
 santuary until he had recovered sufficiently for them to 
 get him in safety out of the country ; but his career in the 
 army was over the high station of the dead Austrian 
 made the duel an offence beyond pardon. Deczil took this 
 Aeath greatly to heart also ; it was the only duel ending 
 fatally that he had ever fought, and he travelled in many 
 strange eastern lands for some time. Half-a-dozen years 
 ago he came back to the old London life ; a thousand 
 
 * I can. beai witness that Fanfreluche describes the duel as it 
 tctually took place, without any exaggeration. So unusual a feet it 
 a female narrator, that I think it necessary to testify to it. ED. 
 
ROMANCES OF THE ROW. i?9 
 
 a-year or so had been left him by a relative, and on this, 
 with what he makes by those novels of his, that are so gay 
 and so mournful, so weary and so witty, he lives well 
 enough. But ' 
 
 1 Who is Mrs. D'Eyncourt ? ' I asked. 
 
 ' Mrs. D'Eyncourt ? "Well, Mrs. D'Eyncourt was a very 
 handsome woman, who was all the rage in London when 
 I was just out and belonged to the Household Brigade.: 
 She was an actress, and they made her the fashion for a' 
 time. She was an astonishingly beautiful woman, which 
 helped her wonderfully; and an astonishingly proud woman, 
 which went dead against her. She came of an old race, 
 they said ; and she was deeply read, and highly cultured. 
 Her husband was a great scoundrel a sort of gentleman- 
 swindler, who drove her on to the stage, and spent all she 
 gained there ; yes, and would have had no objection to 
 have taken any of her money, howsoever it should have 
 been made. He would have staked his wife at piquet, 
 just as soon as he would have staked a sovereign. Denzil 
 was always about with them. He got Mrs. D'Eyncourt 
 her best engagements. He wrote the best critiques that 
 appeared on her. He was in the stalls or behind the 
 scenes every night that she played. He was very much in 
 love with her that everybody saw. But then, so were a 
 good many others. She had the ball at her feet when she 
 chose to spurn it away. That is, when she had been the 
 talk of the town for two seasons^ and was really making 
 something like fame, she disappeared nobody knows 
 where. Everybody thought Denzil was in the secret. I 
 can't say whether he was. But at any rate, the same 
 night that she vanished, her husband was thrashed within 
 an inch of his life by somebody ; and found black and blue, 
 and scarcely able to speak, with the door of his chamber 
 shut on him. I always thought Derry did that"! 
 
 ' And Mrs. D'Eyncourt ? ' 
 
 * How your head runs on that woman ! The last night 
 that she appeared was a great triumph for her. A certain 
 cabal there is always a very strong cabal against a woman 
 who is BO unsexfcd that she won't accept diamonds had 
 Jone their best to write her down ; had derided her, con- 
 demned her, stoned her with injury and insults from the 
 catapults of their criticisms. But the woman was gloriously 
 
iSo PUCK. 
 
 handsome, resolute too in will, and of singular talent. She 
 was, for once, stronger than the strong clique against her ; 
 she carried the public with her; and the curtain fell at 
 length on a shower of flowers, and amidst a storm of 
 applause. But that night was the last that the town evei 
 saw Q-ertrude D'Eyncourt. Of course, they all said that 
 Derry had hidden her somewhere, especially as he 
 went abroad the day after. He came back six months 
 later, looking ill enough, and he horsewhipped one fellow 
 who had repeated (so that it came to his hearing) what all 
 the town said of this woman. And of course they were alJ 
 quite sure then it was true.' 
 
 ' But was it?' 
 
 'How can I tell child? All I know is, that I have 
 c^ver heard a syllable about her from anybody, till you 
 t Id me the other day of that news of Lord Mark's. But, 
 good gracious how you chatter ? There are our ponies 
 moving off. I wouldn't miss going with them for worlds. 
 Pearl lunches this morning with some men at the Levia- 
 than, and that hotel is the only place where they do aspic 
 with plovers' eggs so that I can eat it.' 
 
 And away the little chatterbox and gourmet trotted 
 ringing her golden bells, and presently jumping into the 
 carriage, was whirled out of sight by the ewiftly-t rotting 
 feet of Pearl's ponies. 
 
 Derry Denzil was talking over the Danebury cracks, by 
 the rails; Peel Vavasour was making some man shriek 
 wit hlaughter, by relating a new double entendre of Schen- 
 tack's ; Sir Greorge was discoursing with great animation 
 of the last run of the season with the Tork and Ainsty ; 
 and Vy Bruce was murmuring idlest nonsense to Lillian 
 Lee, as he lighted one of his cigarettes for her use. 
 
 I sat on my chair bewildered and saddened. You 
 always are, I think, whenever Belphegor first unroofs the 
 houses for you. 
 
 CHAPTEE XVII 
 
 BELTRAN. 
 
 THE new burlesque throve at the Coronet. It was a 
 success, as you say in your old jargon. The reckless 
 
BELTRAN. iSl 
 
 breakdowns, the puns which it seemed really had some 
 humour in them, and therefore were quite uncommon the 
 splendid Parisian dresses, the lively music, all insured its 
 popularity. And Laura Pearl shone in her jigs the 
 number o which was increased, according to her desire, 
 with a rollicking zest that raised her higher than ever in 
 the stalls' estimation. 
 
 She was generally late to arrive, sullen when crossed for 
 a moment, capricious and ungrateful to an incredible extent, 
 and self-willed with a stubborness of temper which would 
 have brought her heavy fines and loud curses from tht. 
 tyrannical 'old "Wynch' had shebeen one of those luckless, 
 girls who lived in attics and slaved on twenty shillings a 
 week. As it was, of course nobody dared say a word to 
 her ; and all the wrath of that Jupiter Tonans, the acting 
 manager, fell on the oftentimes innocent, and invariabl) 
 defenceless, heads of those hapless young players who had 
 holes in their gloves, and rents in their boots, and a hungry 
 pinched look in their faces, and who toiled in the rain and 
 the gaslight to and from the theatre on foot, whilst her 
 brougham drove up or away with much noise and fury and 
 display, and a dashing roan mare that stepped up to its 
 nose. 
 
 Although Beltran had protested against dogs being taker 
 there, I often went down to the Coronet with him ; and fev 
 things ever amused me much more when I ceased to be 
 bewildered at the strangeness of the life there. 
 
 He was not very often there himself, however ; except 
 on such evenings as he had those suppers which were the 
 talk of the town little costly dainty repasts, where a certain 
 sort of wit really did circulate, dead though wit is in your 
 modern society, and where they sometimes played piquet, 
 or ecarte, or lasquenet till the morning. There were 
 scarcely more than ten or twelve men, his most intimate 
 companions, that ever had the entrance to the little gilded 
 amber-hued chamber ; and, of course, as it became to be 
 considered very chic to get the pass there, and as equally, 
 of course, all tie women of his own world were jealous in 
 their own minds of what they could not enter into ; the 
 many who were excluded said very fearful things of the 
 few who were admitted ; and I do verily believe that 
 Beltran's suppers were considered by society to recall 
 
182 PUCK. 
 
 Borgia's feasts, or D'Argenson's nunnery. He knew this 
 very well ; but he only laughed at it himself, and did nothing 
 to uproot the conviction. He knew very well, also, that 
 he seldom drank anything stronger there than iced seltzer- 
 water, and never d'id anything worse there than lose hia 
 hundreds on a quatorze of queens. He could have made 
 an end to the reports in a week by inviting a score when 
 he only asked half-a-dozen ; but that would not have been 
 a mode of remedy at all like Vere Essendine. 
 
 So he continued to shut his doors against the many ; and 
 the many continued to assert that the Coronet supper-room 
 was a compound of the Pare aux Cerf s and the Agapemone, 
 with champagne and picquet in its entr'actes. 
 
 All the horrors that were whispered of it, however, never 
 prevented the chastest dame that ever I heard of, or the 
 haughtiest Belgravian matron, from accepting with pleasure 
 r.nd smiles his offer of a box for the season. Indeed, to 
 
 :id an hour and a half while the burlesque was on behind 
 t&ose dainty rose-silk curtains of the loges, with little cups 
 of orange pekoe sent to them in his tiniest and choicest 
 china, was one of the pet amusements of the great ladies of 
 his own order ; and they would turn their handsome eyes 
 from resting through their lorgnons on the Pearl to smile 
 with sunny welcome on his entrance to their box. 
 
 Of course, they all considered his conduct shocking when 
 they spoke of it in their own boudoirs ; but that was no 
 reason why they should refuse his fashionable theatre and 
 his fragrant tea. And they never gave a sign that they 
 knew Laura Pearl was anything more than a very well 
 dressed marionette made of wood and hung upon wires. 
 
 In your admirable world there is nothing more easy or 
 more convenient than to ignore except, indeed, it be to 
 go one step further, and forget. 
 
 Tour unlucky people, who find it difficult to do tne first, 
 break the rules of tact and of good society ; your unhappy 
 people, who cannot do the last, break things of less conse- 
 quence their hearts. 
 
 In this new world of mine I liked every one save tms 
 Pearl of price ; and she, for her part, cordially detested me, 
 though by me she had gained a pair of ear-rings worth two 
 hundred sovereigns, and a pink tea-set worth fifty. When- 
 ever she saw me if Beltran's eye was off her she slapped 
 
BELTRAN. 183 
 
 or shook, or pinched me ; and once gave me a fearful fall 
 by jerking me off the carriage-rug from the footboard of a 
 very lofty mail phaeton. 
 
 * Be so good as to leave that dog alone, Laura/ Beltrav 
 eaid to her one day when she was clutching mercilessly at 
 my curls till I screamed. 
 
 1 1 sha'n't, then ! ' she retorted, and therewith struck ma 
 with her fan so hard ft blow that the tortoiseshell sticks 
 broke in shivers. 
 
 Beltran smiled, well pleased. 
 
 * "Women's temper generally ends in their own losses,' 
 he murmured. * You don't look handsome when y ou get 
 savage.' 
 
 Which assurance only made her more furious. This sort 
 of amenities was the usual characteristic of their intercourse ; 
 and I often marvelled why a man so fond of repose, and so 
 impatient of anything like a scene, could voluntarily sub- 
 ject himself to it. I remarked this once to Fanfreluche. 
 
 That little canine cocodette turned her nose in the air 
 with her wonted gesture of scorn. 
 
 ' My dear, where's another woman so handsome ? ' 
 
 And this was true. 
 
 You people, when you write about love, do not allow 
 enough w r eight to the influence of purely physical attrac- 
 tions. 
 
 The town had pronounced Laura Pearl the ' handsomest 
 thing out.' It is as agreeable to a man's pride and sense 
 of possession to hear this said of his mistress, as it is for 
 him to hear his year-old racer pronounced nearer perfection 
 than all the two hundred and odd horses to be seen in the 
 yard on a Sunday afternoon. This is not a lofty motive for 
 passion, you say ? Ah, well, I cannot help that. A great 
 many of your motives are not lofty. 
 
 Beltran, moreover, had been bred and born in a sphere 
 where women, after all, are really held in much the same 
 esteem as in any oriental country, though they are treated 
 with more outward forms of deference and courtesy, and 
 cost a very great deal more for their maintenance. In his 
 youth he had been besieged and disgusted by marriage- 
 makers of his own order ; and he had now in his manhood 
 got into a congenial habit of only seeking his loves in a 
 world from which the demon of marriage was exorcised 
 
184 PUCK. 
 
 He did not want mental power in his mistress, nor yet 
 affection ; he found the first, in plenty, in other forms of 
 society ; and he looked on the latter with a sort of horror 
 as on something that would * bore ' him infallibly and un- 
 bearably. 
 
 Indeed, like many men of his time, he did his very ut- 
 most to persuade himself that he was heartless, and every- 
 body else that he was mindless. 
 
 Yet a keener intelligence than his few men were born 
 with ; and a truer friend than he was never lived. Now, 
 /our fine intelligence will always soon or late grow dis- 
 satisfied with abasing itself to the senses j and he who can 
 be a sincere friend has also in him the capability of sincere 
 love. 
 
 A trifle, too, showed me this temper in him. 
 
 [And by the way, permit me to add that if you were 
 
 ?uicker and wiser at guessing your companions' characters 
 rom the indices of trifles, you would not make those ever- 
 lasting blunders of foolish trust and idiotic suspicion which 
 BO continually excite in you the contempt and wonder of 
 dogs !] 
 
 This happened when I had been about a month in his 
 possession. 
 
 ' What a pity that boy was in such a deuce of a hurry to 
 kill himself,' said Denzil, one evening, as they drove down 
 to a Richmond dinner. I being ensconced in the back- 
 seat, and there being, for once, no woman in the front. 
 
 ' What boy ? ' asked Beltran. 
 
 ' That poor young wretch who wrote the Demeter. I see 
 they have brought some posthumous poems of his out " by 
 the late Harold Grerant," and they are likely to make a 
 eensation. There is certainly wonderful stuff in them/ 
 
 * How do they get out if he's dead ? I thought pub- 
 lishers would have nothing to say him.' 
 
 ' They would have nothing whilst he was alive. That 
 is their way. They have a knack of thinking that genius, 
 like Granges grass, only exhales its worth when it's been 
 well crushed. It seems that there were manuscripts of 
 his lying about in various places ; and after the issue of 
 that fragment the Trade thought it a decent speculation to 
 collect, and to issue them.' 
 
 *More fool the Trade, then. "While Massinger, and 
 
XELTRAN. 185 
 
 Ford, and Marvell lie unread in ninety-nine libraries out 
 of a 'hundred, who wants the catchpenny jingle of 19th- 
 century verse ? ' 
 
 ' Come, come ; you said yourself that there was great 
 promise in that fragment.' 
 
 ' So I might. But I take it if the man's dead it don't 
 matter much what he promised ; he can't come up to time 
 with any of it, whether it's a promissory note or a promis- 
 sory poem.' 
 
 ' Don't be a brute, Yere ! The poor lad would rest 
 quieter in his grave, I fancy, for knowing that those 
 thoughts of his are not all lost.' 
 
 ' Everybody does rest quiet in his grave, I believe, unless 
 he's scooped up with a spade by an enterprising Eailway 
 Company. You literary men do allow yourselves such 
 poetic license of expression. Surely, from your own senti- 
 mental point of view, you ought to be awfully glad this 
 young idiot did kill himself : who would know anything of 
 Chatterton if it weren't for that lucky dose of prussic 
 acid ? and who would care a hang for Shelley if, in lieu of 
 dying poetically, he had lived to grow fat, leave off his 
 sailor's jacket, read family prayers, and turn laureate ?' 
 
 4 If you would only read this book ' 
 
 ' I ! good gracious ! When do I ever read anything, 
 Sinless it be a novel of yours, or of Lawrence's ? ' 
 
 ' If you would only read the poem you would see what it 
 is that I mean. There are a hundred faults in them, of 
 course ; but there is a wonderful glow of imagery and depth 
 of thought in them for the works of so mere a boy. No 
 pretentiousness either ; no borrowed Catullan images ; no 
 mock incestuous rapture; but the strength of passions 
 struggling with their tempters, like young lions in a net j 
 and yet, with all their latent woe and fire, the purity of a 
 mind that had evidently fed on the simplicity of some free, 
 open-air, and meditative life the only true fife for the poet 
 and the painter. If you would for once read them ' 
 
 1 But I never shall, my dear Derry. So I will take your 
 praises on trust ; the only way not to be obliged to disagree 
 with them. Just now, rhapsodies on bisque soup and red 
 mullets are more to my taste. I wish your dead boy all 
 sorts of living laurels, but I clearly foresee that he will grow 
 into a bore. Pray don't let us have too much of him.' 
 
I PUCK. 
 
 Denzfl flung himself back in his seat, a little out of 
 temper. 
 
 I, lying coiled in my tiger rug, wondered within myself, 
 
 It so chanced that a month or so earlier I had happened 
 to go out in the forenoon with Beltran, at a different hour 
 to his usual one. And he had wended his way, walking, 
 with a cigar in his mouth, to a certain house of business ; 
 where with my own ears I had distinctly heard him, in a 
 somewhat long business interview, commission the principals 
 of the house to search for all manuscripts bearing the in- 
 scription attached to the poem of Demeter ; when found, to 
 have the noblest of such fragments selected by some scholar 
 competent to make the choice, and then to have them 
 printed and issued with as little delay as possible, and at 
 his own cost. I had also heard the persons he had thus 
 commissioned ask if they might, without offence, inquire 
 the reason for his interest in the young dead penniless 
 writer ? and had heard his answer. * Interest ? None in 
 the least. I never saw him in my life. But the boy had 
 genius ; and it ought not to be buried with his body.' And 
 therewith he left, desiring that his name should not in any 
 way be associated with the affair, but that the publishers 
 themselves should appear to be the originators, as well as 
 the executors, of the matter. 
 
 Herein it appeared that he had been thoroughly well 
 obeyed. The poems had appeared, been discussed, been 
 admired, and the name of the dead boy was on the lips of 
 many ; but not a soul had ever dreamed that he had so 
 much as thought twice of the story of the suicide that 
 Denzil had told at his Sunday breakfast. 
 
 But why conceal this generous and sympathetic action ? 
 and conceal it too with this cynical assumption of con- 
 temptuous indifference ? 
 
 Xav, I cannot tell ; I can only say it was his way of 
 belying himself ; a way I have known in more men than 
 one of like temperament. 
 
 ' They do good by stealth, and blush to find it known ; ' 
 or rather swear impatiently to find it known, as their manner 
 is. I do not say that this masking of all their better acts 
 and thoughts is of itself commendable ; but I think, in view 
 of the innumerable creatures who crow out aloud their own 
 charities, and of the abundant hypocrites who only fold 
 
BELTRAN. 187 
 
 their robes to hide their vice and avarice, such exceptions 
 as his are refreshing, and not to be condemned. If you 
 have not known men like him, men of this order and of this 
 habit of speech and act, you will not be likely to compre- 
 hend the character of this master of mine. 
 
 Presently we dashed over Richmond Hill, and drew up 
 before the old Star and G-arter. And here Beltran, with 
 the Duke of Astolat,Ned Gruilliadene, a Charge d' Affaires, 
 and a Guardsman, gave one of those dinners which seemed 
 part and parcel of his duties as lessee of the Coronet. A 
 dinner where all the prettiest of his actresses blossomed 
 forth in the most intensely Parisian of dresses, and many 
 hundred pounds' worth of diamonds and rubies. Where 
 the portly dame, always attached to the house, who would 
 be either Hamlet's mother or Mrs. Candour, the Countess 
 Capulet or Mrs. Bouncer, appeared in velvets of the richest 
 purple, or violet, or ruby, for she played propriety on many 
 scarcely proper occasions, and this is a lucrative office 
 always gratefully acknowledged. Where that charming 
 woman, Mrs. Delamere (who on the stage had something of 
 the sympathetic acting and elegant ease of the French 
 school, yet saw herself almost disregarded by an audience 
 eager for the breakdowns and burlesques of Laura Pearl), 
 brought the superb grace and proud negligence of a duchess, 
 though her forsaken lord was a wine-merchant's clerk, who 
 had wedded her out of a milliner's work-room. "Where the 
 male comedians, making in private the same blunder that 
 distinguished them in public, thought coarseness and 
 buffoonery were wit ; and took an insane relish in the 
 privilege of the moment, which allowed them to address 
 without prefix as l Beltran,' and ' Brune,' and ' Desmond,' 
 and ' Denzil,' men who, meeting them the next day in Pall- 
 mall, barely gave them a nod of the head as good morning. 
 Such a dinner as their host had sat at hundreds of times, 
 bored to death by the drear monotony of the thing, which 
 so exactly reproduced itself one year after another. He 
 knew precisely when Mrs. Delamere would smile, when 
 Mrs. Mac Mundo would frown, what puns his first comedy- 
 man would make, and where he would infallibly make them ; 
 what pretty consternation his actresses would show at the 
 first questionable story that came round with the chablis ; 
 what flushed amusement they would receive a much naughtier 
 
tSS fUCK. 
 
 one with, when they had come to the chartreuse ; what 
 riotous laughter the Pearl would give to the punsters as 
 she crammed the crystallised sweetmeats into her rosy 
 mouth, and had her armies of glasses replenished again and 
 again ; what exquisite dignity disdainful Maude Delamere 
 would show as she swept away on the terrace with her 
 black laces all trailing about her ; and what nonsense he 
 should be expected to murmur in the scent of the geraniums 
 and heliotropes to these women, every turn of whose fea- 
 tures and every tone of whose voices he knew as well as the 
 letters of the alphabet. Dinners at which his actors would 
 drink the rich wines, and the actresses eat the rare fruits, 
 of his giving ; but from which as often as not they would 
 drive away, the one to curse him as a swell because he had!, 
 not laughed at their broadest joke, and the other to mutter 
 against him as a niggard, because the enamelled or jewelled 
 present laid with the bread-roll under the napkin was a 
 shade less costly than what they had desired. 
 
 Little Fanfreluche was right. 
 
 In other ages the jesters fed on blows and black broth, 
 yet oftentimes loved their princes, and would have died for 
 them had only their jingling bauble been a two-edged sword, 
 But in this age the wagered fools, fed on the fat of the land, 
 and drenched with the choicest of vintages, have none such 
 fealty as this, but rise from their master's board to spit 
 forth venom behind his steps, and ring their bells to chime 
 out his dishonour. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 HIS VIEWS ON 
 
 APEOPOS of these Richmond entertainments, I often 
 wondered, by the way, why men, who had their own admir- 
 able cooks, and their own eJegant abodes, and their own 
 choice selected wines, were so addicted to coming out to 
 dinner at the Star and Garter, or Ship, or any suburban 
 place, that it was fashionable to dine at in this manner. 
 
 I often wondered what peculiar attraction existed for 
 them in spending about five times as much on their dinner 
 as it would have cost at home, only for the sake of getting 
 in return a questionable cuisine, lumpy sauces, cold soups, 
 and fifth-rate champagnes at exorbitant prices. 
 
HIS VIEWS ON DINNERS. 189 
 
 I never solved the question ; and I cannot but tkmk the 
 mode is an extraordinary mistake a great waste of time 
 and money, without any adequate quid pro quo. 
 
 If I, instead of being a dog, fed at best on scattered 
 crumbs, were a rich man, and a man of influence enough to 
 be able to command whatever society I chose, I should never 
 dine out of my own house. 
 
 But if everybody did that, you object, who would there 
 be for guests ? Pooh ! my dear friend, men will never be 
 BO equal but what there will always be your gay, courtly, 
 silver-tongued, half-bankrupt, though well-born Martial, 
 who will always be charmed to enjoy the magnificence of 
 Lucan's villa. And if I were Lucan, I would always eat 
 my ccena at home. 
 
 A dinner is not a thing which should be left to chance. 
 The choice of so delicate a combination as the menu should 
 never be given over to hazard. And now that I am on this 
 topic, forgive me if I add my mite to all that has been already 
 written on the great science of dining. 
 
 I have seen a great many dinners in my time, since that 
 first London season with Beltran. Duchesses', actresses', 
 millionaires', playwrights', nobles', and bohemians' dinners 
 I have been present at them all, one time and another, and 
 I cannot forbear from a few remarks on the subject. 
 Dining, or rather giving dinners with success, is an art. 
 Epicures have recognised this long ago, but I want it 
 universally recognised. 
 
 There is no reason in life why Bus, with only his bottle 
 of old port, and his new-laid eggs, and his plump home-fed 
 pullets, and his sunny apricots fresh from the warm south 
 wall, and his honey drawn from his own cabbage-roses and 
 carnations and white jessamine flowers, and a ruddy-cheeked, 
 clean-handed Phillis, and a shady, leaf -bowered, sweet- scented 
 little chamber, should not study to give an entertainment 
 very charming in its own fashion, quite as well as Urbs, 
 who has his swift, silent, clever men-servants, and his gold 
 plate, and his porcelains costly as gold, and his cook, with 
 the soul of a Carenie, and his magnificent pines, and his 
 hothouse grapes, and his wonders of food brought from all 
 ends of Europe, and his perfect wines all of comet years, 
 and his brilliant guests culled from the Legations and the 
 two Houses, from White's and the Q-uards' Club, from 
 Brooks' and Boodles'. 
 
190 FUCK. 
 
 The two entertainments will be at the two extremes of 
 the art, of course ; but there is no reason why they should 
 not both be true art like a Meissonnier and a Poussin. 
 
 Lookers-on see the most of the game, they say. Perhaps 
 you will bear with me a moment, whilst I tell you one or 
 two things that I think of your dinners. 
 
 They are not anything like what they might be. Here, 
 in London, you have every requisite for the very best dinners 
 dinners to call up Brillat Savarin, in ecstasy, from hig 
 grave. You have the best wines, you have the best food, 
 you have handsome women, you have clever men, and you 
 never spare any expense ; how is it, then, that in London 
 you reiterate the eternal complaint all of you that there 
 is no such thing as Society ? It is really very ridiculous ; 
 you ought to be ashamed of the confession. 
 
 You echo it one after another, and yet night after night 
 you go on elbowing each other at assemblies that resemble 
 a crush on a hustings, and crowding together in fashionable 
 .mobs at garden-parlies, and you do nothing in the world to 
 remedy the defect. 
 
 Xow it is a fact if you don't go to them I can't help 
 that it is a fact that there are little dinners even in 
 London which are a success, because they are thoroughly 
 enjoyable. 
 
 Why are they so ? 
 
 Well, one can hardly give a recipe for Society any more 
 than for cooking an omelet. It is not a knowledge to be 
 taught; it is a thing that comes by nature; a thing of 
 genius. 
 
 They are agreeable, first of all, because they are given 
 out of a genuine design to amuse and be amused, and not 
 merely to ' knock off ' a social duty, and occupy a space in 
 the ' fashionable intelligence.' 
 
 Also because they are small enough for the ball of con- 
 versation to be tossed lightly, and rapidly, from every hand ; 
 the talk is not therefore a mere buzzing and cross-fire of a 
 score of voices. 
 
 Also because the host or hostess has the supreme talent 
 of selection, and also the supreme talent of leading the 
 conversation, unostentatiously, but skilfully ; it is almost 
 as great a talent as that of leading aright at whist. And 
 this also 'in a manner must come by nature, though it may 
 be increase! and polished by study. 
 
HIS VIEWS ON DINNERS. 191 
 
 If YOU are people who will persist in giving huge * feeds,' 
 RS slang very fittingly styles them, of thirty or forty covers, 
 I cannot hope to instruct you. Eut if you are open to 
 conviction and willing to give little dinners (one every 
 night if you like) of four, six, or at most eight, guests, just 
 listen to me. 
 
 Be firm in rejecting an odiously long menu. A dozen 
 services are quite enough in all reason; and to risk too 
 great length, is certainly to risk ennui ; a touch of ennui 
 will make your dinner a failure, even though your cook 
 should be a Yatel. 
 
 Take heed to have amidst your dishes two or three 
 which, whilst exquisitely prepared, yet shall be perfectly 
 simple and wholesome ; remember that your very choicest 
 bon viveurs are the very people most grateful for a change 
 in this respect; and remember too the great Savarin's eulogy 
 of a larded fowl, which he preferred to all the chickens 
 f ricassee'd, supreme'd, marengo'd, singara'd, or bordelaise'd 
 that could be proffered him. 
 
 Have a care that your servants are perfectly educated 
 in the science of the wine-book, so that they may be certain 
 to give the proper vintage at the proper time, and neither 
 fill the glasses too fast or too seldom. Have your table 
 elegantly appointed, and a fair show of gold or silver to 
 brighten it ; but let your flowers be far more conspicuous 
 than your plate, since they must be far more beautiful, and 
 you do not want your board to look like a great silver- 
 smith's shop-window. The most delicate porcelains and 
 the exquisite cristalleries of Clichy or Baccarat may be 
 mingled with advantage ; Majolica or Dresden i& too heavy, 
 to my taste, for a dinner-table. 
 
 Pray do not follow the ridiculous mode of thinking it 
 chic to have everything out of its proper season; it is never 
 really good ; if you be a real genius you can well afford to 
 abandon the flavourless asparagus of mid-winter and straw- 
 berries of Christmas with silent contempt to millionaires 
 and the demi-monde, who have no other thought than to dis- 
 play their ill-gotten gains. 
 
 As regards the number of servants, I think you make a 
 mistake in fancying it is their quantity and not their 
 quality that is of importance. "When there are too many 
 tney only tread on one another's toes, as they have trod on 
 
l$a PUCK. 
 
 my tail many & time. A couple of men perfectly trained 
 mil do more for the comfort of your guests than a dozen 
 powdered giants behind the chairs, if the giants be secretly 
 intent on listening for the last new scandal or afraid of 
 injuring their own dignity by a swift movement. 
 
 Unless a servant be as exact as clock-work, and as indif- 
 ferent to the talk round him as an automaton, he is not 
 worth the tax you pay for him. A servant that I know 
 well would not start if a thunderbolt burst at his feet 
 when he was handing the asparagus, nor give a sign that 
 he heard if a score of Sydney Smiths were doing their best 
 to kill him with laughter as he changed their plates ; now 
 that man is worth his weight in gold. But there are 
 thousands of footmen who will preserve a decorous aspect 
 of earless and eyeless gravity throughout a dinner, while 
 very many of them are listening and seeing with all their 
 might for all that hence they wait badly. 
 
 To the good servant his attendance is his art, and he has 
 no thought except to obey its rules absolutely. The most 
 beautiful woman should be sexless, and the most eloquent 
 scandal-monger be tongueless, for aught that he should 
 know or should care. Now, you can make your pattern 
 servant as you can make your standard rose at least, if 
 you be fit to give a good dinner you can. 
 
 Of course you will never in future years resort to the 
 hideousness of food set on the table, now that the Russian 
 mode has once taught you how to refine, and, if one may 
 say so, to spiritualise eating. Nor will the grotesque folly 
 of nodding the head over each glass at some neighbour, 
 like a mandarin on a tea-box, in a custom called 'taking 
 wine' (of which I have heard, though it was over long 
 before my time), ever be revived, it is to be hoped, for 
 nothing cwi well be more thoroughly absurd. Yet the 
 present system of pouring the same wines in everybody's 
 glass, without any seeming remembrance of the exceeding 
 difference in men's wine-palates, is not what it ought 
 to be. 
 
 There are men who only like two sorts of wine in one 
 evening ; men who like a different vintage with each 
 service; men who like all their wines still; men who 
 abominate certain brands ; men who like the French order 
 of precedence for their wines ; men who like the English 
 
HIS VIEWS ON DINNERS. 1 93 
 
 order, which is exactly contrary to it ; all those various 
 tastes should be more consulted than they are usually by 
 butlers 
 
 Of course my own race are all Eechabites, therefore I 
 treat this question from a purely impersonal point of view. 
 jSTo one, I am happy to say, ever saw a dog drunk j inebriety 
 is one of those 'superiorities' which you are so naturally' 
 proud to claim over us. Men, pigs, ducks and geese are 
 the four orders of creatures distinguished by a capacity f orj 
 drunkeness; perhaps it is for this reason that they all 
 four make more noise over their own small affairs a rise 
 in gold, a swill-tub, a caddis worm, or a blade of grass 
 than any other created thing ever is overheard to do. 
 
 But all these, after all, are the merest matters of detail 
 compared with the one essential element of prandial 
 success i.e. the conversation. After all the great account 
 that we make of decoration and of cookery, I have seen 
 two thoroughly enjoyable dinners one in a little set of 
 chambers where the carte was confined to beef-steaks, 
 oysters, Pomery Grreno and Pichon de Longueville ; and 
 the other in a little fishing inn overhanging a picturesque 
 trout-river, where the entire fare consisted of those dainty 
 fish perfectly grilled, and a grand capon, that would have 
 warmed Ealstaff's heart, washed down by the sparkling 
 ales of Trent. 
 
 But then, those who dined at the first were six of the 
 gayest, cleverest, and happiest-tempered people that ever 
 tilted together in a playful tournament of tongues ; and 
 the anglers who laughed over the last were two of the 
 wittiest writers that ever charmed the world ; a soldier 
 whose silver speech is as lightly brilliant as his deeds of 
 daring are of sternest fame ; and one woman, frank, 
 bright, full of grace and of beauty, a child in her mirth and 
 a queen in her empire. 
 
 N.B. Of these tour, none were in love ; if only one had 
 1 lost his head,' the harmony of the dinner would have been 
 most probably at an end ; the perfect freedom of it certainly 
 would have been. They were only friends, in that intimate, 
 pleasant, half-romantic friendship, which only nren and 
 'Women of the highest intelligence can know. 
 
 The one great element of success at a dinner is the 
 talk ; and who shaD give a recipe, as I say, for that ? It 
 
 o 
 
194 PUCK. 
 
 is a thing that goes by nature, like the gift of colour and 
 of song. 
 
 It is preposterous to say that your men do not talk well 
 I have heard talk to the full as "brilliant and as epigram- 
 matic as anything the cleverest writer can put into the 
 mouths of his imaginary characters. "When I hear people 
 protest that in real life no such witty converse as you 
 find in very witty novels can ever be met, I wonder where 
 these protestants have had the misfortune to live. As I 
 eaid in my introductory remarks, it is almost as difficult to 
 print the wit one hears as it is to petrify a soujflee de 
 fecule ; but if you never hear wit in this world good 
 gracious me ! you must keep very bad company. 
 
 I think it is a mistake to think that tremendously clever 
 people are required to obtain radiant conversation. Tour 
 very great genius, your very obstruse scholar, is often a 
 very stupid fellow, so far as lingual utterances go. The 
 best men at a dinner are such men as are to be found by 
 the dozen at the best clubs in London ; men of quick in- 
 telligence, of good culture, of consummate worldly know- 
 ledge, and of just that sparkling, mischievous pleasant 
 social wit which is to conversation what the truffle is to 
 cookery, or the champagne is amongst wines. 
 
 These men are to be found, and better companions need 
 never be sought. True, at some tables they may sit silent, 
 morne, and as contemptuous as their politeness permits, 
 but believe me, that is only because at those tables you are 
 boring them. Gret them into a congenial atmosphere, 
 their tongues will go, their mirth sparkle, and their laugh 
 be heard as enjoyably as any one can wish. They can be 
 the most amusing companions in the world ; if they are not 
 so with you, it is your fault : you bore them in some way. 
 
 Politics you should banish absolutely if people are not 
 of one mind about them they are sure to quarrel over 
 them ; if they are of one mind no subject can be drearier. 
 Some little bit of political news, quite fresh from some 
 Legation or some Secretary of State, before the world has 
 heard it, is all that should be admissible. 
 
 Any quite fresh scandal is a great relish ; especially if 
 you inow something about it that no one else knows. 
 J?erhaps you had better take heed that the chief of the 
 actors involved are not present ; though, indeed, in this 
 
HIS VIEWS ON DINNERS. 195 
 
 6ge you are all so entirely free from prejudice on these 
 points that (if you be discussing a divorce, for instance) 
 you need not mind the presence of the relatives im the 
 least, scarcely of the husband now-a-days ; the only person 
 whose feelings must not be hurt is the co-respondent. 
 Where this last interesting personage is in the plural you 
 had better not invite two of them at the same time ; they 
 are sure to have either two much jealousy, or too much 
 compassion, for one another. 
 
 Dn reste Don Juan is always a delightful fellow, and 
 the most amusing guest you can ever obtain, unless indeed 
 it be weighing on his mind that he will have to marry 
 Julia Abbandonata. In which case of course you cannot 
 reasonably expect him to be lively. 
 
 If you have not the knack of setting the ball of talk 
 rolling, it is impossible I can impart it to you : one cannot 
 make a good host any more than one can make a great 
 composer: both are born. Still there are a few things 
 which help it. In the first place, there is the care needful 
 in the selection of your guests ; they must suit one 
 another, or you will have discord ; a mingling of classes or 
 of opposite political parties is, I think, a mistake: men 
 are more at ease in their own caste ; if you introduce an 
 1 outsider,' he or she must be a very brilliant one. 
 
 Let your party be of very small number rather than, for 
 sheer sake of enlarging it, introduce the wrong element be- 
 cause you cannot get the right. There is a certain unity 
 of feeling, and common likeness of tone and manner, in an 
 Order, still more so in each ' set ' of that ' order,' which is, 
 if made use of, an essential aid to harmony in itself. ' It is 
 an infinite ennui to a man to sit next to another who does 
 not catch his allusions flying ; it ruins conversation when 
 one person outside the pale fails to understand all that is 
 cause for mirth or for chat within it. 
 
 Likewise, you should be very careful not to let any 
 topic get worn threadbare ; the instant it is getting the 
 least bit of a bore, sweep it away with the brisk besom of 
 a fresh and welcome subject. 
 
 A little scandal io, as I say, an excellent thing ; nobody 
 is ever brighter or happier of tongue than when he is 
 making mischief of his neighbour ; but it is a two-edged 
 sword that requires very dainty handling ; and all caps of 
 
 o 2 
 
19$ PUCK. 
 
 slander unluckily fit so very many heads that yon must b? 
 heedful how you select them. 
 
 If it be a party of both sexes, ask people that are a 
 little in love with each other, for people a little in love 
 are always eager to shine ; but banish all grandes passions ; 
 they have an eloquence of their own indeed, but they are 
 very stupid society at a dinner-table. 
 
 And now, if you be a woman, let me offer you one piece 
 of advice, though I know you will never follow it : DON'T 
 THINK OF YOTJESELF. Resign your pet flirtation pro tempo; 
 don't care for * making play' even with your favourite 
 lover. Do not indulge your own palate, nor meditate on 
 your own dress ; let your heart and soul be with your 
 guests, let your whole mind be given to the guidance and 
 the surveillance of the conversation. Remember that your 
 dinner is your campaign, and that on your skilful direction 
 depends your victory. 
 
 But then withal you must be quite at ease, and not in 
 the least pre-occupied, or your influence will be nils you 
 must be always gay, alert, suave, ready to skim over a 
 difficulty, to supply an hiatus, and to prevent a pause ; you 
 must lead with radiance and with tact, and yet you must 
 be perfectly willing not to shine, and to let your powers 
 lie perdu if your guests are in full career without you, an^ 
 if your self-assertion would be their interruption. 
 
 Do you think this all very hard ? 
 
 ~Well, my dear, if it were ten times harder, would you 
 not have your reward when 'men should declare that your 
 dinners were the most charming in London ? 
 
 One last word, leave the table early, and do not grudge 
 the men their half hour of solitude. Nay, send them 
 cigars and a cliasse to prolong it. A trial to you I know 
 but they like it ; don't you believe them if they tell you 
 they don't. They may call it a ' barbarous custom ; ' but 
 it is one that they relish exceedingly, as they do many 
 other ' barbarities ' their vices to wit ; and you will be all 
 the more successful as a dinner-giver if you have the sense 
 in you to see this. 
 
 The most charming woman will be only wise if she tako 
 fully into her mind the conviction that too much even of 
 herself may be a bore. 
 
 I don't know what more I can tell you ; one cannot 
 
HE STUDIES THE STAGE. 197 
 
 make a dinner-giver as I have said, any more than one can 
 make a Michael Angelo. I am half afraid, too, that you 
 English, despite your repute for hospitality, have not tlu 
 genius of entertainment in you. You are far too self 
 conscious and you are seldom light-hearted enough. 
 
 If I were to tell you, also, all that I have heard your 
 guests, when they have gone out in the night air and had 
 their cigars fairly in their mouths, say of dinners you had 
 thought quite perfection you would not believe me. There 
 is nowhere such a thorough- going sceptic as a man or 
 woman who disbelieves in his or her own shortcomings. 
 
 So I will not weary you longer on the subject, as I can 
 hardly hope to improve you, even if you had not skipped 
 this chapter in my memoirs, which is probable. Let me 
 only paraphrase a famous saying, and add : 
 
 * Montrez-moi ton menu,je te montrerai ton cceur.' 
 
 CHAPTEE XIX. 
 
 HE STUDIES THE STAGE. 
 
 I LE ABIDED many wondrous things betwixt Epsom and 
 Ascot. A brief space, indeed, yet one that to me seemed 
 longer than the whole of my previous life, so crowded was 
 its every hour with new and marvellous experiences. 
 "Worldly experiences, I mean. Intellectually, I am not 
 sure that I acquired much. 
 
 Indeed, to a little brain teeming with memories of the 
 Theatres Beaumarchais, Voltaire, Moliere, Feuillet, Sardou, 
 Sandeau, &c., which I had heard read so continually at the 
 Dower-house amongst the Pens, the views of dramati 
 literature held at the Coronet appeared of the most extra 
 ordinary character. They certainly had one merit sim 
 plicity. 
 
 The verb 'to steal' was the only one that a successful dra- 
 matic author appeared to be required to conjugate. 
 
 Por your music steal from the music-halls ; for your cos- 
 tumes steal from Le Follet; for your ideas steal from any. 
 
98 PUCK. 
 
 body that happens to carry such a thing about him ; for your 
 play, in its entirety, steal the plot, the characters, the 
 romance, the speeches, and the wit, if it have any, of some 
 ittractive novel ; and when you have made up your parcel 
 3f thefts tie it together with some string of stage directions, 
 herald it as entirely original, give a very good supper to 
 your friends on the press, and bow from your box as the 
 ' Author.' 
 
 You will certainly be successful : and if the novelist ever 
 obj ect, threaten him with an action for interference with your 
 property. 
 
 These I found were the laws laidjdown by London drama- 
 tists; and they assuredly were so easy to follow and so pro- 
 ductive to obey, that if any Ben Jonson, or Beaurnarchais, 
 Sheridan, or Marivaux, had arisen and attempted to infringe 
 them, he would have infallibly been regarded as a very evil 
 example, and been extinguished by means of journalistic 
 slating and stall- siflage. 
 
 Beltrau had indeed now and then imperilled the peace and 
 prosperity of his Coronet by certain forms of opposition to 
 this quiet regime of uninterrupted theft. Once, I heard, he 
 had actually lost some hundred pounds by relinquishing a 
 piece at the day before its production, because he found out 
 that it was a piracy from a novel, and that the novel-writer 
 had an antiquated prejudice against being robbed. 
 
 Also, when a piece was taken from the French, he had the 
 weakness not only to pay the Frenchman for doing him the 
 honour to use his creation, but actually had ' translated and 
 adaptedf rom the French original ' printed in his programmes 
 and advertisements ; a ridiculous concession to truth, which 
 kept his house half empty the English public naturally 
 fearing pollution from so unnaturally unadulterated an 
 article. 
 
 But Beltan was quite an exception amongst lessees ; and 
 it was no wonder that all the town by the voices of its pro- 
 phets declared for once unanimously that he must be ruined 
 in a twelvemonth. Indeed, they said it was only the wisdom of 
 Dudley Moore and little Lance that had saved him from 
 destruction hitherto. 
 
 ' "What's that new piece you have advertised, Vere ? ' 
 tsked Paget Albermarle at one of the Sunday breakfasts. 
 
 ' This,' answered Beltran, tossing over to him a paper- 
 covered book. 
 
HE STUDIES THE STAGE. 199 
 
 ' Le PecJiede Vwienne? read Albermarle, 'and you call it 
 Vivicfs Secret. What sort of tiling is it ? ' 
 
 ' 0, a glorious piece,' said Denzil, lifting his head. 'I saw 
 it in Paris a month ago, with the Desaix in it. A terrible 
 piece, strong and noble, and full of a curious kind of poetry- 
 and of a wonderful power. Desaix looks superb in it too. 
 She is a grand woman. But you never mean to say you are 
 going to bring it out, Beltran ? 
 
 ' We are going to turn it into English for the Coronet,' 
 answered Leo Lance, striking into the conversation. ' It is 
 wonderfully effective, as you say. We shall have to shorten 
 it make it three acts ; and it will be more of a drama than 
 a tragedy, of course. There's no time for a long play before 
 the burlesque. 
 
 Denzil shuddered very visibly. 
 
 * A drama three acts one knows what that means ! 
 G-ood heavens, Yere ! How came you to decide on the thing 
 before I came back ? I could have told you that you haven't 
 a creature in your company capable of giving the Peche do 
 Vivienne.' 
 
 Beltran lifted his brow wearily. 
 
 * You were at Nice, and we wanted something ; we have 
 been doing this old legitimate business too long : Lance sug- 
 gested this play, and thought that it read very well/ 
 
 ' Of course it read very well ! It is the finest thing they 
 have had over there since Marion Delorme. It is a tremen- 
 dous tragedy, I tell you; and you have vulgarised it by this 
 atrocious title already ! ' 
 
 ' Mr. Lance is an excellent adapter,' put in the quiet 
 sonorous voice of the great editor of the Mi dan. ' He always 
 niters so well, that no residuum of the original gonius ever 
 appears.' 
 
 The hapless Mouse coloured and fidgeted where he sat; 
 but he never dared to resent the sharpest thrust of his great 
 censor. 
 
 * I intend to adhere quite closely to the TVench play,' he 
 muttered sullenly. ' It will only be slightly shortened ; I 
 shall hardly change the text at all. 
 
 ' Then you may withdraw the piece after its first night, 
 Yere,' said Dudley Moore, serenely. 
 ' Don't you like it ? ' asked Beltran. 
 'Like it?' echoed Dudley Moore. 'How is that the 
 
200 PUCK. 
 
 question ? It is a very clever play ; very clever, though I am 
 scarcely so enthusiastic on its merits as Denzil. But it is a 
 play simply unproducible in England.' 
 
 1 0, nonsense ! ' cried Denzil ! ' how is it worse than dozens 
 we give? The poor woman never sins but once, and that 
 under such circumstances, and with such agonies of remorse-, 
 that the moral is the finest possible. There's not an indecent 
 line in the tragedy ; it is only fearfully human and real.' 
 
 Dudley Moore shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 ' You write for the English public, and don't know them 
 better than that!' 
 
 ' Than what ? ' 
 
 The editor closed his cynical mouth, and entirely refused 
 
 t) S9V 
 
 1 Than to suppose that they like what is human and real, 
 he means,' said Beltran. * They don't care the least about 
 that ; they like a little broad farce, a little rough murder, 
 and a little rosewater sentiment. Anything more bothers 
 them ; they can't understand it.' 
 
 * Then why, in heaven's name, fritter away on them a 
 grand play like this ? ' cried Denzil. 
 
 ' Can't be helped now. I/ance has begun it, and the an- 
 nouncements are out.' 
 
 ' And who is to play Vivienne ? ' 
 
 1 Maude Delamere, of course.' 
 
 ' What ? A character almost as awful as Phsedre, and 
 quite as desolate as Antigone, represented by a graceful co- 
 quette in point lace and pearls, who would take poison as 
 sweetly as if it were a cup of coffee, and will die with 
 elaborate care not to tumble her train ? Preposterous ! ' 
 
 * Blaze away, Derry,' said Beltran resignedly. ' But the 
 thing's settled. There's only one question : to keep to the 
 atory or not. Old Wynch will have it that it won't do. 1 
 
 ' Old Wynch knows his world,' said Dudley Moore. ' Of 
 course you must change the story, ia its chief incident. In- 
 deed, I don't see that Mr. Lance need acknowledge any in- 
 debtedness to his original ; he will only appropriate the main 
 idea, all the characters, as much of the passion as he dare 
 use, and all the wit that he can contrivs to translate. Si peu 
 de chose! not worth a reference.' 
 
 The poor Mouse moved uneasily. 
 
 * My intention was,' he murmured, Ho have given thepiece 
 quite as it stands, love and all.' 
 
HE STUDIES THE STAGE. *CH 
 
 '"What ! with the susceptibilities of the British Public ! ' 
 eaid Dudley Moore. ' They never stand any nonsense with 
 the seventh commandment, remember. You must change 
 the illicit love into a decorous bigamy. Indeed, you might 
 try trigainy. They wouldn't at all mind three husbands.' 
 
 * Bigamy!' sighted the adapter. 'They never have 
 enough of that.' 
 
 1 No. The English conscience is so intensely mercantile, 
 that it has no notion of a passion that does not result in the 
 cheating of somebody/ said Denzil, taking aim at me with a 
 coffee bonbon. ' Bigamy is fraud ; and the fraud commends 
 it to the public of these very commercial isles. But it will 
 ruin all the symmetry of the piece ; it will entirely destroy 
 its purport. It will make it altogether witless, senseless, 
 absurd. It will neither have point nor intention ; neither 
 meaning nor object! ' 
 
 ' No sort of objections to it on the stage those/ answered 
 Dudley Moore quietly. ' You ought to be well aware of 
 this, Mr. Lance ; you have had theatrical successes.' 
 
 Little Lance winced, as he usually did, beneath the 
 great censor's flagellations. 
 
 ' It is different with this/ lie muttered, apologetically. 
 ' Denzil is right. Ton see, it's really very grand in the ori- 
 ginal. A great sin, and a great repentance, and all that ; 
 symmetrical, you know ; really artistic ; and if one has to 
 change it into bigamy, it will just be vulgarised and bruta- 
 lised, that's all.' 
 
 ' Precisely/ said Dudley Moore, still in the most affable 
 manner. 'We want something to attract a London 
 fashionable audience, don't we ? ' 
 
 ' Don't go in for a dramatic conscience, Mouse/ said Bel- 
 tran ; 'it's too late in the day all that sort of thing.' 
 
 ' You have had one, my dear Yere/ said Dudley Moore 
 ' I think, on the whole, you have spent more on it than or* 
 your racehorses ? ' 
 
 ' The deuce I have ! ' murmured Beltran. ' Take your 
 own way, Lance, if you like * 
 
 ' Only/ the censor interrupted, ' yxm won't have a week's 
 nin if you do. With Lady Frederic just bolted for the third 
 time, and Lady Stevenham coming into the D. C. with her 
 amatory f our-m-hand, the aristocracy will be infinitely too 
 virtuous to look at a heroine who sins wce t and then reper ts/ 
 
202 PUCK. 
 
 Beltran laughed a little. The world had added his name 
 to those of Lady Stevenham's favoured quartette, and he 
 knew well enough that he had only waltzed twice with the 
 woman, and scarcely thought about her as often. 
 
 1 I'd chance that/ he made answer. ' The thing is, thai 
 French part is an awfully strong one, and I've nobody 
 strong enough for it, if we render it as it stands.' 
 
 ' There's always the Delamere.' 
 
 ' Pshaw ! Maude Delamere is a very pretty creature, and 
 drapes herself uncommonly well ; but she could no more 
 
 five the passion of that French play than she could do you 
 haedre in the original. 5 
 
 'No,' assented Dudley Moore. 'Mrs. Delamere acts 
 very gracefully, and dresses very charmingly, and is one of 
 the few Englishwomen that can carry a Cashmere ; but she 
 is Mrs. Delamere in every part that she plays, and if I saw 
 her in Lady Macbeth, I should expect to see her with her 
 fan and her eye-glass, her black guipure lace, and her 
 afternoon tea.' 
 
 ' To be sure ! The perfection of an actress is to get out 
 of herself ; and none of ours ever do that.' 
 
 ' They're too fond of themselves.' 
 
 'That's just it. They're a set of nice-looking women 
 who dress well, and look well, and never forget it ! ' 
 
 ' The greatest actress I ever saw,' put in Denzil, was a 
 little Jewess of Cordova. She had no sort of beauty ; she 
 was small and yellow ; she had nothing in the world but 
 those wonderful Israel eyes, and a voice like a silver cymbal. 
 And yet, what a genius that creature was ! She was only 
 playing in awretched Spanish theatre, just forthe populace; 
 but I went night after night to see her. It was rnarvtellous ! 
 That woman could reach every passion and every pain in 
 human nature. She was transfigured, metamorphosed, the 
 moment the fury df art got into her. She would give you 
 anything : an old man dying of wretchedness, a young girl 
 wild with first love, a miser gloating over his gold, a homeless 
 child heartsick and lost, a forsaken mistress burning for 
 vengeance, a discrowned queen daunting a mob, a mur- 
 deress stealing to slaughter, a maiden blushing over sweet 
 ehame that creature was them all, one after another, as 
 she would. You never saw her at alL You only saw the 
 thing that she chose to create.' 
 
HE STUDIES THE STAGE. 30$ 
 
 ' Nothing short of that is genius/ said Dudley Moore 
 briefly. ' The only great actress is a woman whom you 
 utterly forget in the impersonation that she chooses you to 
 see. The actresses we are blessed with are always making 
 us think, how well A looks to-night, how intricate B's 
 coiffure is, how becoming that tawny satin is to C, and how 
 resplendent are D's diamonds ! ' 
 
 ' "What did you let that Jewess slip for, Derry ? ' asked 
 Beltran. 
 
 ' "Well, I shouldn't have let her slip. It's years ago now ; 
 but I had half a mind to take her over to Paris or London 
 just on the chance. It seemed atrocious that such trans- 
 cendent gifts as these should be wasted on muleteers, and 
 water- carriers, and olive-pickers. But just about three weeks 
 after I had first seen her act in a comedy of Calderon's she 
 was killed killed horribly, gored to death in the streets, by 
 a circus-bull that had broken loose from his drivers mad- 
 dened with the midnight-glare and the tumult of the people. 
 I didn't see her die, thank Grod.' 
 
 He said it so simply, and so touchingly, that there was 
 silence for a moment in the chamber. 
 
 * It is always so ! ' said Dudley Moore at last, with a plain- 
 tive pitie de soi-meme ! ' The dear Delameres, who are of no 
 earthly artistic use, always live on and on, till good dinners 
 and too much champagne destroy the only symmetry they 
 possess that of form. And a creature of genius, like this 
 Jewess of yours, is always killed by a bull, or a fever, or a 
 bit of orange peel on the pavement, or something that is 
 blundering and bizarre ! ' 
 
 'Mrs. D'Eyncourt had some genius, eh?' said Beltran. 
 ' No,' Denzil answered rather coldly. ' She was a woman 
 o beauty, and of talent ; but she was by no means a genius.' 
 
 * No,' said Dudley Moore. * I remember her very well j a 
 splendid woman, but she had not genius. I doubt if any 
 Englishwoman ever has ; I cannot call one to mind. Your 
 great feminine intelligences have all been Italian or French, 
 and your great feminine actresses all Jewesses. An Eng- 
 lishwoman is never impersonal enough, nor sympathetic 
 enough, for real genius. "With her "the great I is the 
 measure of the universe." ' 
 
 ' There was Mrs. Siddons ? ' hazarded Denzil. 
 Dudley Moore took snuff. 
 
<H PUCK. 
 
 'I I^ave gra^e doubts of Mrs. Siddons. She was a 
 goddess of the age of fret and fume, of stalk and strut, of 
 trilled R's and of nodding plumes. If we had Siddons now 
 I fear we should hiss ; I am quite sure we should yawn. 
 She must have been Melpomene always ; Nature never.' 
 
 1 You are very hard to please ! ' said Denzil. 
 
 'I never am pleased,' responded the great censoi 
 meekly. 
 
 * Well, let us finish about the piece, 'interposed Beltran, 
 ' Is it to be a fine play badly acted, or a bad play decently 
 acted ? It must be one or the other.' 
 
 'O, the bad play, of course,' decided Dudley Moore. 
 * Your women always dress well, and build their hair in 
 the latest fashion ; so long as you do that, the Public won't 
 mind what words they hear so long as they are not words 
 that fly utterly over their heads. Your people alway? 
 look good style ; and if the play's tolerably silly they'll be 
 strong enough for it.' 
 
 * I wish they heard you ! ' 
 
 ' They have heard me fifty times. But it don't make 
 any difference. They stare at the stalls, while they talk 
 of the moon, and they keep an eye on the Times critic as 
 they writhe in their death agony.' 
 
 * You wish this thing made irrational and stupid then ? ' 
 asked Beltran, stirring the leaves of the French pk/y- 
 book. 
 
 * I wish you to have a success, my dear fellow yes. f 
 Beltran laughed a little. 
 
 'Well, do as he tells you, Mouse. He knows best. 
 Don't make the stalls yawn, whatever you do, that's all.' 
 
 ' They won't yawn,' said Dudley Moore confidently ; 
 ' not if they find there is going to be bigamy early enough 
 in the first act, and if you transform that grand old priest 
 of the Paris piece into a Yankee elder from the Salt 
 Spring, or a pedagogue of the Busby type.' 
 
 Denzil ruefully drew caricatures with his pencil on the 
 paper cover of the Peche de Vivienne, and heard in silence. 
 
 ' What does that mean, Derry ? ' asked his friend, con- 
 etruing the silence into disaproval. 
 
 Denzil flung his pen into the fire. 
 
 ' It means, that I'd either have something like Art in the 
 house, or I'd shut the place up altogether! ' 
 
HE STUDIES THE STAGE. 205 
 
 4 Art ! ' echoed Beltran impatiently. ' Where's the use 
 of talking about Art ? The company won't play it, and 
 the public won't come to it.' 
 
 ' Well, shut the house up then.' 
 
 * And turn those forty pair of fine legs out of work ? 
 For shame, Denzil,' said Dudley Moore. ' What a churl 
 you must be to put such thoughts in his head ! The piece 
 will do admirably. Don't mind his nonsense, Mr. Lance. 
 You change the play, as I say ; and if Worth makes for 
 Mrs. Delamere, and somebody puts her in good humour by 
 sending her some new jewels ; and Beltran invites & 
 dozen of the right men to dinner on the first night ; and if 
 those new scent fountains play in the private boxes and on 
 the staircases; and if the plot is carefully confused so 
 that none of the press-men can make head or tail of it, and 
 thus are driven back in despair to praise the dresses and 
 the drawing-room sets for which your theatre is always 
 distinguished, why, I will undertake to say that you will 
 hiwe a good run all through the season ! ' 
 
 ' Yes,' laughed Beltran, ' and the next week's edition of 
 the Midas will take Vivians Secret as an example of the 
 utter degeneracy and absolute foolishness of the English 
 stage in the Victorian era ! ' 
 
 ' Ah, that may be ! ' said the editor placidly, * But, my 
 dear Vere, if my advice fill your house, my staff may well 
 be allowed to cut-up your actors. If you let them murder 
 a fine piece, would you be any the safer from the Midas ? 
 even though the emptiness of your theatre made you 
 look for once like high Art ? ' 
 
 'That's a fact!' sighed Beltran. 'Well fire away, 
 Mouse. As it's to be all dresses and drawing-room sets, 
 it can't tax your brains over-much.' 
 
 The Mouse obeyed ; and three weeks later Vivicts Secret 
 was brought out and became the talk of the town. Mrs. 
 Delamere' s dresses were pronounced divine ; the cabinets 
 in the salon scene were really of marqueterie ; one of the 
 scenes was a real luncheon, with real champagne cup and 
 real things to eat ; the carpet on the stage was a genuine 
 Aubusson ; gallons of perfume danced away every night 
 in the fountains ; the plot was profoundly incompre- 
 hensible ; the action delightfully rapid ; and every one had 
 the pleasure of feeling that the heroine was as immoral as 
 
ao6 PUCK. 
 
 possible, yet that by a judicious dual use of the marriage- 
 service she admirably contrived to avoid shocking the most 
 delicate susceptibilities. 
 
 Dudley Moore chuckled: and a stinging satire on it 
 duly appeared in the Midas. But the satire only sent 
 people more eagerly to the box-office of the Coronet, and 
 had no other appreciable effect. 
 
 Indeed, this anglicised version of Le PecTie de Vivienne 
 was so entirely successful that the stalls were filled, even 
 before the burlesque : an unprecedented occurrence which, 
 as Eanfreluche told me, rendered Laura Pearl's temper 
 absolutely unbearable, and caused her to break her ivory 
 hair-brush UDon her maid's shoulders. 
 
 CHAPTEB, XX. 
 
 LA. RELSE COCOTTE. 
 
 THE theatre was one of my greatest amusements. 
 
 I soon understood the fascination which that peculiar 
 form of ruin possesses for men, and the attraction that 
 draws your nobles and gentry to play the part of impre- 
 sario. 
 
 Tour wares are pretty women ; your business is amuse- 
 ment ; your patronage is extensive ; your society is of that 
 easy sort which lets you keep your hat on your head ; 
 smoke with your female companions ; show you are bored 
 when you feel so; and wear your shooting-coat in the 
 drawing-room both actually and allegorically. 
 
 All that is disagreeable in it all the agreements with 
 male players, all the ill-tempers of female ones, all the 
 debt and credit accounts, all the law difficulties with irate 
 authors, and all the practical worries of the whole thing 
 you can entirely delegate to your acting manager, whose 
 name alone appears before the public. To be sure, for 
 this form of diversion you will be likely to lose your entire 
 fortune in something less than three years ; but then, 
 as in many of your pursuits the turf or the cards to 
 wit it is quite possible to lose it in three days, or even 
 
LA REINE COCOTTE. 207 
 
 three hours, tins objection is liardly to be urged against 
 amateur-lesseeship for a moment. It is true also that you 
 will get tired of it very soon ; and then you will find ita 
 nets so cleverly woven around you that you will be unable 
 to get out of them. But this, again, is so universal a 
 characteristic of all your pleasures in whicb women are 
 concerned, that it is scarcely worth while to mention it 
 against theatres in particular. 
 
 It is further true that, after amusing the public for 
 several seasons, after benefiting a great number of human 
 beings by your employment of them, after behaving very 
 generously and charitably in hard winters to your poorer 
 employes, after honestly doing your best to bring something 
 like Art on the stage, and after seeing your ancestral acres 
 melted in an actress's diamonds, and your manager and 
 treasurer retire with a villa and an easy competence you 
 will be within an ace of your entire ruin, and will be con- 
 demned by society in toto as a roue, a brute, and an idiot. 
 
 But i you do not mind these little trifles to play at 
 being an impresario is perhaps the best fun there is out. 
 You are in all things like the mover of the automaton 
 chess-player hidden beneath the table, and laughing in your 
 sleeve to hear the silly crowds agape with wonder at your 
 marionettes. There is only this difference : the chess 
 automaton is honest and don't take his master's money; 
 your automata, when they see that the game is all up, will 
 make a clear sweep of the board before you have touched 
 a brass coin. 
 
 These reflections, however, did not trouble me, nor 
 Beltran either. There was plenty of money then, what- 
 ever there would be afterwards ; and the Coronet, with all 
 that appertained to it, was in its way very amusing. 
 
 The sous les cartes of everything always is amusing. 
 Pardon this ungrammatical jumble of two languages; in 
 my time I have associated with so many English adapters 
 of Parisian plays. 
 
 There was plenty of diversion ; as for the virtues, I sup- 
 pose you don't look for them very often in a green-room. 
 Yet you might sometimes, and find them. 
 
 ' There goes the biggest fool in all London/ said Lord 
 Brune one morning, as he watched Beltran pass down St. 
 James's street. 
 
ao8 PUCK. 
 
 f Eh ? ' asked Paget Desmond in amaze ; oeing given to 
 thinking his friend one of the keenest- witted men on the 
 town, in Y 'bach indeed he was right. 
 
 'The vtry biggest fool,' averred Lord Brune solemnly 
 *Do you know the last thing that he's done?' 
 
 'Last thing? No.' 
 
 'We 7 *! just this. Know woman that played mother's 
 part n Vivia's Secret all first month? ugly beggar, 
 yellov/, grey-haired, and all the rest woman not worth 
 sixpence ? ' " 
 
 ' Yes ; broke her leg last week in the street. Had to get 
 substitute.' 
 
 * Exactly. "Well, her boy came crying to Beltran; little 
 wretch, eight or nine ; said his mother'd sent him to say 
 she must give up her part for good and all ; leg was broke 
 above knee, and she couldn't stir for six months, if ever. 
 Boy made a beast of a row, bellowing. They'd nothing at 
 all to live on. What do you think that ass has done ? I 
 got it out of old Wynch. Continued her salary, by Jove ! 
 and had her and the boy sent down to the sea, and all the 
 rest of it, at his cost. A. woman as ugly as sin, too ! ' 
 
 And Lord Brune went out of Brooks' s in immeasurable 
 disgust. 
 
 A few hours later, I heard some other men ask Beltran 
 what had become of the old actress that broke her leg in 
 the street. 
 
 ' How should I know ? ' he answered them. * Nobody 
 ever does know what becomes of old women. "Women 
 oughtn't, by rights, to live at all after forty; we never 
 look at 'em later than that.' 
 
 'They go to workhouses, I suppose?' suggested Fred 
 Orford, with that sort of vague, pensive curiosity with 
 which a connoisseur wonders where all the ordinary china 
 that he only uses for coffee, and does not care to catalogue, 
 goes. 
 
 ' I suppose they do,' said Beltran. ' It don't much mat- 
 ter. We\Q done with 'em.' 
 
 And if he had known that old "Wynch had betrayed him 
 to Lord Brune, he would have been much more seriously 
 angered than if he had discovered tho gravest of that 
 worthy's secret peculations. 
 
 About his faults or his follies people might chatter tii* 
 
LA REINE COCOTTE. 209 
 
 were tired, for aught that he cared ; but for his better 
 deeds he had an almost morbid horror and avoidance of 
 publicity. 
 
 ' I don't believe you are so bad as people think, Vere,' 
 said Lady Otho BeaujoLais to him one day. She was a 
 pretty creature, with, whom he had that sort of pleasant 
 harmless platoni.es which are so common to the present 
 period. 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 ' Don't you, dear ? Wall, pray don't say so.* 
 
 As for Laura Pearl, of course she always took him at his 
 fcrord, being a woman incapable of any sort of insight 
 mto such a character as his, and I think that his greatest 
 attraction for her lay in the fact that she thought him the 
 incarnation of human heartlessness. 
 
 I saw her often. 
 
 I never saw her without marvelling by what spells she 
 induced a man of his temper and his taste to endure 
 association with her own coarse, cruel, and mindless life ; 
 by what sorcery of personal beauty she persuaded him to 
 forget her ignorance, her brutality, and her avarice. 
 
 IVom the first moment that the blaze of her splendid 
 auburn eyes had flashed over me I had been pursued by 
 vague memories to which I hardly dared give shape and 
 name; from the first hour in which I had beheld her 
 covered with rubies at the head of her banqueting-table I 
 had been ceaselessly haunted by a fancy that took entire 
 possession of me. 
 
 For the scent of the moors and the dales rang in her 
 voice ; the scent of the old pinewoods seemed to come to 
 me as she flung her perfumed hair upon the wind ; when 
 she gazed on the shining stones of priceless girdles, 
 carbuncle-studded, there was in her eyes the look I had 
 seen given at the ' dimonds ' of Dick o* the Wynnats' 
 pack ; and when there floated in the gaslights the golden 
 and gossamer tissues of her stage attire, they half veiled 
 and half revealed the same form that I had used to behold 
 imprisoned in the russet garb of a ragged linsey, as tfh<? 
 whiteness and the softness of the almond are shut in Vj? 
 their fibrous shell. 
 
 I felt sure, and yet I doubted. 
 
 The conjurer Grold can baffle eyen a dog's keen scent 
 and faultless memory. p 
 
210 PUCK. 
 
 At last one day I knew. 
 
 There was a theatrical question that had brought them 
 all down to the house in the forenoon a question of 
 whether they should or should not accept Mrs. Delainere'3 
 ultimatum, which was to have her salary doubled at once 
 or to withdraw from the company altogether. She was 
 entirely wrong legally ; but as Vivia was then at th? 
 height of its first success, and as Vivia without Mrs. Dela 
 mere would have been in racing parlance nowhere, and 
 as that lady, if coerced into keeping her engagement to the 
 letter, was perfectly capable of breaking it in the spirit by 
 acting so sullenly and so badly that the audience would 
 have been driven away in ennui and disgust, she obtained 
 her own terms in full triumph. 
 
 The cabinet council had broken up ; a note had been 
 dispatched to Maude Belamere couched in terras to satisfy 
 the utmost exactions of that capricious beauty ; Beltran, 
 Denzil, and the rest had gone their own ways ; and I, by a 
 stroke of ill-fortune, had got accidentally locked up in that 
 famous supper-room, which served also as council-chamber. 
 
 I knew there was no chance of escape, till they came 
 again in the evening, which one or other of them was cer- 
 tain to do ; and I composed myself dolefully to slumber 
 away the intervening time. An hour might have elapsed 
 when, to my pleasure, I heard a key turn in the door. I 
 thought it might be some servant whom Beltran, missing, 
 had sent for me. 
 
 Instead, I saw Laura Pearl. 
 
 How had she entered ? He believed that he alone could 
 open that room, as he had had affixed to the door a steel 
 lock of very complicated Italian workmanship, of which he 
 possessed the sole key. I presume she must have had a 
 skeleton key made, and that his antique fastener was not 
 of such mysterious manufacture as he supposed. 
 
 She entered, admitted old Wynch after her, and closed 
 the door with her key. 
 
 ' Get to business/ she said curtly, seating herself by the 
 table. 
 
 He seated himself opposite, and obeyed. 
 
 TJnperceived, where I was curled up on one of the 
 couches, I listened in horror. 
 
 The wicked old man, with as dry and simple a commercial 
 exactitude as though he dealt of groceries or calicoes, 
 
LA REINE COCOTTB. 21 1 
 
 detailed to her the various matters in winch lie was her 
 pander, accomplice, and financier. 
 
 Appointments, intrigues, gifts of jewelry, letters of; 
 flattery or of folly, careful audits of how much gold such- 
 and such poor fools would yield before their final ruin,: 
 elaborate estimates as to the probable value of so much ; 
 gilded youth caught in the toils all these he laid before; 
 iior in what seemed a sort of custom of periodical auditory, ! 
 received her instructions, and proffered his advice, having \ 
 in all between them but two simple objects to make money 
 and to cheat men. 
 
 She listened attentively, answered with that curious 
 shrewdness which often accompanies complete intellectual 
 ignorance, thrust the presents and the letters into her 
 carriage-bag to be examined at leisure, and began and 
 ended the conference with that good humour and brevity 
 which perfect harmony between two confederates alone 
 can bring about. 
 
 As Avice Dare had conspired with the Pedlar of the 
 Peak, so did Laura Pearl conspire with the Pandarus of 
 the town. 
 
 As her solitary object then had been the amassing of 
 silver and the betrayal of her brother, so her solitary object 
 now was the amassing of gold and the betrayal of her 
 lover. 
 
 It is a terrible thing to corrupt a woman ay, so it is ; 
 but it is a more terrible thing when Nature has made a 
 woman so corrupt that no fiend, if there were one, could 
 teach her aught of evil. 
 
 She dismissed him at last carelessly, but go od-humouredly, 
 a a clever workman lays down a clever tool. 
 
 * I forgot one thing,' said the old man, returning a pace 
 or two. ' The old woman in Shoreditch wants ten shillings 
 a week for the boy. She says now he is over three years 
 she cannot afford to keep him for six.' 
 
 She listened with an angry gloom on her face. 
 
 ' Ten shillings is a deal for the keep of a brat,' she mut. 
 tered, turning round and round on her finger a sapphire 
 ring, worth a king's ransom in the old days when kings 
 were deemed things of worth. 
 
 ' So it is,' said old Wynch dryly, with a gleam of humour 
 in him. * It is almost as much as the keep of a parrot.* 
 
lit PC7C*. 
 
 The sarcasm passed "by her unfelt. 
 
 * He's sure to go on living, I suppose ? ' she asked, 
 sullenly. 
 
 * Well yes,' said the old man with a smile. 'Some 
 children will, yon know. I suppose bad air, and sour milk, 
 and mouldy bread, and bruised flesh, and the stench of those 
 bone-boiling places agree with 'em. Seems as if they did.' 
 
 * ' What do you mean ? I'm sure the woman's good enough 
 to him,' she answered sharply, as if a momentary touch of 
 conscience smote her. 
 
 ' O, very good,' said the old treasurer, with his queer 
 smile. ' She's so fond of children : she's got thirty all in 
 one attic to take care of; she's a true Christian, that 
 woman. Shall I say she shall have the ten shillings a 
 week ? If a child dies when it is out to nurse, it is always 
 a nasty business. There are inquiries, and a great deal of 
 nonsense talked about " neglect " and " abandonment " and 
 all that.' 
 
 * Very well ; she shall have the ten,' she said reluctantly ; 
 1 but not a farthing more, mind not never.' 
 
 1 I'll tell her so,' said Wynch and he went out with a 
 pleasant-spoken farewell. 
 
 Laura Pearl remained behind him, locking herself ii^ 
 and spelling through some of the notes, and testing some 
 of the gems she had received through the good offices of 
 this unlovely Mercury of sixty years. 
 
 She had made at least a score of rendezvous one at her 
 milliner's, on.e at her florist's, one in Kensington G-ardenu. 
 one in Richmond Park, one in the coffee-room of the Levia- 
 than, one in this very room of the Coronet. And to pre- 
 serve them all from collision or misadventure, and above 
 all, to time and arrange them so that none of them should 
 be known to Beltran, required as much ingenuity and pre- 
 cision as your betting-book requires from you. 
 
 It is true, she had one great thing to help her ; she knew 
 all his ways and hours and habits, and through her spies 
 and his servants knew quite well all his movements when 
 he was away from her. 
 
 Men object to the surveillance of a wife, and most justly ; 
 but they seem to forget that it is nothing compared to the 
 unscrupulous espionage of a courtesan. 
 
 She was some little time occupied in arranging her book 
 
LA REINB COCOTTE. 213 
 
 of engagements ; for though she seemed to have a system 
 of marks and crosses that she herself understood, all usage 
 of pen or pencil appeared strange and awkward to her. 
 
 This business at length completed, she shut up her mo- 
 rocco bag, and took her burnous from the chair to depart ; 
 doing this she saw me for the first time, and caught me up 
 with a quick gesture of dislike j no doubt to torment me 
 in my master's absence. 
 
 The sun was shining strongly through the window by 
 which my couch stood, and as she seized me, the light 
 gleamed on that little ring of white metal that Ambrose 
 of the Forge had graven with my name, and which I still 
 wore about my throat. 
 
 It caught her sight fo the first time. 
 
 She grew suddenly pale for she had no need of rouge 
 upon her rich and ruddy skin and the blood came and 
 went strangely in her face. She stared intensely at me, 
 spelt the letters on my collar slowly, over and over and 
 over, then flung me from her, as though I were an asp. 
 
 * It's the pup ! ' she muttered, as she sank down into the 
 great carved chair. ' It's the beast of a pup 1 I might 
 have known it ! ' 
 
 Lying where she had thrown me, I grew deadly cold ; I 
 also knew her now. 
 
 For a second, in her hard splendid eyes there was a look 
 of craven fear, of troubled memories. No living creature 
 is without some conscience ; and the fangs of recollection 
 bit now into hers so sharply, that they aroused it for an 
 rnstant from its gold-drugged sleep. 
 
 ' Poor Ben ! poor Ben ! ' she muttered. ' Be he alive, I 
 wonder ? ' 
 
 Perhaps she had never thought of him from the time 
 that she had betrayed him until now. It seemed so. 
 
 For the instant remembrance held her in its thrall. Be- 
 holding the little creature whom she had sold into bondage 
 that she herself might escape to the liberty of sin, she saw 
 again the sheltering rosethorn, the dark mournful yews, the 
 open cottage door, with the brown brook running on its 
 way, the soft peaceful purple hills, the blue kingfisher 
 perched beside the pool, the deep green wood with all the 
 sunlight quivering through, the tender homely face of the 
 man she had betrayed. 
 
214 PUCK. 
 
 The dead time had no beauty for her O, no. 
 women are but ashamed that ever they wore innocent; 
 they are but fevered and enraged to know that the days ever 
 were when they were poor, and lowly, and of no account. It 
 had been abhorred by her when it had been her present ; 
 it was loathed by her now that it had become her past 
 
 Yet in a sense it smote her; for a brief space her 
 conscience thrilled with life. Yet not strongly, nor for 
 long. 
 
 She shook her hand in the light till it flashed in every 
 facet of her gleaming rings ; she looked at her reflection in 
 the old silver mirror of Venice that was opposite her ; she 
 cast down her eyes, and gazed upon the diamond locket 
 that rested upon her breast under the soft silks and laces 
 of her dress : and she laughed. The same laugh with 
 which, tossing her arms above her head, she had beheld 
 herself the mistress of the mock jewels of the old pedlar of 
 the Peak. 
 
 ' I ha' done well/ she cried aloud in the silence, her 
 native accent strong in her voice in that moment of excite- 
 ment. ' I ha' done well ! If ony Nell o' Moor Farm could 
 see me now ! ' 
 
 Then she thrust her foot against me, and spurned me to 
 the farther end of the chamber, and passed out and away 
 to her carriage. 
 
 I heard the shiver of her silk robes on the stairs of the 
 theatre ; I heard the chime of her ponies' sleigh-bells 
 through the open window ; I heard the rush and roll of the 
 wheels as she dashed down tho stone-paved street j and I 
 knew now whence it came, that instinct of terror and aver- 
 sion which had possessed me ; I knew now whence they 
 rose, those memories wherewith her voice, and her eyes, 
 and her cruel beauty had been BO strangely weighted for 
 me. 
 
 For this woman was indeed A_vice Dare. 
 
 Perchance it might be urged she would have never found 
 her way to gilded wickedness, had not the old pedlar of the 
 "Wynnats first thrown open the door of temptation. 
 
 "Well, perhaps not ; she would only have wedded Ambrose 
 of the Forge, or some other honest-hearted toiler of the 
 woods and moors ; and merely dishonoured a name that 
 was of no account, in the brutal orgies of drunken miners 
 
LA REINE COCOTTE. 215 
 
 and herdsmen ; and only have dwelt, in sullen discontent 
 and savage repining, in a little lowly cottage, that her 
 passions, and her sloth, and her violence should have made 
 a hell to her husband and children. She would have done 
 less injury indeed, because her sphere would have been the 
 village on the moorland, instead of the cities of the world. 
 She would only have broken a poor labourer's peace instead 
 of a score of rich men's fortunes. She would only have 
 been a ragged tipsy virago at an alehouse instead of a splendid 
 cocotte, who swept nobles and gentlemen at will into her 
 net. She would only have been the curse of one unhappy 
 man, about whose neck her sin and shame would have been 
 hung for ever like a millstone, instead of being as now the 
 Circe, into whose fell power there were gathered high names, 
 and proud titles, and fair lands, and lordly honours, to be 
 devoured, or destroyed, or levelled with the swine, or 
 stripped and made a mock of as she would. 
 
 O no ; there would have only been the common tale of a 
 wretched cottage home, and a female drunkard, and children 
 who quoted the word 'mother ' as authority and example for 
 all evil doing, and a woman losing all likeness of her sex 
 through sullen hatred and through dull debauch. Only that. 
 
 Imprisoned in the cage of obscurity and poverty, this 
 kite could only have struck gloomily and hungrily at such 
 poor feeble worthless mice, and larks, and night-moths, 
 and other home-bred things to which her native moor had 
 given life. Loosed to full flight, she could pursue all birds 
 of rarest plumage that spread their golden wings out to the 
 sunlight of a glad fair fate ; could tear the breast-feathers 
 of the proudest falcon that ever flew; and could dip her 
 thirsty beak into the heart's blood of a score of wild, happy, 
 thoughtless, heedless pigeons, slaughtered on a Bummer's 
 -iay to yield her sport an hour. 
 
 But would she herself have been more innocent? Not 
 one whit. 
 
 If you want a truth (which is not very likely, for it is a 
 ware that is never saleable), take this truth: a woman 
 guilty for the sake of gold would be guilty without gold for 
 sheer love of guilt. "When Mephistopheles finds that he 
 can tempt G-retchen with jewels, he is a fool for his pains ; 
 he might know that he has wasted his money ; she would 
 have been sure to have come to his realm of her own accord 
 unasked. 
 
fi6 PUCK. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXI. 
 
 THE WOOD-ELF. 
 
 OITB evening towards the close of the season a misfop. 
 tune chanced to me. I was lost. 
 
 Beltran went down to speak at the Lords a thing that 
 he scarce ever troubled himself to do and I, following him 
 without his knowledge, got divided from him in the maze of 
 streets about those legislative houses of yours whose archi- 
 tecture will last just about as long as the laws passed in 
 them will endure perhaps even a little longer, gimcrack 
 though the architecture may be. 
 
 I was sorely grieved and frightened, of course, and ran, 
 and ran, and ran, wildly hither and thither ; not knowing 
 any better, and getting under the feet of the horses, and 
 losing all my senses in the din and press. 
 
 It was quite late also, and night, although a midsummer 
 night, was coming on apace. I could have found my right 
 road if left to myself; but you always put as many obstacles 
 in the way of a dog's return to his home as in the way of a 
 man's or woman's return to honesty and virtue. 
 
 Boys hooted at me; cabmen swore at me; girls chased 
 me ; and cats spit at me ; and terrified, blinded and deafened 
 with the noise and the pursuit, I had no other thought than 
 to rush away and away at my topmost speed, eluding every 
 grasp, until at length, fairly exhausted, I was caught by 
 the gentle hand of a girl. It stopped me, and stroked me 
 tenderly, so that my terrors were stilled. 
 
 * Poor little thing,' she said in a very soft voiee that bad 
 in it the sound of extreme youth, almost of childhood. 
 ' Poor little thing. Stay with me.' 
 
 It was so dark in the little narrow street into which I 
 had unconsciously darted, that I could not see her features ; 
 but her touch and her tone reassured me, and I let her lift 
 me in her arms and caress me. 
 
 ' "We are both stray/ she murmured. ' You seem like a 
 little friend.' 
 
 Then I felt her tears fall on my forehead, and by dusky 
 moonlight I saw that she bore in her other arm a sheaf o r 
 sweet country flowers bluebells and moss-roses, and othe 
 
THE WOOD-ELI-. 217 
 
 tender homely blossoms that crown the cottage-walls and 
 meadow-hedges witli their beauty. 
 
 I suppose she strove to sell them, for standing there she 
 offered them timidly to some passers-by ; a few of these 
 thrust them roughly aside ; most hurried on without reply ; 
 none took them. I wondered how they could refuse that 
 touching mute appeal. 
 
 Finding all efforts useless, she turned, with a heayy tired 
 sigh, and went up the little street into another more narrow 
 and poorer still, and opening the little door of one of its 
 desolate houses, entered and passed up its stairway, dark 
 and steep, and smelling foully, to a very small, bare com- 
 fortless garret. She put me down upon the floor, and 
 struck a match alight. By the gleam of the little lamp she 
 trimmed, I saw for the first time the face of this flower-girl. 
 
 It was excessively lovely very pale, very sad, but of in- 
 finite beauty. It looked wan, as though for want of 
 nourishment; the bow-like mouth had little colour; and 
 the large eyes, of that gray which burns dark as night, had 
 heavy circles under them. Her weighty yellow hair was 
 coiled simply about her head, and her black dress was 
 russet-hued from age and well-nigh threadbare. She was 
 very poor, it was easy to see, and by the thinness of her 
 transparent cheeks it seemed as though she had not tasted 
 good food for many a day ; but she was very young, sixteen 
 years at most, and was lovely despite all the cruel anta- 
 gonism of poverty and sorrow. 
 
 Who could she be? All alone, thus, in the heart of 
 London. 
 
 I, who had seen life in the green-room of the Coronet and 
 the chambers of Yere Beltran, knew at a glance that this 
 girl was proud by instinct and most pure in innocence. 
 
 Yes ; though she had been out in the gas-lit streets at 
 ten of the night, and only sold poor drooping thirsty flowers 
 that no one cared to buy. 
 
 She poured some water from the broken pitcher for her 
 faded harebells and moss rosebuds; and laid me on a 
 corner of her bed; and put out her lamp, for economy's 
 sake, no doubt, and undressed herself and knelt down to 
 her prayers. 
 
 I do not know why it was ; but as I saw the linen fall 
 off her delicate slender shoulders, and the yellow rippling 
 
si3 PUCK. 
 
 Lair fall down almost to her feet as I saw her kneel there 
 with her hands folded on her bosom, and that look upon 
 her face which Sant has given to the prophetic child of 
 Israel I thought, curiously enough, of Avice Dare as I 
 had once seen her when she had sought her couch, with thai 
 wicked triumph in her own bared charms, and that wicked 
 discontent within her soul, flinging herself upon her bea 
 without a thought of prayer, with only a muttered savage 
 word because her beauty was unseen of men, and her sleep 
 was taken on a rude flock-pallet. 
 
 This child's eyes filled with tears, and her chest rose and 
 felt with sobs as she knelt ; the moonlight, the one un- 
 sta'ned thing that a city could not pollute, came streaming 
 in upon her, and seeking this creature who also was 
 incx irrupt amidst corruption; the quarters tolled often 
 whi 1st she prayed there, and yet I do not think her prayers 
 wei > for herself, for I heard of times the murmur, 'Harold, 
 Hai Did, Harold.' After a while she came and stretched 
 her young limbs on the hard narrow canvass bed ; her eyes 
 closed with a long breath that still was a sob ; and so 
 merciful is even sorrow to all youth that before long she 
 slept, and, by the look upon her face, dreamed peacefully 
 
 She awoke early, at sunrise, and caressed me with gentle 
 little hand that was very white and very thin. When she 
 was dressing she looked sadly at her flowers. Despite all 
 her care of them, they were dead. Bluebells are the 
 shortest lived of all flowers, once gathered ; they are little 
 gipsies, though such modest ones; they must have the 
 freedom of their green wood and their hedgerow j bring 
 them beneath roofs, they perish. 
 
 Cage robins and gather bluebells, they both surely die ; 
 they are the innocent bohemians of the forest and the lane. 
 
 ' I have nothing to give you unless you will eat dry bread? ' 
 she said to me, breaking off for me a piece of a stale loaf 
 that seemed the sole contents of the little cupboard in her 
 attic. Now, I had dined late, and was not yet hungry, and 
 I abhorred dry bread ; but lest she should deem me un- 
 grateful or dainty, I scratched my throat with a few of the 
 rough morsels. If you have not seen a dog force himself to 
 eat something he dislikes because he fears to vex the feel- 
 ings of the giver by refusal, you are a very poor observer.* 
 * I hare seen it. ED. 
 
THE WOOD-ELF. 219 
 
 Whilst I was eating it, the do or was thrown violently op en, 
 and on its threshold stood a stout, red-visaged, untidy 
 woman of fifty or thereabouts. 
 
 1 Where's my rent ? ' she demanded fiercely. 
 
 The girl's pale cheeks grew paler still, but she looked 
 calmly and fully in the infuriated face that was turned upon 
 , her, though her voice trembled a little as she answered. 
 
 ' I am so sorry. No one would buy anything of me yester- 
 ! day. And, as I told you, I have not a penny left. But if 
 I you will kindly have patience ' 
 
 ' Patience ! ' echoed the virago. ' I've had a deal too much 
 patience with such muck as you. A comin' into honest folks 
 houses without a shillin' to bless yerself asellin' nasty weeds 
 in make believe to look a trade a takin' bed and board like 
 a thief a knowin' you can't pay for it! Patience! I'll hev pa- 
 tience ! Griv' me what yer owe, or I'll send for the police 
 this minnit ! ' 
 
 The child grew ashen pale now, and her limbs shook ; but 
 her eyes did not lose their resolute frank clearness, and she 
 answered firmly still. 
 
 ' Indeed indeed I paid you every farthing till this week. 
 You know I did. And if I could only find my brother ' 
 
 1 Yer brother ! Grammon o' yer brother , ' yelled the wo- 
 man, coming farther into the chamber. ' Stow that trash. 
 I've had enow of it. G-o and tell that rubbish where you 
 please, yer poor pitiful white-faced mawther, but don't think 
 to come over me no more with it. It's a pack of lies ' 
 
 ' It's true ! ' The colour flashed back into the the girl' s'f ace 
 and her eyes gathered a sudden deep fiery glow. 
 
 ' Lies or no lies, it ain't nothin' to me. \ ain't to be done 
 no more by it. Out ye shall pack, with the constables to 
 r look after yer, if ye can't give me my money. Give me my 
 money ! Give me my money ! ' 
 
 ' I cannot give you what I have not.* 
 
 She spoke with a strange dignity in one so young, and the 
 passion of the vixen had not power to break her self- 
 command. 
 
 1 Then yer'll hev to make it,' yelled the woman. ' Will 
 yer go in the streets and make it ? Yer well favoured enow, 
 
220 PUCK. 
 
 DO money to buy fresh flowers ! and only look who will buy 
 these ? they are quite dead ! ' 
 
 * And I wish you was dead along of 'em!' shrieked the 
 fury, made more violent by the innocence of the answer. 
 ' I'd have the shower o' hair off yer head anyhow, then, and 
 make a penny by that. Th' idee o' comin' and using o' honest 
 victuals, and honest folk's beds, and cheers, and tables, with- 
 out so much as a bit o' linin to leave behind yer as yer pay- 
 ment. Ye'd a box when ye come, and it's dratted empty 
 now, for I looked in't last night, and there wasn't nothin 1 
 but a nasty mouse a' gnawin' at the lid.' 
 
 'I have sold what I had, to pay you for the last three 
 weeks,' the girl replied to her, quietly still, and with a certain 
 pathetic pride. 
 
 'O, yer have?' retorted her tormentor; 'and ye hain't 
 got a mossel o' nothin' then, let alone the rags on yer back ? 
 Well, then, to jail ye'll go, my lass, and that as sure as you're 
 a impident, ly'in', white-livered hussy as ever crept into a 
 honest house to ' 
 
 4 This will bring you your due,' the girl said coldly, and 
 from where it was hidden in the bosom of her dress she drew 
 out a little old-fashioned round gold locket, and tendered it 
 silently to her torturer. It was given in silence, given with 
 a singular firmness and reticence of all emotion ; yet there 
 was that in her face which made me fancy that to part with 
 the little locket was worse to her than to part with her life. 
 
 The woman clutched it thirstily, with the ruthless greed of 
 her cormorant class. 
 
 * A bit o' pinchbeck ! ' she muttered, biting it, smelling it, 
 testing it as best she knew how ; it was genuine gold, how- 
 ever, and she was compelled to admit thus much to herself. 
 
 1 It ain't worth half you've had this week,' she said sul- 
 lenly. ' But it 'ull dew. I'll no send yer to jail if je'll trape 
 off this minnit ; and here here's tuppence to get yerself a 
 loaf with; nobody sha'n't say as I deals hard with yer, though 
 ye've took me in shameful, and I a poor lone woman.' 
 
 The girl took up her little straw hat with one hand, and 
 myself with the other. 
 
 1 The locket is worth twenty shillings, and what I owe you 
 is but six. God forgive you if you were ever so wicked to 
 my brother as you have been to me.' 
 
 Then without even glancing at the copper coins which the 
 
THE WOOD-ELP. 121 
 
 Bubdued virago, in a sort of stupid shame and gloomy wrath, 
 held out to her, she went away down the narrow dusky stair- 
 case, and through the low door, into the street. 
 
 It was a beautiful summer morning ; the sun was radiant 
 even in that dreary place, making indeed its squalor, and its 
 unloveliness, and its grimy outline, more hideous and more 
 desolate. 
 
 Sunrise is beautiful in the country ; but in the by-ways of 
 a filthy city it is only sad ay, and even fearful. Night pity- 
 ingly covers, with its cool gray shade, that scrofula of brick, 
 and mud, and dirt, and vileness, with which men have defaced 
 the sweet fair face of nature ; but the sunrise only shows in 
 their uttermost nakedness those throbbing festers of the 
 earth which your mad humanity exalts as triumphs of the 
 tribe of Enoch. 
 
 The child went slowly out, and down the narrow road ; it 
 was too early yet for any of the closely pent population to be 
 stirring. A footworn cat moved here and there, the sparrows 
 twittered in the gutters, a tired homeless starving dog slunk, 
 shivering, through the warmth of dawn. She, moving like a 
 creature in a dream, walked mechanically where chance took 
 her. 
 
 A woman-child alone in a great city there is nothing 
 more pitiful on earth. 
 
 She went on and on, slowly, and dreamily gazing straight 
 before her. Her hands were very cold, and her lips were as 
 white as marble. 
 
 Suddenly she paused, with a quick gasping breath : her 
 frame shook with a fevgrjsh shudder ; her eVj closed, an<? 
 shs reeled against the stone wall by which sfie stood. ' The 
 next moment she sank senseless on the flags. 
 
 She fell in a half-sitting posture against the old steps of 
 a deserted house; so that, to any passer-by, it would have 
 looked as though she only rested there and* slept. 
 
 I, sorely frightened and sorrowful for this young desolate 
 creature, could only cower helpless near her ; I knew not 
 my way home, and if I had done so, should not have had 
 the heart to leave her. 
 
 She appalled me in her awful stillness. I had never 
 seen death, but it seemed to me that surely I saw it now. 
 I moaned aloud, thinking to summon aid. I did no good. 
 Irom a house farther down a woman threw open her lat 
 
4*2 PUCK. 
 
 tice, and sliouted to me to be quiet, or she would brain me 
 with a bit of wood. A young slender mau, with his hands 
 folded upon a book that bore a red cross on its cover, 
 passed by on the other side ; he paid no heed to my sad 
 cries ; doubtless he was on his way to early matins, and was 
 too absorbed in thinking of his own salvation to have an eai 
 for me. 
 
 Presently there came into the street a cheery, ruddy, 
 stout-built woman with shining brass pails on either side of 
 her, whose metal clang resounded through the silence, and 
 brought the cats out from the area rails, eyeing her ex- 
 pectantly. There was no one up to receive her in any one 
 of the quiet little houses of the street ; and she filled/from 
 her milk-pails, each one of the jugs, or pots, or tin-cans, 
 which were set out on the doorstep, against her coming, in 
 that curious trustfulness of each other which the poor so 
 often show, in such marked contrast with their acrid 
 suspicious of the rich. 
 
 These pots and cans were, for the chief part, covered, but 
 in one or two the cats dipping their noses, had a feast ; 
 and one unlucky puss, being unable to withdraw her head, 
 set forth full gallop in her prison, raising a loud clatter 
 \vith the pitcher on the pavement, and banging it to and fro 
 till she released herself. 
 
 Even at that moment I could not but think how like she 
 was to a human being caught by the neck in the jug of hig 
 poverty, after drinking up all the cream of pleasure ; but 
 from about the cat's head the earthen jug did at length 
 break, falling away in a thousand pieces : who amongst you 
 ever releases himself from the iron pot of debt ? 
 
 As the woman drew nearer to us, I gathered hope that 
 she would stop and take some pity, for her face was a broad 
 and homely, and pleasant one ; and she had the tan of the, 
 Berkshire sun still on her skin, and the accent of the 1 
 Berkshire people still in her yoice. But I was dis- 
 appointed. 
 
 She glanced at the recumbent figure, indeed, but she only 
 turned aside so as not to step on it. 
 
 ' More muck o' bad gells ! ' muttered this comely-looking 
 sun-bronzed Pharisee, with her pails thus passing on with 
 judgment. 
 
 Her cry soon echoed down a distant street. 
 
THE WOCD-ELP. 3 
 
 1 awaited with a trembling heart, powerless and very sad. 
 
 After a little while I heard a suddenly swift pattering of 
 feet, the rush of a large breathless body, the panting of an 
 eager, creature and round a corner in full speed came the 
 form of a big brown dog. 
 
 Emaciated, dust-covered, footsore, I recognised him in a 
 moment : it was Bronze. 
 
 He threw himself on the girl's form ; he kissed her franti- 
 cally, he moaned over her, he lashed her with his tail in a 
 paroxysm of idolatry and joy ; he never saw me, but I did 
 not need one glance from him to tell me who his darling was. 
 
 "Wakened from her trance by his rough rapturous em- 
 braces, the child Gladys slowly raised himself, gazing at him. 
 with dim eyes that were unconcious of him, and of herself, 
 and all ground her : then she put out her hands feebly, 
 and felt and grasped him by his loose brown curls : then 
 started and looked at him with a strange fixity of gaze. At 
 last, with a cry that pierced my heart, she flung her arms 
 around him, and buried her face upon his neck, and wept in 
 a very passion of tears. ' O Bronze, dear Bronze, good, 
 precious Bronze !' she murmured wildly. 'You are come, 
 you are come ! then he is near!' 
 
 Bronze crouched in silence at her feet. 
 
 'He is here? He is well? O, tell me, Bronze/ she 
 gasped. 'Dear, dear Bronze, do tell me ! ' 
 , Bronze could only gaze at her with tender hazel eyes, 
 that seemed to look love into her very soul. 
 
 ' Take me to him, Bronze ! ' she cried. ' This moment 
 this moment ! Look ! I am quite strong ! ' and she darted 
 to her feet, and stood erect, quivering all over with hope 
 and dread and Ion-ing. 
 
 Bronze crouched again at her feet, as though to entreat 
 pardon for a disobedience he could not help: and moaned 
 t piteous heart-broken and heart-breaking moan. 
 
 She sank down once more, being far weaker then sh<5 
 knew, and on her face there came a ghastly terror. 
 
 She seized him, and held him, and gazed into his eyes. 
 
 * Bronze Bronze !' she gasped. ' O Grod ! is he dead? 
 You are alone ! ' 
 
 Bronze lifted his head, and sent forth on the still morning 
 air a long wail of anguish, terrible as the Irish coroivach 
 over an open grave : then down he crouched afresh before 
 
*a^ PUCK. 
 
 her, and .silently caressed her feet her hands, her dress, hei 
 hair. 
 
 She knew the meaning of that one long note of woo ; and 
 without a cry, without a sign, she fell back senseless on 
 the stones. 
 
 There came down the street at that instant a girl who 
 sang as she went a snatch of a music-hall ballad. 
 
 The voice was fresh and gay and very full of melody, th? 
 mirthful slang words rang out in strange contrast with the 
 gloom and the silence around her. She was a pretty 
 creature with flushed cheeks and round limbs, fantastically 
 though cheaply attired, whilst her chestnut curls were 
 tumbled in picturesque disorder out of a tiny "Watteau hat 
 with a bunch of moss-rosebuds in its front. At a glance 
 I recognised in her the little "Wood-Elf of the Coronet's 
 Burlesque. "Would a little dancer of hornpipes and singer 
 of slang songs be more merciful than the pious youth on his 
 way to his canticles, and the buxom milk-woman with her 
 swift judgment ? 
 
 Little Courcey was coming no doubt from some casino- 
 ball or theatrical supper, that had been prolonged till sun- 
 rise, and the devil himself would be strong in her, and utter 
 through her mouth some coarse and cruel jest. 
 
 As she approached her eyes fell on the child G-ladys and 
 on Bronze, who was vainly trying all he knew to recall his 
 recovered treasure to life and consciousness. She looked, 
 paused, then crossed the street. 
 
 ' Mercy on me ! what is the matter?' she cried. As none 
 of us gave answer, she stooped and raised the girl's insensible 
 form against the steps, and loosened her dress, and fanned 
 her with her little hat. These efforts failing, she darted 
 swiftly, with more regard for charity than honesty, towards 
 one of the little milk jugs standing before the door of the 
 nearest house. It was a slender white china pitcher, and 
 she forced its mouth between Gladys* lips, and poured some' 
 of the still warm liquid down her throat. 
 
 After a few moments it levived her; her eyes opened 
 with a dull streamy stare in them. Through want, and ex- 
 haustion, she was still unconscious of where she was or of 
 what had happened. 
 
 ' Are you better, dear ? ' asked the "Wood-Elf very kindly, 
 
 an't you hear me ? won't you speak ? ' 
 
THE WOOD-ELF. 225 
 
 1 I do not know,' she muttered. * He is dead, !ie is dead.' 
 
 'Who is dead?' 
 
 Gladys put her hands to her temples, and gazed about 
 her with the look of a hunted deer. 
 
 < He is, look ! Bronze would never have left him, and 
 Bronze is all alone. He must be dead, you know, he 
 must ! ' In the simple words there was an unutterable 
 heartbroken certainty of an irreparable woe. Nellie, quick 
 of thought, answered to the truth as she guessed it. 
 
 'Are you only sure "he" is dead because the dog is 
 alone? That is no proof. Dogs stray, or are stolen, very 
 often. Do not think " he " is dead only from that/ 
 
 The girl glanced up at her with eyes in which a swift 
 radiance of sudden hope shot through the dulness of 
 stupified senses. Then her lips quivered, and she burst 
 into a passion of tears ; the spirit which tyrannous and 
 vulgar brutality could not bend broke now at the first 
 touch of kindness. 
 
 Nellie let that tempest of grief somewhat exhaust itself 
 then she spoke again. 
 
 ' My home is close by here. Come along with me if you 
 can walk ; you are not fit to be out in the streets. Or 
 shall I go home with you ; is it far ? ' 
 
 ' I have no home.' 
 
 1 None ! then come along with me and rest a bit. "We 
 will see for "him" afterwards, whoever he is. Come 
 along. I live close by.' 
 
 Grladys strove to rise. 
 
 ' You are very good,' she said gently, as she lifted her 
 hands to her forehead again, and looked about her with 
 that pitiful, wondering, uncomprehending look. Her limbs 
 trembled ; she had very little strength, and scarcely any 
 knowledge of where she was or of what she said. 
 
 ' Come, then,' said Nellie simpiy, and she took her hand 
 in hers, and half led, half supported her through that 
 street and the next, Bronze and I following them close at 
 hand. He had made no objection or opposition to the 
 Wood-Elf's possession of his treasure, nor had he as yet 
 taken any notice or given any recognition of myself. 
 
 Where Nellie went was to a vegetable shop in a little 
 street to the left of the one in which she had found us. It 
 was a small place, dingy, dusky, smatty from the sacks of 
 
 Q 
 
*6 PUCK. 
 
 coal that were also sold on the small premises ; but wit& a 
 certain fresh and pleasant smell from cabbages, and let- 
 tuces, and lemons, and thymes, that brought vaguely to my 
 senses the memory of the little herb-garden in the Peak. 
 
 Early as it was the shutters were down, and a white- 
 haired, brown-faced old woman was washing some sage and 
 marjoram in a wooden bowl of water. 
 
 ' Lawk a mussy, Nell, why when'll be a bed next ? ' she 
 cried, catching sight of her late returning wanderer. ' Ten 
 to six, as I live ; I doan't like it, I doan't like it.' 
 
 ' Don't you, grandmother ? ' said Nell indifferently. 
 1 "Well, I do, and that's all about it. Do the kettle boil 
 yet?' 
 
 ' Kittle was on the bile beautiful half-a-hour agone, but 
 she's off agen now. Kittles can't be looked for to bile for 
 ever,' responded the old woman with a little asperity. 
 * In my young days if wenches had come in at six o'clock, 
 after trapezia and flamickin about all night, they'd ha' had 
 to go down on their bended knees 'stead o' axin', like a 
 queen, if kittles biled. But, Lord's sake! who've ye 
 brought in with ye?' 
 
 ' A girl I know, that wants a bit of breakfast. I met 
 her hard by, a pretty girl, gran', and a deal more respect- 
 able than I am. Now, look sharp, there's an old dear, and 
 get me some tea, and put a dash of the craythur in it, for 
 I'm dead tired, and so is she.' 
 
 And Nellie therewith half -drew, half -forced, up the 
 stairs into a little room at the head of them, the still half- 
 senseless, half-stupified form of Gladys. Bronze and I 
 followed of course. 
 
 ' Dogs ! ' screamed the old woman below, ' two dogs, 
 Nell Nell them, nasty, dusty- ugly beasts sha'n't go up 
 my clean boards.' 
 
 But we were up, on the E3*?> scrubbed stairs, and Nell 
 called out with careless anret-r to the clamour that the 
 dogs might do as they liked, her grandmother wasn't to 
 bother. 
 
 The little chamber, like all about the place, was scrupu- 
 lously clean: it was a small square white-washed room, 
 with deal furniture and a truckle-bed, and a latticed win- 
 dow, that looked out dolefully on chimneys and on roofs. 
 But there were touches of grace about it, despite its 
 
THE WOOD-ELF. ^227 
 
 nakedness, as there were about Nell herself, despite her 
 impudence; about the little window the golden-drop 
 creeper grew out from a pot, and ' made a sunshine in that 
 ehady place.' There was a canary in a bright brass cage, 
 canopied with white-blossomed chickweed and the amber 
 tufts of groundsel. There was a heap of bright-hued 
 things in a corner, which, though only the trumpery satins 
 And tinfoil glitter of stage costumes, still made a glow of 
 colour and a shine of silver. And on the bed was a short 
 full skirt of rose-hued tarlatan, that was fresh and dainty 
 and unworn, and gave something of the grisette's grace to 
 the barren attic. This new ball-robe Nellie cast aside, as 
 roughly as though it were an old piece of sacking, and with 
 a gentle force pushed her guest down upon the pallet, and 
 bade her lie there and not speak. 
 
 G-ladys obeyed, her senses still but half-awake and in- 
 capable of resistance ; and Bronze, flinging his huge form 
 on the bed at her feet, kept watch and ward over her 
 safety. 
 
 In and out of the room the "Wood-Elf darted, some half, 
 dozen times, noiselessly always, and brought by degrees 
 tea and toast, and bread, and a cluster of round radishes 
 white and smooth as ivory, and a green fresh crown of 
 dewy cress. All the while the voice of the old woman 
 below was grumbling, in a running chorus of blame and 
 of complaint ; but Nellie paid no heed. Indeed, as I 
 learned later, she was justified in this, since her money 
 paid the house and all that was therein. 
 
 Vainly did she entreat the girl G-ladys to touch food : 
 she could not eat. Food was loathsome to one who had 
 been without it for four-and-twenty hours, and who for a 
 month past had well-nigh starved. Not so her good Sama- 
 ritan, who, having eaten four hours earlier a hearty supper 
 of lobster, oysters, ices, and confectionery, attacked with a 
 will the radishes and bread-and-butter. The infusion of 
 brandy in the tea, which she had put unknown to her 
 young wayfarer, acted like a soporific on the child, who 
 probably had never tasted the spirit in her life. It flushed 
 her face, it warmed her chill and trembling limbs, it made 
 her eyelids heavy, and drop with sleep, against her will or 
 even her knowledge. 
 
 Deep dreamless slumber, like the si mber of an inTuni, 
 
228 PUCK. 
 
 came over her, and she lay on the narrow bed with all that 
 beautiful unconscious colourless repose you see in a dead 
 child who has died painlessly. 
 
 Bronze, crouching nearer, and also refusing all offers of 
 food, since they involved the leaving of his post, stretched 
 himself on guard. 
 
 Nellie, munching her radishes as rabbits munch clover, 
 sat and looked at her wish curiosity. 
 
 ' By the looks on her she'd do for the profession/ the 
 Wood-Elf muttered to herself. * But I guess she'd go and 
 break her heart in it, as that D'Eyncourt woman did. You 
 honest loyal thing/ she went on, laying a quantity of 
 broken bread beside Bronze, ' your bones are half through 
 your skin, and you're fairly perished, and yet you'll go 
 without eating rather than leave her. Hang me, if you 
 dumb uns don't beat us hollow ! ' 
 
 Then, without noticing me, she threw off all her finery, 
 dipped her face in a pan of cold water to take the rouge off, 
 wrapped herself up in an old blanket, and, curling herself 
 up in a corner of the room, was soon fast asleep like a 
 dormouse. 
 
 In something less than three hours, by the tolling of the 
 clocks, she awoke. Ail women are not at all pretty when 
 they awake ; some look very stupid, some very cross, some 
 very pallid and untidy ; but Nellie looked pretty, with her 
 cheeks as red as roses and her eyes as blue as forget-me- 
 nots, and her chestnut waves of hair all tumbled, and her 
 ruddy mouth half -pouting and half -yawning. 
 
 She splashed about in her cold water like an otter or a 
 ealrnon ; came out of it ruddy and fresh, and dripping like 
 a rose in a shower. Then she dressed herself very softly, 
 wrote on a big card with great, sprawling, ill-formed letters, 
 * You are with a friend ; do not fear ! ' put the card where 
 the sleeper's eyes would fall on it if they unclosed, and 
 then left the room, locking the door from without. 
 
 'What d'ye know o' that wench up-stairs ? Ne*t to 
 nothing, I'll be bound/ 1 heard the old woman's grumbling 
 voice ask as she went down. 
 
 'Less than nothing, Gran/ the Wood-Elf answered 
 gaily. ' But I'll wager she's a good girl, and that's more 
 than I am ! ' 
 
 'Y're good enow/ grumbled the old dame, 'if yer 
 
THE WOOD- ELF. *2$ 
 
 wouldn't stop out so long a nights ; and if yer wouldn't 
 spend such a power o' money on ycr victuals and yer 
 finery ; and if ye wouldn't be allays a givin' credit to all 
 them trapezin poor as asks yer, and a wastin' apples and 
 nuts and pennorths o' "baccy on all the young uns and the 
 old uns o' the street.' 
 
 The Wood-Elf only laughed, and (by the more distant 
 echo of the laugh) disappeared, I think into the street. 
 
 As for me I was in high dudgeon to be unrecognised 
 and pent in durance like this ; and Bronze would not enter 
 into any sort of converse, nor permit me to utter a sound 
 or move a limb, lest I should disturb the sleep of Gladys. 
 
 I felt deep interest in her ; I could not help it ; but 
 I also wanted greatly to return to Beltran, and I thought 
 with a sort of anguish of the delicious minced chicken on 
 which his servant was wont at this hour of the day to regale 
 me. One's regrets for a lost friend a.*e never so poignant 
 as when that loss also entails a limitation of one's daily 
 dainties. 
 
 So I withdrew myself in a corner and sulked, having an 
 erroneous notion, caught up from human-kind, that sulki- 
 ness was a fine vindication of dignity. 
 
 With noon the "Wood-Elf returned, having been down, I 
 daresay, to the theatre in that toilsome routine which forms 
 the most laborious part of the profession. To skip and 
 sing and spout at night in the blaze of the light, with the 
 stimulus of the crowded house, and the flattery of the 
 clapping hands, that is well enough, even when one is not 
 a star but only a little fifth-rate performer with a guinea a 
 week. But to tramp down to the house at noon, in snow, 
 or rain, or heat, or tempest, and go through all the dreary 
 repetitions in the ugly darkened daylight ; to be scolded 
 by shrill voices, and to be pushed about by rough. hands, 
 and to stand until your legs ache while scenes are shifted 
 and elaborate sets are arranged, ah, think twice, my goo<? 
 maiden, unless indeed you be a Rachel or a Mars, before 
 you refuse the comely village-carpenter's marriage-troth, 
 or leave the old father's mill-house in the woods, or fling 
 away the homely peace of life on the moor farm, for this. 
 
 G-ladys once during her absence had awakened an< 
 started and gazed about her, then beholding Bronze and 
 reading the kindly words on the great card, lu.d sidiod 
 
23 PUCK. 
 
 and smiled as in a dream, and fallen once more into 
 slumber. 
 
 The opening of the door aroused her now, and aroused 
 her fully. 
 
 She sprang up on her bed, and turned her beautiful 
 wild eyes on Nellie. 
 
 ' Who are you that are so good to me ? And where am 
 I? And how is he? And why is Bronze alive, yet all 
 alone ? O tell me ? Pray do tell me ! ' 
 
 Nellie sat down beside her and regarded her with per- 
 plexity. She scarcely knew what was best to say ; and 
 she was absorbed in gazing with all her might at this 
 creature, still younger and far more desolate than she 
 whom yet she felt was as widely different from her as 
 though she had come from one of those distant worlds of 
 stars which she, who dwelt in the gas-glare of cities, scarce 
 ever even saw. 
 
 Gladys caught both her hands. 
 
 ' O, do tell me ! You are so good, and you wrote your- 
 self there my friend. What is it that has happened ? and 
 why is Bronze here ? and where is Harold ? ' 
 "Nellie was forced to answer something. 
 - My dear, I don't know,' she said slowly. ' I found you 
 in the street. You had fainted. I brought you home 
 with me. That's all. Whose dog is Bronze ? and who are 
 you?' 
 
 The splendid flash of hope paled out of the girl's face. 
 It grew white with vague fear. 
 
 'I am G-ladys G-erant,' she answered breathlessly; 'and 
 Bronze belonged to my brother, who took him away with 
 him a years ago. And I came to London some weeks since, 
 and I went to" the house where Harold had written his last 
 letters, and he was not there. They only knew that he had 
 left them long ago ; and I never have learned more. And 
 Bronze rushed on me to-day, and then I found he was 
 alone. I was sure that Harold must be dead, or the dog 
 would never have left him.' 
 
 She spoke in an agony of dread, her slender hands 
 locked hard in one another. 
 
 It was an inarticulate slight fragment for Nellie to gather 
 any sense from it. But she had tact, and said the first 
 thing that seemed best to her. 
 
THE WOOD-ELF. *3* 
 
 'Bead? because Bronze is alone? What nonsense, 
 child ! Who put such fancies in your head ? The best of 
 dogs gets lost over and over again. Why, if he was half 
 as fond of your brother as you says, he'd never have left 
 his grave, that you may take your word on.' 
 
 ' That is true,' murmured G-ladys. ' You would never 
 have left his grave, would you, Bronze? dear, good, patient, 
 precious Bronze ? ' 
 
 ' That I would not could I have found it/ said Bronze's 
 wistful eyes as he listened. 
 
 ' That he would not/ averred Nellie. ' This Harold of 
 yours is alive depend on it ; the dog got astray some- 
 wheres, and smelt you out, as those clever beasts always 
 does. What was Harold?' 
 'Harold? A poet.' 
 
 There was a superb glory and pride on her young wan 
 face as she spoke those words. Nellie, like the practical, 
 shrewd little worldling that she was, gave a significant 
 shrug. 
 
 ' A poet ! Wants a deal o'money to be of that trade ! 
 Was he rich?' 
 
 1 no. We have been very poor.' 
 
 1 And he come to town to seek his fortune ? And to 
 make a great man of his-self ? ' 
 
 ' He came to London for that yes.' 
 ' And what did you come for ?' 
 * Only to find him.' 
 ' Whew ! Without an address ! ' 
 
 ' I had that one. But he had not written for so long 
 that I felt certain something had happened. 0, something 
 has something must ! ' 
 
 She hid her face upon her hands, and shuddered. The 
 dim shadow of an unknown woe is worse still than the 
 presence of a calamity whose worst is told. 
 
 ' Nonsense ! ' cried Nellie imperatively. ' You must not 
 fret yourself like that. Young men have a hundred 
 different lodging-houses in a twelvemonth. For you to 
 come to look for him in this sort of way is just madness 
 like you might as well set to look for needles in a bottle 
 o' hay. He might be within a stone's throw of ye, and 
 you never know it. Never think a man dead for that little. 
 "We'll try and find him. Poets isn't so common as women; 
 
and I'll ask some gentlemen I know as writes in papers. 
 But come, tell me a bit more about yourself, dear. Are 
 you all alone in this place ? ' 
 
 1 1 am all alone in the world.' 
 
 ' Goodness ! "Well a many is. Only you look as if 
 you'd never roughed it like. How did it come about, if 
 one may ask ? ' 
 
 G-ladys, by one of those strong efforts by which she had 
 restrained all emotion when she had given the locket to her 
 tyrant, looked up with dry, calm eyes, and spoke with a 
 low and steady voice. 
 
 ' Of course you may ask everything. You have been so 
 good ' 
 
 'I aren't good,' said the Wood-Elf pettishly, while the 
 colour sprang ruddily in her cheeks. 
 
 ' You are to me. That is all I know. It happened ai 
 this way : we had a farm in Sussex, such a fresh, lovely, 
 quiet place. My father was never rich ; but he was better 
 than rich ; so wise, so gentle, so Q-od-f earing, so loving to 
 his men, and to his beasts. I always think that Isaac must 
 have been just such a man as he. Arid we were very 
 happy very though troubles came. You know farming 
 is but uncertain work ; the sun, and the wind, and the 
 rain, and the snow, are all its ministers ; but they rule veij 
 ill for it sometimes. When I was quite a little child 1 
 think we had no want; but I can hardly remember th< 
 time that there was not some anxiety in the house. My 
 father was very generous, and always gave much to the 
 poor ; he could not sit down and break bread for himself 
 knowing that another wanted it within his reach. And the 
 sheep would sicken, and the lambs <iie, and the wheat rut, 
 and the hops wither so often, so often ! Not from ny 
 fault of my tather's, but just from the cruelty of things, as it 
 seemed. And yet the life was so happy at least I thought 7 
 it so. Harold, I know, grew tired, and chafed because oi 
 the stillness, and would leave us, and go forth to make the 
 world ring with his name, as he said. My father took 
 blame to himself because, he said, that it had been his 
 reading aloud of Shakespeare, and Milton, and Massinger, 
 and Ford, and Jonson, and all of them that had first 
 moved poor Harold with this spirit of longing and of 
 unrest. I do not think it was that Harold was born to 
 
THE WOOD-ELF 235 
 
 dream dreams. But I must not trouble you with this 
 you only want to know why I am here. "Well, Harold left 
 us ; and my mother seemed to droop ever after. In a littX, 
 time she died ; of the cold, they said, since she was delicate 
 in health ; but I am sure what killed her was the absence 
 of Harold. He was full of grief when he heard of it; but 
 he did not offer to return. Nor did my father press it, 
 " If the lad can do for himself it will be well," he used to 
 bay. " To come back hither is to be buried under the 
 timbers of a falling house." He meant by that, things 
 were very ill with us, and that he had no heritage t<r 
 bequeath to my brother. The land had been mortgaged 
 many n year, had been mortgaged when he came to it by 
 my grandparents. But he had always paid interest to the 
 day; and those who held the mortgages had promised 
 solemnly never to call for more. The year that Harold left 
 us was one of misfortune from seed-time to harvest. The 
 cattle died, the hay failed because of the drought, the hops 
 did not yield, and two of the best horses were struck by 
 lightning ; nothing fared well of it all. It was a terrible 
 summer ; terrible, and yet so beautiful. Thus at last, my 
 father for once could not pay all the sums that were due, 
 and the mortgagees broke faith with him, and claimed the 
 old house and all the lands. My father was a proud man, 
 and just, and upright; and it killed him. He died of 
 paralysis, they say ; but it was only his heart that was 
 broken. When he was dead they took all. They said that 
 there was nothing for Harold or me ; it might be so, I 
 cannot tell. I only know they thrust me over the thres- 
 hold the first day that he was laid in his grave.' 
 
 A convulsive shudder shook her, and the veins of her 
 throat swelled like cords ; but she kept calmness still, and 
 ended her tale in a few brief phrases. 
 
 ' A woman who lived in a village near took me to her 
 home through the winter. A good, old, tender creature, 
 blind, to whom I read, and for whom I wrote. She said my 
 father had been good to her in her youth. But when the 
 spring came I could not live on her charity. It was not 
 possible. I served her in the rough cold season ; but with 
 the bright weather a young niece of hers always arrived, 
 aud then I knew she could really need me no more. 
 Besides, I longed to see Harold. So I came hither. I had 
 
234 PUCK. 
 
 a little money ; five pounds in silver that my godmother 
 once had saved for me, all in bright sixpences, and I 
 thought it would last well enough till I had found my 
 brother. But you see, it went so little way. It was 
 almost all gone, it seemed, in a week or two. Then 1 
 bought some flowers and tried to sell them ; but I did not 
 get again so much as I paid for them ; and and the 
 people were so rude, so jeering, so cruel. Ard at last 1 
 had no money, and the woman of the house turned me out, 
 and there is no more to tell. Only that now I have 
 found Bronze all alone, I am sure that my brother is not 
 with the living.' 
 
 She ceased, and was very still ; still with that quiet of 
 absolute grief which is far more intense in its desolation 
 than all more passionate and eloquent emotions. 
 
 Nellie had listened with great tears gathering in her 
 bright eyes that had the sunny azure of the little cuckoo's- 
 eye flowers. 
 
 She was touched, she wag awed, she was subdued, she 
 was for once at a loss for all words. 
 
 ' Don't wed yourself to that fancy, dear,' she said softly 
 at last. ' Maybe after a bit the dog will help you to find 
 him. As I telled you, them poor beasts never leave 
 their masters' graves ; and it's more like by far that Bronze 
 have been stray. Whose dog's that other little white un 
 that was with you ? ' 
 
 1 One that I found last night. And now, may I not 
 know who you are t .*at have been so good to me ? ' 
 
 The Wood-Elf flushed a little hotly under the short 
 locks of auburn that fell over her forehead in thick waving 
 fringe. 
 
 ' My name's Nell Browne. Leastways I was baptise* 
 so in the poorhouse. My mother came tramp, they say ; 
 she died the day I was born, locked up, I think, in a sort 
 of a damp hutch. Nobody knew she was in trouble till 
 they looked in in the morning and found me and her 
 dead. There's a many dies that kind of way. They never 
 knew no more about me, nor who my father was. I dare 
 say he wasn't no good. So it don't matter. Gran' here is 
 no grandmother of mine. They farmed me out to her 
 when I was seven, as a kind of little maid like. The old 
 woman kept a little tea-shop in a village down in Berks ; 
 
THE WOOD- ELF. 235 
 
 and she was very good to me ; never beat me ; not once. 
 Well, you see, when I grew up a bit I was pretty and 
 lissom: and 1 thought as I might do better nor go on 
 sweeping out a little sty of a tea-shop all my days. So I 
 bid good-bye to gran', and the noddin' chiney figures, and 
 I come up here to seek my fortune ' 
 
 * And they were not cruel to you ? ' 
 
 ' Bless you, my dear ! ' answered Nell hastily, with the 
 colour still hot on her face, and her eyes wandering a little 
 away to the speck of gold that the canary made against the 
 light. ' You're the sort Life's cruel to not me. I got 
 all niy banging about in the workhouse. I've done pretty 
 well since. You see I've a knack of singing and jigging 
 about, and I've got the go of it in me, and so I took to it 
 natural, as it were, and I've fared very well as things run. 
 I've been five years at it, though you wouldn't hardly 
 think so ; I'm twenty come July, and I was fifteen when I 
 left granny and the chiney nodding-men.' 
 
 Gladys looked bewildered. ' I don't understand,' sho 
 said softly. 'What is it that you do ? ' 
 
 * Stage, my dear,' said Nellie a little curtly; ' the theatre, 
 you know.' 
 
 Gladys' eyes opened in mute awe, and radiated with a 
 solemn wonder. 
 
 ' The stage ! What, do you play Beatrice ? ' she mur- 
 mured breathlessly, * and Victoria Corrombona, and the 
 Duchess of Malfi, and Imogene, and ' 
 
 * Dear heart, no ' ' cried Nellie, laughter back on her 
 lips, though her tears were not dry on her cheeks. ' Me 
 take leading business ? Not a bit of it. I just dress as a 
 boy, or a sprite, or a devil, or something queer, and jump 
 about, and sing, and talk balderdash, and look pretty ; that's 
 all I have to do. It was awfully hard at first, you know. 
 One could only begin, of course, with penny gaffs, and ' 
 
 ' Penny gafts ! ' 
 
 ' I beg your pardon ; I mean low places of amusement, 
 where the poor people come.' 
 
 ' Poor people need not be low.' 
 
 ' O, of course not, but they mostly are. And that's how 
 one has to begin. But that's over now. I'm at a fashion- 
 able house, and and it's all right enough. A year ago, 
 when I'd made some money, I thought I'd go and have a 
 
236 PUCK. 
 
 look at the tea-shop. So I went down by return ono 
 Saturday to the little old village, and I asked after granny. 
 The chiney men was there, nodding fit to kill themselves, 
 and looking as wise as judges ; the street was there, and 
 the trees were there ; and an old cat, as was our kitten* 
 when I first went to sweep out the shop, wns there too, 
 K shinning of herself on the door-step. But poor old gran' 
 wasn't there. She'd come to grief; got in debt, you 
 Rnox; and all the plant and the things had been sold 
 right over her head, and she was living on the parish in the 
 TTzetehedest old almshouse, hard by the church. So I jus<; 
 said to her, " Come along, gran,' and keep house along of 
 me ; " and I took this bit of a pkce, and set her up in 
 business like, because she's happier thinking as how she 
 does something for her own living. And she's a good 
 deal of use, the old woman is ; she gives cads right down 
 facers when they come after me ; and it makes it feel a bit 
 like a home, you know, having her, though she's cranky 
 as cranky can be. It's a sort of fancy one has that 
 of getting a home, when one hasn't had none but a work- 
 house.' 
 
 In the expressive eyes of Gladys Q-er.int I saw a hun- 
 dred changes pass whilst Nellie spoke. There was shrink- 
 ing distaste ; there was wondering non-comprehension ; 
 there was an instinctive sense of wrong, and yet there were 
 the swift sympathies of a noble nature with that gratitude 
 which had 'thus paid its debt to an old and helpless crea- 
 ture, and with that wistful desire for a life denied, a love 
 unknown, that thus broke out in Nellie's latest words. 
 
 She did not answer for a moment ; these two young 
 lives, so widely sundered by training and temper, bewil- 
 dered one another. They had only the common ground of 
 their mutual trust. 
 
 ' Are you happier than I, never to have loved any never 
 to have grieved for any ? ' said Grladys softly. c No, I think 
 not ; I wish I wish you had such memories as mine.' 
 
 ' O God, so do I wish ! ' cried Nellie with a curious 
 passionate cry; she rose impetuously and crossed to where 
 her canary hung ; she felt, I believe, as though she would 
 have died in the streets on the morrow only to have such 
 memories of the beloved dead, as this child possessed and 
 cherished. 
 
THE WOOD-ELF. 237 
 
 'Put you see, 5 Gladys murmured, with a strange sad 
 tender smile on her face, ' I have had all my summer in my 
 spring; it is all over now. There are nothing but tho 
 night and the winter. "While you you have had the cold 
 and the darkness first ; your sun has yet to dawn.' 
 
 Nellie turned quickly and stored at her. She had never 
 heard any one speak like this. ' Are you a poet too ? ' she 
 said suddenly. 
 
 ' I ? O no ! Harold could tell what he felt, I can only 
 feel ; but I am rested now, I must go. I cannot thank you, 
 only ' 
 
 * G-o ? what do mean to do ? ' 
 
 1 I dc not know. I am not afraid. God will give me 
 some f 7 lend as He gave me you.' 
 
 * Nonsense ! ravens gobble up worms on their own hook, 
 and sow up the rents in their own nests ; they don't go 
 about on heavenly messages nowadays.' 
 
 ' But you must have found friends when you came hither, 
 quite alone ? ' 
 
 Nellie's cheeks flushed. ' That's neither here nor there. 
 Friends ! a woman has no friends unless she has two thou- 
 sand a-year. She has only but that's no odds to talk 
 about. Just you stay there, stay as long as you like stay 
 till you are strong ; and then we'll set about seeing for 
 Harold.' 
 
 * I could not live on your charity.' 
 
 There was that singular dignity in the answer with which 
 this delicate, terrified, desolate child had awed her vulgar 
 tyrant ; a pride lofty, stainless, incapable of accepting alins. 
 
 ' Charity ! ' cried Nellie, quickly catching the tone and 
 translating it aright ; ' it wouldn't be no charity of mine. 
 You're so different to me so gentle-born like, and uses 
 such fair language; and I dessay so clever, and book- 
 learned, and all that. There's a deal you might do for me, 
 for I ain't no scholar ; and if I could only read hard words 
 off quicker, and speak 'em with a nicer accent, as it were, 
 why, they all say as I've a deal of talent, and there isn't 
 the least atom of reason why I shouldn't take a iruch 
 higher line of business. And all that you might teach me ; 
 only by being with you I'd pick it up like ; and then one 
 day, perhaps, when you've found your brother (for I'm 
 sure as he may be found, and shall be found), he'll wrifco a 
 
2& PUCK. 
 
 great play for me, and I'll make a grand hit in it, and then 
 we shall both say what- wonderful good has come of Bronze's 
 hollering out, and bringing of me to you on a spring morn- 
 ing, all by chance like, don't you see ? ' 
 
 G-ladys looked at her with a look of infinite comprehen- 
 si on and gratitude. 
 
 1 1 see how nobly you try to make me think your charity 
 a selfishness ; but I see nj fit return that I could give you 
 for living at your cost, and I must beg of you to let me 
 have my way and go.' 
 
 * Gro to death or perdition, you innocent creature ! ' mut- 
 tered Nell. Then at that instant she caught sight of the 
 collar on my neck, and darted at me, and read the inscrip- 
 tion, glad of some diversion, as her eloquence failed of its 
 point. She dropped me on the floor, with that curious dis- 
 regard of our bones and feelings from which we dogs per- 
 petually suffer, as she read. 
 
 ' Why, as I live, it's little Puck ! ' she cried. 
 
 ' You know the dog ? ' 
 
 ' To be sure I do ! Why, here's a run of luck : there's 
 five pounds reward out for it this forenoon, offered on 
 handbills in the shops, you know, and one never thought 
 once of this little beast of yours and Puck being one and 
 the same, I was so busy wondering about you.' 
 
 ' You know its owner too, then ?' 
 
 'Why, gracious, he's the lord as owns our theatre. 
 Here, I'll take it back this minute to him, and bring you 
 the five sovereigns, and if you pays me half-a-guinea 
 a- week, you'll treat me like a queen, and you can stay on 
 here two or three months, anyhow.' 
 
 1 Take the dog to him, but do not bring me back any 
 2noney ; I am not a thief, to take payment for honesry.' 
 
 ' What ! But he's offered the five sovs. for the dog ; 
 you've a right to it where is the harm ? ' 
 
 I There may be no harm, but I would not take it. My 
 father would have never let me iiccept a reward for doing 
 such a little simple thing, so plainly right as that.' 
 
 ' No wonder your father's farm was swallowed up in 
 mortgages,' muttered Nellie. 'Weil, shall I take Puck 
 anyhow, and will you wait till I come back, certain sure ? ' 
 
 I 1 will, indeed, thankfully. But I beg of you to tell 
 that gentleman that I am very glad to bo able to restore 
 
THE WOOD-ELF. 23$ 
 
 his dog, but that if lie were to send me any money, 
 should at once return it. Do not tell him either that 
 want money, or he might think himself bound to give it, 
 please remember ; I trust you.' 
 
 Nellie turned, a little uneasily, from the grave sweet 
 >gaze of those thoughtful and pleading eyes eyes half 
 prayer and half command. 
 
 ' I'll be careful,' she murmured ; ' but I'll go at once, for 
 you aren't strong enough, and I know as he'll be pleased 
 to see the little un safe back.' 
 
 And with that she carried me forth, and closed the door 
 once more upon her guest. 
 
 ' What a queer lot of chances ! ' she murmured. ' I am 
 at my wits' end, little Puck, what to do for that child. 
 She's a lady bred, if she aren't a lady born ; she's not fit 
 for our life ; she makes one feel so good-for-nothing like 
 with that look of her two big eyes. I'll tell him anyhow, 
 if I can see him ; he's generous, and he's a gentleman, and 
 I know he aren't one-half so wicked as they says. Maybe 
 he will do something 'for her : I never believe he'd go for 
 to hurt her an innocent thing like a fawn or a kid.' 
 
 Then, with myself under her arm and her little rosebud 
 crowned hat on her head, Nellie set forth into the streets 
 again followed by a grumbling valediction from the old 
 woman to the effect that ' gells as was allus a flauntin' and a 
 trapezia, abroad i' that fashion, and a takin' of low mawthers 
 to gio 'em bed and board, couldn't look to kip a roof over 
 their heads a week longer, with taters at two shillin' the 
 quarter, and every blessed head of brocoli eyelet-holed wi* 
 worums.' To which dismal prophecy Nellie paid no heed ; 
 but wound her way through the streets which led from her 
 own little home in the low purlieus of Westminster, to the 
 aristocratic places wherein the Coronet and its patrons 
 were to be found. 
 
 When we reached Beltran's chambers it was six o'clock, 
 and his night brougham with its pair of bays stood before 
 the house; with a certain shyness Nellie, who lost her 
 tardihood with her entrance into his neighbourhood, rang 
 the door-bell. 
 
 No sooner was the door opened than I wriggled out of 
 her hold, dashed up the stairs, and bursting through the 
 danced and whirled round Beltran, where he 
 
PUCK. 
 
 *tood before the mirror in his dressing-room. He welcomed 
 me kindly, whilst they told him who desired to see him. 
 
 He was already dressed for dinner, and soon passed intu 
 his reception room, where Nellie was standing looking for 
 once shy and ill at her ease. Nellie was not promoted to 
 that standing from which a burlesque dancer cau hail lords 
 and gentlemen as Fred and Greorge ana .7 *ck, as old fellow, 
 and old cus, and old hoss ; perhaps because she ' kept 
 straighter than most of them ; ' the glories of drag-seats 
 and of little dinners were as yet unknown to her ; and a 
 peer was to her still only a very great and terrible person. 
 .For Nell no brougham waited as yet ; no stalls clapped 
 approval with delicate lavender gloves ; and no Richmond 
 repast was ever ordered at three guineas a head. She was 
 as yet only a little dancing-girl unpromoted. 
 
 ' I ani very much obliged to you, Nellie,' said Beltran, as 
 he gave her a kindly good-morning. ' I am glad the dog 
 found so pretty a guardian. Won't you sit down, and have 
 some fruit or some tea ? ' 
 
 Nellie blushed, and fidgeted. The very langour and 
 ease of Beltran's manner a manner as natural to him as 
 it was to breathe only increased her unusual perturbation. 
 It was easy, no doubt, to chaff, and flout, and exchange 
 impertinences and puns with young university men or boy- 
 soldiers in at casinos ; but it wa<* very much more difficult 
 to her to speak out to and look straight at this thorough- 
 bred, indolent, weary-looking employer, whose consummate 
 insolence, when he was displeased, had, she knew, passed 
 into a by-word even among his own set. 
 
 1 1 didn't find Puck myself, sir/ she murmured. ' It was 
 a young girl as is at mine now, my lord ; and she was 
 almost dying this morning ; and I took her in, though 
 gran' made a fuss, and she's gentlebred, I'm sure, though it 
 seems as ho\v she be all alone, and hasn't not a shilling in 
 the world ; but she told me not to say a word about that to 
 you, because she seems so proud like, and she won't accept 
 of no reward, and she trusted me r.ot to tell, and now I am 
 telling ; and I feel so mean, and yet I don't know what to 
 do. She is so helpless and seems so innocent, and with it 
 all she is as proud ; and you see, my lord, for a girl like 
 me to work for her living aren't nothing ; but this one ' 
 
 And Nellie broke down in her flood of disconnected and 
 
THE WOOD-EL*. 241 
 
 involved phrases, stammering very much, and entangled in 
 a web of words. Beltran smiled as lie stood by the hearth 
 but only kindly, with no touch of contempt. 
 
 4 1 don't quite understand. Tell me all about it, Nellie. 
 Don't suppose I'm in a hurry. I dine down at Grreenwich 
 to-night, but I needn't start for half-an-hour. "Who is it 
 that is too proud to take these five pounds for the puppy ? ' 
 
 Thus encouraged and reassured the Wood-Elf told her 
 own tale, and that which she had heard also. Told it, too, 
 rapidly indeed, and very brokenly, and with not any elo- 
 quence save that of feeling, but pathetically for all that, by 
 reason of her quick, ardent, honest sympathies with its 
 subject ; and Beltran listened, yielding her far more atten- 
 tion, and indeed more respect, than I had seen him show to 
 the elegant nothings of a marchioness, or the loquettisr 
 repartees of an ambassadress. 
 
 ' And you see, my lord,' continued the girl eagerly, her 
 awe of him fading away in the excitement of her genuine 
 pity and desire to do good, ' my sort of life's well enough 
 for the like of me. I've always roughed it, and I'm fond 
 of the business, and I never was eddicated nor nothing of 
 that kind ; but this one, she may be a farmer's daughter ; 
 she says so ; but she's a lady, if ever I see one, and she's 
 proud, and so delicate, and so coy-like, she couldn't do aa 
 I do, she couldn't. She'd just go mad with the rudeness, 
 and the bustle, and the the shamefulness, as one may 
 say. And I haven't a notion what on earth to do for her, 
 and she won't touch them sovereigns as you've offered 
 for little Puck ; and I shall never be able to stop her from 
 rushing off again right into starvation and her coffin, and 
 I thought as how maybe, if it wasn't making too bold, yon 
 -flight take a kind of pity 0:1 her, and imow some great lady 
 W ft^cthsi' a& aight know of something as would suit her!' 
 
 And she paused at last, fairly out of breath, and 
 frightened at her own temerity now the words were uttered. 
 Beltran sirred again. 
 
 1 Great ladies are not very easy to persuade, I fear, in 
 tfvieh cases. But I will do anything that I can for this 
 child vou have so generously 'befriended. She will not 
 taXt kie fi\re oounds, you are sure ? ' 
 -So, sir ; I am .sure she will not. 1 
 Bit you can tike and use it for her ?' 
 
242 PUCK. 
 
 1 No, sir, I couldn't. I don't tell a lie well afc no time, 
 and I never could tell one at all with her big eyes a watch- 
 ing of me.' 
 
 * Well, it is difficult then to help her. Of course if she 
 were fit for the theatre I might give her a place ; do you 
 think she would be ? ' 
 
 ' She has the looks for it, sir ; and she fired up like a wild 
 thing about Imogene and Juliet and that lot. But you 
 see, my lord I mean : as she'd have to begin being so 
 poor, and so young, and nobody not knowing about her 
 as she'd have to begin like I did, just with hard, hard work, 
 and a shilling a night, and a miserable tramp every morning 
 and evening to and fro ; she'd die off, I think, of cold, and 
 worry, and hardship. And and she's that coy, and 
 dainty and proud ; her heart would break on the stage, I 
 think.' 
 
 Beltran laughed. 
 
 'Do you think hearts break on the stage, Nellie? I 
 don't.' 
 
 ' I don't know, sir. They says as Mrs. D'Eyncourt's did. 
 I don't suppose there's a many as keeps on the stage as 
 cares a hang ; but some few as is drove off of it, as one may 
 say, sir, do.' 
 
 *' Perhaps so. I never considered the question. If your 
 protegee would not like the stage, what is her name, by 
 the way ? ' 
 
 ' An odd name, sir, one as don't sound altogether En- 
 glish Gladys Grerant.' 
 
 1 G-erant ! It is English enough, very old English. Her 
 brother must surely be the same lad that wrote those verses 
 which I which the world has taken to praising.' 
 
 ' She did say as her brother were a poet, sir.' 
 
 'That is very curious,' murmured Beltran, stirred for 
 the moment out of his habitual indifference to all created 
 things. 'There is not much doubt, I should think, but 
 that they must be the same. However, there is small con- 
 solation for her, Nellie, in this: the boy is dead.' 
 
 'Dead!' echoed Nellie. 'O, dear heart! how sorry I 
 am. I have told her so to keep on believing he is alive, 
 and that she'd find him and be happy with him, and all 
 that ! Might I make so bold as to ask what you know of 
 him, my lord ? ' 
 
THE WOOD -ELF. 243 
 
 Beltran walked to the other end of the room, and gavo 
 her a pretty green volume. 
 
 ' Nothing in life/ he said carelessly. ' But these poems 
 are a little the talk of the town, and you see by the in- 
 scription that the author is dead.' 
 
 Nellie turned the leaves over reverently and helplessly ; 
 the dirty pages of Lacy's ' acting- editions ' were the only 
 ones she ever strove to read. 
 
 ' To be clever enough to make a book as big as this, and 
 then die ! ' she murmured. * Lord ! how sad it seem ! I 
 never can tell her ; O, I never can tell her ! Couldn't I 
 hear somthing of him, sir, where this was printed ? ' 
 
 * I think you had better not try. You see you know no- 
 thing of her.' 
 
 ' O sir ! ' cried the "Wood-Elf eagerly, in her zeal forget- 
 : ing her awe of him. ' You'd never say them sort of sus- 
 pecting things of her if you could only look in her face ! 
 If ever I see a face as was all innocence, and loveliness, 
 and pride, and light, and sadness like, all mixed up together 
 and changing every minute, I see it now in hers I do 
 indeed. There's that about her, sir, as do seem to make 
 me feel so common, and so coarse, and so good-for-nought 
 beside her. My bit of a place aren't fit for her, and my 
 talk will only do her harm, and and 0! I know as evej^" 
 word she says is gospel-true. I'd swear it ! ' 
 
 * I like to hear you, Nellie,' said Beltran kindly. * It is 
 ood and generous of you. I am not doubting in the least. 
 Jut at the same time you could not satisfy the publishers 
 
 iat she was any connection of this writer's ; and if you did 
 here would be very little good in it. Poems never pay: 
 these are no exception to the rule. The town may talk of 
 r hern ; but five hundred people, at the outside, buy them. 
 Leave the matter with me. And until you hear from me 
 r.gain, tell this child that you have lighted on her brother's 
 work at a bookseller's take her that copy, it may give 
 aer pleasure and persuade her to stay with you till you 
 can hear of him. It is not worth while to tell her he is 
 dead.' 
 
 As he spoke he twisted out the front leaf or two which 
 bore the record of the young poet's brief life and death, and 
 handed the volume back to her. 
 
 'But what shall I tell her, sir, please?' murmured 
 
244 PUCK. 
 
 < Vellie. ' She's not a one as I could tell false to ; and ske'D 
 &sk me, and ask me, and say she won't live on charity.' 
 
 2 Tell her the truth, then, not all of it, but just so much 
 as this : That you told me her name, and that I gave you 
 this book and that I will see her myself to-morrow. She 
 will not leave you then, unless she be an utter little fool/ 
 
 ' She's no fool, sir; but she's dreadful proud.' 
 
 ' She's all the better for that. Leave me your address. 
 I'll try and get to you at noon.' 
 
 1 'Tisn't a fit place for the like of you, sir ; 'tisn't indeed/ 
 stammered Nellie. ' It's nothing but a little old green-stuf! 
 chop, and in a horrid part of the town, too/ 
 
 Beltran laughed. 
 
 ' My dear girl, I have been in fifty times worse places, I 
 will warrant. I'll see you at noon/ 
 
 Nellie took the hint that her interview was ended, and 
 rose. 
 
 " You're very, very good, my lord,' she said earnestly. ' I 
 don't know how to thank you. She'd do it better nor me. 
 I was sure as you was kind and pitiful, though ' 
 
 ' Though what ? Come, out with it ! ' 
 
 Nellie looked for once up in his face, and took courage 
 from its look. 
 
 1 Why, in the theatre, you know, my lord, they're very 
 afeared of you ; and they calls you very hard, and very in- 
 different, and very full of scorn like. But I never thought 
 that they spoke as was all true about that/ 
 
 'Didn't you? "Well, I suspect they did. Good-bye. 
 And, for your own share in bringing back that little rascal, 
 do me the pleasure to wear this/ 
 
 He tossed lightly into her lap as he spoke a pretty necklet 
 of quaint Roman beads, which lay with other trifles of the 
 ort in an old Yernis Martin dish on a table near him. 
 
 Nellie coloured as brilliantly with pleasure as she had 
 done with embarrassment. For a moment she held it, 
 gazing at it in blind bewildered adoration. Then, as though 
 the green scarabaei which were in it had life and sting, and 
 sharply wounded her, she started and shrank a little, and 
 put it quickly down upon the table near. 
 
 1 If you please, sir no,' she murmured. ' I'd rather 
 not. I'd rather you'd not think as I could have come for 
 sake of such a thing. I'd nothing to do with finding Puck. 
 Nothing nothing, indeed/ 
 
PAR-CI; PAR-LA. 245 
 
 And '.hen p.e turned before lie could reply, and darted 
 e\vjfth" from the room, as though if she tarried longer in 
 sight of those glittering scarabsei with their golden clasp, 
 hor continence would perish, strangled by desire. 
 
 * "WoDd<-rs will never cease ! ' said Beltran to himself. 
 'Th^ tcvrc ialks of a dead poet instead of kicking him as a 
 dead aa y - , a dog conies back without a thief catching hold 
 of him ;-- and one of my dancing-girls refuses to take my. 
 iewellery ! I thought that I knew the world, Puck ; but I 
 suppcse after all that I don't.' 
 
 And with that soliloquy he lighted his cigarette, and 
 down-stairs to his brougham. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 PAB-CI; PAB-LA. 
 
 Otf the morrow he went out alone, and did not permit 
 me to accompany him. 
 
 Hence I knew nothing of how the fates of Bronze and 
 the child Gladys fared in the hands of a man whom the 
 town called a gamester and a libertine. 
 
 Ascot followed almost immediately on the night in which 
 I had found her with her dying blue-bells ; and we were 
 the guests of its prettiest maisonette, all through those gay 
 pleasant sunny days of early June. I often thought of 
 poor Bronze as I watched that brilliant scene from the box 
 of Lady Otho Beaujolais, in which Beltran occupied his 
 accustomed place, ignoring or defying, with his natural in- 
 different recklessness, the furies that he thus awakened in 
 Avice Dare, whose box, though he had given five and twenty 
 guineas for it himself, he almost entirely neglected. 
 
 She took her vengeance in a curiously characteristic- 
 manner. She went shares with the moat unlucky and 
 reckless plunger that she knew in all his maddest ventures, 
 and as he (the merest lad) left off a loser by about five , 
 thousand, she involved her friend into the payment of one 
 half of that amount : Beltran of course being obliged to 
 
246 PUCK. 
 
 disregard the poor "boy's courteous protests that ' ladies'" 
 losses never counted.' 
 
 Altogether that Ascot cost him very heavily, and the social 
 gaiety at the maisonette, where the champagne- cup seemed 
 to floV in perennity under the lime-trees, and cards to come 
 out of their own accord at evening on the laurustinus 
 terrace, it seemed no marvel if he had altogether forgot his 
 promise to serve a friendless child. 
 
 I remarked this to Fanf reluche, who was of course at 
 Ascot with her mistress, and was made much of by her old 
 masters, the Eirst Life. 
 
 1 My dear,' returned that sapient moralist, ' a gentleman 
 may forget his appointments, his love vows, and his political 
 pledges ; he may forget the nonsense he talked, the dances 
 he engaged for, the women that worried him, the electors 
 that bullied him, the wife that married him, and he may be 
 a gentleman still ; but there are two things he must never 
 forget, for no gentleman ever does, and they are, to pay 
 a debt that is a debt of honour, and to keep a promise to a 
 creature that can't force him to keep it. Now, Beltran is 
 a gentleman, core through.' 
 
 By this I suppose that she thought that the case of 
 Grladys and Bronze was safe with him. 
 
 We often judge very differently from what you human 
 I; ings do. 
 
 I was once taken into a night-club, where some of the 
 highest play on the town is to be had ; where the men who 
 lounge outside its doorway, on a hot night in the season, 
 are the maddest plungers of their time ; and where those 
 quiet soft-toned patrician voices name the biggest coups of 
 their generation. 
 
 'Pick out the best fellow amongst us, little one,' said 
 my patron of the night, who was Clyde Paulette, of the S. 
 P. G-uards. 
 
 All the men were, as it chanced, almost entire strangers 
 to me ; of none of them did I know the character before- 
 hand ; but I studied them all one after another, compre- 
 hending what was asked of me. 
 
 At last I selected one I cannot tell why by that 
 peculiar instinct which leads us instantly to a correct 
 diagnosis ; and I was greeted by loud shouts of laughter 
 from all present, including the man 1 signalised. 
 
PAR-CI; PAR-LA. 247 
 
 It seemed that lie was known as ' Ruthless Rhy,' from 
 his duels, his intrigues, his fatality to married women, and 
 many other wicked sports and pastimes ; was indeed looked 
 upon as the very worst lot, in a set as wild as it was 
 thoroughbred. 
 
 But though they made such mockery of me for my choice, 
 I adhered to it, and would not alter. 
 
 Well two years later on, this man Yaughan Rhysworth 
 was martyred in China, when he was on his travels ; killed 
 by the most lingering and hideous of deaths. He might 
 have saved himself might have been living now if he only 
 would have told one lie. He would not ; and he perished. 
 .Then men in England, hearing of that death, began to tell 
 to one another many buried things of this lost life j and 
 many who had owed him much were full of shame at their 
 long silence, and spoke out their great debts to him ; and 
 the world thrilled strangely at this grand and simple heroism 
 in one who had so long been calumniated and half shunned 
 in its midst. And so it came to pass that they found at 
 length how wisely I had made my choice, and how blindly 
 they had mocked it, in that late summer night in the billiard 
 room when steadfast in my selection I had trus/-,ed Ruthless 
 Rhy. 
 
 But I wander too far a-field again ; if I stray over all 
 my recollections I shall have you as impatient of me as was 
 GJ-il Bias of the archbishop's sermon. 
 
 Our Ascot week was a very pleasant one bar it s losses 
 in money. These were not limited to the losses on the 
 turf; they were increased by those at the picquet and 
 ecarte tables that stood out after dinner on the laurustinus 
 terrace, which overlooked the close-shaven lime-shaded 
 lawn ; with the cosiest of arm-chairs beside them, and the 
 mellowest of lamps burning near them. 
 
 The play was higher and more continual than common in 
 consequence of the presence of the Prince de Perras, one 
 of Beltran's guests ; a handsome and witty person, who was 
 the most inveterate and the most fortunate card-player it 
 has ever been my fortune to know. Beltran rather fancied 
 himself at ecarte, and with justice ; for there were few 
 better players than he in his set. But either the Prince 
 was in reality far his superior, or else the run of the cards 
 was tco strong for science to change them, for it is certain 
 
248 PUCK. 
 
 that in the five Ascot days M. de Ferras won from his host 
 BO me very enormous stakes. He was a very rich man too, 
 which made it more provoking. 
 
 ' The French were very stupid when they fixed Play in 
 the masculine gender/ grinned Fanfreluche, sore of heart 
 for her hero. 'How can it be anything but a woman? see 
 how it smiles on the fullest purse.' 
 
 Avice Dare, however, was not like hazard ; she did not 
 smile on the courtly de Ferras, who for his part treated her 
 with a cool and even ceremonious mann^;^ which seemed to 
 argue a profound distaste for her. 
 
 I remarked this to Fanfreluche ; who tilted her ears 
 over her nose with her accustomed gesture of satiric scorn. 
 
 ' My dear ! how can one tell ! I saw a man once, the whole 
 London season through, so insolently rude to a married 
 woman, that everybody wondered she did not strike him off 
 her visiting-list. Well, when August came, he eloped with 
 her in his yacht to South America. O, you can never tell. 
 Men in love are often most intensely disagreeable. They 
 are so mad with themselves for being such fools that they 
 take it out in hard hitting all round. 
 
 I But M. de Ferras,' I began in a maze 
 
 ' 0, pooh, my dear ! ' cried Fanfreluche. ' He has robbed 
 his host at cards, and abused his host behind his back : to 
 fulfil the whole duty of a nineteenth century guest it only 
 remains for him to betray his host in love ! ' 
 
 ' You think very ill of men ? ' I muttered ; I was indeed, 
 slightly weary of her sceptical supercilious treatment of 
 all things ; your pseudo-philosopher, w r ho will always think 
 he has plumbed the ocean with his silver-topped cane, is a 
 great bore sometimes. 
 
 I 1 think very well of men,' returned Fanfreluche. ' You 
 are mistaken, my dear. There are only two things that 
 they never are honest about and that is their sport and 
 their women. When they get talking of their rocketers, 
 or their runs, their pigeon-score, or their bonnes fortunes, 
 they always lie quite unconsciously. And if they miss 
 their bird or their woman, isn't it always because the sun 
 was in their eyes as they fired, or because she wasn't half 
 good looking enough to try after ? bless your heart, I 
 cnow r them ! ' 
 
 ' If you do you are not complimentary to them/ I 
 grumbled. 
 
PAR-CI; PAR-LA. 249 
 
 Can't help that, my dear,' returned Fanfreluche. 
 c Gracious ! whatever is there that stands the test of know- 
 ing it well ? I have heard Beltran say, that you find out 
 what an awful humbug the Staubach is when you go up to 
 the top and see you can straddle across it. "Well, the 
 Staubach is just like everything in this life. Keep your 
 distance, and how well the creature looks! all veiled in 
 its spray, and all bright with its prismatic colours, so deep, 
 and so vast, and so very impressive. But just go up to the 
 top, scale the crags of its character, and measure the height 
 of its aspirations, and fathom the torrent of its passions, 
 and sift how much is the foam of speech, and how little 
 is the well-spring of thought. "Well, my dear, it is a very 
 uncommon creature if it don't turn out just like the 
 Staubach.' 
 
 I have since seen the Staubach myself, and don't consider 
 it any finer than the Kinder Scout* of my birthplace ; at 
 that time I was mute ; I was thinking that there were some 
 waters, deep, cool and silent, hidden from human sight, 
 that no man ever fathomed, and that there were such 
 characters likewise. 
 
 ' Yes, there are,' said Fanfreluche, divining in her curious 
 fashion my unuttered reflection. * And there are men like 
 them. And I will tell you what there is too ; there is a 
 torrent that flings airiest foam-bells on the wind, and 
 sparkles with gayest colours in the light, and seems to 
 dance and sing all its mirthful hours through, as lightly 
 and as emptily as though it were but a sheet of froth ; and 
 yet beneath, all the while, it is so dark, so deep, so sad, so 
 still, and it only flashes with colour and foam, so that none 
 may probe its depths, and none stir its dead that it hides. 
 
 ' But, goodness me, I shall be too late to dine at Maiden- 
 head ! ' she cried, interrupting herself, as though ashamed 
 of her momentary earnestness. ' You know the Brigades 
 have taught them simplicity there, and the dinners are very 
 good ; I don't care for simplicity as a rule, it's the biggest 
 bore and impostor that ever existed, and with women 
 always means limp muslin, weak tea, and a thatched cottage 
 
 * Puck means a fall of water in the wild country about the Kinder 
 Scout, the highest summit in the hills of the Peak range. Allowance 
 flaust be made for his patriotic prejudices. ED. 
 
25 PUCK. 
 
 full of rats and earwigs. But when simplicity has the 
 Guards for godfathers, and takes the form of ducks and 
 green peas, or a perfect haunch of venison, I do like her. 
 She's worth all the foreign cooks in the universe.' 
 
 And off she went to enjoy it, perched atop of one of the 
 drags of the Household. 
 
 Ascot fell very late that year ; and as I overheard that 
 we were shortly to go yachting, and afterwards to the 
 German gambling-places, I trembled for the fate of Gladys 
 G-erant and Bronze, notwithstanding the assurances of my 
 little Mentor. 
 
 The day she spoke thus was our last day under the 
 lindens and acacias of this pleasant little cottage a cottage 
 with a billiard- table and a croquet-ground, a conservatory, 
 half-a-dozen men-servants, nine o'clock dinners, and a 
 drawing-room in blue velvet. 
 
 There are few things more pleasant, I am inclined to be- 
 lieve, than the mixture of Town and Country, judiciously 
 managed. You like the purling murmurs of a brook all the 
 better, if beside you a delicate Burgundy also murmurs out 
 of its jug. You find the odours of the sweet briar and the 
 roses all the sweeter, if they be crossed by the spice-like 
 perfume of your favourite cigarettes. 
 
 The song of the nightingales comes more purely and 
 clearly than ever as you sit by the open windows, pushing 
 the wine and the olives around. The hay never smells so 
 fragrantly as when the wind tosses it to you where the five- 
 o'clock tea is passing from hand to hand, under the golden- 
 starred pyramids of the blossoming lime-trees. 
 
 And when the great white moon goes sailing through 
 the dark clouds above the woods, you think how lovely the 
 night is as lovely as nights used to be in your boyhood 
 when leaning over the balcony you are fanned by a jewelled 
 hand ; and lightly chiming across your thoughts come 
 breaks of song, murmurs of laughter, fragments of the 
 world's idlest talk, from those bright chambers within, that 
 you see through the lace of the curtains, and the screen of 
 camellias and myrtles, as you look away from this starry 
 still night, and this fan that stirs like the wing of a bird, 
 
 O yes, it is well to talk of the mountains and forests in 
 iolitude. Take your tent if you will and live roughly, 
 tloft on some barren plateau ; cook your snared bird in a 
 
PAR-CI; PAR-LA. 251 
 
 bed of ashes, and lie down to sleep on your pile of heather, 
 and stare at the stars through the rent in your canvas, and 
 stalk out alone in the mists of the dawn. That is very 
 well ; and it is very well you should think so, if you cannot 
 afford any other ; and it is simple, and solemn, and grand, 
 and all that. But for pure amusement, my friend combine 
 the Town and the Country. 
 
 A certain friend of mine went not long ago to pass his 
 villeggiatura in one of the fairest spots in all Europe. 
 There is a poetic calm about the place that is beautiful ex- 
 ceedingly; great snow-clad mountains enclose it; deep 
 darkling lakes sleep in its shadowy woods ; wild pine-wooda 
 tower against skies of deepest blue ; boats glide all through 
 the day dream-like upon its waters ; there is the sound of 
 falling torrents everywhere, and now and then the chime of 
 bells. 
 
 He spent seven weeks there. When lie lounged into 
 Arthur's again, another man asked him how he had enjoyed 
 his time in that happy valley of the Oberland. 
 
 'Well,' he made answer slowly, with a big cigar in his 
 mouth, ' we made the time out pretty tolerably. We used 
 to breakfast late ; and we'd get to whist about three in the 
 afternoon, and we'd play on till about two next morning 
 bar dining, of course. We did that every day. It wasn't 
 half bad fun. Never had such a steady innings in all my 
 life ; and we'd first-class players. I don't know that I ever 
 saw better: not even here, nor at the Arlington.' 
 
 Now this man, whatever you may think, is neither of an 
 unpoetic temperament, nor of an inartistic mind ; he has, on 
 the contrary, a great deal of feeling and of perception in 
 him ; and for athletic powers, whether in climbing, boating, 
 or walking, he has few rivals. It was not therefore that he 
 was a Peter Bell, to whom every primrose was but a stupid 
 weed ; it was only that he wanted his town in his country, 
 and took it in the form of a pack of cards. 
 
 I think that is the reason why, of all your human 
 pastimes, yachting is the most charming to you. 
 
 You have the freedom of the seas, the freshness of the 
 winds | the width of the waters is round you, and above 
 flashes the silver-winged gull ; life and its worries lie behind 
 you with that low white shore that has died out of sight ; 
 all debts and all difficulties have been severed with the rope 
 
*5 2 PUCK. 
 
 that moored your row-boat to the pier-head. You ara 
 away, and are afloat, and are free. 
 
 And yet all the luxurious pleasantness of the world you 
 hare left, are still with you. On the cushioned bench there 
 lies the newest novel, just cut. In the big goblet the lumps 
 of ice float on the golden wine. Screwed upon your deck 
 your whist-table shows its green, tranquil, familiar face. 
 The silky nectarines and the purple grapes lie lazily to- 
 gether on your plate. In the pretty mirrored cabin a choice 
 little dinner will wait you, when the sun goes davr fdii, 
 if you be one not happy without this additional toy, there 
 can be also beside you some feminine form clad in the 
 richest and coyest of dresses, that with gold butfcona and 
 azure satin and snowy silk so amusingly copiee four own 
 sailor's attire. You can strike right across an ocean, and 
 yet can carry the town with you. 
 
 Here is the real charm of yachting that makes it t^e 
 prince of all your pastimes. 
 
 To that pastime we went from Ascot ; to the beautif IL: 
 graceful, gleaming schooner Bonniebelle, that called my 
 master master also, where she lay on the smooth gray 
 narrow ribbon of the Solent water. 
 
 It was such a picturesque existence, I am ashamed to say 
 I forgot everything else in it. Lady Otho was queen on 
 board the Bonniebelle charming Lady Otho, with her 
 pretty haughty head, and her gracious imperial way&, and 
 her soft patrician languor that was sweet as the south 
 wind, after the brusque tyrannies of ths jocottes. 
 
 It was so pleasant there. 
 
 Besting all through the night, with the ^ampa of tii<3 op 
 cosing shores glistening through the glcom like glo\7Wu2-ni3 
 through a twilight. Gliding all through the day, with 
 laughter and music and song, and the scent of cigarettes 
 #nd the sound of gay careless voices, just crossed by the 
 Bailors' shouts and the splash of the severed waters. Stay- 
 ing now and again at nooks in the little Island, where some 
 pretty house was bowered in a nest of red tangled creepers, 
 and a green shadowy lawn sloped down to be lapped by the 
 waves ; and quaint balconies, all leaf-covered, leaned over 
 the white foam-crests. Waiting far into the midnight, 
 while the waltz tunes rang over the beach, and the white 
 dresses here and there flashed through the aisles of syringa 
 
PAR-CI; PAR-LA. 253 
 
 and myrtle ; and the lights shone out through dark festoons 
 of foliage and thickets of tall fuschia ; and the glad good- 
 nights were called, gaily from voice to voice ; and the cigara 
 were lit, and the boat was pushed off, and the waters rippled 
 lunder the oars, and the harvest-moon arose, broad and 
 bright, above the silvered sea. Ah, how pleasant the life 
 was ! the old Sweet life that is dead ! 
 
 In it I could discern no sign that my master had remem- 
 bered the child Gladys. Only once did I fancy that he had 
 spoken of her. 
 
 The Bonniebelle had run far down Channel ; it was a 
 very sultry afternoon ; the sky was cloudless, and the sails 
 hung motionless in the hot dry air. Lady Otho reclined 
 under her awning, lovely beyond compare with a gorgeous 
 feather fan in her hand. 
 
 Beltran had been talking more seriously to her than 
 usual j and those two, whose attachment was of the serenest 
 and the most passionate sort, now seemed for the moment 
 almost to have approached a quarrel. 
 
 You turning knight- err ant, Yere ! ' I heard her say, as I 
 drew near to listen ; and there was a smile on her lips new 
 tnere, and not sweet. ' Ak,je ne crois pas les miracles excepte 
 tn foil' 
 
 1 Believe or not, as you like,' answered Beltran, as he rose 
 f jom his seat and lighted a cigarette. 
 
 ' Some women are awfully good to us, Ned,' he muttered 
 a few minutes later to Lord Ghiilliadene. ' But how bitter 
 bad the best of them are to their own sex ! ' 
 
 * Awfully bad,' assented the handsome Earl, brewing him- 
 self a pick-me-up. 'What's amiss with Alice Beaujolaisf 
 You've ruffled her somehow, haven't you ? ' 
 
 " Not I, said Beltran. ' It's the weather.' 
 
 But I do not think it was the weather, oppressive though 
 the heat and the calm might be. I think he had been speak- 
 ing to her of the story of Gladys, and seeking to interest 
 her in it vainly. 
 
 I suppose I shall be considered very heterodox if I write 
 a thing that I really believe ; but I do believe it ; and it is 
 this that men are much softer at heart than women. 
 
 O, I know men can be hard enough ; they can swear 
 savagely on occasions ; they can hit mercilessly when they 
 are minded ; they can be like steel or granite to a woman 
 
354 PUCK. 
 
 whom they have ceased to care about ; I know that. But 
 for all that they are never hard with the chill, contented, 
 egotistic, lifelong brutality of women. Apres moi, le deluge ! 
 that is a woman all over. If the Pompadour did not say 
 it, she ought to have done. 
 
 Lucretius has said how charming it is to stand under a 
 shelter in a storm, and see another hurrying through its 
 rain and wind ; but a woman would refine that sort of 
 cruelty, and would not be quite content unless she had an 
 umbrella beside her that she refused to lend. 
 
 I get very out of patience when I hear of the tenderness 
 of women ; they are only tender just for themselves and 
 their belongings as tigresses and bears are. They have 
 no notion of any impersonal sympathy. Men you can move 
 by a thousand things their imaginations, their affections, 
 their chivalries, their follies, their intelligence, their per- 
 ception, what you will. But a woman can only be rnovei 
 by just one thing alone her own private interests. 
 
 Women always put me in mind of that bird of yours, the 
 cuckoo. 
 
 Your poetry and your platitudes have all combined to 
 attach a most sentimental value to cuckoos and women. 
 All sorts of pretty phantasies surround them both ; the 
 spring-tide of the year, the breath of early flowers, the verse 
 of old dead poets, the scent of sweet summer rains, the 
 light of bright dewy dawns all these things you have 
 mingled with the thought of the cuckoo, till its first call 
 through the woods in April brings all these memories with 
 it. Just so in like manner have you entangled your poetic 
 ideals, your dreams of peace and purity, all divinities of 
 patience and of pity, all sweet saintly sacrifice and sorrow, 
 with your ideas of women. 
 
 Well cuckoos and women, believe me, are very much 
 like each other, and not at all like your phantasy : to get 
 a well-feathered nest without the trouble of making it, and 
 to keep easily in it themselves, no matter who may turn out 
 in the cold, is both cuckoo and woman all over ; and while 
 you quote Herrick and Wordsworth about them as you 
 walk in the dewy green wood, they are busy slaying the 
 poor lonely fledglings, that their own young may lie snug 
 and warm. 
 
 Allans ! I shall be told, I suppose, that it is very easy ; v 'and 
 
PAR-CI ; PAR-LA. 2$5 
 
 therefore ignoble) to satirize woman. It is easy, no doubt 
 just as Pasquinades were easy in the corruption of Borgian 
 Borne; just as epigrams were easy in the vileness of 
 Bourbonic Prance. Had Borne been virtuous or Prance 
 pure, Pasquin's pillar would have been blank, and Figaro's 
 mouth been silent. 
 
 After the yachting there came the playing places in Q-er- 
 many ; and after those there came the shooting : the latter 
 at a variety of houses, in a variety of counties. Our servant, 
 who was, as I have said, a notable exception to his class, 
 and had taken me greatly into his affections, bore me about 
 through all these manifold changes ; and though his master 
 and mine laughed at him for cumbering himself with me, 
 Beltran never offered any serious opposition to my presence 
 wherever he went. 
 
 It seemed to me the hardest work that ever men set 
 themselves, that inveterate ' gunning ' from sunrise to sun- 
 set : that incessant unremitting assiduity with which they 
 devoted themselves to the slaughter of birds without any 
 pause or breathing space, save in that one hour when the 
 not luncheon smoked under the nut-coppice, and the 
 champagne-cup was drunk where the great curling ferns 
 shielded the mouse and the wren. 
 
 But the share that I had in it was pleasant enough. Some- 
 times we were at great country-houses, filled with fashion- 
 able gatherings ; sometimes we were at those grand ducal 
 mansions that stand amidst the gorse and bracken of the 
 midland shires ; sometimes we were at his own place, a gray 
 rambling old baronial pile, set in the heart of the green 
 meadows, and the beechen woods, and the drowsy hawthorn 
 lanes, of Bucks. 
 
 There were always women, of course ; dainty dames and 
 demoiselles of the world of fashion. Alice Beau jolais being 
 always invited with the same circle of guests as Beltran, , 
 with that curious tacit recognition and condonation of 
 such a liaison which people always accord while the woman 
 is ' in society,' and which contrasts so comically with their 
 virtuous ostracism of her if she once be fool enough to 
 blunder into an open scandal and the columns of the 
 newspapers. 
 
 * My dear, she goes everywhere ; she attends the Draw- 
 ing-rooms, you know ; and her own people visit her It 
 
PUCA. 
 
 would be ridiculous for us to object.' I have heard tilled 
 women say this hundreds of times of great ladief of their 
 own order, whom they knew to be guilty of the vilest of 
 intrigues and the foulest of sensualities, and whose ' con- 
 nections ' were as notorious to their own set as though they 
 had been pilloried in a market-place. And they never did 
 object accordingly, but asked each aristocratic sinner, with 
 her favourite ' friend ' of the moment, in the very kindest 
 and most charitable manner possible. 
 
 If a silly idiot mismanaged her matters and created scandal 
 by getting into the divorce court, or by irritating a long- 
 suffering society with some folly that it is quite impossible 
 for society to be blind to, of course it was a different thing. 
 They ' objected ' then with all imaginable severity, and com- 
 bined their forces to drive forth the foolish one from the 
 sacred precincts of an outraged community. 
 
 Lady Otho, therefore, being a woman of an exquisite tact, 
 and taking care to be always au mieux with her husband (a 
 sensible creature likewise, who thought that in the matter 
 of condonation it was always best to ' give and take'), went 
 to all the houses that Beltran went to, and carried on her 
 ' platonics ' with him with the most admirable ease. She 
 deigned to take much notice of myself ; and though she de- 
 clined to accept me when offered to her, petted me habitually 
 very much, as she usually did the youngest and saucies't 
 addition to her ' pretty pages/ from the cornet-list of the 
 Brigades. 
 
 I never knew quite whether I liked her how can you 
 with those women of the world ? She was kind and insincere ; 
 she was gentle and she was cruel ; she was generous and 
 ungenerous ; she was true as steel, and she was false as 
 Judas what would you ? she was a woman of the world, 
 with several sweet natural impulses, and all a coquette's 
 diplomacies. 
 
 She tended me with the greatest solicitude one day that 
 autumn, when I had run a thorn into my foot : and the very 
 next day, when I was well again, she laughed to see me 
 worried on the lawn by a bull-terrier. If you have not met 
 a woman like that, I wonder where you have lived. 
 
 However, as a rifle I enjoyed myself amongst those fair 
 patricians in the various houses we visited. I played with 
 their wools and floss silks ; tore their yellow-papered novels, 
 
PAR-CI; PAR-LA. 257 
 
 and stept on their velvet or silken skirts at my fancy, in the 
 mornings; strolled after them in the conservatories and 
 rose gardens ; was curled on their folded plaids when they 
 graced the pheasant or grouse drives with their presence ; 
 and learned to care for the bang of the breach-loaders, and 
 the risk of a shot, as little as they cared when a brave old 
 cock bird staggered dead through the smoke, and they 
 watched how the wagers they had laid in gloves went. 
 
 Then when luncheon came on the sturdy gray pony's back, 
 and they dispossessed me of their plaids to stretch themselves 
 thereon, they would toss me foie gras, and truffles, and 
 biscuits ; while nonsense, ' delicious thing, like the bubble 
 from a spring,' and laughter, and stories, and half -gay, hal& 
 ead fragments of vague sentiment, floated with the smoke 
 of the cigarettes, and the scent of the delicate burgai>dies, 
 amongst the yellow furze and the wet mosses, and the big 
 dock leaves of the bank, up to the branches of the nut-tree 
 hedge, where amongst the half -reddened foliage the linnet 
 would be singing her latest, and the robin his earliest 
 eong. 
 
 It was pleasant, very pleasant, and in these bright, care- 
 less, sport-filled days of autumn, there seemed no time in 
 which to remember Bronze and Gladys. I forgot : and I 
 supposed that he forgot also. 
 
 When I met Fanf reluche again, she scoffed at me severely 
 for this. She came to stay with her mistress at that old 
 place of Beltran's in the beechwoods of Bucks. He was 
 seldom there except in the shooting season ; it appeared that 
 his fortune was too impoverished for him to be able to 
 sustain the enormous expenses which a nobleman's open 
 house and great establishment involve. 
 
 When he went down to the place it was in a half- 
 bohemian, half -bivouac fashion, that yet was perhaps plea- 
 santer than any other, in the old dim, picturesque, historic 
 house, with its oak-panelled rooms, and its stained windows, 
 and its shady grass terraces with their dark cedars. For 
 though he called it roughing it, the roughness was only of 
 the most artistic sort ; with a perfect cook, and perfect 
 wines, and perfect cigars ; with wondrous old gold plate, 
 and fabulous antiques, and paintings, and china, all round ; 
 and a grand piano in the Elizabethan drawing-room, and 
 *ho clash of billiard-balls under the painted arches of th* 
 
 5 
 
PUCK. 
 
 Chapel entrance, and whist-tables in the little garden room, 
 that looked through oriel windows on to the terraces anc* 
 the cedars. 
 
 Here Lady Otho came not ; and the society somewhat 
 scandalised the county. 
 
 I suppose he thought that the demi-monde best suited that 
 indolent, irregular, half-bohemian existence ; and that when 
 his guests and he came trooping in through the twilight, 
 from the golden-woods, and the broad bistre fallows, into 
 that strange old place, it was easier to be able to lounge 
 into dinner in their velvet shooting dress ; it was easier to 
 be able to talk whatever impudent mischief came uppermost ; 
 it was easier to be able to brush a kiss from a cheek so 
 coolly, and with as little pardon asked, as when brushing the 
 bloom off a peach. It was easier certainly ; and they were 
 wont to declare that the ultimate practice of both mondes 
 was the same, it was their theories only that differed. 
 And when you come in tired from a long day's shooting, 
 and indisposed for more exertion than to drink your wine 
 and to light your cigar, it is easier to have to do with women 
 who have no theories. For, at any rate, the theorists ex- 
 pect you to put on your dress coat, and to keep awake after 
 dinner. 
 
 By the way, permit me, in parenthesis, to say that one 
 of the chief causes of that preference for the demi-monde 
 which you daily and hourly discover more and more, is the 
 indulgence it shows to idleness. Because your lives are 
 so intense now, and always at high pressure, for that very 
 reason are you more indolent also in little things. It bores 
 you to dress ; it bores you to talk ; it bores you to be polite. 
 Sir Charles Grandison might find ecstasy in elaborating a 
 bow, a wig, or a speech ; you like to give a little nod, cut 
 your hair very short, and make ' awfully ' do duty for all 
 your adjectives. 
 
 1 Autres temps, autres mceurs.' You are a very odd mix- 
 ture. You will go to the ends of the earth on the scent of 
 big game ; but you shirk all social exertion with a cynical 
 laziness. You will come from Damascus at a stretch with- 
 out sleeping, and think nothing of it ; but you find it a 
 wretched thing to have to exert yourself to be courteous in 
 a drawing-room. 
 
 Therefore the demi-monde suits you with a curious fitness, 
 
PAR-CI ; PAR-LA. 259 
 
 And suits you more and more every yciir. 1 am afraid it fa 
 not very good for you. I don't mean for your morals ; 1 
 don't care the least about them, I am a dog of the world 
 I mean for your manners. It makes you slangy, inert, 
 rude, lazy. And yet, what perfect gentlemen you can be 
 still, and what grace there is in your careless weary ease, 
 when you choose to be courteous ; and you always do choose, 
 that I must say for you, when you find a woman who is 
 really worth the trouble. 
 
 Fanfreluche, who came thither with Avice Dare, took me> 
 to task, as I say, for my supposition that Beltran had for- 
 gotten his promise. She insisted that he had not done so, 
 however appearances might betoken. 
 
 ' He hasn't forgotten,' she assured me again and again, 
 and with much force, one Sunday afternoon, when there 
 was no gunning, and everybody was out on the terrace in 
 the warm golden October afternoon, reading novels, playingr 
 ecarte, drinking seltzers, chanting glees, sauntering under 
 the great old cedars, while the crimsoned woods stretched 
 away in the sunlight, and the creepers glowed scarlet where 
 they trailed over the stone balustrade. 
 
 'Gentlemen don't forget not that sort of thing, I mean. 
 Now, you look there at Neil Strathalan there he's pour- 
 ing out the claret-cup fo* Laura. Beastly stuff, that those 
 tomfools of the butler's pantry poke cucumber, and lemon, 
 and si>ice, and brandy, and every abomination into ! As 
 thougt wine weren't bad enough by itself.' 
 
 I looked at Neil Strathalan as she spoke ; he was one of 
 the men staying with us; an ex guardsman; a duke's son; 
 a handsome, worn, reckless, indolent-looking man of the 
 world, of whom I had seldom heard anything good. 
 
 ' I know what a bad fellow everybody thinks my Lord 
 Neil. And he does go awfully fast ttiit 1 grant. Plunges ; 
 turns night into day ; makes love to no end of married 
 women ; does everything that he ought not to do. Well, 
 I'll tell you a thing I know about Neil. It happened a 
 long time ago, when I belonged to the Brigades. There 
 was a man alive at the time called Maurice Bi-ysdale ; he 
 was a g;reat friend of Neil's, and they wei-e always together. 
 Poor Maurice was thoroughbred all over, but he was fearfully 
 x ;r3r ; he went the pace like all of them, and ha iwidn't stay 
 in him for it ; and he broke down utterly fortune, and 
 
?6o PUCK. 
 
 body, and mind. He got abroad to avoid arrest, and he 
 died abroad at a little fishing town in Norway. 
 
 ' Neil Strathalan was yachting at that time in the northern 
 waters, and he just reached in time to see the last of one 
 of the handsomest, bravest, truest gentlemen that ever was 
 killed by plunging. I was with him, and I saw Maurice 
 too lying in that little, pent, dark, close chamber, with its 
 scent of fish, and of tar, and of salt water, and with the 
 endless sound of the sea coming in through the square hole 
 in the wall, which was all that served him as casement. 
 
 ' I can see him now, with his frank fair face, and his bright 
 chestnut curls, and his great massive limbs that had, so 
 little a while before, owned all the strength of giants, and 
 now were stretched there powerless as a child's, and with 
 the life ebbing out of them as the tide ebbed off the shore. 
 His eyes were growing very dim, but he knew Neil. 
 
 ' He looked up at him with his old sweet smile, and found 
 force to grasp his hand. " You'll take care of Ailie," he 
 murmured. " Poor little Ailie ! She'll be safe with you, 
 Neil? You'll look after her, won't you? her and the 
 thildf? 
 
 4 Neil clenched his hand in both his own : " By God, I 
 will ! " and as he said it the last wave of the tide rolled off 
 the shore, and the last breath died on Maurice Drysdale's 
 lips. And Neil ah ! do you know what a man's grief is 
 to see ? 
 
 * Ailie Gratton was a mere girl eighteen years I think 
 at most and she had loved Maurice with all a woman's 
 passion, and much more than most women's fealty. He 
 had met her in a summer-tour about the Irish lakes ; it 
 had been the old story, the Faust story that the world 
 loves to condemn, whilst it leaves unarraigned the Messalinas 
 of its palaces. She was far lovelier, truer, and more tender 
 than most Gretchens are. Dying there, his last thought 
 had been of Ailie poor little Ailie as defenceless, as 
 lonely, and almost as innocent as any one of the heaths on 
 her native mountains. For he had kept her in perfect 
 seclusion, and had never let a gross word or a coarse glance 
 light near her. Yet he had died alone well, because such 
 men will ; they drag themselves out to solitude like stricken 
 
 igs. 
 
 ' Do you think Neil forgot his promise or not ? Perhaps 
 
PAR-CI; PAR- LA. 261 
 
 you will confess that I know something more of men than 
 you do, when I tell you that 110 sister was ever dealt with 
 more loyally, tenderly, and reverently than is his dead 
 friend's darling dealt with by Neil Strathalan. Ailie lives 
 in utter solitude, giving herself up to the care of her son, 
 and to the memory of her lost and unforgotten love. All 
 Avant, all hardship, all anxiety are spared her; and she, 
 .absorbed in one remembrance, hardly heeds, scarcely knows 
 all that she and her child owe to Neil. As for words of 
 shame or passion, he would no more breathe them to her 
 than he would lift his hand to slay her. 
 
 ' Once when his visits to her got bruited about (for all 
 things are seen and told in this day !), the world, which is 
 always so vile of thought that it deems all men must be 
 vile of deed also, said that this man was worse even than it 
 had called him ; that ere his comrade was cold in his grave 
 he sought the dead man's mistress as his own. Neil smiled 
 when he heard that they said this. He knew I know 
 that sacred to him as the name of his mother, were the 
 trust of his friend and his promise.' 
 
 I said nothing ; I felt that she spoke truth ; although of 
 Neil Strathalan I saw nothing save an evil, careless, hard, 
 good-looking man, whose speech was very caustic, and 
 whose life was very Jazy, and whose ways and works were, 
 as the world said, all of wickedness. 
 
 Fanfreluche, ashamed again of having suffered herself to 
 feel unwise shame, that she had caught up from her friends 
 of the Clubs and the How trotted off, shaking her bells, 
 to beg for bonbons from Beltran. Whether she was right 
 about his memory of the child Gladys I knew itot ; and 
 events soon took place which thrust all speculations on it 
 out of HIV head. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 VENDETTA. 
 
 TOE Coronet was of course far too fashionable a theatre 
 to be open during the months when the town was a desert. 
 
s6 PUCK. 
 
 Hapless amateurs would indeed now and again dwport 
 themselves upon its stage, and some crazed creature would 
 percliance ruin himself with a ' Shakespearian revival,' or 
 an ' Opera for the Million,' in those dusty desolate months 
 when the clubs were tenantless and the park was a prairie. 
 But its own people knew it no more. 
 
 Mrs. Delamere went to the Baths, sweeping from Spate 
 Homburg, and from Homburg to Baden, t.l her fancy, 
 changing her dress three times a-day, wearing the costliest 
 of "Worth's costumes, throwing the Astolat gold away at 
 the tables, and holding her pretty classic head as proudly 
 as any queen regnant or empress amongst them all. And 
 so did likewise such of her wise sisterhood, as, nominally 
 dancing at the Coronet, actually spent in three months the 
 fortune of any young baronet, or coronet of the brigades, 
 who thought 'it manly and fashionable to have their brazen 
 chignons beside him in his phaeton, and to pay for their 
 \>all at Willis's Rooms or their big dinner at Richmond. 
 
 As for the luckless ones who either had Lot =t pretty irace 
 to attract the stalls, or else were foolish eiiougL to cling to 
 some poor shred of self-respect and honesty, they of course 
 went in the dead season to east-end theatres and music 
 Sails, or to i toilsome tour about the provinces ; and spent 
 their sultry summer amongst the grit and dust of stining 
 cities, paying thus in murk and misery, and continual toil, 
 for their ignorance in not perceiving that the only horn of 
 plenty is held fast in the hands of vice. 
 
 With the early days of November the glories of the 
 Coronet revived, and were to revive with more extravagance 
 than usual this season ; with a new burlesque, gorgeous in 
 the extreme, and of enormous cost, in which the darling of 
 the public was to delight it with even less drapery and 
 more jigs than ever. 
 
 It was much talked of during the shooting-time, and as 
 no pains or expense had been spared in the preparation of 
 it, so great results were expected from its production. 
 
 Denzil had of ten urged ray master to sever his connection 
 with the theatre, but Belt-ran had never been induced to 
 do so. 
 
 ' Amateur management is worse than plunging,' Denzil 
 had said one night on the grass terrace in the shooting 
 season. 'Farquhar of the old Royal Buskin makes hia 
 
VEXDETTA. 263 
 
 fortune by a theatre, and why ? Because he is a clever 
 man of business, who supplies the town with amusement 
 as a mere matter of commerce, just as a publican does beer. 
 He has been at it all his days, is not troubled with scruples, 
 and is as hard as nails to boot. He would neve? allow a 
 pretty pale piece of inanity to murder a fine bit of " leading 
 business," as I have known you to do, because the piece of 
 inanity was young and poor, and wept bitterly, and prayed 
 of you to treat her like a star. And he would, on the con- 
 trary, take his twenty or thirty sovereigns a- week from 
 any dainty dame of casino celebrity, whose "friends" 
 would pay to get her on to the boards, whose dresses would 
 t)e ninety guineas each, and all stiff with golden brocade, 
 and whose admirers would fill the stalls and muster strong 
 and often in the private boxes. Now, as for you you 
 bade Wynch keep on that wretched woman Berthald be- 
 cause the woman was old and was ugly, and could ill find 
 engagements ; you insisted on little Lacy being retained 
 because she was only seventeen and had not a shilling in 
 the w> rid, when you knew she broke down in the mere 
 letter wita every fifth word she spoke; you allowed that wild, 
 German, Waldenvorst, to rant in Kotzebue and Shake- 
 speare, because you found him a scholar, and a poet, and a 
 beggar, and Grod knows what all besides ; you never give 
 yourself the trouble of having the accounts audited by any 
 public accountant ; and you never give yourself the chance 
 of making money by the only paying places in the house, 
 because you are always lending stalls to any man that 
 wants them, and always offering the boxes to every pretty 
 creature you meet. Niglit after night I have seen every 
 private box filled with women of our set, to whom you had 
 given them, and who only came there to flirt, and to chatter, 
 and to yawn a little, and to have cups of tea sent them in 
 from your room.' 
 
 Bel trail smiled. 
 
 * G-O on, pray : the recollection of tbe tea seems to excite 
 you rather. As far as I can remember, the wine that the 
 Press drinks is the bigger item/ 
 
 'And I have seen,' pursued Denzil, regardless of the 
 interruption, ' the very best actresses you ever had snubbed 
 Dut of the theatre by that woman yonder. I have known 
 ihe poor girls actually surrender their engagements rather 
 
264 PUCK. 
 
 than endure the insolence of her abominable injuries 
 "When she is called at rehearsal, she is always absent. 
 Inquire, and you find she is 'bored,' and gone to her 
 brougham, and so are Dora Delany and Vic Viliiers, just 
 because you give them high wages to oblige Annesley and 
 .Fred Orford, though neither of the girls has a grain of 
 talent, or sense, or decency even; and both have their 
 'brougham,' and can snap their fingers at fines. Then, 
 when the first night comes, you wonder they are not letter- 
 perfect, and that the prompter's is almost* the only voice 
 heard.' 
 
 'You are hard to please, Berry,' said Beltran with a 
 smile. ' I am wrong when I take penniless virtue, and 
 wrong when I take independent vice ! Pray go on ; it is 
 delightful to hear you. In Gertrude d'Eyncourt's time 
 you weren't so severe on that poor old Eoi d'Yvetot the 
 stage.' 
 
 * Like most Hois d'Yvetot, it pays its ministers with a 
 senile laugh, and starves its public while it crams its 
 courtesans.' 
 
 * Don't be so fearfully epigrammatic. An epigram is a 
 truffle of truth, dished up in a soufflee of superciliousness. 
 Your antagonism to the poor theatre ' 
 
 ' I have no antagonism to any theatre. I have a very 
 bitter antagonism to women who order their lover to take 
 one, as they bid him buy them a 5,000 diamond locket, 
 careless how he may pay for their toy with his ruin ; 
 women who, without one shred of talent, grace, or learning, 
 seek it simply as the arena on which to show their forms, 
 and display their diamonds, dress at their rivals, and put 
 themselves up for sale. It is as utterly disastrous for a 
 gentleman to become an impresario as it is for him to 
 become a builder. Where the adept makes a fortune, the 
 amateur only rushes to ruin. A theatre is a most ruinous 
 toy for any man of your temper and tastes. Is the game 
 worth the millions of candles you burn at both ends for it ? 
 For the life of me, I can't see what you get in return for 
 your money? Only the obligation to give dinners and 
 suppers to actresses whose genius lies in their legs or their 
 hair, and comedians whose facetiae are even staler and more 
 intolerable over the claret-jug than before the floats ; only 
 the necessity to mingle in a society inferior to your own, 
 
VENDETTA. 265 
 
 composed of people who, whilst they supplicate you with 
 unblushing impudence for your invitations, curse you behind 
 your back, because you are what they call a swell ! Peopks 
 ffho submit to your contempt for the sake of your cham 
 pagnes, and who tout you for [Richmond or Greenwich 
 dinners, while they hate you like poison for the mere tone 
 of your voice, the mere cut of your coats, the mere cost of 
 the flower in your buttonhole ! ' 
 
 ' You're awfully good fun, Deny, when one does get a 
 rise out of you. Perhaps I shall please even you with an 
 actress one day qid vivra verra. There's the dinner-bell. 
 The cook sent me word that he's invented a new style of 
 jumping mushrooms in wine, which he thinks we shall pro- 
 nounce very great in it's way. Come along.' 
 
 In this wise was Denzil's advice always disregarded, and 
 we went to town for the first night of this splendid piece ; 
 many of Beltran's own set men and women both did 
 likewise, although it was early winter, and fashionable 
 London was still desolate. It was to be produced on a 
 Saturday night, and he went up in the afternoon of that 
 day, having asked some score of critics and litterati to a 
 dinner on the morrow at the Leviathan the one hotel in 
 London where the clarets are what they call themselves, 
 and the innumerable nuances of choice fish are studied, 
 and the artichoke and the tomato are comprehended to be 
 as equal in import, and as different, as a fugue of Bach and 
 an overture of Rossini. 
 
 Laura Pearl had been in London some two weeks or so, 
 rehearsing; and the extravaganza was entirely to her 
 glory ; for notwithstanding its magnificence, its cost, and 
 its reputed worth, as a thing actually of esprit, it was well 
 understood that its chief attraction for the town would lie 
 in the fact of its being written chiefly to exhibit a soulless, 
 shameless, mindless woman, who had a fairer face and a 
 more notorious infamy than any other ; or at least had the 
 good fortune to have them more talked about. 
 
 * If there were a Garrick on the stage, the stalls would 
 vote him bad form, yawn, and go away to their carriages 
 or their clubs. But they will flock nighb after night to see 
 Pearl, half -dressed, jump about in a breakdown,' said Ean- 
 freluche. 'The fascination Pearls, or anything at all 
 treating of them, possess for society is a very odd feature 
 
266 PICK. 
 
 of said society.* It is a fact there is no disputing it 
 that the public are as eager to see the worst woman of her 
 year as they would be to see the greatest hero that ever 
 lived. A theatre will fill from pit to roof, if only a cruel 
 courtesan will show on its boards. A girl's photograph 
 will sell like wildfire if she be only known to be absolutely 
 infamous. People in the park gaze after Laura Pearl or 
 Lillian Lee with as curious a wonder and reverence as 
 if they gazed after a Jeanne d'Arc or a Yivia Perpetua. 
 Honourable women name them openly, and study their 
 dress, and put their pictures in their albums. They have 
 their opera-box and their pew at church ; they are copied 
 in their coiffures, and they are asked for their patronage to 
 charities. It is awfully odd, this deification of degradation ! 
 "Where will it end, I wonder ? Ah, where will it, indeed ? 
 "Well, I suppose it will end in their apotheosis. They have 
 
 ?ot to the Lawn ; they will get to Hurlingham : and then 
 suppose there won't be a reasonable doubt but what 
 they'll get also to heaven! ' 
 
 "Which was profane of Fanfreluche, but pardonable j for 
 if she placed heaven latest and highest in her estimate of 
 the triad, it is certainly more than most ladies seem to do. 
 
 I contrived to slip unseen down to the Coronet on this 
 Saturday night. "We arrived there towards the end of a 
 witty, graceful old comedy, which formed the lever du 
 rideau. Beltran went almost at once to the box of Alice 
 Beaujolais, and thence to other people he knew in the 
 house. I stayed behind. 
 
 The comedy soon came to an end. Maude Delamere 
 swept off in a superb dress, and an injured frame of mind ; 
 martyred indeed she might well feel, as the house had 
 been only one third full until her last act; and she was 
 well worth seeing in her comedies, despite the Midas 
 sneers at her. 
 
 It was half-past nine the time for the burlesque. 
 
 ' Where on earth is Laura ? ' said Beltran, coming in 
 from the front of the house, where he had been conversing 
 with some friends. 
 
 1 It's a quarter past her time,' said Denzil, who waa 
 
 * This was in the printer's hands before the Formosa audiences 
 gave fresh evidence of the accuracy of Mile. Fanfreluche's observa- 
 tions. ED. 
 
VENDETTA. 267 
 
 flirting a little with Mrs. Delamere as he put her carriage- 
 iloak round her. 
 
 Beltran went across and rapped on the panels of the 
 Pearl's dressing-room door ; silence following, he pusned 
 it open. The little chamber was empty. 
 
 The music had burst out afresh, and succeeded in 
 amusing the audience. They played through the whole of 
 the Bronze Horse overture ; when it was ended she had 
 not made her appearance. 
 
 Beltran smoked a cigar with apparent indifference, but 
 his eyes grew angry. 
 
 The gods of the gallery began to raise an uproar; they 
 stamped, and kicked, and whistled, and screamed snatches 
 of song. 
 
 ' Time's up ! ' they holloaed. 
 
 * 'Tis, by Jove ! ' muttered Denzil. * Shall I go and look 
 for her, Beltran ? ' 
 
 ' Let the call-boy go.' 
 
 The call-boy went. 
 
 The orchestra gallant defenders of the stormed breach 
 burst bravely into a ringing waltz of Offenbach. 
 
 But the gods had heard enough of melody, and preferred 
 their own tuneful screechings ; they would not hearken to 
 their Orpheus with his nourished baton. They shouted, 
 and hissed, and swore, and kicked, and screamed out 
 snatches of the vilest music-hall comic ballads. 
 
 The stalls yawned visibly; the women in the private 
 boxes rose. 
 
 Beltran, with his cigar in his teeth, looked pale with 
 anger. But he said nothing ; silence was his second 
 nature in any crisis ; he abhorred people who ' ruffled ill.' 
 
 ' Let me go on and sing, sir ! ' said a little musical, 
 feverish voice at his elbow. ' They cotton to me, you 
 know, my lord ; and p'rhaps I'd keep 'em quiet ? ' 
 
 He looked kindly down on Nellie as she approached him. 
 She had been allotted a good part in the coming burlesque, 
 and was radiant in the gauze and gold, the glittering wings, 
 and the starry crown, of a fairy's best Paris costume. 
 
 ' You're a good child. "Well go.' 
 
 She tripped on to the stage at his order, and burst, 
 without preface or trepidation, into a charming little slang- 
 aong. It was utter nonsense, but it had gay, airy music 
 
268 
 
 to it ; the musicians knew it, and took up its burden at her 
 $rst bars ; the gods welcomed her with rapture and growl- 
 ing intermixed. The song was a success, and a truce, for 
 . the moment. 
 
 * While they're quiet I'll get Alice away. They may 
 grow noisy/ murmured Beltran. 
 
 A second or two later I saw him, through the flies, 
 in a private box where sat, with her party, Lady Othe, 
 Beaujolais. 
 
 'What an ass!' swore Denzil, regarding him as he 
 placed her Cashmeres round the great lady's shoulders, and 
 led her from the box. ' To give the signal himself to empty 
 his own house ! ' 
 
 * What on earth did you do that for, Yere ? ' he asked, 
 when Beltran, returning to the scene of warfare, calmly 
 re-lit another cigar. 
 
 1 Lady Otho hates rows/ he said briefly. 
 
 * And you think there'll be one ? ' 
 'Must be.' 
 
 He leaned his back against one of the upright beams, 
 and waited. 
 
 There was a frightful confusion and tumult around him ; 
 prompter, scene-painters, old Wynch, the luckless players, 
 all the numberless supers and machinists of a fashionable 
 theatre, were wild with exultation and agitation. Still he 
 said nothing ; but his face grew pale, and I did not care to 
 look up at the gleam in his darkening gray eyes. 
 
 There was still no appearance of Laura Pearl, nor of anj 
 apology from her. 
 
 ' Surely she must be ill ? ' hazarded Denzil. 
 
 ' She'd have sent in that case/ said her lover, his feelings 
 undisturbed by the suggestion. 
 
 To commence the piece without her was impossible ; the 
 first scene entirely, and almost solely, depended on the 
 absentee. 
 
 The gallant little Wood-Elf, a heroine to the core, re- 
 commenced her singing with a daring and persistence 
 worthy of the Yieille Gtirde itself. But her charming 
 could charm no longer ; almost all the respectable part of 
 ihe house had followed when Beltran had led out his 
 oeeress ; some men in the stalls alone remained. But the 
 crowd in the two upper tiers and the pit were still there; 
 
VENDETTA. 269 
 
 and their howling and hooting sounded as though demons 
 themselves were unloosed. 
 
 The Wood-Elf ran off breathless. 
 
 4 O, my lord ! I'm afear'd I am indeed that they'll 
 get chucking something at me ! ' 
 
 'Dress and run off home,' answered Beltran. * 111 
 thank you to-morrow, Nellie.' 
 
 The "girl's eyes flashed and danced, and her young cheeks 
 were in flame "beneath their rouge. 
 
 ' I don't want thanking, sir,' she whispered. ' Might I, 
 please, stay and see it out ? ' 
 
 Ere he could attend to or answer her, the call-boy 
 rushed in, gasping for utterance. 
 
 ' Well ? ' said Beltran imperiously. 
 
 ' If you please, sir,' palpitated the hapless Mercury, who 
 was in mortal terror at the message he brought ; * if you 
 please, my lord, she've a bin out since five, and she han't 
 bin back, my lord. But they ses as how this here was 
 left, and was to be sint when you sint arter her.' 
 
 And the boy tremblingly tendered a note. 
 
 Beltran, with his face as calm as an alabaster mask, tore 
 open the letter. 
 
 Long afterwards I knew that letter ran thus : 
 
 * You're a clever fellow, Beltran ; but you're a fool all 
 the same. Don't tell a woman again you can get as good 
 as her for breakdowns with whistling for 'em. When you 
 get this I shall be off to Paris with the Prince de Ferras. 
 If you think me worth fighting about well ; he's a deal 
 better shot nor you, I saw that with the rocketers. I hope 
 your now piece will be a hit to-night. But I guess it won't 
 work very smooth. Tours no longer, 
 
 1 LATTBA.' 
 
 As he read his face changed terribly ; but it was only 
 for a moment ; he recovered himself instantly, and crushed 
 the note up in his hand. 
 
 ' She will not be here at all to-night,' he said simply to 
 the men around him, without a tremor either of passion or 
 emotion in his voice. ' Tell the people, Wynch, that the 
 piece is put off, and return them their money doubled 
 at the doors.' 
 
27 PUCK. 
 
 "Wynch only stared anxiously at him. 
 
 1 Damn you, sir ! do you h*ear me ? ' said his master, 
 calmly still, but with an accent in his voice which sent the 
 yicked old man to obedience as fast as Ms legs could carry 
 him. 
 
 ' You may all of you go home now,' Beltran continued to 
 the actors and actresses, who stood like scared sheep about 
 him. ' Attend here to-morrow, at noon, as usual. Your 
 salaries will continue.' 
 
 Then he put his hand on DenziTs arm. 
 
 1 Come out with me, Derry.' 
 
 They turned to go ; but at the moment the announce- 
 ment that "Wynch was making, in lieu of conciliating the 
 people, only exasperated them. In the tumult of their 
 rage they scarcely heard the offer of the double money, 
 but only incensed at the deprivation of their evening's 
 amusement for at this house the drama counted for 
 nothing, and the burlesque for everything they became 
 utterly unmanageable in the pit and gallery, and howled 
 like a 'herd of hyaenas. 
 
 ' Clear the house ! ' cried Beltran, his voice ringing firm 
 and imperious out as he paused, and abandoned his intcii- 
 tion of quitting the scene. 
 
 ' Easier said than done ! ' muttered Denzil. 
 
 ' "We shall have a free fight,' laughed Paget Desmond. 
 1 I'm agreeable.' 
 
 1 Call police, and clear the house,' said Beltran again, 
 unheeding alike the terror of his actors and the chaff of his 
 friends. 
 
 Old Wynch, before the fallen curtain, continued to 
 shriek his entreaties to the public, all in vain. The roughs 
 were strong in numbers, and rampant in injured feeling. 
 They saw an exquisite opportunity for their vengeance, 
 and the temptation to seize it proved irresistible. Pit and 
 gallery rose on one impulse, hooting like owls, roaring like 
 tigers, and set to work to damage and demolish everything 
 that they could reach and seize. 
 
 The half-dozen men remaining in the stalls left their 
 seats and came round to us by a passage which, as they 
 were privileged frequenters of the wings, they knew by 
 heart. 
 
 1 House will be wrecked,' muttered Denzil. ' I'll sweaj 
 she's sent a score of lambs in here on order.' 
 
VENDETTA. 27* 
 
 As lie spoke, Belt ran forgetful that liis name had never 
 appeared to the public in connection with the Coronet 
 since it was ostensibly licensed by the Chamberlain to old 
 Wynch left the flies, and displacing his manager, stood 
 himself before the footlights. 
 
 'At the doors you will get your money doubled. I 
 regret you have lost your night's amusement ; but 1 will 
 make you what amends I can,' he said to the infuriated 
 mob, while his voice penetrated to the farthest corner of 
 the theatre. 'As to your rioting, I shall not permit it; 
 quit the house at once, or the law shall force you.' 
 
 For an instant they were too amazed at his unexpected 
 and unexplained appearance to speak ; but the pause 
 lasted only that one fleeting second; the next the very 
 calmness and contempt of his attitude and address in- 
 furiated them the more. 
 
 ' Curse the swell,' roared a gigantic bully, who seemed 
 to urge on the affray. ' Will ye give over a rare lark just 
 for Ms cheek, lads ? ' 
 
 The words were the signal for a terrific onslaught. The 
 men became lunatics, possessed and loosed ; they tore the 
 curtains down, they wrenched away the gilded scroll-work 
 of the balconies, they broke the glass of the gas-burners, 
 they pulled up the benches, and used them as levers and 
 as mallets to work more destruction; they wreaked their 
 ra^e upon the inanimate, harmless things, as a mob, once 
 seized with the devil of ruin, always does in its blind rabies. 
 
 ' The beasts ! ' swore Beltran under his breath. In 
 another instant he and the four or five men of his own 
 class who were behind the scenes had sprung across the 
 orchestra-box, vacated in a rush by the terrified bandsmen, 
 and were in the midst of the crowd and the worst of the 
 combat. 
 
 I, as though the blood of all the mastiffs flowed furiously 
 in my veins, stood with leonine courage before the floats, 
 and barked my loudest, till I thought that I should shake 
 the house down, Sampson-like, on friends and foes in one. 
 
 I have since been told that my loudest does not rise one 
 note higher than the smallest wail of a penny trumpet ; but 
 this I do not believe. Eanfreluche has said it, and, besides 
 the notorious fact that no female creature ever acknowledges 
 excellence in what she has not done herself, it is well 
 
272 PUCK. 
 
 Known that all earthquaking thunders, wnetne* of the 
 orator's voice or the hero's cannon, are invariably pooh- 
 poohed by those jealous of them, as the mere co-;apsiug 
 erack of broken windbags. 
 
 I must, however, in veracity, grant that the fulmination* 
 of my wrath took little perceivable efrect on tbe com 
 batants. The roughs, of whom there were this night un- 
 usual numbers in pit and gallery for this fashionable 
 theatre, had begun wild work, and appeared only the more 
 resolved to prosecute it to its worst issues, because c the 
 swells ' endeavoured to prevent them. Ko scarlet-clothed 
 matador evermore furiously enraged an Estremacuran bull 
 than did the sight of these eight or ten men in evening 
 dress infuriate the sweeps, and costermongers, and butcher- 
 boys, and counter-jumpers, who had commenced the sack 
 of the Coronet. ' The gentlemen/ hitting cut straight 
 with their old Ox-ford science, looked so cool, so tranqui}, 
 so contemptuous ; and the roughs, hot, and dirty, and 
 clamorous, and clumsy, were so thoroughly conscious of 
 that immeasurable difference betwixt themselves and their 
 adversaries, and hence grew only madder, fiercer, co-arser, 
 and more brutal. It was a duel of Class in its way ; and 
 bitter as class warfare ever must be : with disdain on one 
 side, and hatred on the other. 
 
 Beltran and his friends were but as one against a score, 
 a little knot of silent scornful men forcing their way, 
 shoulder to shoulder, against a furious, yelling, tumultuous 
 crowd; levelling their blows with fearful force when they 
 did strike, and thinking, it seemed, less of saving the 
 theatre from its wreckers than of chastising the audacity 
 of the mob towards themselves. There were only ten of 
 them, and there were some three hundred of the riotors ; 
 yes I felt the little Courcey girl was right as she cried 
 breathlessly to the prompter, crouching terrified in his den, 
 * Ten thousand to nothin* on the swells, Davy ; they'll 
 beat, they'll beat, they'll beatj ' 
 
 But Davy, crouching in his hood-like box, was fas* too 
 white and frightened to accept or even hear the wager. 
 
 Meantime, every available weapon that could be torn 01 
 twisted out of wood and metal work, the mob seized and 
 used. Fragments of gilded mouldings, of shattered glass, 
 of coloured plaster, of carved decorations, flew hurtling 
 
VENDETTA 2 7.3 
 
 through the air. There was not an unbroken gas-globe 
 left in the whole house. The central chandelier hung 
 unhurt indeed aloft ; but all its glittering glass stars and 
 rays fell crashing to the floor under the missiles hurled 
 against it. Howling, stamping, and struggling, they 
 wreaked their passion on all things within their reach. 
 
 Never a word spoke Beltran ; but he acted as his Order 
 always acts when, out from the serenity and impassiveness 
 of habit and of temper, the fire of a sudden furious scorn 
 breaks into flame. The roughs went down like felled 
 oxen before him; no stroke went home so surely and so 
 cruelly as his, and here and there a rioter, glancing up and 
 catching the look in his eyes, crouched, though unstruck, 
 like a lashed hound before him. The mob knew by instinct 
 that this man contemned them utterly, and would never 
 fear them, knew also that though his property was being 
 destroyed before his eyes, there was a certain, fierce, cool, 
 sweet delight in the mere sense of combat that had both 
 pleasure and passion in it for the quiet aristocrat. 
 
 The actors and actresses had all fled away aghast by the. 
 stage-doors ; the workmen and other people of the place 
 buug aloof amongst the wings, unwilling to come forward. 
 No constables had as yet arrived ; there was Nellie, who 
 kept her ground and watched the issue of the fight with an 
 intense absorption into which no selfish fenrs had power to 
 intrude. In all her fluttering gossamer, and golden glisten, 
 and winged fairyism, painted and tinselled and spangled, 
 she yet stood there with so much of youth, of eagerness, of 
 fear, of vivid feeling and of tortured pain upon her face, 
 that all the art and artifice, the coarseness, and the com- 
 monness, seemed dead, and all the tenderness and courage 
 that were in her the only living ruling things that had 
 their dominion over her. 
 
 Laura Pearl could never have been transfigured by 
 emotion as this poor child was. She was only a little com- 
 mon girl, with a pretty baby face, that was her only fortune, 
 and an ignorant little mind, that had slang songs, and ob- 
 scene jests, and evil knowledge, and vulgar trickeries as ita 
 sole store of wisdom ; she thought it fun to show her shapely 
 form in posture dancing; she bared her pretty rounded 
 limbs unthinking, to the gaze of the populace ; she had 
 never heard a gentle word, or caught the echo of a holy 
 
 T 
 
274 PUCK. 
 
 thought throughout her brief hard life, whoso laughter was 
 more sorrowful even than its sobs. 
 
 Yet for the hour standing there, she was transfigured, 
 because she had not fear, and she had love. 
 
 The conflict probably had not endured ten minutes ; but 
 its uproar, its oaths, its ferocity, its insane frenzy of 
 destruction, its noise of splitting wood, and trampled plaster, 
 and falling glass, made it seem like a long-drawn-out battle. 
 The broken benches, were already slippery with blood, the 
 ground was already cumbered by the prostrate bodies of 
 some half-score of the mob ; the roughs employed every 
 missile they could lay their grasp on, the gentlemen only 
 used their science of attack and of defence ; yet those neav, 
 straight, calm blows were very pitiless, and took unerring 
 effect. From the moment that the straggle had commenced, 
 Beltran had striven to reach the ring-leader of the affray, 
 a huge brawny bully, who, standing erect at the back of the 
 pit, had been the first to shout forth the signal for the 
 wrecking. He appeared to perceive the efforts of ' the 
 swells ' to reach him, as he dodged them repeatedly, forced 
 himself behind woodwork, or amongst a thick knot of his 
 companions, and escaped that direct vengeance which ho 
 saw hung over him. At length, however, Beltran, with a 
 leap like a stag's, sprang at, and reached him, and caught 
 him by the throat. 
 
 Although the big brute was a giant, the gentleman in 
 height outmatched him ; but while Beltran was of slender 
 build, and had lost strength from the manner of the life he 
 led, his foe was of massive form and sinew ; a mighty 
 brawler, all made of bone and muscle. The conflict looked 
 utterly unequal, the delicately-fashioned man of pleasure 
 looked to have no possible chance against the bully of the 
 populace, strong as any bullock. As they closed, their faces 
 were in as wide contrast as their forms the one colourless, 
 calm, intent, with the pale curved lips pressed close ; the 
 other flushed and swollen, and big-veined, with the great 
 teeth locked like a mastiff's. I shuddered and closed my eyes 
 for a moment only one, when I looked again the man wa3 
 down, and Beltran, with his hands still at the rioter's throat, 
 shook him to and fro as though he were a child, and beat 
 his great shock head against the iron pillar beside which 
 he stood. 
 
VENDETTA. 275 
 
 I saw then what the rage of a man, habitually calm and 
 indifferent to an excess, can be when it at length is roused. 
 All the pent passion in him, to which he had permitted no 
 utterance, poured itself out now in physical violence. 
 
 The iron column was the one nearest the stage of all 
 that row of fluted gilded metal shafts which ran the whob 
 semicircle of the house, and gave it half its elegance and 
 lightness. Thus he was very near to me and to the Wood. 
 Elf. The girl gazed on in that wrapt fascination which tha 
 ferocity of physical struggles exercises over all women ; and 
 I shared it with her. The writhing of the huge ruffian's 
 body ; the impotent convulsions of his gigantic limbs ; the 
 swellings of the black veins of his throat ; the gasping of 
 his open month for words that would not come ; the dull 
 thud as his skull was again, and again, and again dashed 
 against the iron ; the contrast of the furious onslaught 
 which thus dealt with him, and the look upon Beltran's face, 
 which never lost its pitiless and immovable repose ! these 
 had an awful fascination for both myself and her ; one which 
 held us breathless, wonder-stricken, spell-bound. 
 
 ' You will kill him, my lord,' gasped Nellie. 
 
 Beltran did not seem even to hear her voice. 
 
 ' Ton will kill him, sir ! ' she cried out, her pretty chim- 
 ing voice grown shrill and tremulous with fear ; not fear 
 for the death of the man of her own class, but fear for the 
 issue of the passions that she for the first time saw roused 
 and loosed. 
 
 The cry passed over the head of the one she supplicated, 
 unheard or regarded. The girl, beside herself with agita- 
 tion, and nerved by the strong impulsion of an impersonal 
 terror, sprang down the six-foot depth that severed her 
 from the ground-floor, and seized with both her hands the 
 sleeve of Beltran's coat. 
 
 ' You will kill him my God ! * 
 
 ' "Why not ? ' said Beltran, without looking up ; and he 
 struck the man's skull yet again against the iron column ; 
 driving it home upon the metal as though he drove a nail 
 m with a mallet. 
 
 The girl gazed with her great blue eyes dilating. 
 
 * Is he worth it, sir ? ' she dared to whisper. 
 
 Her instinct led her to say the only thing that could have 
 touched him to attention in this hour. 
 
 ffl 
 
27 6 PUCK. 
 
 His old, quiet, contemptuous smile came on his mouth in 
 an instant. 
 
 ' I doubt if he be,' he said indifferently, rather to the 
 sense of her words than to their speaker ; and he flung the 
 man down with a crash upon the floor, where the huge body 
 lay motionless, and the beaten brain throbbed slowly into 
 stupor. 
 
 At that instant one of the many gas jets from which the 
 glass globe had been shattered, flaring higher, caught one 
 of the lace curtains of the pit tier boxes. There were a 
 sheet of flame ; a scent of burning stuffs ; a puff of smoke ; 
 they were enough. 
 
 The rioters, dominated only by the one sovereign impulse 
 of self-preservation, ceased from their work of violence and 
 ruin, and rushed pell-mell to seek their outward way 
 through the narrow doors and passages. 
 
 Beltran saw the danger ; it was in a favourite box of his 
 own,where he would lie perdu sometimes after dinner, with 
 only the jewelled arm, and the bouquet, and the lorgnon of 
 his companion of the hour visible through those very 
 draperies of blue silk and white lace, which were now con 
 Burning under flames. As he saw, he caught up a breadth 
 of green baize which had been torn off the pit benches, 
 reached up, grasped the burning curtain, and wrenched it 
 down with no other cost than a scorched wrist. In two 
 more seconds the danger which had threatened the theatre 
 had died wholly away and only left the odour of charred 
 wood lingering after it, and the naked framework of the box 
 exposed. 
 
 But the terror it had inspired endured much longer ; the 
 crowd were blind and deaf to the fact of their own safety j 
 the alarm of fire had killed all other memory in them. 
 Like terrified sheep one moment, and raging wolves the 
 next, they huddled together, then fought, and tore, and 
 shrieked, and swore, and trampled one another underfoot 
 in mad competition for pre-eminence in egress. 
 
 * They will do their own killing now ! ' said Beltran with 
 that placid contempt which men of his character always 
 feel for the excited agony and maniacal terror of a populace 
 And he stood with that odd quiet smile on his face, looking 
 on at the plunging, shrieking, struggling mass of his 
 enemies as they fought their way out through the portals 
 of the house which they had ruined. 
 
VLtiDETTA. 277 
 
 It was no vengeance of his own seeking ; but it was ven- 
 geance curiously swift and sure. That wild throng pour- 
 ing from the doors, the stronger trampling down the weaker, 
 the more ruffianly brutally forcing their passage over the 
 trodden bodies of the feebler in the fight, the whole stream 
 rushing outward, pent-up, broken, mad with fury, like a 
 swollen mountain-stream hemmed in a narrow gorge, drew 
 at last attention in the street without ; and constables com- 
 ing to the rescue were met by that screaming, terrified, 
 maddened, living river. 
 
 At length the building was slowly cleared of the last of 
 the mob that had disfigured, and striven to destroy, it. 
 That last was the big bully. As they raised him his eyes 
 opened and glared stupidly, yet with returning conscious- 
 ness, around him. 
 
 They fell upon his conqueror. 
 
 He made a sign for Beltran to draw nigh him, and drew 
 his breath tightly. 
 
 * It was all along o' her? he gasped. ' Look'ee, ye've hit 
 me hard, but I don't hate yer as I hate that devil, now all's 
 said.' 
 
 ' She set you on this to-night ? ' 
 
 * Damn ! I ses she did,' gasped the wretch, Ms voice 
 hoarse and almost inarticulate. ' I warn't no worse nor 
 most, and I bore yer no grudge, though ye're a swell ; but 
 I seed her night after night in yer theayter, and I was mad 
 on her, right on mad. She's the buxomest blowan as 
 ever ' 
 
 * Never mind that, go on.' 
 
 1 Yer minded it, as well as me. I ain't got no breath, I 
 can't go on ; not rightly. Ter see, them huzzies that yer 
 swells take up with, they lags yer ready, but it's us as they 
 sets their eyes on ; they aren't never true to you swells, 
 they allus git a lover somewheer out o' their own kind. 
 It's a fact, don't go for to doubt it. You swells keep my 
 lady, and my lady keeps Tom, and Dick, and Jerry unbe-; 
 known to ye ! Lord, what game I've made of yer with her ' 
 
 He stopped, his breath failing him, and the great veins 
 in his throat swelling like cords. 
 
 1 Go on,' said Beltran simply ; but the look in his eyes, 
 under their lowered lids, was darker even than that which 
 had been in them when he had hurled this man down at his 
 feet. 
 
*7 8 PUCK. 
 
 1 Go on ! ye'd go on, choking like this/ gasped the otTier. 
 'She made a lord o' me for an hour or two 'tis them 
 women's way I'd yer wine and yer gold, and yer victuals 
 and yer baccy, and you warn't never no wiser ! Te never 
 are, none of ye. Ye dainty swells, ye're poor trash to 
 wenches like her, they takes strappin' big blokes like me 
 as'll beat 'em as soon as look at 'em. Eh ? what was I 
 telling ye ? My head he do buzz so. Handsome ay, 
 she's a rare un to look at, but a bad un to beat. She got 
 &ick 'o me, she kep me on and off like ; I was a awful fool. 
 Not such a fool as you, though. "Well, days agone she seed 
 me, just a minute like ; and she telled me as how, if I'd wreck 
 yer place to-night, she'd tane me back to favour, and not 
 never look at you no more. She sed she'd be in the 
 theayter, and when the smash was done, she'd have me 
 round in her own room ; and we'd get dead drunk together 
 and nobody 'd come anigh her never agen but me. And I sed 
 I was game for't, and I'd do it, and I'd get my pals about me 
 like, so that there'd be the damndest row. And there liev 
 been eh ? And now she aren't here, curse her and they 
 Bed awhile agone close by me as she've a stole away with 
 some other lord, and cheated you, and me, and all on us ! 
 And they'll give me the stone jug, and hard labour, just for 
 this 'ere spree damn her, damn her, damn her.' 
 
 And with the savage oaths rushing fiercely in a torrent 
 of blasphemy from his purple lips, the man once again lost 
 all sight or sense of where he was or what he said. No 
 one had heard the strange confession. 
 
 'Take him away,' said Beltran quietly, turning to the 
 police, * and have him as well cared for as you can, at my 
 cost.' 
 
 Then he turned to his own friends : ' They can do with- 
 out us now ; and we have had enough of it, I think. Won't 
 you come and have some supper? ' 
 
 The other men assented willingly, they were heated and 
 bruised, two or three of them had contusions ; and all were 
 thirsty and tired. 
 
 'It's a happy thing they did not know where the wines 
 were,' said Beltran with a little laugh, as he motioned his 
 friends to precede him through the familiar ways. * There 
 was something worth wrecking in them, if they'd onlj 
 guessed it.' 
 
VENDETTA. 279 
 
 He lingered behind the rest, and approached the "Wood- 
 Elf who stood by, very pale, so that her rouge burned with 
 a hectic fire, and her large blue eyes looked black and 
 tumid in her little plaintive face. 
 
 He took her hand, with a grave and gracious respect ia 
 the action. 
 
 'I thank you sincerely, Nellie,' he said gravely, 'you 
 saved me from a passion that disgraced me.' 
 
 It was very gracefully said, this acknowledgment from a 
 man commonly so contemptuous to his kind, and so reticent 
 of all manifestation of feeling; and it took a strange effect 
 on the poor little dancer. 
 
 She trembled in all her limbs till her bright silvery wings 
 shook like those of a frightened dove. If a season earlier he 
 had given her a jewelled trifle and a flattery she would have 
 received both with a saucy laugh ; the touch and the words, 
 that had as much reverence in them as though they were 
 given to his sister or his wife, moved her curiously to a 
 passionate sense of pain and of unworthiness. 
 
 'It was a rough scene for you, Nellie/ he continued 
 gently, noting her embarrassment and her emotion, though 
 not witting of their cause. ' You were a brave little soul to 
 stand by us through it. Come to supper with me, and 
 have some claret-cup to shake off those horrors.' 
 
 The girl shrank back. 
 
 ' JSTot now, my lord,' she murmured ; ' not to-night, i 
 couldn't, I couldn't ! ' 
 
 lie looked at her quietly, and understood something of 
 what was moving her moving a little ignorant, childish, 
 burlesque dancer whom he paid ten shillings a night to 
 reject an honour and a pleasure that a week earlier would 
 have raised her to the height of ecstasy and triumph. 
 
 He dropped her hand and did not press her further. 
 But he stooped to her with that graver sweeter accent to 
 his voice which Laura Pearl had never heard. 
 
 1 You are as well away, little one. Gro home ; and keep 
 your bright and honest courage untarnished if you can. 
 When you want a friend rely on me.' 
 
 Then he went on his way to his supper-room. 
 
 The customary attendants had fled in terror; but the 
 supper was set forth as usual on the table, and he bade 
 them welcome to it. He was easy, tranquil, indifferent, in 
 
280 PUCK. 
 
 no way altered from his habitual manner; and but for the 
 disorder of his attire and his inability to usa his left arm, 
 there appeared no sort of change in him. I shivered at 
 what seemed such almost inhuman self possession. It is 
 true, I was famished and unnoticed ; all things look dark 
 to us in such a case. 
 
 As they sat down there was a buzz of voices crossing 
 one another in a fiery fury of excited talk ; when it lulled 
 a little, Paget Desmond's ringing mellow voice cauie 
 straight athwart the table in a point blank question : 
 
 * Vere ! You kave never told us what's amiss with 
 Laura ?\ 
 
 1 Nothing is amiss with her.' 
 
 The voices fell ; all the eyes of his guests turned wonder- 
 ingly on Beltran. 
 
 * Nothing ! ' echoed the guardsman in amaze. ' Nothing? 
 Then why on earth didn't she show ? ' 
 
 * Caprice ! ' put in Denzil hastily, divining that there was 
 something wrong with his friend. ' Last winter, in Paris, 
 Ysaffich paid a forfeit of twelve hundred francs, and, what 
 was more astonishing, left her great part to be filled up by 
 her most detested rival, for a mere piece of obstinacy and 
 ill-temper, and the determination to spend that particular 
 evening in a dinner with Russians at the Cafe Madrid, as 
 she had made a wager to spend it.' 
 
 * But that wasn't a first night, surely ? ' 
 
 * It would have made no difference to Ysaffich if it had 
 been. She would have beggered herself of everything she 
 possessed to carry out her caprice, and win her wager ? 
 
 ' The wager was a big stake, then ? * 
 
 1 The wager was a box of sugared chestnuts from Si- 
 raudin's ! Nothing more on either side. Paget, on my 
 word, you don't know women if you can't estimate the 
 overwhelming ecstasy that lies for them in having their 
 own way, even when their own way is their own ruin.' 
 
 '"Well is Laura dining anywhere, then, like Ysaffich ? ' 
 persisted Desmond, who was the biggest and most good- 
 humoured of guardsmen, but slow to comprehend or to 
 follow a hint. ' It's deuced cool and ill-natured of her if 
 she be making all this row ! ' 
 
 * What on earth will poor Beaufort say ? He begged me 
 to telegraph how the piece went/ said Dudley Moore, He 
 
VENDETTA. *$ 
 
 spoke of the author of the extravaganza a ciever graceful 
 jester, who was imprisoned bj a sudden attack of illness. 
 
 ' Beaufort need not despair,' said Beltran, with a certain 
 inflection of coldness and of authority in his voice. ' It ia 
 only a question of delay. His interests will not suffer.' 
 
 ' Pardon me. It is not in your power to promise that. 
 The public' 
 
 < The public ! Well ! What of the public ? ' 
 
 * Is not a turnspit dog that will come at your bidding to 
 roast every joint you may put to the fire ; and it certainly 
 won't be inclined to perform its good offices for one of 
 which it has once been balked as a meal.' 
 
 * No ? And yet how contentedly it lives, famished on the 
 crumbs which the Press scatters to it from the begged 
 crusts of borrowed opinions ! At any rate, Mr. Beaufort 
 shall Lave what justice I can procure for him ; and wha f 
 compensation money can offer.' 
 
 'That is very amiably said,' interrupted the great editor. 
 1 But it seems to me that you utterly ignore the fact tha% 
 rt was the absence of a favourite actress to-night, not any 
 hitch or fault in the presentation of the piece, that caused 
 the emeute yonder. Now it will be exceedingly difficult to 
 please the public with that same piece anyhow. It is as 
 bad as champagne that has been uncorked but not drunk ; 
 whatever vintage it might be from, whatever sparkle it 
 might once possess, it is flat and flavourless now. To pro- 
 duce it at all will be of very doubtful wisdom ; not in your 
 interests, I fancy, certainly not in Beaufort's ; but to pro- 
 duce it without Laura Pearl in it will be eheerly and 
 simply an impossibility.' 
 
 * Why so?'. 
 
 Beltran asked the question coldly and curtly, and a dark- 
 ness came into his gray, tranquil eyes. 
 
 1 Why so ! Can you ask ? And you have known the 
 theatrical public all these years ! ' 
 
 * And so have I,' dashed in Denzil. ' And I could see 
 your meaning fast enough if you were talking of an actress 
 of mind, of talent, of taste ; but we are only talking of a 
 handsome woman who dresses well, and does breakdowns. 
 There are scores of them to be had at the music-halls/ 
 
 Dudley Moore laughed a little, grimly. 
 
 4 We are talking of a woman who be it through beauty 
 
2^2 PUCK. 
 
 or breakdowns ingratiates herself sufficiently with her 
 audience for them to pull the house down because she don't 
 appear. This popularity of hers makes her as necessary 
 to the success of this establishment, as though she were a 
 Grisi or a Eistori. I am not paying her a compliment. If 
 the public get accustomed to seeing a performing monkey 
 at a certain house, and like the monkey, and find salt in its 
 antics and tricks, it will make a fearful row if the monkey 
 be absent from any piece performed at that theatre. It 
 considers itself cheated, in point of fact ; cheated out of its 
 pet spectacle and diversion.' 
 
 ' You are not very gallant to the absent ! ' cried Denzil. 
 1 1 am not seeking to be gallant ! I am stating a fact. 
 You say she is of no consequence because she is only a bur- 
 lesque actress ; I say she would be of just us much conse- 
 quence if she were only a monkey. However, I am talking 
 on the premise that either her caprice of non-appearance 
 (whatever its cause) is to continue, or that our friend here 
 is irritated enough by it to resent it by her future exclu- 
 sion. 
 
 ' O, hang It!' cried Desmond in dismay. 'I say; we 
 can't do without Laura. She's no end of fun in those flip, 
 flaps. He won't cut up rough with her for this will you, 
 Beltran?' 
 
 * Colonel Desmond, you forget that we are all of us un- 
 enlightened as to the cause of the lady's absence, and con- 
 sequently so as to the extent of her offences and the 
 duration of her exile,' said Dudley Moore, with dry cruel 
 unction. 
 
 Beltran himself, thus directly appealed to, once more 
 could no longer evade answer. 
 
 1 1 don't fancy you will any of you be likely to see her in 
 this place again,' he said very calmly ; * as for the cause, 
 I don't think that much matters to anybody. Ysaffich's 
 sweetmeats only concerned those who had to pay foi 
 them.' 
 
 There was the strange quiet smile about his mouth as he 
 spoke, with which he had watched the rioters rush on their 
 own destruction ; everybody at the table felt that the sub- 
 ject was not one to be pursued with him ; even Desmond 
 gathered that it might be best to drop the topic, and eveu 
 Dudley Moore's bitter tongue remained for once inactive. 
 
VENDETTA. 283 
 
 Beltran, with his easy languid laugh, changed the therne 
 6y a brief and witty story. It was very seldom that he ever 
 took the trouble to amuse people : when he did no one 
 could do it with more effect or greater charm. He chose 
 to do it this evening, and succeeded. 
 
 The conversation grew brisk, and gay, and bright with 
 genuine mirth; the wines were admirable, the men's tempers 
 were heated. They drank perhaps a little more than they 
 ought to have done ; but the laughter if continuous was 
 always good-natured and always genuine. 
 
 I no longer thought Beltran callous and heartless ; ho 
 seemed to me ft very marvel of self-command and of 
 courage. 
 
 To be sure, by this time, he had given me food in abund- 
 ance and a drink of water, which made me regard him 
 through Claude glasses. But, my very dear people, you do 
 just the same : when your master, the world, keeps you 
 starving, you, in your cynical hunger, murmur at its cold- 
 ness and harshness ; it is a Saturn that devours its children, 
 it is a Nero that fiddles while you are shrieking in agony, 
 it is a Commodus that sees men tear each other to death 
 for his pleasure, it is a Judas that betrays his Master, it is 
 an Israel that crucifies all divinity ! But if the world only 
 toss you a cake, only keep you well fed and well fattened, 
 what a good and a fair world it is, how full of all sweetness 
 and light, how true in its vision, how pure in its excellence ; 
 fruitful as Ceres, smiling as young Hebe, tender as the 
 virginal mother of Krishna, many-breasted as the Cartha- 
 ginian goddess by whom all the multitudes of men might 
 be nurtured ! 
 
 And you are as sincere in your worship as in your curses, 
 only you are an optimist in both. 
 
 When the supper-party broke up it was noisily and joy- 
 ously ; there had been no gayer or pleasanter night at the 
 Coronet than this which followed on so wild a combat. 
 
 Beltran saw his guests out by the private door, and 
 laughed them a careless good-night. 
 
 It was only one in the morning when he reached his 
 chambers ; but two and three and four were chimed by the 
 clocks, and he never moved from the chair into which he 
 bad cast himself. 
 
 Once his lips quivered with rage, though they had lacghed 
 
284 PUCK. 
 
 BO lightly and so listlessly all the past hours through. His 
 heart indeed had not been pierced by the blow dealt him 
 that night ; he had never loved this woman, save with the 
 slight, soulless, inconstant passion which a loveliness purely 
 physical evokes. But he was deeply wounded in his pride, 
 and in that form of self-love yet stronger than pride, which 
 makes a discovered infidelity so bitter to any man, even in 
 a wife or mistress who has lost all charm, and from whoit 
 release is ardently desired. It was horrible to the haughty 
 and exclusive gentleman to be thus cheated and betrayed 
 to be thus cast to the jests of the town ; to be fooled like 
 any boy in his earliest youth ; to be made the dupe and the 
 laughing-stock of a woman drawn from the dregs of the 
 populace ! 
 
 AVhen his ignoble rival had panted out his confession of 
 hatred and treachery, Beltranhad suffered one of the keenest 
 indignities that a man of his temperament could have en- 
 dured. 
 
 For the opinion of the world, when he himself chose to 
 provoke it, he cared not one straw ; but the opinion of the 
 world when he knew himself a fit subject for its mockery 
 was a very different thing to endure. 
 
 He had been universally successful in his intrigues ; he had 
 been uniformly more the sought than the seeker of women ; 
 he was unsparing in his contemptuous ironies on those who 
 were the fools of their own amours ; he was given to be- 
 lieving, and to imbuing others with his own belief, in his 
 perfect keenness of vision, and infallibility of judgment ; 
 he had as little of vanity and as much of it as a man of 
 fine instinct and cool sense, but spoiled by a society that 
 has too greatly deferred to him, usually possesses. Above 
 all, he was intensely proud. 
 
 The blow fell on the most sensitive nerves of his nature, 
 and the curse that he breathed through his teeth upon hir 
 traitress could hardly have been deeper or fiercer if & 
 cheated idolatry and a wronged worship had spoken in it. 
 His pride had been pierced to the quick and abased in th 
 dust ; it is a less forgiving and a more terrible enemy than 
 the most cruelly outraged love, for its wounds are faf 
 Blower to cv/e, and its scars far slower to fade. 
 
 When fi/e o'clock struck, and the last spark of flame 
 died out from the gray ashes in the grate, he was still there ; 
 
LA PIPETTA. 285 
 
 cast backwards in the great depths of the chair, and gazing 
 out at the dead embers of the fire, as though in its dreary 
 shadows he saw the ghosts of his own dead years : years 
 whose strength had been spent, and whose resolves had 
 been stifled, and whose purer dreams and higher desires 
 had breathed out their faint life for ever, under the murderous- 
 embraces, and the poisoned kisses, of harlots. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 LA PIPETTA. 
 
 ABOUT ten o'clock in the morning the valet was commonly 
 used to knock at his master's door, and being bidden to 
 enter, would carry in some coffee or some soda and brandy, 
 and such letters as had come by the early post. At that 
 hour I was always accustomed to run in likewise; and, 
 perching myself on Beltran's bed, to eat the coffee-sugar, 
 ind watch him whilst he glanced through his correspondence. 
 r .t was generally a great amusement to me, for being of 
 mick intelligence, I had soon learned to guess from what 
 cair hand each epistle came by its very air and aspect, to 
 say nothing of its monogram, and it was a little comedy to 
 me to see the weariness, the impatience, the contemptuous 
 amusement, or the curt dismissal, which were what he 
 generally bestowed on these delicate, tempting, and glossy 
 letters, which the writers doubtless had conceived would 
 be so welcome or so terrible to him, according as they 
 wooed him or reproached him. This morning, for once, the 
 servant's rap was not answered by a permission to enter ; 
 but Beltran, with the only savage oath I ever heard him 
 use, bade the man begone and the letters also. Even to 
 my whine and moan no heed was paid by him ; and I sat 
 outside the inaccessible chamber, tired in patience and 
 wounded in heart. 
 
 Neglected by my master, bewildered, saddened, and per- 
 plexed by the strange events of the past night, I did a 
 foolish thing. I incautiously wandered down the stairs, 
 and finding the house-door standing open, I went forth 
 into the street. 
 
236 PUCK. 
 
 It was a sunny frosty morning, and people were astir ; it 
 was bright and busy and tempting. There are, in our race, 
 natural and nomadic instincts that no education or captivity 
 can eradicate aninborn passion for freedom and enjoyment. 
 This, in man, is damned with texts by your priests, and, in 
 dogs, is chastised with stripes by your keepers. But, as a 
 rule being of itself innocent, and desirable, and even noble, 
 it is too strong always for either priests or keepers ; and 
 under the damnation or the dog- whip will turn the man 
 criminal and the dog mad. This instinct awaking in me, 
 and I, being a little foolish guileless thing, deprived by my 
 mode of life of many of my proper qualities of self-pre- 
 servation and of foresight, and rendered helpless an(j 
 dependent against my very will, was vaguely moved by it, 
 and, knowing no better, moved to my own destruction. 
 
 I wandered down the street, playing with the rusty 
 eaves that blew along the pavement, feeling pleasure in 
 the fresh wind that wantoned among my curls, and thinking 
 of no evil, because meaning none. The leaves were always 
 escaping me, and always running gaily on ; and I ran after 
 them, wondering, indeed, how such poor, shrivelled, brown, 
 and aged things had heart in them for play, when they 
 knew, as they could not fail to know, that their day was 
 done for ever, that they never more could toss in western 
 winds and summer suns, but had no other thing to do than 
 to drift dully on, and die. 
 
 For I was young and did not guess that the leaves, though 
 so worn and sere and useless, are all unconscious of their 
 fate, and murmur amongst each other of their spring-time 
 and their forest as though they were tossing still aloft, and 
 had not known decay, even as the old amongst you ' babble 
 of green fields,' and do not see their grave. I chased the 
 leaves, and the leaves outstripped me. I ran unwittingly 
 through many tortuous turns of streets. Just as, triumphant 
 at the last, I caught my playfellows and found them rotten, 
 useless, frail as timber, a black shadow fell between me 
 and the light ; a black cloth was flung over my head and 
 body ; I was seized, crushed into silence, and borne away. 
 
 When I saw the light again, I was in the horrible den of 
 Bill Jacobs. 
 
 1 He's got to be a cussed pretty beast,' said the brute as 
 he surveyed me. * I sha'n't chance a reward : rewards in 
 
LA PIPETTA. 287 
 
 slants now with them swells. He's worth two ponies, and 
 " 11 get two ponies for him.' 
 
 ****** 
 
 I have a dim recollection of blows, bruises, foreign tongues, 
 bewilderment, dark dens, sharp whipcord, sickness from a 
 mrious motion, and imprisonment in some floating dungeon. 
 But what I distinctly recall, as the first picture on my 
 mind after the renewal of the hideous scenes of bloodshed 
 and suffering at Bill Jacobs', are, a sky of the deepest and 
 most radiant blue, and a vivid quivering sunlight, that 
 seemed alive in its intensity ; a crumbled wall, all clothed 
 with a green that I knew later as that of the acanthus ; a 
 berd of goats, a huge barrel upon wheels, and a small 
 cream -hued, fox-like face,thatwas peering close agamstmine. 
 
 ' Ruzzola Pepe I do not understand ? ' 
 
 ' Well, I can tell you no more. Pepe is a servant to a 
 marcJiesa, whose villa is close by ; and he had been sent to 
 fetch you from the English ship ; some English friend had 
 bought you as a gift to the marcJiesa; and lo ! as Pepe was 
 between the town and the villa, we overtook him at a little 
 village. The contadini were playing ruzzola ; and Matteo 
 was giving them wine ; and he challenged Pepe, and Pepe 
 set you down and went to play in right fierce earnest. 
 They are all alike, these Italians : give them a spade or a 
 mattock, arid they die perspiring in ten minutes ; but show 
 them a ball, or a disk, or something to gamble with, and 
 they will fag themselves at it from siesta to sunset ! So 
 they got to play, these two, and they presently waxed 
 furious at it. That wine is fresh from the vat, and Matteo 
 does not water it for his own drinking ! Old Pepe had 
 staked every coin he had on him before they had played 
 naif an hour. The luck was at see-saw, and lured him on ; 
 then it set dead against him, and still he played. Ho 
 staked his pipe, he staked his buttons, he staked his shoes, 
 and before he had done he had stripped himself nearly bare. 
 Then he went mad, and he staked you.' 
 
 ' Hush ! ' said the owner of that face, in the tongue of mj 
 own kind. ' Hush ! I will not hurt you I am Spirka.' 
 
 ' Spirka,' I echoed the name conveyed no meaning t( 
 me, and I did not know where I was. 
 
 ' Yes ; I am Spirka, the Pomeranian. I live in the little 
 hooded house there up on the wine-cart. That is Matteo 
 
23S PUCK. 
 
 my master, yonder, giving a drink to the goat-herd. O, it 
 is no matter; he will fill up the cask from the well ! No one 
 will be the wiser ; and the wine is not his, you know. Are 
 you in pain now ? ' 
 
 T groaned that I was. 
 
 ' That is bad,' said the sympathetic Spirka. c You have 
 been in my house three weeks, and have seemed to know 
 nothing.' 
 
 'I know nothing now. What has happened? "WTiere 
 ami?' 
 
 ' You are on the road between Civita Vecchia and Borne. 
 And you are in my wine-cart. You were knocked over by 
 one of the wooden rounds at ruzzola. That is one of our 
 games, you know. Matteo got playing at it with your 
 Pepe, and Pepe knocked you over ; they thought you were 
 killed. So did I' 
 
 The Pomeranian paused, and I shivered; though you 
 make your own selves so often into helpless counters on 
 the green-table of fortune, you have no idea how horrible 
 it is to a dog to feel that he has been a mere stake, thrown 
 for as a thing of no feeling of no volition of no vitality. 
 A man very often will game himself away till he has no 
 more shame or sentient power than his dice; but a dog 
 never does this, and never loses his self-respect or his sen- 
 sitiveness. 
 
 'Staked and lost you/ continued the communicative 
 Spirka. ' You were the property of his mistress a present 
 from a foreign land a thing of price entrusted to his care. 
 He shrieked, he raved, he cursed himself and you ; then up 
 he lifted his wooden disk, and let it fly with furious force. 
 It struck you as he meant it should ; and as it stretched 
 vou senseless on the grass, he took to his heels and fled, 
 nowling like a beast fled before Matteo's knife could reach 
 him. Every one thought you were dead; but Matteo 
 thought not. Anyhow, he put ) ou up here beside me, and 
 gave you a chance of your life. And you are alive.' 
 
 In my present state, the declaration appeared to me pre- 
 mature and unconclusive ; however, as I certainly breathed, 
 heard, and saw, I did not dissent openly from it. I ventured 
 to ask why Matteo had not taken me to this marchesa, who 
 was to be my fate. 
 
 ' Pooh ! ' said Spirka contemptuously. * He won you 
 
LA PIPETTA. 189 
 
 fairly, at ruzzola. It v, r as not for him to turn out of his 
 road i'or a strange woman and a foreign dog. "What would 
 she have given him for a little beast with two ribs broken 
 as yours were ? He would have had the stick for getting 
 at games with Pepe, and you would have been thrown neck 
 and crop down a well. Do not get asking rude questions, 
 or I will give you a shake with my teeth.' 
 
 ' Would it be rude to ask what is Borne ? ' I panted 
 timidly. 
 
 1 Rome ? I heard a man say once that it was an eternal 
 archaism, uttered in marble whatever that may have 
 meant. It is the place we take our wines to, that is all I 
 know. "We shall soon be there.' 
 
 ' Is it in England?' 
 
 ' England ! England is a little bit of mud floating in the 
 middle of a duck-pond I have heard Americans say so.' 
 
 ' It is not ! It is a noble place a great place ! ' I panted, 
 patriotism coining on me, though I knew not one country 
 from another. 
 
 'Pshaw ! Nothing is either noble or great except Uault- 
 helhautszeim ! ' responded Spirka, swelling with scorn and 
 pride. 
 
 * And what is Raulthelhautszeim ? ' I asked appalled ai 
 the mere rolling grandeur of the quadrupedal word. 
 
 ' My village ! ' responded the Pomeranian with dignified 
 emphasis ; and thereon fell a-barking at a goat who had 
 strayed nearer the cart-wheels than Spirka deemed fitting. 
 
 I, with my scarcely-healed ribs, lay still and silent among 
 the straw, in the little pent-house over tie shafts. The 
 extreme strangeness of the scene, and the marvellous efful- 
 gence of the sunlight, stupefied me. 
 
 ' What time in the year is it ? ' I asked faintly at length. 
 
 * December,' the Pomeranian answered in a brief pause 
 of his breathless tirade at the obnoxious goat. 
 
 It had been in November that I had been seized by 
 Jacobs. Ignorant as I was of time, or of occurence, I 
 arrived at the conclusion that I must have been sold by 
 the thieves to some purchaser who had consigned me hither. 
 And this conclusion very naturally explained all the impri- 
 sonment, suffering, and bewildering torments that I had 
 endured, and which were all blurred in my memory into one 
 indistinct maze of half-obliterated wretchnees. 
 
290 PUCK. 
 
 Matteo came to Ms place on the cart ; the horsi* with its 
 bedizened leathern harness, jogged on ; the wheels creaked, 
 :he bells jingled; the huge wine-cask was drawn slowly 
 ilong; and 1 lay motionless, exhausted, and frightened 
 amongst the straw. 
 
 And thus we moved on through the great, golden, silent 
 waste, all alive indeed with glorious-coloured insects, and 
 waving, various-hued grasses, and shrill grasshoppers trilling 
 under the leaves, and wise-faced bearded goats straying 
 under broken arches and gazing down from vine- wreathed 
 ruins ; but yet withal so still, so strange, so death-like. 
 
 The road was uneven ; the day was hot ; Matteo did not 
 urge his horse in point of fact, he was asleep almost all 
 the way, trusting doubtless to the vigilance of Spirka. 
 
 Slumber, and your dog will guard you ; it is only your 
 human friend who will sieze that hour of your eyelids' 
 closing to steal your purse, or press adulterous kisses on 
 your darling's lips, or bid your children mock you for a 
 sluggard. 
 
 So we moved slowly on, through that wondrous blinding 
 sunlight, which seemed as though no clouds could ever 
 darken, and no rainfall ever soften it ; moved on through 
 two days, resting innumerable times, and covering but a very 
 few roods in an hour. 
 
 The horse paused at a little town, whose name is needless 
 Vere ; a little cluster of dwellings lying, as your Campagna 
 nllage often does, among deep cork-woods, and old chestnut- 
 ^rees ; with quaint gray houses, and ancient walls made 
 lovely by the lichens, and great wells everywhere, into 
 which for ever waterspouts were emptying themselves with 
 sweet cool soothing measure. 
 
 Spirka barked loudly ; Matteo awoke ; looked lovingly 
 for a moment at the open door of a tavern, then descended 
 before it. The wine, to whomsoever it belonged, seemed 
 likely to be long upon its journey Eomewards. 
 
 A handsome, good-tempered, dark-eyed woman bade him 
 welcome joyfully; and after setting him down to a meal 
 at a little round ta!51e in the ivy hung balcony; brought to 
 me and to Spirka a plateful of rice, and of what they call 
 macaroni. 
 
 Before I had a chance to touch a portion of it, Spirkt 
 swept the whole up with his tongue. 
 
LA PJPETTA. 291 
 
 ' What right had you to do that ? ' I murmured wof ully . 
 ' some was mine.' 
 
 ' Eight ! ' snapped Spirka, ' I like your impudence. Why, 
 I am a Prussian ! ' 
 
 Who does not believe in nationalities ? 
 
 I wonder if Europe will ever do as the good-natured 
 Eoman woman did? She boxed Spirka's ears (who took it 
 quietly, as she was so much bigger than he), and then she 
 served me afresh with some food by myself. 
 
 There was a black-browed, handsome, thievish-looking 
 man sitting in the balcony with a box of musical puppets 
 beside him. He looked at it and spoke to Matteo. 
 
 Soon afterwards he came down from the balcony, and 
 took me out of the wine-cart and shook and pinched, and 
 tormented me in that peculiar manner whereby you men 
 imagine that you test an animal's value, and health and 
 temper. He was clad in greasy sheepskins, he had a sly 
 cruel gleam in his great black eyes, and he looked sluggish, 
 brutal, and a rogue to boot. I trembled beneath his slight- 
 est touch. 
 
 ' What didst give for him, Matteo P ' I heard him ask. 
 
 'I won him. at ruzzola? the wine-carrier replied. 
 
 * Art in the mood to sell him ? ' asked the puppet-player. 
 
 1 Ay, ay,' assented Matteo. 'I have no wish for him. I'll 
 stake* him again at a game of morra, if thou wilt, against 
 five baiocchi.' 
 
 ' Done ! ' cried the other Eoman, with all hig nation's 
 passion for hazard and for lottery set on fire. 
 
 So they commenced playing. 
 
 I, trembling in the hooded house of Spirka, was powerless 
 whilst my fate swung in the balance. It was one of the 
 greatest moments of mental agony that I had ever known. 
 They played that wild, strange ancient game of morra, 
 which with its antics, its vociferations, its twinkling, daz- 
 zling, ceaseless movement of the fingers, so utterly bewilders 
 the stranger who watches it. They looked to me like 
 maniacs. But to be sure if dogs ruled in the world, they 
 would very often raise the cries of ' Eabies ! ' against very 
 many human actions and grimaces. 
 
 A man wheeling round in the maze of a waltz ; a man 
 frantically tearing over the turf in a running match ; a man 
 laboriously beating the water with two flat wooden blades ; 
 
 u2 
 
292 
 
 PUCK. 
 
 & man solemnly blowing forth fire- smoke from Kis mouth 
 and nostrils ; a man furiously battling with twenty others 
 for the right to kick a big ball into space do not all and 
 :any of these look infinitely more like insanity than a poor 
 dog just speeding in a straight line to the river-side on a 
 hot summer's day. 
 
 This frantic and foolish battle came to an end in favour of 
 the puppet-player. 
 
 My heart sank within me. The wine carrier had a frank, 
 good-humoured, sunny face that inspired me with some trust, 
 but the mere touch and glance of this fantoccini owner froze 
 my blood. 
 
 He saluted me with a blow by way of greeting, on enter- 
 ing into possession of my little captive body. 
 
 ' Ho ! In a week's time thou wilt jump about like an eel 
 in a frying-pan ! ' he cried to me ; and nodding and laugh- 
 ing a good-bye to Matteo, he threw me roughly on the top 
 of his music-box, and hoisting it on his shoulders, departed 
 from the hostelry. 
 
 ' "WTiat an ass thou hast been, Matteo ! ' the woman of the 
 house said, as we moved away. ' To have lost at a game of 
 morra a little beast like that, who looks worth his weight in 
 silver ! ' 
 
 Matteo hung his head, looking wild with himself for his 
 greed and his loss. Spirka barked a loud farewell, but I 
 think he was glad to reign once more alone on his throne 
 of the wine-cart, where he had so long been supreme. 
 
 As for me, I went with a bitter heart, and a trembling 
 braiD, forth on fresh travels, seated on the slanting roof of 
 the box in which the puppets of my new master reposed. 
 Ah ! how I wished the first of a thousand such futile 
 wishes that since we were made to be delivered over to 
 be the slaves of man, we had been created deaf and dumb, 
 as those wooden burattini, and not cursed with nerves, and 
 fibres, and affections, and instincts, that are never of any 
 other use to us save only to make us suffer ! 
 
 I had indeed cause so to wish j for the time of my most 
 intense torture was now at hand. I had never suffered like 
 it ere then in truth, I doubt if any human being ever 
 knows such suffering, even in the worst agonies of your 
 prisons, your mines, and your mad-houses. 
 
 My taskmaster, whose name was Giacone, known amongst 
 
LA PIP ETTA. 293 
 
 the populace as Gia, proved the tyrant Lis look had be- 
 tokened. He was indeed merciless beyond all description; 
 and the brutalities and privations he inflicted on me came, 
 of course, with tenfold more torture to me because of the 
 peace and comfort and latterly the extravagant luxury 
 of the life I had chiefly led. "With the exception of the 
 time passed in Jacobs' power, I had never had anything to 
 prepare me for the misery I endured with this Roman slare- 
 Iriver. 
 
 In the first place, he scarcely fed me, save just enough to 
 keep my life in me ; in the second, he fettered my limbs 
 into a little coat and cap that were to me what the fetters 
 of iron are to your prisoners ; in the third, he exercised 
 every ingenuity of torment in the process of what he called 
 niy education i. e. the endeavour to make me dance, jump, 
 posture, and go through card tricks to the sound of his 
 organ-music. 
 
 And this reminds me to tell you what idiots you are 
 when you beat your dogs as you do ; a puppy is thrashec 1 
 within an inch of his life to teach him * intelligence ! ' In- 
 telligence, forsooth ! when you have dazed the poor be- 
 wildered brain, and confused all the struggling senses, 
 with physical pain! In educating a dog for sport, for 
 instance, remember that you are educating him against all 
 his natural instincts, though to your own uses i. e. you 
 want him to stand still and point, when nature would tell 
 him to dash forwards ; you insist on his not ruffling an inch 
 of either fur or feather in retrieving, when instinct would 
 lead him to eat up the whole bird or beast ; you swear at 
 him for not sneaking step by step at your heel, when every 
 fibre of his body, and every pulse of his limbs, are quiver- 
 ing with longing to be ' at them ; ' you require, in a word, 
 every law of his being to be either violated or altered, to 
 serve your purpose and pleasure. 
 
 This being the case, you proceed to instruct him in these 
 offences against his own habits by the brutal stripes of that 
 foul instrument of torture, a dog-whip ; and when you have 
 made every muscle throb with pain, and bewildered all his 
 mind with internal suffering and piteous terror, you wonder 
 at his ' stupidity/ and curse him or shoot him because he 
 does not obey your word on the instant. O, how wise you 
 are and how just ! if there be a spectacle on earth to re- 
 
294 
 
 joice the angele it is your treatment of the animals that 
 you say God has given unto you! 
 
 It is not for me, a little dog, to touch on such awful 
 mysteries ; but sometimes I wonder, if ever He ask 
 you how you have dealt with His gift, what will you answer 
 then? 
 
 If all your slaughtered millions should instead answer for 
 you if all the countless and unpitied dead, all the goaded 
 maddened beasts from forest and desert who were torn asun- 
 der in the holidays of Home ; and all the innocent, playful, 
 gentle lives of little homebred creatures that have been rack- 
 ed by the knives, and torn by the poisons, and convulse^ 
 by the torments, of your modern science, should, instead, 
 answer, with one mighty voice, of a woe, no longer inarticu- 
 late, of an accusation no more disregarded, what then ? 
 Well ! Then, if it be done unto you as you have done, you 
 will seek for mercy and find none in all the width of the 
 universe; you will writhe, and none shall release you ; you 
 will pray and none shall hear. 
 
 Where was I ? 
 
 Ah ! let me pass quickly over the pain of that cruel 
 time ! 
 
 I do not wish to dwell on this portion of my life. 
 
 Gia was at his best but a rough taskmaster, and at times 
 a very brutal one. He taught me many accomplishments, 
 as I have said, such as begging for food, as erect as a 
 sentinel ; marching on my hind legs ; shouldering a piece of 
 stick as a musket ; taking wonderous leaps over a stretched 
 cord ; and finally putting a little cap on my head, and 
 sitting gravely in a chair with a pipe in my mouth. As I 
 was excessively small, the pipe was a very small one also ; 
 and as this was a very favourite attitude with my audiences, 
 I gained the name in Italy of Pipetta. 
 
 Like most other brilliant amusers of the public I was 
 weary enough at heart; and though I looked so gay and 
 gilded to the contadini in my little scarlet coat, and my little 
 cap with the gold band, as I went through my tricks, I wished 
 over and over again that I were dead, and ached in every 
 bone of my little body from blows and from hunger. I 
 went through my dances and my postures trembling with 
 terror, till in the burning days I was as cold as ice ; and I 
 cnly costumed and capered from dread of the lash and 
 
LA PIPETTA. 295 
 
 starvation, as you men of wit coin tlieir brain from tlie 
 dread of poverty and a prison. 
 
 It was a miserable, toilsome, sordid life I led; ono 
 mechanical routine of stereotyped antics ; one ceaseless 
 round of mimicry of that joy of which my heart gave not 
 one echo. 
 
 I was the envy of all the children for that little red coat 
 of mine, that little gilded cap, that little pipe I smoked, 
 that little tambourine I played. 
 
 Dogs were too wise to envy me, for they knew that I 
 was not free ; and I I envied every dog I saw that roved 
 at large, though with a soiled coat and a hungry body ; 
 every dog that barked from his heap of straw outside his 
 master's loggia ; every dog that drove his herd of goats to 
 and from their milking; every dog that followed some 
 homely, honest, simple duty, and owned a kindly hand that 
 would caress him now and then, and a wooden house that 
 he could call his own. 
 
 To be a goat-herd's dog ; to sleep on a fragrant bed of 
 dried wild thyme ; to bask in the soft warm dawns, and 
 slumbrous evening shadows ; to wake to the memory of a 
 pleasant duty to be done to the chime of tinkling bells ; to 
 drink and splash at will in the hillside brooks, and to watch 
 the old wise-looking bearded goats nibbling at the green 
 wild vine shoots what happiness it seemed to me ! How 
 passionately I envied, as I passed, them j all shabby and 
 shaggy though their coats might be ! 
 
 Some of these dogs, doubtless, were sometimes roughly 
 treated ; sometimes hungered, and smarted, and were foot- 
 sore, and sun-heated. But they were free ; and they had 
 not to go through that dreary desolate pantomime of mi- 
 micked gaiety, while their hearts were breaking ! 
 
 Ah ! you pity your hewers of wood and drawers of water, 
 you weep for those who do your rude hand-toil that needs 
 no thought, and live in the open air of moor and meadow 
 blown on by all fresh winds of heaven. Guard your com- 
 passion rather for those who must still pipe for you, though 
 you no longer dance ; who must wear the festal robes of 
 frivolity though famine gnaw at their entrails, and despair 
 devour their hearts. 
 
 You laugh! You can see no parallel betwixt a little woe- 
 begone anticking dog, and the men and the women or 
 
296 PUCK. 
 
 genius ? "Well it may seem foolish ; yet believe me they 
 have nearer kindred than you think ; that one close terrible 
 kindred of woe, and solitude, and bondage, and the iron 
 cruelty of mimicked mirth. 
 
 My life endured thus for a year. I saw and heard much 
 in the many wanderings which we made through all the 
 Papal States ; much which remains on the copper-plate of 
 recollection, in sharp and denned outline ; since there is 
 no aquafortis that bites in so sharply as misery. 
 
 There are many beautiful pictures which arise in my 
 memory, of earth and sky, of colour and form, of night and 
 day ; of the majestic old-world beauty of the women, and 
 of the quaint, poetic, rich-hued life in the vineyards and 
 cornfields, in the hill-side osteria, or the harvest-season's 
 out-door camp. But other and worther than I have 
 painted these again, and again, and again, ever since the 
 world was young. All the universe knows the smell of the 
 Parma violets, and the taste of the waters of Trevi ; the 
 wail of the/n^ertzr^and the chant of the barefooted monks ; 
 the frank sweet light of the Eoman smile, and the deep 
 strong stench of the Roman cabbage. Why should I 
 dwell on these ? 
 
 Though the sun was so cloudless, and the smile so fair, 
 and the sod so thick with flowers, the time was dark and 
 Ircar to me. A time of desolation. 
 
 Now and again some girl, drawing the metal pail up 
 from her fountain, would pity my little, dust-stained way- 
 worn face, and give me a drink from the clear Virgine 
 water, and a kiss from her arched, ruddy lips. 
 
 Now and again some old woman, seated at sunset under 
 the vine-hung gallery of her house, telling her beads in the 
 cool calm decline of day and of age, would lift her voice, 
 and bid my master cease to beat me, as he passed. 
 
 Now and again some gentle-eyed priest, with a wistful 
 pain and peace together on his face, would take me up, and 
 murmur a kind word to me, and pause at a stall in the 
 street to buy me a little fried fish, all golden and shining 
 from the stove. 
 
 But these were few. 
 
 For the most part people are cruel, cruel if only from 
 lack of thought. And they were cruel to me. The chil- 
 dren in especial; children are cruel everywhere. 
 
LA PIPETTA. *9? 
 
 indeed of the virtues are inborn ; and th^ nrtue of mercy r 
 rarely very rarely ever runs in the quick, gaj, self- 
 moved blood of youth. 
 
 The children were cruel always. AVhen they wished me 
 to dance, I had to dance, though I died. When I made, 
 through fright, an error in my tricks, they stoned me and 
 bawled at me. When I had walked round and round on 
 two feet, till I was sick and giddy with the strain, and f ell,, 
 they screamed to my owner to beat me for the fault that 
 fault of my weakness which injured their pastime. 
 
 The children were cruel always those brown handsome, 
 graceful creatures, with the limbs of gods and the eyes of 
 ingels. So cruel they were, that at length when I saw 
 children drawing nigh I would shiver, and moan, and seek 
 to hide myself under a stone. In vain ! Unerringly they 
 would hunt me out, and riot, and scream, and tear me from- 
 one and another, till Gria, for the sake of my value, would 
 rescue me from their clamour and their grip, half dead. 
 
 Therefore, that time is very hideous, very hateful, to me. 
 
 And it seemed to me always, that in this Latin land the- 
 very earth, by reason of its drought, and pain, and the in- 
 numerable dead it hid, was cruel likewise ; and that even 
 the sun, burning through so many weeks and months, 
 without one drop of rain, grew hard, and horrible, arid 
 rather shed death than begat life, with its unquenched rays. 
 
 There used to come upon me an infinite longing for the 
 cool grey mists, the cool brown shadows, the dewy grasses 
 damp at noon, the wild west wind sea-fed in summer, that 
 I had known in that old north-country of my birth. 
 
 It is a thirst, I think such as birds caged in cities feel 
 which devours us with so terrible a desire when we, who 
 drew our first breath in the shady stillness of green 
 northern woods, burn, and stifle, and grow blind in the 
 merciless glare of southern suns. I suffered far more, 
 also, because of the indulgence and luxury of my late brief 
 enjoyment of a life of fashion. I had known what it was 
 to be an idol of society, to be sunned in the smiles of 
 coquettes, and to be caressed by the hands of great ladies; 
 my palate had been attuned to dainty living, and my taste 
 to all the gay frivolities and charming follies of the world 
 of pleasure, only as it seemed that I might suffer more 
 acutely from the degradation of my fate and the misery oi 
 my captivity. 
 
298 PUCK. 
 
 I thought how wicked I had been to scorn all those poor 
 dancing girls, who slaved for the popular amusement on a 
 miserable pittance. I, too, knew now what it was to be 
 the slave of the public, to be in the dress of the mime, to 
 have to dance with aching limbs, and play with an aching 
 heart. 
 
 How often I had joined with Panfreluche in her merciless 
 ridicule of these poor jaded, tired, rouged, and spangled 
 coryphees of the burlesque ; how often I had scoffed with 
 her at their poverty and their sorrows ; at the faded prints 
 and the ragged shawls of their own day-attire, contrasted 
 with the gorgeous dresses in which they flashed and 
 glittered in the gaslight; at the hard bread and strong 
 cheese they nibbled by stealth, while they waited for re- 
 hearsal; at the tears that gushed into their eyes, under 
 the coarse oaths and brutal vituperations of their stage 
 tyrant ; at the piteous fashion in which they would trudge 
 forth on foot into the rainy or snowy midnight, they, who 
 went skipping and bounding, and whirling and laughing 
 before the footlights, as though they had not a care in the 
 world, or a need in the universe ! 
 
 I knew not what it was to go through this mimicry of 
 gaiety, this ostentation of radiant mirth, with grief in the 
 heart and famine in the body. I knew what it was to long 
 to lie down and die, yet be forced to rise and caper, and 
 seem merry, because a ruthless Public cried ' Dance, 
 dance, dance! Shall ye dare to be weary or sorrowful 
 when we have bid ye be joyous, and have bought your joy 
 with our money ? ' 
 
 Alas ! If I had been cruel from the levity and the 
 thoughtlessness of young years, my sin was visited very 
 heavily upon me. 
 
 And another sin too, my momentary oblivion of my first 
 beloved home, seemed to me now but justly avenged by the 
 wretchedness of my doom. Puffed up with the sudden 
 fashion and luxury of the eminence to which I had been 
 raised ; inflated by the compliments and caresses that I 
 received from noble lips and gentle hands ; esteeming my- 
 self amongst the great ones of the earth, because I fed off 
 silver, and ate of costly wonders out of their season, and 
 drove in coroneted carriages, and looked from the windows 
 of noble-men and gentlemen ; conceiving myself, in my fool- 
 
LA PIPETTA. 299 
 
 ishneas, to be far lifted above the good and gentle com.; 
 panions of my infancy ; I had, wickedly and shamefully, 
 thought scorn of their simple and hardy life, and had dreaded 
 lest people should ever know that my first year had been 
 spent beneath the roof of that rosethorn cottage. 
 
 Wicked ingratitude, foolish shame ! that now had bitter 
 punishment. 
 
 And it was not for the gay rich life in London, but for the 
 innocent forest life in the green pinewood of the Peak, that 
 I yearned with such an agony of longing as I was dragged 
 through the towns and villages of Italy, footsore, bruised, 
 bleeding, worn-out with fatigue, sore all over from blows, 
 devoured by hunger, driven half -mad by thirst, and never 
 hearing any other voices than those that rained their curses 
 on me, or shrieked to me to dance though I were dying. 
 
 A year passed with me thus. 
 
 It was a hard life enough for Gria himself : all such lives 
 are, however romance may colour them, or their vicissitudes 
 make them seem adventurous to the eyes of imaginative 
 youth. 
 
 To tramp all weathers on foot, with a heavy box of fantoc- 
 cini strapped to your back ; to sleep where you can, in a hay 
 loft or a corn-barn ; to walk fifteen miles to a town where, 
 maybe, you do not get as many pence; to play in the 
 scorching heat, under the balconies where the happy people 
 lounge in their pleasant idleness, which seems to insult you 
 with its insolent prosperity of peace ; all this was hard 
 enough, even for him. 
 
 But then he had many easy hours withal ; welcome at 
 some wayside trattoria where trade was dull, and a fritter 
 was tossed, and a stoup of wine poured with eagerness for 
 him ; mirth at some rustic bride, where the fun was at its 
 height, and he, though a stranger and a wanderer, was 
 frankly bidden to join; a turn at morra; a stroke atpallone; 
 a caste of the loccette ; a game at dominoes when the day 
 was done and the men and maidens were jesting and 
 dancing in some little village under the cork-trees. He 
 had all these things ; for he was a man of ready tonguo : 
 and comely enough in person. But I had none of these 
 I starved whilst he ate his stew ; I ached with bruises 
 whilst he laughed in the inn-porch ; I was the sport and 
 the prisoner of the brutal children whilst he was flinging 
 
300 PUCK. 
 
 his heels in the measures of the dances. I was infinitely 
 miserable ; and it seemed to me tbat my misery would have 
 no end. 
 
 In the Eternal City, as in the Campagna, I was but a 
 little, lonely, friendless, miserable suffering thing. To me, 
 therefore, it was horrible. 
 
 A victory looks but a sorry thing to the boy conscript, 
 lying cramped and bleeding, and crushed and woe-begone 
 in the ambulance wagon on the red evening-tide after the 
 battle. Rome looked but a motley, blinding, cruel, uncanny, 
 eldritch place, full of noise and colour to me, as I lay, ach- 
 ing and terrified and heart-broken on the top of the wooden 
 fantoccini box. 
 
 I have heard you speak often since then of its sorcery, of 
 its sadness, of its wonderful hues, and its unutterable 
 beauty, and all its mystical, awful charm that none who 
 have once been under its spell can resist ; well I never 
 felt any of these. To me it was only a place where I 
 suffered. 
 
 Believe me, it is the light or the darkness of our own fate 
 that either gives ' greenness to the grass and glory to the 
 flower,' or leaves both sickly, wan, and colourless. A little 
 breadth of sunny lawn, the spreading shadow of a single 
 beech, the gentle click of a little garden-gate, the scent of 
 some simple summer roses, how fair these are in your 
 memory because of a voice which then was on your ear, 
 because of eyes that then gazed in your own ! And the 
 grandeur of Nile, and the lustre of the after-glow, and the 
 solemn desolation of Carnac, and the wondrous beauty of 
 the flushed sea of tossing reeds, are all cold, and dead, and 
 valueless, because in those eyes no love now lies for you : 
 because that voice, for you, is now for ever silent. 
 
 The narrow, crowded streets ; the bray of mules and 
 asses ; the eternal wail of the beggars ; the stench of stews 
 and fries from the cooking-stalls in the alleys ; the over- 
 powering odour from the great mounds of fruit and flowers ; 
 the squalor and the glitter, the filth and the beauty ; the 
 glimpse through the butchers' doors of a dying kid, or lamb, 
 as it struggled beneath the knife ; the shriek of a goose or 
 a fowl, as it was seized from the Jiving flock to have its neck 
 wrun^ at the market stall : these were what I saw of 
 Borne ; what I always see now when I think of it. 
 
LA PIPETTA. ^01 
 
 Moreover, I was harder tasked in the City even than m 
 the Cainpagna. In the latter there had been but a scant 
 audience at best ; two or three performances had always 
 sufficed to gain what coins were to be had in the district. 
 But in Borne there was an audience the whole day long 
 save at the brief noon-hours ; and all through the star-lit 
 evenings, till late into the night. 
 
 When one crowd had dispersed another gathered. No 
 sooner was the round of tricks finished than it had to be 
 commenced afresh. There was scarce a moment that I waa 
 not either dancing, or telling fortunes on the cards, or 
 walking round with my toy tambourine to collect baioccJii. 
 Gia had no mercy, and the people had no mercy either. 
 It was one perpetual toil, one everlasting misery. At last 
 it so wore me out that I went through the whole programme 
 mechanically, with a noise like the rushing of winds in my 
 ears, and the darkness of a sickly swoon before my eyes. 
 More than once I dropped from sheer exhaustion ; and then 
 was roused with a kick and curse. 
 
 I think if you knew what you did, even the most thought- 
 less amongst" you would not sanction with your praise and 
 encourage with your coin, the brutality that trains dancicg- 
 dogs. 
 
 Have human mimes if you will ; it is natural to humanity 
 to caper arid grimace and act a part ; but for pity's sake do 
 not countenance the torture with which Avarice mercilessly 
 trains us ' dumb beasts' for the trade of tricks. 
 
 All through those long, sickly, burning days, with feir 
 scorching sun streaming on the parched ground, the Lash of 
 ny task-master kept me at my tread-mill of mimicry. It 
 /v r as as bitter, unbearable, agonising toil to me as any that 
 four galley-slaves suffer is to them. The strain on the 
 muscles and limbs was an intense physical torment ; and 
 the incessant nervous apprehension, the terror of ill-usage 
 and blows, were yet more excruciating still. 
 
 ' The Clown-dog draws throngs to laugh and applaud,' 
 says some advertisement : yes, and I knew a very clever 
 clown-dog once. His feet were blistered with the hot irons 
 on which he had been taught to dance ; his teeth had been 
 drawn lest he should use his natural weapons against hia 
 cowardly tyrants; his skin beneath his short white hair 
 was black with bruises ; though originally of magnificent 
 
3=>2 PUCK. 
 
 courage, his spirit had been so broken by torture that he 
 trembled if a leaf blew against him; and his eyes well, if 
 the crowds that applauded him had once looked at those 
 patient, wistful, quiet eyes, with their unutterable despair, 
 those crowds would have laughed no more, unless they had 
 indeed been devils. 
 
 Who has delivered us unto you to be thus tortured and 
 martyred ? "Who ? O that awful eternal mystery that ye 
 yourselves cannot explain ! 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE DOG AND THE DEYIL. 
 
 AFTER a space Gia quitted the city. What he did 1 
 know not ; but it is certain that he displeased the priestly 
 authorities in some manner, and had to go stealthily and 
 swii'tly out of Rome. For I heard many dark ominous 
 words pass between him and his mates, the piffierari, and 
 the pijferari counselled flight; and he departed thence, all 
 
 hurriedly, by night, taking me and the box of fantoccini 
 with him. From the muttered fragments of talk that I 
 heard, I have a fearful fancy that he had killed some hap- 
 less woman in a drunken brawl, and that the woman being 
 a priest's light-of-love, existence on the Seven Hills was no 
 Longer safe or even possible for him. 
 
 You will always find that these sluggards who are too 
 lazy to labour for themselves, and seek their support by 
 means of some poor performing animal, are great brutes as 
 well as great cowards. Were you wise, you would forbid 
 all such performances ; for, if the man who works neither 
 brain nor body be deemed by you useless and of evil ex- 
 ample to the community, what then must he be who, in 
 .order that he may live in a sot's idleness and indulgence, 
 does daily beat, fatigue, and torture a creature delivered 
 into his power ? 
 
 Hiding and skulking, and by means, I think, of false 
 papers and names, Gria got across to Ostia; and thence 
 went by sea to Marseilles. The horrors of this passage I 
 cannot dwell upon. I was starved, sick, beaten tor moan- 
 
THE DOG AND THE DEVIL. 303 
 
 ing, and drenched in a deluge of rain that swept the whole 
 Mediterranean with almost the force of a water-spout. 
 Had it not been for the goodness of an old weather-beaten 
 sailor, who wrapped rne in a morsel of tarpaulin, and lied 
 me with a rope to the seat, I must have been driven over- 
 board, or have perished of wet and cold, whilst Gria below 
 drank brandy and played dominoes with the halt-drunk 
 skipper of the rotten, groaning, olive-laden felucca. 
 
 There is this that is consolatory in life ; its darkest hours 
 rarely have no ray of light ; its woes, its tyrannies, its 
 agonies, commonly give birth to some act of kin'dlmess, or of 
 courage, or of compassion, that arises in their midst as apaliii 
 irf the desert ; it is little enough oftentimes, but it is some- 
 thing ; something that just saves the earth from being hell. 
 
 Marseilles lay white and blinding, and scorched with a 
 hard burning sand-laden wind from the African shores, 
 when we at length reached it after a hideous voyage of 
 storm and heat, of hurricane and drouth united, a voyage 
 through which the skill of the old sailor I have named alono 
 brought the vessel, whilst its captain lay drunk in the 
 cabin, and the crew shrieked and roared to the saints. 
 
 In Marseilles we tarried some time, and thence passed 
 across France to Paris. 
 
 It was the same old miserable life ; the same tramping, 
 and playing,, and performing. 
 
 ' O, what a happy little thing art thou! ' said one day to 
 me an honest, but rather stupid dog (the only dog ever un- 
 wise enough to envy me), who lived in a hut amidst the 
 fields of the great south-west, with a goat-herd. * Look at 
 me I fare so hardly, I am out in all weathers, I nover 
 taste anything except a bit of black bread or rancid meat, I 
 am all the year round with those silly goats, I never see 
 anything all day but a plover or henharrier flitting by over 
 the marches. How lucky thou ! to ride on the top of that 
 box, and to be tossed sweet cakes and biscuits, and to .have 
 nothing at all to do but only to dance for thy living ! ' 
 
 Alas, he little knew the perpetual travail of my existence, 
 and how gladly I would have changed places with him, and 
 taken his black bread and his liberty together ! 
 
 There is no labour so utterly weary and cruel under the 
 Bun as the labour which takes the semblance of pastime. 
 I" or the dullard is free to go to his solitude, and weep his 
 
304 PUCK. 
 
 ?^eart oii ; if he will, for the dead whom he laments ; but 
 Verdi must write his new opera though the mistress of his 
 youth lies scarce cold in her coffin. 
 
 Our passage across Trance occupied long ; going so slowly 
 as we did, pausing at every little hamlet or wayside wine- 
 shop on the road. The people on the whole were more 
 cruel than those of the Campagna ; the women were toil- 
 hardened and sun-dried, and had not that frank sweet smile 
 of Rome. There were often fairs, or fetes, on Saint-days, 
 in the townships through which we went. 
 
 These were very quaint and picturesque, I admit ; all the 
 colour and the movement; all the gorgeous charlatans and 
 conjurers ; all the saints and images and banners ; all the 
 white-robed choristers with their censers ; all the flower- 
 crowned girls with their crosses ; all the chanting priests 
 and singing women; all the green branches, and floating 
 ribbons, and ringing music, chimed in so well with the old 
 grey walls, and the high-peaked reofs, and the straight 
 poplar trees, and the quiet narrow street. 
 
 But on such popular days as these I was so maddened 
 with the noise and tumult, I was so worn out with over 
 exertion and pitiless demands on my frail strength, that at 
 length, whenever we drew near the gates of a town, and I 
 saw the gleam of the golden host uplifted, or heard the 
 clamorous charivari of the fifes and drums, I trembled and 
 sickened, and strove vaitJy to escape in any ditch or any 
 hole, and was only dragged within the gates by sheer force, 
 by curses and cuffs, and kicks and blows. 
 
 Of course I had no power against my tyrant. I was a 
 little weakly timid thing, and all the natural agility and 
 spirit I possessed were cramped by the garb in which he 
 had imprisoned me, and cowed by the hunger to which he 
 subjected me. 
 
 So my life passed : and I had been one year and a half 
 with Gia, when at last we drew near to Paris. I dreaded 
 the city beyond all words to tell. I thought that there I 
 should always see the host uplifted, and always hear the 
 shrill ('in of the charivari. 
 
 Tn the country sometimes I had a respite, a breathing 
 space : some woman milking her cattle gave me a drink 
 from the foaming pail ; some lad lying deep amongst the 
 hay made me a nest beside him ; some gentle cow w.-uld 
 
THE DOO AND THE DEVIL. 305 
 
 let me rest amongst the fodder of her stall; some big 
 rough-coated dog about a farm would bring me food and 
 call me to his kennel ; some young girl, leaning out of her 
 lattice in some hostelry we stopped at, would call to Gria 
 not to beat me, and would come down and caress me, and 
 beg me of him for the night, and take me to her little bed 
 under the eaves, and lull me to slumber like an infant 
 against the warmth of her soft bare breast. 
 
 But in the cities there were no pause, no pity, no peace, 
 from morn till midnight. The very animals themselves m 
 agony grew selfish, and had but little mercy for their kind, 
 because, for their own dumb helpless lives, men had none. 
 
 As we drew near Paris we came to a long steep stony 
 street, uncleanly, unsavoury, full of noise ; I heard them 
 say that it was Sevres. I have ever since shuddered at 
 the name when I have heard it spoken before those pretty 
 porcelain things it christens. 
 
 Here there was a crowd; the porcelain makers and 
 painters had finished their work for the day ; they were 
 lounging and gossiping and singing, and sipping their 
 coffee inside their house-doors. 
 
 Gria, as usual, wherever he could command an audience^ 
 sot his box upright on its pole, opened its case, and began 
 to play, bidding me dance to the music. The puppets 
 never tired, of course ; and I suppose he thought that I 
 was like them. 
 
 Now as it chanced I had performed all day long in the 
 town of Versailles, hard by. I had scarcely had any rest ; 
 and I did not know how to commence afresh. Dancing and 
 performing are as severe a trial to us as the hardest rowing 
 or wrestling is to you ; more so, indeed, because you, after 
 all, are only doing that which you choose to do, and which 
 is in a manner natural to you, whilst all these actions 
 which you teach us are to us painful, unnatural, and full of 
 an arduous strain and contortion, for which our nerves and 
 muscles are utterly unfitted. 
 
 The puppets danced gaily, as the organ handle turned ; I 
 moved to and fro, as I had been taught, on my hind legs ; 
 I smoked my little pipe ; I struck my tiny tambourine that 
 was hung round my neck ; I did all to the best that I could, 
 and the youths, and the young girls, and the children, and 
 the sturdy tannors of Eillancourt and the \van potto iy 
 
So6 PUCK. 
 
 painters of Sevres applauded gleefully and shrieked, 'En 
 core, la Pipetta! encore, encore!' so that I had to go 
 again and again through all my antics, and yet they were 
 not satisfied. 
 
 Now, I had been performing all day long since sunrise ; 
 I had eaten nothing but the handful of boiled rice he had 
 tossed to me. I was very sick, and tired, and worn out ; 
 and it so came to pass that, when in obedience to the ' en- 
 core, encore * of the impatient and delighted little crowd, 
 Gria shouted to me the word of command to commence 
 afresh, I tried to dance again, but my strength failing 
 tottered, and moaned, and fell, breaking in twain my little 
 painted tambourine. 
 
 I lay, stupefied and sick, in the white dust. Gria furious, 
 threw himself on me, and seized me by the neck, and beat 
 me ; ah ! I can feel the rain of the blows now. 
 
 ' I will teach thee to tire ! I will teach thee to fall ! ' he 
 screamed aloud, and with every word the biting lash curled 
 round my little quivering body. 
 
 ' Beast ! would you kill the dog ?' cried one of the porce- 
 lain makers, though he did not stir to succour me. 
 
 ' It is mine !' cried Gia, a coward though a brute. 'It is 
 mine, I will kill it surely; the little sluggish devil!' 
 
 Scarcely were the words uttered, when suddenly a pon- 
 derous body flung itself on my tormentor ; a row of white 
 and glistening teeth seized and shook him with tremendous 
 force; he dropped me with a shriek of terror; and my 
 deliverer, in whom I recognised one of the princes of iny 
 own kind, caught me up in those massive fangs which had 
 wrought rny freedom, and bounded off with me in a stretch- 
 ing gallop. 
 
 The pressure of his jaws ; the speed of his going ; the 
 heat ; the bruises ; the terror ; all combined, made me 
 insensible: this manner of deliverance was well-nigh as 
 fearful as the torture itself had been: and I knew not 
 where I was carried nor how long I remained unconscious. 
 
 "When I recovered my senses, I was lying on long grass 
 beneath the trees of a garden: and over me stood my 
 friend a gigantic tawny-coloured Muscovite dog. Hugo 
 though he was, and with the grip and the claws of a lion, 
 his eyes were soft and even tender, and gleamed very 
 gently and benevolently on me from under th leonine 
 waycs of his shaggy mane. 
 
THE DOG AND THE DEVIL. 307 
 
 He addressed me in that universal tongue of ours which 
 & one of the many superiorities which we enjoy over men: 
 you, poor humanities, born on different "banks of a river, 
 or opposite sides of a plain, jabber jargons mutually unin- 
 telligible to each other, and on a public mart, or at a tir 
 national, stand bewildered amidst a score of unknown 
 tongues spoken by your next-door neighbour. But place 
 a Labrador dog with a Pyrenean dog, let one of Poland 
 meet one of Peru, and lo ! you behold them intelligible to 
 one another at once, able to exchange converse by a free- 
 masonry to which the widest-spread of your brotherhood is 
 as naught. For our race being too wise ever to build either 
 a Babel or a Babylon, no curse of confusion rests on us, 
 and though scattered all over the world, we are yet even as 
 one great nation. 
 
 'I am Russ,' said my deliverer. "We always give our 
 names frankly to each other ; that base human device, an 
 alias, is wholly unknown amongst us. ' I am Russ. I will 
 not hurt you ; you know that. We are far away from that 
 brute, your taskmaster. No man can emulate my speed. 
 I have raced even with rein-deer ; and have beaten them. 
 You poor little frightened thing! he would have killed 
 you if I had not interfered. Are you a dancing-dog ? ' 
 
 I groaned an assent : I was ashamed of niy profession, 
 and of my little red jacket, and of the broken tambourine 
 about my neck. 
 
 1 Ah, that is so like a man ! ' said the giant Euss grimly. 
 * To case your little supple body in a tight bit of cloth, and 
 to force you to strut awkwardly about on two legs, and to 
 then call that sort of disfigurement "training" you. "Well 
 I am glad that I saw you. I fly at all such creatures 
 as Gia. Wretched, lazy, lubberly ruffians, who are too idlg^ 
 to labour for their living, and torture a bear, or an ape, or 
 a goat, or a puppy like you, to get the coins that their 
 want for their food and their drink ! I have had a tussle 
 ere now with this Gria. Too idle a sot to work for himself, 
 he is for ever pressing some innocent thing into his service, 
 that he beats, and starves, and drives mad for his profit.' 
 
 I shuddered with the remembrance of my sufferings as 
 he spoke ; and with the pain of the bruises that covered 
 ivery inch of my body. 
 
 'You are very good,' I faltered, 'biu how car. you 
 keep me from him ? ' 
 
PUCK. 
 
 1 "Why, see here. I will get you permission to stay in this 
 place. You need not go out of the garden walls ; and G-ia 
 will never dare to track me. Ask every one in Paris wha 
 Euss is and what he can do. If you feel well enough 
 now, come within.' 
 
 He stalked like a lion towards a low white stone build- 
 ing ; and I feebly followed him, still wondering, dazed, and 
 affrighted. My limbs ached, and my coat impeded my 
 movements ; but I managed to crawl after him meekly and 
 .feebly, through some winding grassy paths, all yellow with 
 ; golden dandelions and shadowed with hanging boughs. At 
 last we approached the low stone house ; with a thatched 
 roof on which pigeons sat pluming themselves, an old 
 carved oak porch half smothered in that white creeper you 
 call traveller's joy, and some deep stone-embayed windows 
 hidden likewise in ivy and creeping roses. Amongst all 
 this verdure and blossom, there hung, half seen, a wooden 
 board on whieh glistened a couchant silver stag. 
 
 Euss crossed the threshold and mounted some broad 
 wooden stairs, so black with age and slippery with polish 
 that I had much ado to climb them after him. On the 
 head of the stair-case he pushed open an unlatched door, 
 thrust himself through it, and advanced into the chamber. 
 
 It was broad and low, with casements looking out on 
 sunny meadows ; it was filled with what to me seemed 
 lumber, quaint shapes and devices, shabby draperies, and 
 strange wooden skeletons that filled me with terror. At 
 what I afterwards knew was an easel, stood a young man 
 painting; at a little distance sat a girl in a blue-serge 
 gown, and with a white peaked cap. 
 
 It was to the woman that Euss advanced ; taking me in 
 his mouth, and laying me at her feet ; then retreating 8 
 little, he gazed at her with eyes of wistful entreaty, thump* 
 ing hia bushy tail weightily on the floor. 
 
 The young painter laughed. 
 
 ' Another protegee, Euss ? Yerily thou art the most 
 benevolent of all four-footed Christians ! ' 
 
 It was a misnomer. "We have ever been pantheists; 
 pagans, if you will. Had the dogs of Jerusalem been 
 Christians, be sure that Pilate would have been torn limb 
 from limb, and Peter with the lie upon his lips been bayed 
 from out the hall of judgment. Where one dog lives and 
 loves, there at least is one friend faithful 
 
THE DOG AND THE DEVIL. 309 
 
 However, the speaker meant well, I doubt not ; and 
 Buss, understanding him, leapt on him in gratitude, 
 knowing that he had obtained asylum for my helplessness. 
 
 ' Poor little thing ! How thin it is, and how frightened ! ' 
 said the young woman, who stooped over me and touched 
 me gently. ' This is the fifth dancing c.og that Buss has 
 brought to me ! ' 
 
 Euss thumped his tail in confirmation. 
 
 ' The fifth ! "Where are they, then ? ' the artist asked. 
 
 * O, I have placed them out ; people around took them ; 
 they are happy/ the girl answered him, smiling and freeing 
 me from my coat. ' Ah, forgive me, Monsieur Carlos, I 
 forgot that I was sitting ; I have disarranged the pose ! ' 
 
 The painter looked down on her tenderly. 
 
 ' No matter ! The sun is low. "We will put the canvas 
 aside till to-inorrow. Then I will paint you with the sick 
 dog in your lap ; that soft pity becomes you so well ! ' 
 
 She smiled again, and a bright warmth came over the 
 cool clear olive of her cheek ; then she rose and bore me 
 from the chamber, followed by Russ. In a few moments 
 I w r as lying on some hay in a corner of a fragrant smelling 
 loft, and being fed with fresh milk and bread, whilst Buss 
 surveyed the operation with a good-natured and self-approv- 
 ing air. 
 
 ' That woman is an angel,' he said to me as she passed 
 out, leaving me cleansed, comforted, and refreshed. 
 
 < Who is she?' I asked feebly. 
 
 1 Our Madelon,' he returned, as though all were uttered 
 therein. ' I have lived with her ever since she was fifteen. 
 She is twenty-two now. Philip Ferrand left me here when 
 I was young. He never paid them, either, for his six 
 months' board and lodging. I have heard painters say 
 since then that he has risen to great eminence in England. 
 "Well, if he have, he has never thought of either his dog or 
 his debts. The old Mere Bris, too, here nursed him 
 through a dangerous illness ; and not so much as a kerchief 
 for her throat has Philip ever sent her in payment.' 
 
 ' But they have been good to you ? ' 
 
 * Good 1 Indeed they have. I was never happy with 
 him. He would swear at me, and, what was worse, sneer 
 at me. You know a dog would sooner be kicked than be 
 laughed at. Here I have been happy all my days. It ig 
 
PUCK. 
 
 such a still, quiet, pier >:mt place; and one does as one 
 likes. Sometimes I go out for a long ramble ; when I do, 
 I am sure to meet some animal in distress, and I rescue 
 him, if I can, and bring him to Madelon.' 
 
 ' That is very noble of you.' 
 
 ' O dear, no i It is just commonly right. Life would 
 get too smooth and too sleepy here if I did not go out 
 sometimes, and have a fight and a tussle over some bit of 
 evil-doing. For what else was I made so big and so strong? 
 Do you know what they say in my country ? ' 
 
 'No. InBussia?' 
 
 ' In Eussia. They don't let dogs enter churches, because 
 they say that a dog once betrayed Noah to the devil for 
 the sake of getting that thick warm coat which we northern 
 dogs now all wear. Now, that is a lie. It just shows the 
 way men distort things. Amongst our traditions, which of 
 course men can know nothing about, is one on that very 
 point ; and it runs thus, having nothing to do with Noah : 
 
 ' In the very early age of the world there was a dog, very 
 wise and brave, and who hated a lie most of all the sins 
 under the sun. 
 
 1 Now, this dog one day came to a church, where a 
 preacher was being listened to as though he were an angel 
 from heaven. The dog knew better, and sprang on him, 
 and tore off his robes, and showed a cloven hoof and a tail 
 beneath them. "Foolish people!" cried the dog, "your 
 priest is the devil of Falsehood ; " and he drove the devil 
 out of the sanctuary. 
 
 ' He went to a second church, and found the priest the 
 devil of Greed, and drove him out the same. 
 
 1 He went to a third, and there exposed the devil of 
 Lust ; and to a fourth, and there unmasked the devil of 
 Self-love ; and to a fifth, and there sprang upon the devil 
 <*f Empty-words ; and the people all stood aloof and 
 wondering, and cried, " Eh, then ! are our priests all devils?" 
 
 ' But the devils themselves were sorely frightened, and 
 said. " If the dog tear off all lies, then the trade of devils 
 and priests will be gone ? " So they banded themselves 
 together, and persuaded the foolish people that the dog 
 was a wizard, and must be killed for the weal of the world. 
 And in the end, the wicked people stoned the dog to 
 death ; and he died because he had dared to witness the 
 
THE DOO AND THE DEVIL. 311 
 
 truth, and had not left those fools alone to their worship 
 of falsehoods. 
 
 * And from that day, devils still having great influence 
 and, above all, being strong in all pulpits, whence the} 
 throw dust in the eyes of the multitude, they have always 
 hated all dogs, and have forbad them out of their churches.* 
 This is the true tradition. The other fable is a devil's 
 device.' 
 
 I thanked him for his instruction, but being still faint 
 and weary, longed in my soul to be quiet and sleep. Be- 
 sides, when you have just been in the grip of a cruel man, 
 it seems to you that the devils themselves can hardly be 
 very much worse to deal with, and you hardly feel that 
 proper abhorrence of them which you would do at any 
 other time. 
 
 Eeturning to present matters, I asked him who was that 
 youth whom I had seen in the painting-chamber. 
 
 ' O, an artist!' answered E-uss, with a little good-natured 
 Contempt. ' All the men who come to this place are artists. 
 That one has been here since the first days of March. By 
 name he is Carlos Merle. He is of very great genius cer- 
 tainly ; but I am not sure of him for all that. He is fitful 
 He works with great spurts, and then does nothing for 
 days, except lie on the grass and dream, or murmur to 
 Madelon. Genius is a great thing, of course ! but it is 
 not everything. Genius is like a spirit flame; but genius 
 must have its armour of application, as the flame must 
 have its lamp-shade, or both will go out under a blast of 
 rough wind.' 
 
 ' What was he doing when I saw them ? ' 
 
 ' Painting her portrait. All of them like to do that. It 
 occupied Jean Stenlinck six weeks last year to get the por- 
 traits of a brown pipkin and a market- cabbage ; and Jean 
 still is mad with himself because the pipkin won't look old 
 enough, and the cabbage will look too green on his canvas, 
 do what he will to alter them. Ah, the ecstasies I have 
 heard him go into over a well-painted wooden pail, or a 
 pinch of snuff in a paper ! They see nought to adore in 
 Teal pails and papers of snuff, then how can the mere 
 imitation of the thing have any worth ? ' 
 
 * Except in Scotland ; where I suppose that the people's gratitudf 
 to their Colley-dogs is too strong for Satan tc nquish it. E. 
 
312 PUCK. 
 
 I was too tired and ill to take any interest in Ms disquisi- 
 tion. Since that time I have heard plenty of art- jargon 
 talked by half the connoisseurs of Europe; but I am not 
 sure that I ever heard anything more direct to the point, 
 or more truly sensible, than this objection from E-uss. But 
 Euss is not the world ; and meantime Meissonniers fetch 
 the same prices as Raphaels. 
 
 ' I like artists,' continued my instructor, laying his mas- 
 sive form down to rest. 'They are stupid, you know. 
 They will stare for hours at a ripple of water, or a few 
 twisted twigs, and they always talk as if heaven and earth 
 depended on their hogs' bristles and their oil-tubes. But 
 they are a kindly, simple, genial race as a rule. They are 
 so ignorant, and know nothing about a bird except the hue 
 of its feathers, and nothing about a dog except the tint of 
 his coat, and nothing about a woman except the red in her 
 lips and the white in her limbs, going altogether by the 
 surface of things and fancying they have got " atmo- 
 sphere " in dabs of grey and yellow, and " distance " in 
 streaks of flake-white, and " sunset " in scumbled lakes 
 and ochres. Yet they are very happy in that innocent 
 blissful stupidity of theirs, and, like all happy people, are 
 good-natured. Of course no dog was ever so ridiculous as 
 to draw an imitation dog, and take pleasure in the canvas 
 creature that could not bark, or move, or smell, or feel. 
 But then so many of men's pursuits do look so trivial to 
 us that I scarcely think Art, as they call it, is much worse 
 than anything else. And it hurts nothing, which is more 
 than can be said of the generality of their pastimes.' 
 
 ' You do not think well of men ? ' 
 
 ' O yes, well enough,' said Buss carelessly, as a giant will 
 speak of pigmies. * There are only two animals in all 
 creation that I hate, and they are a cat and a woman.' 
 
 ' You think these two alike, then ? ' 
 
 ' Alike' My dear little soul, they are one and the same ! 
 When cats die, they become women. Did you never know 
 that ? Look at their pretty little teeth, their velvet skins, 
 their agile grace, their idolatry of warmth, and ease, and 
 good living; their chilly sensualism; their frolics, that 
 always end in a scratch to their playmate ; their passion 
 for chasing a mouse or a lover, that, once caught and slain, 
 is valueless vermin for evermore in their sight. The cats 
 
THE DOG AND THE DEVIL. 3 T 3 
 
 keep all their characteristics when they turn into women. 
 We become men, it is said, though I doubt it myself j for 
 it would be hard to descend in the scale of creation. But 
 dogs who believe this affirm that our singular antagonism 
 to cats is instinctive, as against our future betrayers in 
 our future state of existence. The dog that kills a cat 
 will, it is said by our poodle-pundits, meet that cat as a 
 woman when he is a man, and will marry her. There 
 seems no justice in so terrible a punishment ; but if true, it 
 serves to explain the " cat and dog life " of most marriages.* 
 
 And with that Euss, fatigued by his long gallop through 
 the heat of the noon, composed himself to sleep ; and slept 
 with fits and starts, and mutterings and growls, caused, he 
 afterwards told me, by a dream which he had of a tortoise- 
 shell cat, whom he had once slain in the days of his youth, 
 incited thereto by his master, and who appeared to him in 
 his slumber, with prophecies of her vengeance. 
 
 I, overpowered with pain, joy, fear, and fatigue, all com- 
 mingled, slept also, and forgot in slumber all my bruises, 
 my woes, and my exile. 
 
 Ah, when I awoke, how delightful it was ! No coat im- 
 prisoning my limbs, no stick shaken in my eyes, no kick 
 thrust into my ribs, no curse hurled at my defenceless 
 weakness ! It was all calm, and still, and sweet. The 
 bright summer sun-light came streaming in ; the apple- 
 boughs, fruit-laden, swayed against the windows, the cocka 
 crew near at hand, the sheep bleated afar, the pleasant 
 scents of fruits and of blossoms and of herbs blew in upon 
 the south-west wind ; and I rejoiced in all this freedom, 
 peace, and loveliness, wdth that gratitude which is a dog's 
 religion. 
 
 "Why have you not more of it in yours ? 
 
 The Romans, I have heard tell, veiled their faces in 
 prayer : that was fear. The Greeks stood, with eyea 
 fastened on the earth : that was meditation. The Chris- 
 tians kneel : that is entreaty. There were but the poor 
 Peruvians, who bowed low, lifting their eyes to heaven, 
 and showering kisses in the air : that was rejoicing, thank- 
 fulness, and adoration, all in one. 
 
 And you think you are holier than they were ? 
 
 ", think so if you like. 
 
314 PUCK. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 THE SILVEB STAG. 
 
 IT was a tranquil fragrant place, tins little hostelry oi 
 the Silver Stag. It was quite old, and very rustic, though 
 yet so near to Paris. 
 
 Its gardens were famous for their peaches, and its hives 
 for their honey. It was a drowsy, shady, odorous place, 
 full of the murmurs of birds, and of bees, and of ever- 
 tremulous leaves. Untrained roses bloomed in every nook 
 and corner, and pigeons and dovea by the hundred flew all 
 day in and out of a great square stone dove-cot, that had 
 been built in the years of the Dame de Beaute. For 
 human life about it there were only the cheery old woman, 
 Manon Bris, her daughter Madelon, and the painter Carlos 
 Merle. 
 
 Their house was much frequented by artists, who came 
 thither for sake of economy, fresh air, solitude, and the 
 beauty of the woods ; men could live there for a few francs 
 a week, enjoy all the stillness of the country, watch all the 
 charm of woodland life, and yet withal be in Paris in less 
 than an hour. The place was indeed consecrated to artists, 
 and few others ever intruded there, unless it were some 
 gay group of students and grisettes on a Sunday, after a 
 childish frolic in the wood, and some wild rounds of games 
 and dances under the orchard-trees. All the week it was 
 very still, still as death, except for the fluttering of the 
 doves, and the singing of the birds, and the turning of the 
 water-wheel, and now and then the bay of Buss. 
 
 For old Manon Bris, being well off, and her daughter 
 well dowered, and being, moreover, an honest, fearless, 
 pure-living old woman, cared not if she displeased her 
 patrons ; and set her face straight against all those Greek- 
 limbed models and Egyptian-eyed companions whom the 
 Dainters would fain have brought thither ; and she would 
 have none of them no, not if it were ever so and made 
 lier will felt on her guests, who laughed indeed, but yet 
 obeyed, and came there only with male comrades. 
 
 It is needless to say what a paradise this place was to mo 
 a poor little terrified, agonised, hunted creature, who f of 
 
THE SILVER STAG. 315 
 
 a year and a half had only known blows, and kicks, and 
 hunger, and thirst, and suffering. They let ine dream or 
 doze all my hours away ; play at will in the sweet unshaven 
 grasses ; roll the fallen apples about as balls, and roam 
 from dawn to twilight in the deep old leafy ways of the 
 fragrant-scented garden. 
 
 It seemed to me happiness exquisite enough only to 
 stretch my limbs in peace on the cool moss ; only to pass 
 the whole blithe day without one voice raised in anger 
 at me ; only just to be fed, and to be clean, and to be left 
 quite free. The passion for freedom is intense in dogs. 
 Men do not much mind the gall of fetters, if so be that 
 those fetters are well gilded. But the gilt on a chain 
 makes it none the better to us ; and we pine, and fret, and 
 thirst for liberty, with a force you can never know you, 
 who so continually sell yourselves into bondage for the 
 sake of the purchase-price. 
 
 Moreover, there was one person very good to me ever 
 gentle, ever thoughtful, ever kind. This was Madelon 
 Bris. 
 
 She had not very much beauty, this Madelon ; not at 
 least after the vivid colouring and the exuberant outline of 
 Avice Dare, who had the scarlet bloom on her cheeks and 
 the northern gold in her hair. She was very slender, and 
 very pale, with great dark changing eyes, and swift small 
 feet, and a mouth which, though somewhat large, yet had a 
 smile so sweet that it had loveliness. 
 
 In every iota she was so unlike to what Avice had been 
 in the old Peak days, that the contrast was almost startling 
 to me. She was so skilled at every sort of work ; so 
 rapid and lithe in every kind of movement ; she seemed so 
 perpetually content; she sang so constantly over her 
 labour, indoor or out. 
 
 She knew every fowl by name; she would twist tho 
 Jmmblest grasses and flowers into such pretty forms ; she 
 did all household things with so neat yet so elegant a 
 touch ; she dressed so simply, yet with so much grace and 
 suitability for the work she did ; with never any ornament 
 save only one plain and massive cross of gold hung on a 
 string of ivory beads. Everything about her was in 
 Harmony, and her life ' seemed set to music,' though it was 
 a life of continual industry, and of even prosaic cares. 
 
3*5 PUCK. 
 
 Her mother was very old, and did little save sit in the 
 Bim and read her well-worn book of Hours. All the toil 
 and the thought of the place fell upon Madelon ; and there 
 were no boards so white, no brazen pans so shining, no 
 pottery so clean, no honey so clear, no poultry so plump, 
 no plants so healthful, no omelettes so lightly tossed, no 
 bed so sweetly-lavender-scented, as those of the Silver 
 Staff. 
 
 This life of hers was prose, even as had been Avice's ; 
 but there was a poetry in it. 
 
 It was not heavy-weighted with tawdry f<>' i; cs; it was, 
 not fevered with discontent ; it was not disfigured by an 
 everlasting straining after something unpossessed; it was 
 not hideous with the dead incurable poverty of spirit, and 
 abject slavery to the dominion of ignorance, that are so 
 appallingly hopeless in the lives of your English poor. 
 
 A vice had wreathed huge glass beads on her throat, red 
 and yellow and blue ; Madelon never wore but the ivory 
 necklace that had been her great-great-grandmother's. 
 Avice had worn a gown of many colours, and of as many 
 rags ; Madelon wore one of dark-blue serge, but whole and 
 deftly shaped. Avice, gathering radishes for the dinner- 
 table, had thrown them all together, wet and soiled with 
 the clods of their native earth; Madelon washed them 
 needfully, set them in little dainty pyramids of red and 
 white, and garnished the whole with blossoming thyme. 
 Avice at her work had kept her mouth sullenly tight set ; 
 Madelon at her work sung like some blithe bird. In Avice 
 poverty had been dire ugliness and sulky wrath ; in 
 Madelon poverty was smiling patience and thoughtful 
 content. 
 
 But there is no need to amplify examples; the one was 
 Gallic and the other British. 
 
 Life went very softly and happily at the Silver Stag: old 
 Manon Bris was a cheery old soul, with a stock of quaint 
 legendary lore from her native province and a mirthful 
 temper combined with a sturdy will. There was no one at 
 the house that summer save Carlos Merle, and he lived 
 almost like their son and brother. He was a man of seven 
 or eight-and-twenty, Bohemian, enthusiast, and artist ; he 
 bad few friends and little gold, but in compensation he had 
 a most singular personal beauty and as singular a genius 
 for art 
 
THE SILVER STAG. 31? 
 
 I have never in my life seen a man more beautiful than 
 Carlos ; he was like some perfect classic statue, and was 
 Radiantly fair with golden locks, though the country of his 
 'birth was far away south, touching the Pyrenees. They 
 did not know very much about him j but from what he had 
 said it had transpired that his mother had been a woman of 
 noble family, who had contracted a low marriage with an 
 opera-singer. Both were dead now, leaving him their 
 beauty, their artistic dreams, and their poverty. 
 
 It was easy to see that there was more than friendship 
 betwixt Madelon and her guesb. She was reserved with 
 him ; and as shy as the natural dignity about her, and her 
 clear and candid nature, permitted : but he never addressed 
 her without the blood tinging her pale cheek, and he never 
 entered her presence without her deep dark eyes kindling 
 with a richer glow. As for the young man, he seemed ir- 
 resistibly drawn to the peace and purity of this character 
 so opposite to his own ; he watched her swift yet soft move- 
 ments as she went about her household labour, oJine Jiast, 
 olme rasf, with the same pleasure that he watched the 
 graceful flight of a dove ; he appealed to her continually 
 for her opinion of his art, and listened to her with loving 
 reverence. For Madslon, though by no means what you 
 term an educated woman, was of that natural intelligence 
 which to a great extent supplies education by observation, 
 and had heard and seen so much of art from her childhood, 
 that her power of criticism was considerable when her 
 modesty allowed her to give judgment. 
 
 She had a strong influence over Carlos Merle: when he, 
 with his native southern indolence, would lie all through 
 the long sunny hours under the acacia shadows, dreaming 
 of many pictures but executing none, she would approach 
 him gently and murmur : ' Dreams are the artist's heaven ; 
 but they are not the highway to fame, my friend.' And 
 he, roused by that hint, would then rise, and shake himself, 
 and go within, to work at his great picture for the Salon, 
 or bring his tools into the open air, and sketch all manner 
 of living things and floral life around him. 
 
 ' They love one another,' I said to Buss, when I had been 
 there a week or two. 
 
 ' I suppose they do,' he answered reluctantly. ' But I 
 hardly approve of* it. There have been many better men 
 here than Carlos ; and she has never cared for them,* 
 
318 PUuK. 
 
 ' What is amiss with Carlos ? ' I asked ; for indeed 1 
 liked the young man myself ; he was gentle of nature, and 
 often played with me. 
 
 'There is this amiss/ said shrewd Euss. 'He is thfl 
 weaker of the two. Not in talent ; he has superb talent. 
 but in character. And there is always woe in such cases.'' 
 
 ' May she not strengthen him ? inspire him ? ' 
 
 ' Where did you catch up that human cant ? Do not 
 believe that women ever do that. When a man is strong; 
 but has fallen, a great-minded woman may raise him to hef 
 height, to above her height ; if she only move him with 
 passion enough. But where a man is radically weak it is not 
 in any woman to do it. A mistress may, perhaps, because 
 the tenure of a mistress is always uncertain, which piques 
 and spurs him to retain her ; but a wife never will. Her 
 attraction falls away into habit ; and her epell dissolves in 
 familiarity.' 
 
 1 But look what influence Madelon has over this painter 
 already.' 
 
 ' Ah yes. Because he is a little in love with her ; and 
 is under the first charm of her sweet modest worth, her 
 lofty pure vdsdorn. But if he were to marry her these 
 would soon grow only wearisome to him, if only by reason 
 of their superiority to himself ; and he would be sure to 
 forsake them for sake of some warmer, fuller, and more 
 merely sensual charm. Madelon is an angel to those who 
 have studied her nature ; but she is only a quiet good girl 
 of the people to others, and she cannot, you know, be 
 called beautiful.' 
 
 1 Are only beautiful women beloved then ? ' 
 
 ' O yes ! I have seen men mad for a woman who had 
 scarcely a good feature in her face ; but then sho had a 
 diable au corps that supplied the place of beauty and se- 
 duced them.' 
 
 ' A diable au corps ? ' 
 
 'Au corps, et a V esprit, et a Vdme \ A woman who was 
 once a cat, my dear : which Madelon never can have been.' 
 
 I said nothing ; though I wondered greatly why a woman 
 was likely to be less beloved because she was an angel 
 than if she had been a cat ; and I wondered also why 
 diable au corps should be such a great attraction. 
 
 I do not wonder now : nor will you either, if you have 
 
THE SILVER STAG. $19 
 
 studied the sex, and know all that Buss meant by the three 
 iittle words. 
 
 However, despite the chill that he threw on it, I con- 
 tinued to weave my little romance in those pleasant sum- 
 mer days, under the great blossoming lilacs and lindens of 
 the place of my refuge ; and I think that Madelon and 
 Carlos Merle wove theirs too. 
 
 She was seldom alone with him, for the white tower of 
 Mere Manon's head-gear was ever in sight, in the same 
 chamber or through some open door. But continually 
 when she was out among the flowers, or the poultry, or the 
 beehives, tying up the sweet-scented stocks, or gathering 
 the rose-leaves to dry for pot-pourri, or calling the pigeons 
 Around for food, Carlos would come down from his painting 
 attic, and saunter forth likewise, and stand beside her in his 
 picturesque linen blouse, with the sun on his handsome 
 golden head, emoking, and smiling, and sometimes tender- 
 ing a nominal help. 
 
 And at such times he would talk tenderly to her, wist- 
 fully and sadly too, for he was alone in the world, and poor, 
 and very ambitious ; and Madelon would let the rose-leaves 
 roll down on the turf again, or the grain all tumble in a heap 
 at her feet, whilst she listened with tears that did not fall 
 just gleaming in her great soft eyes ; the tears of a yearn- 
 ing sympathy which was, though she scarcely knew it, love. 
 
 At such times, also, Euss would growl, where he waa 
 stretched full length under the trees. 
 
 'There have been many better men here than he,' he 
 would grumble in my ear ; * and she never hearkened to 
 one of them like that. 0, he is well enough ; I do not 
 say anything against him ; but he is of the stuff, look you, 
 to make a great name by his genius one hour, and kill him- 
 self for a courtesan the next.' 
 
 I, with the obstinacy of youth, disbelieved his verdict, 
 and thought much better things of this sunny-haired 
 southerner. 
 
 I lived a good deal in Carlos' atelier ; in rainy days I waa 
 there entirely ; and I think that I got to understand him 
 better than stout old Euss, with his preconceived conclu- 
 sions, ever did. Experience is an excellent spy-glass ; but it 
 has this drawback, that prejudice very often clouds the lens. 
 
 Carlos, with all his beaufcy and talent, and mingled force 
 
320 PUCh 
 
 tnd indolence, had had but a rough life ; and had becis 
 sorely tossed and evilly entreated, and had suffered much 
 from poverty and other ills. 
 
 This place in its peace and poetry was much such a haven 
 to him as to me ; its calm idyllic days were sweet to him. as 
 to myself ; life here, under these blossoming limes, these 
 clouds of foliage and flowers, seemed so still and fair a 
 thing, so fit for dreams, so free of pain. 
 
 There are pauses in all your lives in which a balmy rest 
 comes unto you, and you say, ' It is well with me ; I wil] 
 look neither at the years that lie behind me nor before. 1 
 It was such a pause in this young painter's. In such a 
 season a young man's 'fancies lightly turn to thoughts of 
 love ' love for any woman near to him; any woman youth- 
 ful enough to have in her the likeness of an ideal, and fair 
 enough to seem to him the source whence his peace comes. 
 Madelon was both these , and she was more. She was a 
 woman who won his reverence by her pure straight 
 thoughts, free of all guile ; who charmed his eye with the 
 grave grace and the lithe ease of her movements ; and who 
 made that poverty, which so long had been the King cf 
 Terrors to him, wear an aspect of sweet serene simplicity, 
 which appeared of higher worth than riches. 
 
 He loved her therefore ; loved her truthfully ; if in such 
 a season of summer and of rest he would have thus loved 
 equally any mindless, laughing, red-lipped girl, or any 
 dark-browed, lustrous-eyed faithless wanton, who should 
 have been beside him in that soft maturity of the full year. 
 
 The influence Madelon had on him was very genuine, if 
 not destined to be very enduring. She seldom advised ; 
 she never preached ; she was disposed rather to undervalue 
 her own powers of judgment, than to exalt them. But tho 
 very sight of her, in the untiring industry of her simple 
 life, was of itself a tonic to the indolence of genius ; and 
 beneath her honest humility thera was a force of enthu- 
 siasm for all high purpose and achievement, that acted as a 
 fulcrum to the too facile talents of her guest. 
 
 What he felt towards her it was plain to see ; her own 
 feelings were deeper hid, and less easy to guess. But that 
 his presence was welcome to her, and his success dear, there 
 could be little doubt ; and her sincere belief in the great- 
 ness of his future was in itself enough to stimulate a mar 
 
TUB SILVER STAO. 321 
 
 f spirit and of sensitiveness towards the realization of its 
 inspiring prophecies. 
 
 So the summer: sped sweetly away with us all ; the pass- 
 ing of time scarcely noticed except by the change of apple- 
 bucU to fruit, and the appearance and disappearance of the 
 ruddy gold- starred strawberries underneath their leaves. 
 
 Two other artists passed part of the season there, but 
 they were two aged men, severally painters of landscape 
 and of animals ; and their presence in no way jarred upon 
 the harmony. Indeed, in a manner they contributed to it, 
 for they had both fame and influence in the world of art, 
 and they also saw great things in the works of Carlos 
 Merle, and bade him be sure of that ultimate victory over 
 the world, of which he often despaired : the ten years in 
 which he had studied art having been a decade 01 failure, 
 neglect, and privation. 
 
 With fresh heart put into him, the young man laboured 
 hard during those long, clear, midsummer days ; taking his 
 recompense in the cool of the'^ dewy evenings, with the 
 great stars shining out, and the nightingales singing in the 
 orchard, whilst Madelon, sitting in the porch, let her work 
 fall upon her knee, and listened to him as he murmured 
 passages of the Nuits d'Octolre, or of the Chants du Ore- 
 puscule, their melancholy and fervid poetry seeming, indeed, 
 to be the very voices of the night. 
 
 I did not share B-uss's contempt for Art. To me it 
 always appeared a marvellous sorcery this, through which, 
 by means of pigments and of oils, all things of nature were 
 made to have their being on a dull, dead piece of pine-wood 
 or of paper. I have moaned at the misery of Landseer's 
 ' St. Griles ;' I have barked furiously at the hunting scenes 
 of Snyders ; I have howled with grief before the ' Dead 
 Trumpeter's dog' at Avignon; I have longed for old Trust 
 to see the sheep of Bonheur and of Yerbceckhoven ; I 
 have thirsted to pull the meat out of the basket of that 
 bloated 'Jack in Office;' therefore there cannot be a 
 doubt but that I have the true feeling for art in me. Eor 
 this lies, I humbly submit, not half so much in the sharp- 
 ness of criticism, as it does in the credence of sympathy. 
 
 Hence I watched with interest the progress of the great 
 picture with which Carlos was about to challenge the 
 verdict of Paris in the "Winter exhibition of the Salon, 
 
PUCK. 
 
 It was a very peculiar picture ; in a style that is not 
 popular in these days, when you are fond of little cabinet 
 sketches of every-day life, and of a realism that faithfully 
 reproduces every rent in a worn carpet, every knot in a 
 carpenter's piece of deal. 
 
 This picture of Carlos' was gorgeous in hue, shadowy in 
 meaning, had but little detail, and was of a terrible force 
 and a passionate poetry. And yet the subject was very 
 simple. It was only a man lying dead in a hot glow of 
 sunset, with a wondrous fair face, and a fearful woe set 
 upon it ; self-slain it was easy to tell : and away from him, 
 looking back over her shoulder, was stealing through the 
 hush and the heat, with the light of the west all about her 
 like a fire, a woman, with a wicked laugh upon her mouth, 
 and her bosom all bare, and her hand gathering up rich 
 disordered gold-broidered robes. This strange work, which 
 had no story, was called simply ' Paustine,' and it spoke 
 for itself. 
 
 It was of this subject and its treatment that the painters 
 who came and went that summer at the Silver Stag pre- 
 dicted such great things. 
 
 There was a little one, a highly-finished study also, which 
 he intended to send with it, for sake of the contrast, as I 
 suppose. This was quite a small picture of a woman 
 sitting in cool, grey, silver-toned light, that came in through 
 an ivy-hung lattice'; her work, a common shirt of serge, 
 had fallen on her lap, and her eyes were lifted to the soft 
 night sky without, where the first stars were gleaming. 
 The subject was of the slightest and simplest ; but the 
 colour, the patience, the tender poetry in this moonlit face, 
 made it beautiful. It was on this that he had been en- 
 gaged when Buss told me that he was painting the portrait 
 of Madelon Bris. 
 
 'Send them both,' said one of the aged artists to him. 
 ' They show that you can feel and fathom the two extreme 
 opposites of woman's nature, Without being able to do 
 this, neither painter nor poet can be great.' 
 
 Doubtless Ihe old man was right. 
 
 But how many of you men write, think, paint, and speak 
 as thought there were but one of these two sides to woman- 
 hood according as the brazen, or the silvern, round of the 
 shield has been turned to you. 
 
TUB SILVER STAQ. 323 
 
 . It was into autumn when those two paintings were alto- 
 gether completed. Madelon looked at the one which so 
 much resembled her, of which she had indeed been alike 
 the theme and the inspiration, with a shy sweet pleasure, 
 that blushed a little in her pale cheek, and spoke eloquently 
 in her dark eyes. But before the Faustine she stood far 
 longer, lost in thought ; gazing at it with an intensity, a 
 wistful wonder, a fascinated horror even as a woman may 
 gaze at a rival who, though steeped in sin, is yet through 
 sin victorious. 
 
 It was in the hush of an October evening that she stood 
 looking at it thus for the hundredth time, his latest toucli 
 having been put to it ; making more wicked the laugh of 
 the courtesan, more lurid the sunset glow, more glittering 
 her robes of cloth of gold, more white and rigid the face of 
 the dead man. 
 
 The evening was very warm. The leaves of the creepers 
 around the wide lattice were tinged with amber and 
 crimson; the sun was burning in the west; the great 
 golden pears hung motionless amongst their still green 
 leaves ; the fragrance of ripened fruit, and of damp earth, 
 and of late roses came in on the western wind. 
 
 ' The large wooden chamber was half in shadow, half in 
 light ; the only sound upon the silence was the lowing of 
 the cattle in the distant fields, and the coo of the doves 
 ere they settle to rest. All was cool, and still, and balmy. 
 
 Carlos approached her when she stood in front of the 
 Faustine. 
 
 ' "Why will you look so much at that picture ? ' he said 
 gently. * Why not look rather at the other, which is like 
 yourself ? ' 
 
 Madelon did not answer for some moments, and I thought 
 a faint shudder came over her. 
 
 * It has the fascination of the unknown for me,' she 
 answered simply. 
 
 * The unknown, indeed ! But that is not all ? ' 
 
 'Not quite all. I am trying to see wherein lies that 
 woman's power that terrible power which has ended in 
 stretching him there dead.' 
 
 ' Tou cannot. No woman can see it unless she be like 
 that woman herself.' 
 
 ' Are you sure of that ? I am not." 
 
324 PUCK. 
 
 ' "Why ? You say it is the sorcery of the unknown, 
 In saying that you have said yon cannot comprehend it.' 
 
 ' I ought to have said rather the unfamiliar. It cannot 
 be unknown to me, since I feel it. It hurts me; it oppresses 
 me ; it is an awful thing that witchery of aio, that has 
 such irresistible seduction for all men ! ' 
 
 And whilst she spoke she still gazed with the same pecu- 
 liar intensity of regard into the wicked eyes of the Faus- 
 tine, till it seemed as though she read a living mind, a 
 living vice, a living lie, in that pictured semblance of a gold- 
 decked crime. 
 
 Carlos, in answer, moved the other picture before her. 
 
 4 Nay,' he said softly, ' if Faustine triumph over some, 
 others are saved saved by such pure eyes as those that 
 win them to their higher dreams, to duty, peace, and 
 honour. For a season Faustine may allure ; but the gold 
 on her garments is bought by blood, and the cruel hot sun 
 of passion kills. Men seek to rest for their lifetime in 
 the holy light of those calm stars.' 
 
 Madelon smiled : the smile of a woman who believes, 
 and for w T honi belief is beatitude. Yet the smile died soon 
 upon her face, and she looked not at the woman who sat 
 dreaming in the starlight, but still on the wicked eyes of 
 the Faustine. 
 
 'It maybe so/ she said, under her breath; 'but your 
 pencil was closer to truth than your words. Look ! he 
 lies dead ; and she she sits there by the lattice alone. 1 
 
 Then she passed swiftly from the painting chamber, as 
 though fearful that her answer bcre some interpretation 
 that she could ill endure to hear him give; some self- 
 betrayal which for one brief moment had escaped her. 
 
 Alone ! Carlos echoed i;ae word as he stood before tho 
 little portrait, which caught the fading light 2 the west 
 upon it. The word seemed to strike heavily on his ear ; 
 dully upon his heart, as with the melancholy of a foreboding. 
 
 This little slender, simple study had more sadness in it 
 than he had ever noted whilst occupied in creating it. Tho 
 weary folding of the hands, the meditation of the uplifted 
 eyes, the thoughtful shadowy smile upon the mouth, the 
 faint grey light that seemed to float around the form ; all 
 were sad* with the infinite sadness of resignation, the sad- 
 ness of a woman alone with her perished youth j alone 
 for evermore. 
 
TUB SILVER STAQ 25 
 
 The face was the face of Madelon ; but on it was a griel, 
 Ground it was a solitude, that were as yet far from her; that 
 ss yet had never even touched her cheerful tranquil life. 
 
 1 It is Faustine, who dies alone ! ' he muttered, as though 
 he repelled the thought her words had conjured up. ' Not 
 such women as Madelon. They die in the ripeness of 
 time, after a life of peace, with their children and their 
 grandchildren about them/ 
 
 He went to the open window and leaned his arms on ifc, 
 and looked down on the garden below. He was very 
 thoughtful and touched, I thought with a reflex of Made- 
 Ion's sadness. 
 
 I wondered if he had ever been beneath the sorcery of 
 such as that Faustine whom he had painted there; or, 
 whether it were only by some foreboding of a fate to come 
 that he had dreamed that dark and awful story, and 
 wrought it out with colour till it seemed the'record of a fact. 
 I could not but fancy it the last. 
 
 The fair face of this young painter was very frank, and 
 tender, and eager ; it had sorrow and unrest, and desire 
 upon it, but these were all untainted by evil : it had rather 
 the longing for a fuller life in it than the fatigue of one by 
 whom the uttermost possibilities of life have been exhausted. 
 Perhaps I hardly reasoned thus, then ; but I felt it : and 
 now, looking back to that time through the light of my ex- 
 perience, I ain certain that I translated aright the look 
 upon his features. 
 
 As he leaned on the wooden window-sill, in the still green 
 garden beneath, where the moonlight already was stealing, 
 he saw Madelon. She was walking amidst her flowers, 
 that grew half wild amidst the grass and bushes. Now 
 and then she stooped and raised some fallen carnation, or 
 lifted some rose, which, overladen with dew, drooped down- 
 ward and trembled, as a human heart that is too happy 
 sinks and trembles with apprehension. 
 
 Now and then, too, she moved aside, that her foot should 
 not crush some tiny crawling thing, that had its one short 
 hour of harmless joy amongst the leaves and grasses : now 
 and then she lifted some little brown glow-worm, with its 
 brightly burning lamp, up to some place of safety, on a 
 leafy bough, or in the cup of a late lily : nay, even a beeth: 
 creeping with its load homeward, or even a sand- worm 
 
FUCK. 
 
 crawling in the gravelled way, she stepped aside from 
 leaving them their life. 
 
 "Would that more amongst you had that tender pity; 
 had that reverence for the wonder of existence which is as 
 great in the tiniest fly that wings its way as in the great 
 leviathan of the sea. All things must suffer, and must 
 think, since all things dread and trust : can there be fear 
 without mental torture? Can there be trust without 
 emotional power? Ay and thrusting a pin through the 
 beetle's body and cutting the brain from the living pigeon, 
 in your hideous dissecting rooms, will not teach you this ; 
 it will only teach you to be blind to it. 
 
 The young man leaning from the casement, hidden him- 
 self amongst the thick screen of the ivy, watched her as 
 she moved. Perhaps that gentle compassion for the * low- 
 liest thing that lived ' had greater sweetness in his sight 
 because, to him, the world of men had been cruel and hard ; 
 and the world of women had had for him some scoru,*since 
 he had not owned the gold that buys their kisses. 
 
 When the stones of poverty and of disdain are rained 
 from many hands upon one single head, he on whom they 
 fall being defenceless grows one of two things beneath 
 the storm : either he becomes case-hardened and ruthless 
 in revenge or he grows weak as water, and is ready to sell 
 his soul for the sweet balm of pity. To Carlos Merle 
 with the heart of a woman in his god-like young form 
 pity and comprehension bore so fair a likeness to love that, 
 paying them with gratitude, he dreamed gratitude was also 
 love. This error is common with you all ; commonest with 
 the tenderest of your natures: but it is an error which 
 often costs you more heavily than sin itself. For, amongst 
 you men and women, though there be absolute passion 
 without love, there is no absolute love without passion. 
 
 He watched her thus awhile, where she went amongst 
 the trees, with the dark graceful folds of her dress sweep- 
 ing aside the dews. 
 
 On a sudden impulse, as it seemed, he left his studio, and 
 ran lightly down the old broad oaken stairs, and went out 
 into the garden. He was at her side ere she had heard hia 
 steps that fell so lightly on the grass. She started a little, 
 and turned from him, as I noticed, having followed him 
 myself out into the balmy evening air. 
 
THE SILVER STAG. 3 2 7 
 
 1 Madelon,' lie said to her, with a tremor in his voice, 
 4 Madelon, it you will let it be so, you shall never sit at 
 the lattice alone.' 
 
 She gave him one quick glance under her dark deep 
 lashes : then she was silent, her hand gathering the feath- 
 ery crowns of tall seedling grasses that grew round her. 
 
 1 May it be so ? ' he murmured. ' Have you faith enough 
 in me to let me enter your life ? You can make me what 
 you will : will you give me place beside you always ? ' 
 
 She did not answer, but her drooped face flushed till all 
 its colourlessness changed to a hot scarlet radiance, like the 
 flush on the latest autumn roses. 
 
 ' Tell me,' he murmured eagerly. ' Can it be that you 
 have less pity for me than for that glow-worm that you 
 lifted out of harm a moment ago ? I love you, Madelon ; 
 you must have known it all this summer through, and I 
 think I think you have some love to give in recom- 
 pense ? ' 
 
 The glow died from her face ; great tears stood unshed 
 in her eyes ; she trembled greatly whilst she left her hand 
 in his. 
 
 ' It is not a question of my love,' she said, scarce audibly. 
 * It is of your peace, your greatness, your future. 
 These lie far apart from me.' 
 
 ' They lie with you : with you alone ! ' he answered her, 
 with passionate belief in his own truth as he drew her 
 nearer and nearer, and stooped his golden head, and kissed 
 her where they stood beneath the great shadows of the dy. 
 ing limes.' 
 
 Tor a moment Madelon surrendered herself to that sweet 
 intoxication. But the breathless trance endured but a little 
 space ; she drew herself from him, and looked straight up, 
 into his eyes with that deep glance of hers that had in it' 
 such exhaustless tenderness and power of sacrifice. 
 
 ' You speak in haste/ she said tremulously. * I am the 
 only woman near you ; you have found some comprehension 
 and some sympathy in me ; you have a noble nature; and 
 you offer me love. But, though I love you, Carlos, I am 
 not fit to be your wife ! ' 
 
 1 Not fit ! My God ! ' he cried, ' what grace, what excel* 
 lence, what purity of womanhood have there ever beea 
 Cound lacking in you ? ' 
 
3 28 PUCK. 
 
 1 She smiled faintly ; but her eyes never lost their steady, 
 meditative wistfulness of regard. 
 
 1 Nay, I speak the truth,' she said gently. ' I am but one 
 of the people ; I have ever laboured with my hands ; I am 
 ignorant, even if sympathy teach me some few things. 
 You will be great, my friend; you will have fame, and 
 fame brings fortune; I shall be no meet companion fop 
 you in that new life which so surely waits for you. I lovb 
 you ' 
 
 She paused, and stretched her hands out to Kim in a ges- 
 ture of infinite tenderness, though her foce the while grew 
 yet more deadly pale. 
 
 ' See ! I do not seek to deny it or Kiie it. I love you, 
 Carlos, but because I love you, I know I know that there 
 will be no place for me in your future ! ' 
 
 He seized her outstretched hands, and poured forth 
 poetic burning words of eloquence, that thrilled out upon 
 the stillness of the autumn twilight, and seemed to scorch 
 and stagger her as they pierced her heart. But for her he 
 swore he had been worthless ; crushed beneath the load of 
 poverty and of the world's neglect. Her influence alone 
 had breathed into him the strength to give form and sub- 
 stance to the fair dream of an idle brain. He had no name 
 nor place in the world as yet : should he win either ever, it 
 would be through her inspiration ; through that brave ac- 
 ceptance of the yoke of toil, which, beholding in her, he 
 at length had followed. 
 
 So he urged and pleaded till the ardent eloquence of 
 woijds was as a whirl of fire in which her thought and her 
 will were caught, and blinded, and consumed. Yet not 
 wholly ; for this woman's love was unlike the love of heir 
 sex without one taint of selfishness, or of vain desire, 01 
 of untrue appraisement. 
 
 ' You speak generously,' she murmured, whilst her heart 
 heaved and her lips quivered. * But you speak in blindness. 
 You love me now O yes ! but for how long ? Nay, it ia 
 not that I distrust you. I distrust myself. I may be well in 
 your sight here here in solitude and in summer but with 
 the moment that brings you fame, and that the world usurps 
 you, I shall be no more than a kindly memory in your heart ' 
 
 ' A memory ! If ever 1 love you less, if ever I leave your 
 eide, may God ' 
 
THE SILVER ~TAQ. ^q 
 
 ' Hush ! The future is not in yotlr nanas ; not in mine. 
 Call no curse upon it. It will not be possible that you should 
 iove me always. I have not beauty ; I have not knowledge ; 
 Tarn only, after all, apeasant trained to household labours. I 
 I were to become your wife, what would you say in the years to 
 eonie ? you would say this womanhas no likeness with my life 
 s nVstands now; no kinship with my fame; no fitness for my 
 career, You would say it assuredly in your own heart ' 
 
 * Are you mad ? ' he cried with impetuous interruption. 
 * Am I a noble or a prince, that you should look on me with 
 this proud humility treat me thus, as though I were some 
 creature of a higher sphere descended to you ? You know 
 my history, my poverty, my dependence on my own labours ; 
 the neglect the world has had of me, the chances that I shall 
 never be able, do what I may, to give my name to fame. As I 
 stand now, I am barely your equal. You have certain 
 possessions ; I have none. To me this sweet and tranquil 
 place is the happiest home that I have ever known. Is it a 
 little thing to ask you to let me share it always ? to ask 
 you to let me, in the fever and disappointments of a paint- 
 er's career, always have its rest and innocence to return to 
 for shelter and for hope ? No ! it is because it is so great 
 a thing a thing so utterly beyond my rights to claim and 
 my power to requite that you draw yourself aloof from 
 me, and plead your own unworthiness, in, the noble false- 
 hood of a woman's pity ! ' 
 
 The words poured from his lips with all the vivacious fire 
 of his southerner's temperament, and with all the fiery re- 
 proach of that upbraiding selfishness which always sounds 
 upon a woman's ear as love itself incarnate. It moved her 
 strangely. The colour came and went upon her face ; her 
 limbs trembled ; her lips parted with swift uneven breaths. 
 She looked up swiftly in his face with the great tears heavy 
 on her lashes. 
 
 * Ah, if I could be of use or service to you/ she mur- 
 mured ; ' if I could be sure that you never could repent/ 
 
 She needed to say no more : he stooped again his 
 beautiful fair head, and his lips rested on hers unchidden. 
 
 They wandered long together that evening, through the 
 lonely moonlit orchards, and the deep cool gardens ; on 
 which the last glow, and the last breeze, and the last sigh 
 of the dying summer were lingering, as though loth to pas? 
 away and leave the earth to silence, snow, and shadow. 
 
330 PUCK. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXVII. 
 
 FAUSTINA VICTEIX. 
 
 LIFE at the Silver Stag, which had been full of peace be* 
 fore, now deepened into happiness. The beatitude of con- 
 fessed and mutual love was there ; nor was there any 
 hindrance to it, nor any shade to mar it. 
 
 The old Mere Bris had grown to regard with unusual 
 favour this golden-haired young stranger, who treated her 
 with all a son's reverent kindliness ; and she offered no 
 opposition to his marriage with Madelon, desiring only 
 that he should achieve some public success that should be 
 a guarantee of his ability to add somewhat to her own 
 slender store. And to this Carlos Merle offered but little 
 opposition : he was too proud and honest to seek to live in 
 idleness upon these women ; and, indeed, though he knew 
 it not, so much of the desire of rest, and so little of the 
 desire of passion, was in his love, that it was almost enough 
 to him to be certain'of this simple asylum and this innocent 
 affection that he had already gained. So all things went 
 smoothly and joyously in this primitive and pleasant spot. 
 His pictures were completed ; his time was his own ; he 
 could spend it at will with Madelon ; aiding her in her out- 
 door tasks ; \vatching her in her in-door occupations ; 
 listening kinoly to the old dame's legendary lore; and 
 even spending his strength in such useful fashion as the 
 hewing of wood for the winter firing, and the fetching of 
 buckets of water from the distant well in the orchard. As 
 for Madelon there was in her fathomless eyes such a look 
 of tranquil intensity, of unutterable joy, as I have never 
 seen on any human face ; she spoke but seldom ; but her 
 voice as she sang at her work had the sweetness in it of 
 one continual hymn of praise ; and to her the russet 
 autumn was as the golden dawning of years of perpetual 
 Bunmier. 
 
 Euss alone was ill-satisfied. 
 
 'It is not well,' he muttered to me. 'It is not welL 
 He is sincere ? O yes, he is sincere ; men mostly are 
 whilst they talk of love. But it is only affection with him ; 
 there is no passion in it j pud no man, with his beauty and 
 
FAUSTINA VICTRIX. 331 
 
 tis nature, ever passes by passion all bis life long. He will 
 know that one day and she too. But we can do no good. 
 Don't let us talk of it.' 
 
 1 Is passiop. such a good thing, then ? ' 
 
 Buss growled a whole satire. 
 
 * G-ood ? It is a devil, my dear : and one that the dog 
 I told you about never succeeded in driving out, whether 
 from church, or castle, or cottage. It is a devil that will 
 tempt Carlos Merle, sooner or later ; and it will drag him 
 away from her in the end, let him seek or strive as he may.' 
 
 The winter soon came. It was very cold, but very 
 bright. Carlos sold a little landscape to a stranger who, 
 resting at the Silver Stag, chanced to see, and paid five 
 gold pieces for it ; and he spent all the five in purchasing 
 a set of furs for Madelon. She chid him gently for the 
 extravagance, but smiled on him for the love shown therein. 
 She wrapped them about her mother, and moved blithely in 
 the snow to feed her poultry and her doves, quite warm in 
 her dress of serge, from the rapture and the peace that 
 dwelt together in her heart. 
 
 The broad low kitchen of the place was always ruddily 
 bright from the big fire of wood that burned on an old- 
 fashioned hearth, built long, they said, ere stoves were 
 known. It had a pleasant odour always in it, from thc\ 
 many herbs that hung from the ceiling beams ; knots of 
 .dried thyme, and marjoram, and sage, and rue. The 
 reddened light of the stormy winter days played cheerily 
 upon the brass and pewter that, shining like gold and silver, 
 filled the black oak shelves. 
 
 All day long the little birds would crowd under the case- 
 ments for food that Madelon threw them ; and the droll- 
 visaged ducks, and the neat coquettish hens, when wet or 
 cold, would come through the door she opened for them 
 the former with solemn march, and shrewd all-seeing eyes, 
 the latter with coy dainty steps, and shy sidelong glances 
 and go straightway to the hearth, and there sit and dry 
 their plumage and dress themselves, and turn their heads 
 over their shoulders to survey themselves, precisely as I 
 have seen great ladies do before their mirrors. "When dusk 
 closed in, and the fowls were all at roost, and the oil lamp 
 lighted, Euss and I would lie alone within the warmth of 
 tlie logs, watching, with dreamy pleasure, the big copper 
 
33* PUCK. 
 
 kettle of soup swinging in the chimney ; while old Mere 
 Bris dozed in the corner, and Madelon, with her great eyes 
 all dilated and eloquent, listened to some chant du siecle 
 rend aloud to her by her lover's melodious vibrating voice. 
 
 It was a happy winter time ; and in it I almost forgot 
 my two past years of misery. Not quite : for a dog never 
 wholly forgets; and, having its spirit once broken, is never 
 altogether the same dog again. Naturally the eyes of 
 creatures of our race are fuller of glee, mirth, readiness, 
 and gladness than the eyes of any other living things ; but 
 most of them are clouded by sadness, by terror, and by the 
 constant apprehension which your brutal training leaves on 
 them, long before they have even reached their prime. 
 
 It was a hard winter, so far as cold went. The great 
 black woods were ice-bound, and the water of the duck- 
 pond had to be broken every morning for the old carp to 
 breathe. Madelon put over the doorway a little oat-sheaf 
 for the birds, in a fashion she had learned of some German 
 artist ; and jthe casements were thick with dense, white, 
 glittering frost with every dawn that rose. But though so 
 chill without, life went within gladly and brightly. The 
 first real chill of the year seemed to fall when it was no 
 longer possible for Carlos to longer defer his visit to the 
 Salon. 
 
 His pictures had been accepted ; he went to the assem- 
 bling of the critics. He was to rest there the night, and 
 was to return on the morrow, bringing his tidings with him. 
 As he quitted the little porch Madelon thrust a covered 
 basket into his hand. 
 
 ' It is the carrier-dove Fleurette,' she whispered to him, 
 while her voice was full of love not spoken in. phrases. 
 ' She has often become between this and Paris. If all be 
 well with you, loose her. She will be back here in two 
 hours.' 
 
 So Fleurette went with him on his pilgrimage ; for the 
 electric wires were a costliness not dreamed of by these 
 poor and simple people. Russ, and I, and Madelon tarried 
 behind in the old, oaken, dusky chamber. It was a drear, 
 dark day, with fitful gusts of storm-wiud, and sudden 
 driving clouds of rain a day full of melancholy and of 
 foreboding ; a day that makes dogs howl, and men pen 
 satires, and women sit all day long wearily watching the 
 
FAUSTINA VICTRIX. 333 
 
 sweeping on and off of the black mists. Madelon did her 
 household work of the day none the less quickly or well ; 
 but every now and then she started, as a blast shook the 
 house ; and when her labour was done, sat with fevered 
 cheeks by the casement, looking out with wistful eyes for 
 the clearance of the skies that should allow the dove's soft, 
 slender wings to beat their safe way home. Her whole 
 soul was in her lover's fame, even though she knew fame 
 was her cruellest rival. 
 
 The day passed very wearily to us all. 
 
 There came back no Fleurette. 
 
 Madelon kept the shutters down an hour later than was 
 her custom, and stood gazing out into the shadowy bleak 
 night for the white small form of her messenger of hope. 
 
 1 Close the window, mafille] called her old mother from 
 the chimney-corner. ' It is quite dark, and there may 
 come beggars around, or worse drawn by the light in the 
 lattice.* 
 
 Madelon obeyed with that curiously implicit obedience 
 which characterises French filial duty, and came and sat 
 down by her lamp ; and began to sew mending a worn 
 summer blouse of Carlos Merle's. Her mother did not 
 see that her eyes were wet with tears but I saw. Je 
 resfe : tu fen vas / Such is eternally the requiem over 
 all women's loves ; when the woman has loved well. 
 
 The long evening went slowly, very slowly. The 
 bubbling of the copper pot, and the crackling of the fire 
 logs, were the only sounds upon its stillness. E-uss once 
 moved toward her, and laid his great head on her knee, and 
 gazed into her face with great loving eyes of sympathy and 
 reverent pity. Madelon stopped and kissed him, and tears 
 fell on his forehead. 
 
 ' It is thus that it must be, Buss,' she murmured over 
 him. 
 
 The evening and the night passed ; the morning broke 
 fairer, though still cold. About noon a little flash of white 
 glimmered in the steely sky ; there was a murmuring 
 noise ; and, beating against the casement, there fell down 
 the dove. Madelon caught her with a low cry. 
 
 She was not cold nor wet, and could not have been 
 loosed until that morning. He had forgotten to send he* 
 home. 
 
334 PUCK. 
 
 Beneath her left wing was a note. As Madelon read it 
 Bhe grew pale paler than she ever had been through all 
 this winter-time. 
 
 ' What does he say ? ' cried the old mother from her 
 chimney-corner, eager to learn the best or worst. 
 
 Madelon waited a moment ere she replied. When she 
 did so her voice was calm. 
 
 ' Only three words, ma mere. " Success ! Return to- 
 morrow." ' 
 
 I To-morrow ! ' cried Mere Bris. * He said this day this 
 day, beyond a doubt.' 
 
 * Yes. But how likely it is that he has met with friend^ 
 and see, mere he has success at last. No wonder he 
 stays from us ! ' 
 
 Then she left the chamber ; closing the door upon her, and 
 carrying with her the tired, thirsty, ruffled dove. 
 
 Carlos did not coine that day, nor the next, nor the 
 next. 
 
 Madelon said nothing, not a word, save at such times as 
 she answered, to her mother's petulant quibbles, that it was 
 natural and fitting he should stay ; that he was his own 
 master ; and that he owed them nothing. 
 
 But the time dragged drearily ; and she never sent 
 Fleurette back to the city. 
 
 With the fourth day indeed he came, sweeping through the 
 snow, with his yellow locks on the wind, and his fair face hot 
 with proud passionate glow. He rushed straight to where 
 Madelon stood, having risen in startled amaze; he clasped 
 her hands, he kissed her dress, he showered letters, and 
 papers, and gold upon her lap ; at first he flung himself at 
 her feet, and letting his head drop down upon her knees, 
 Bobbed like a woman. 
 
 I 1 have the desire of my life ! ' he cried to her. ' I have 
 the desire of my life I am famous ! ' 
 
 It seemed, as I gathered awhile afterwards, that he had 
 in truth achieved the most singular success of the winter ex- 
 hibitions, and redeemed, almost in a day, the painful and 
 long decade of disappointment and of failure. The general 
 crowds of Paris flocked to stand before the Paustine ; but 
 some half-score of perfect judges offered him well-nigh its 
 weight in gold for tkat little study of the woman at the 
 lattice. 
 
FAUSTINA VICTRIX. 335 
 
 Faustine was one of those wonderful and instantaneous 
 ruccesses which sometimes seize on the world with a force 
 quite outside criticism, and quite beyond attack. 
 
 People nocked in herds to see it ; and on the class ol 
 which it was the representative it seemed, they said, tc 
 exercise the strongest and most irresistible fascination. 
 
 The day of the first exhibition had been a day of unsha- 
 dowed triumph for Carlos. His name had leapt to all the 
 lips of Paris ; and great artists, long neglected and con- 
 temptuous of him, had turned and surveyed him with & 
 curious puzzled look, as though they said, ' Eh, then, who is 
 this that has been amongst us, and ilia we have denied ! ' 
 
 They denied him no longer. The popular voice is very 
 seldom indeed the voice divine; but occasionally it does 
 speak with the prescience, the spontaneity, the irresistible 
 verdict of a godlike fiat. It spoke thus in his election ; 
 and against such a choice his rivals had no power. 
 
 The Faustine had been sold ere it had hung two hours' 
 Bold for an enormous sum, as many said. For the Woman 
 at the Lattice he had, with an artist's and a lover's im- 
 provident, unwise spirit of fanciful attachment, refused all 
 the offers made to him. 
 
 ' Are you mad ? ' painters had whispered him. ' Faustino 
 in a year will be worth to you millions of francs, and that 
 little panel will never again fetch so much as they tender 
 you for it now.' But Carlos had shaken his head, and 
 been firm. ' Shall a man sell his soul ? ' he had said in his 
 heart. So the Faustine hung there, sold at her birth, as 
 befitted the likeness of a courtesan ; but for the woman in 
 the moonlight there was no gold chaffered. 
 
 And he came back to us, wild and drunk with the wine of 
 his fame ; he wept, he laughed, he threw himself like a child 
 before the crucifix ; he scattered grain in huge golden 
 showers to the birds upon the snow ; he waltzed, he sang. 
 he was like one possessed ; and all this was beautiful i* 
 him, because his own youth had so much beauty, and all 
 his ecstasies had so much truth. Then he grew very quiet, 
 and came and stretched himself upon the hearth, and lay 
 there with his head leaning upon Madelon's knee. 
 
 * I shall be great,' he murmured passionately to her. ' A\ 
 ready in a day my name is famous, and men say of my 
 work that it has in it the germ of the eternal And what 
 
33 FUCK. 
 
 should I have been without you you, to whom riches, and 
 fame, and honours, and life, all are due ? ' 
 
 Her face was in shadow, and he was not looking up to it, 
 but into the burning embers of the wood ; or he would have 
 eeen a smile upon it that only the martyrs wear, 
 
 ' Be great ; be greatest,' she whispered to him. ' So 
 shall I be content.' 
 
 And yet I think she knew so well that, saying this, she 
 also said, ' G-o from me, and never more return.' 
 
 Division already had commenced : passion and ambition 
 will scarce ever live together. They are as two fierce para- 
 sites which will not share with that which they cling to and 
 corrode, but must have all or nothing. Here and there, in- 
 deed, they may grow side by side together ; when they do, 
 the world has no strength to stand against that furious 
 fusion of strange forces. 
 
 The first note of fame to him brought the first note of pain 
 to her. He needed now to be perpetually passing to Paris. 
 It seems that fame is such an ignis fatuus that a man, if 
 he once lose his personal watch over it, fears to see it sink 
 into the marshes of oblivion. 
 
 It was natural that he rejoiced in his fresh-won success ; 
 that the new voices of praise were very sweet upon his long- 
 thirsting ear ; that the new life which had opened for him al- 
 lured him with an enchantment he scarcely sought to resist. 
 
 It was natural, moreover, for his name's sake, or he thought 
 it was, that he should have a studio in the heart of the 
 artist-world, now that this world was busied with his works. 
 All Madelon said was simply, ' "What is best for thee, is 
 for me happiest.' 
 
 The old mother grumbled at the thought of his considering 
 some other abode so needful for him, just because he had 
 won his way a little on to the tongues cf men. 
 
 But he pleaded his excuse with his graceful kindly filial 
 fashion. 
 
 ' Nay, mere, it is not a home that I seek ; my home is 
 here,' he answered. ' I do but go to Paris as to an armoury- 
 shop, where I may be nigh at hand for the battle ; to circum- 
 vent my foes, and to secure my victories.' 
 
 And Madelon urged his cause also. ' It is best, indeed, 
 mere. All painters must have a working-place in Paris. Tho 
 world is never so fond of genius that it will ever run far into 
 
FAUSTINA VICTRIX. 337 
 
 strange corners and village-hearths to seek it. It is best- 
 out in the mart, with the rest of men's merchandise.' 
 
 * You do not want to be happy, Madelon ! ' retorted the 
 old woman sharply. 
 
 Madelon smiled that same sweet dreamy smile that had 
 such an unfathomable meaning in it. 
 
 ' Nay, mere,' she answered, ' let him be so first/ 
 
 So it came to pass that, when the turn of the year came, 
 and the first signs of life were stirring under the bark of the 
 trees, and the ice of the pools, and the dark sodden mould of 
 the gardens, Carlos Merle had a studio of his own in the heart 
 of the Art-world of Paris, and stayed there all the week, and 
 only came to the Silver Stag at tne close of each sixth day. 
 
 It was inevitable, I suppose ; they said so. Paris had a 
 place for him now, and he went to fill it ; the voices were 
 glad about him, they were pleasant on his ear. The w^orld 
 spoke his name ; he liked to hear it sounding. Men pointed 
 him out when he pawed ; and was proud of that finger- 
 homage. Crowds stood all day long about his pictures'; 
 he was pleased to stand near also, and see that worship of 
 the multitude which worships the artist as it worships- 
 the god blindly and yet unerringly. It was natural, I 
 suppose, that Paris should draw him thus, daily and daily, 
 more and more towards it. It was natural, doubtless ; but 
 at the Silver Stag the spring was dreary. 
 
 The sweet scent of the russet fallow turned upwards under 
 the Plough ; the bees began to boom about in the pale sun- 
 shine ; the ducks found shoots of cress under the chill water ; 
 the swallows came from Africa, and as they twittered under- 
 neath the eaves, told to the home- staying doves a thousand 
 stories of the old Libyan world. It was earliest spring 
 with all things ; but it seemed to us rather like the setting 
 than the resurrection of the year. 
 
 Yet Carlos came with every seventh day came with burn- 
 ing eyes, and eager words, and proud glad laughter, and spoke 
 incessantly of the great life that had opened to him with his 
 victory. The world was transfigured to him. He was no 
 longer poor, or neglected, or alone. He had present ease and 
 future wealth secured. Men sought him ; houses opened to 
 him ; friends came around him ; he was known ; ard in that 
 one word there lies for genius all the width that yawns be- 
 tweenheaven and hell. The very suddenness of it made it the 
 
33 8 PUCK. 
 
 sweeter ; and lie went to the phantasmagoria of the worlo 
 with all the eagerness, and almost all the ignorance, of a 
 child. 
 
 Vice had had scant temptation for him earlier, because 
 clothed in rags rather than in robes. But now pleasure, for 
 the first time, smiled on him from the sweet gay eyes of 
 dainty, velvet-footed, silvery-voiced women. Their allure- 
 ments were not easily forgotten when he returned to the 
 quiet homely innocence of his little woodland shelter. Not 
 ihat he loved it less, or less loved Madelon ; but he seemed 
 like the carrier-birds, which, though they are never easy 
 until they have reached their home, yet, resting but a 
 moment there, desire to fly forth again. 
 
 He poured out on her the same passionate gratitude. He 
 still beheld in her the force whereby he had been lifted up 
 to greatness. He came to her for all his highest inspira- 
 tions. He brought to her, as of yore, all his thoughts, and 
 his hopes, and his dreams. He beheld in her the most per- 
 fect of created women, whose shoe-latchet he was not worthy 
 to unloose. But still with the sunrise of every first day of 
 the w r eek he went, as an arrow from the bow ; and though his 
 eyes' oftentimes looked back, his swift icet never tarried once. 
 On some of these seasons of departure he would take me 
 with him, having grown to like me in a fashion, though not 
 deeply. Take me into the great white gleaming city, that 
 seemed all colour, and tinsel, and marble, and foliage ; and 
 into his little atelier, where already the world was flocking, 
 because he had painted a courtesan in such sort that all of 
 her kind recognised their own likeness. 
 
 The atelier was somewhat high in air, in a famous part of 
 the artist-town. He had taken it from a rich young amateur, 
 and it was full of eastern stuffs, curious woods, cabinets, 
 cushions, and all manner of quaint glittering rubbish brought 
 from Asian bazaars. Its window looked on a pile of zinc roof, 
 and its spiral staircase was dark and narrow, and its north, 
 light was obscured. If I had been an artist, I think I should 
 never have painted so well in this small, luxurious, gaudy 
 chamber, with its stuffs, and metals, and skins, as in that 
 broad, low, wooden room, all open to the light, and swept by 
 the free winds of heaven, and scented by the odours of the 
 woods and fields without. Indeed, I know not why it was, but 
 I felt a curious fancy that in this Parisian studio Carlos would 
 
FAUSTINA VICTRIX. 339 
 
 never paint again as lie had painted when the Faustina rose 
 to life. 
 
 This little, dusky, bedizened, crowded, gilded chamber, 
 with its pieces of art and its fabrics of India, might be a 
 paradise to him, because to him it represented resurrection 
 from a death in life, and was as the temple of victory. But 
 to me it was only a den, pastille-scented, charcoal-heated, 
 stifling with artificial aroma, and bounded by four narrow 
 close walls, all hung with fantastic gold Japanese shapes, 
 on a ground of black, that made me shudder whenever I 
 looked at them. 
 
 It was not dull, for there were throngs all day long com- 
 ing in and going out ; men and women also, who came 
 because the Faustine was the fashion. Beside, that singu- 
 lar beauty which he possessed was fair in the sight of the 
 sated dames of the capital, as in the thoughtful wistful eyes 
 of Madelon. It was a beauty untamed and yet soft, virile 
 and yet appealing, that had a sorcery for women ; and ere 
 long the great ladies of Paris vied to seat this superb young 
 painter at their board and welcome him within their pre- 
 sence-chambers. ' Je suis pauvre* he would object to their 
 nattering overtures, with his gracious half -proud diffidence. 
 ' Quest- ce que c'est qa ? ' they would answer. 
 
 So, though he waited within all the day, I was always 
 left alone at twilight, and the key was turned in the studio- 
 door, and rarely ever again unturned until the first streak 
 of dawn. He painted scarcely at all. How could he ? He 
 had done so much in the summer and early autumn, because 
 Ae had gone to bed almost with the kine, and risen always 
 with the lark. But now that his days and evenings were 
 nil spent either in the gay wild laughing company of wits, 
 and rhymesters, and playwrights, and artists, or in the 
 dazzling brilliancies of the great world of society, work 
 was impossible. 
 
 Do not think that Carlos spent all his gains upon him- 
 self. O no ! He spent them royally ; and every manner of 
 good thing and gracious gift found the way to Mere Bria 
 or to Madelon. He had received as many orders as he 
 would have been able to execute, working at the hardest, 
 in the coming two years ; and no thought that an hour's 
 illness, a street accident, a horse's kick, might turn hia 
 Eldorado afresh into a desert, ever weighed on the f 
 
34& PUCK. 
 
 sanguine glow of his fervid temperament. He intended'tc 
 labour assiduously, he said when when all this novelty 
 should have worn off when he should have in a measure, 
 received his recompense for his ten years of weariness and 
 pain. 
 
 So that when with every sixth day he went to the Silver 
 Stag, and the old mother would ask petulantly of him what 
 the week's work had beheld done, he would murmur 
 hurriedly a thousand picturesque words, sketching a thou- 
 sand picturesque scenes. It was the spring ; it was just 
 April ; it was the height of the world's follies. All things 
 seemed so fair and new ; people were kind ; and the days 
 fled so fast ; and friendships such as those he made were 
 fame and fortune likewise. And Madelon, who never asked 
 him questions such as these, would call softly across to her 
 mother from whence she sat at work by the casement, 
 * Carlos is right, mere. It is such people as these that are 
 fitting for him ; their voices are fame.' 
 
 But I think she only said it to disarm the sharpness of 
 the old woman's irritable tongue ; for I think that Madelon 
 knew that the greatness of the artist cannot come from 
 without ; that genius is a curlew best rocked on the tossing 
 crest of a roughened sea; and that for him by whom a 
 thirsty ear is lent to the world's homage, the tocsin of 
 feebleness, if not of failure, has already sounded. 
 
 The gladness of the man is come when the crowds lisp 
 his name, and the gold fills his hand, and the women's 
 honeyed adulations buzz like golden bees about his path ; 
 but how often is the greatness of the artist gone and gone 
 for ever ! 
 
 Because when the world denies you it is easy to deny the 
 world ; because when the bread is bitter it is easy not to 
 linger at the meal ; because when the oil is low it is easy 
 to rise with dawn ; because when the body is without sur- 
 feit or temptation it is easy to rise above earth on the 
 wings of the spirit. Poverty is very terrible to you, and 
 kills your soul in you sometimes ; but it is like the northern 
 blast that lashes men into Vikings ; it is not the soft lus- 
 cious, south wind that dulls them into lotus-eaters. 
 
 In the north wind Carlos Merle had staggered to his 
 reet, and been proud, and been strong, and had conquered ; 
 m the south he was ready to say, 'It is sweet; leave me 
 alone ; 1 have lived ! * 
 
CLEOPAIRE: 34 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 CLEOPATEL 
 
 * It is as you said,' I lamented to Russ. 
 
 1 Of course/ lie made answer, ' where two people lore it 
 is always the deep heart that breaks itself for the shallow 
 one. I do not say his is shallow really, but it is for 
 this passion. Do you not know that a man's passions are 
 just like the channels of water-courses ? some seasons they 
 are narrow as runlets, others they are as broad as rivers ; 
 sometimes u child can straddle athwart them, and plumb 
 them with his little forefinger, and at others a man shall not 
 cross them with safety to his own life. It just depends on 
 how the storm has come down.' 
 
 Which was no doubt true ; and the storm-drum never 
 yet has beaten that has warned men of a fatal passion. 
 
 So the spring time came, and went, sadly at the Silver 
 Stag ; though there was no lack of guests and of passers-by 
 all through that lovely cowslip time. There were always 
 artists, of some standing or another, staying there, from 
 the grey-headed masters to the laughter-loving students, 
 and one and all these talked of Carlos Merle. 
 
 By Madelon's desire no one knew aught of the relation- 
 ship between them, and so they spoke of him fully and 
 frankly as of a familiar mutual theme of interest. It 
 was only when they touched, as she thought, too closely on 
 the personal matters of his life that she would check their 
 converse ; as though, in the pure undivided loyalty of her 
 soul, she feared to seem to do him the dishonour to glean 
 by hearsay what he withheld from confidence. But old 
 Manon Bris, less scrupulous and more inquisitive, asked 
 all she could of his life in the city from the men who came" 
 beneath her roof, and caught many glimpses in it of ex- 
 travagance, and heedlessness, and pleasure, that wore the 
 look of evil to her sturdy peasant's mind. 
 
 ' Carlos lives as a prince in Paris,' she muttered to her 
 daughter. 
 
 * O no, mere,' Madelon answered her in deprecation. ' He 
 lives as every artist that is at all known must do. Do not 
 believe that boy Looloo's chatter ; he is a little scaramouch, 
 
34 PUCK. 
 
 who thinks it a feast to get a full meal of roast chestnuts, 
 his people have always been so poor, and he is such a child * 
 he can be of no judge of how a man should live.' 
 
 ' Carlos was as poor two months ago ! ' 
 
 ' Not quite, mere; and beside, if he were, he has earned 
 a large wage, and a just, since then ; he may surely have 
 some pleasure from the price of his own labours.' 
 
 ' He will never marry you, Madelon,' muttered the old 
 woman, in discontent and doubt. 
 
 ' He would marry me now, mere, if I would have it so/ 
 Madelon answered her gently. 
 
 And this was true, for every time that Carlos came back, 
 thither he renewed with almost feverish entreaty his offer 
 of an immediate union. But perhaps Madelon detected 
 the accent of honour only, and not of passion in his words ; 
 or perhaps she felt, that he sought to bind his will by law, 
 because he felt it unstable in inclination ; at any rate she 
 answered to him always, * Not yet.' 
 
 It was not from any fear for herself I am sure. Madelon 
 was not the kind of woman that fears ; I think it was 
 rather that she feared for him, and that she desired to leave 
 this beautiful future, which was now unclosing to him, 
 altogether free and entirely without claim or lien on it. 
 
 1 Servitude is well for, women,' she would say to him; 
 ' they are hardly happy free ; but with men it is otherwise : 
 liberty is the very marrow of their bones.' 
 
 And she would not wed with him earlier than that late 
 autumn time which her mother had originally fixed. Yet 
 though she was so resolute, her cheeks grew thinner, and 
 her eyes larger and brighter every day ; and I think that, 
 if she had once heard the pleading of actual love quiver in 
 his voice, she would have put her hand in his and never 
 have withdrawn it till the priest's benediction had made it 
 his own. 
 
 Maybe those women are happiest who easily deceive 
 I themselves. Madelon was not of them. The essential 
 truthfulness in her made her, no doubt, specially keen t* 
 feel any grain of truth that was lacking in others. ' He 
 does not really love me,' she had told herself the very night 
 on which she first heard of his love ; and the lowliness of 
 her self-esteem made it appear to her impossible that he 
 tver should do so. 
 
'CLZOPATRE.' 343 
 
 The full deep spring came; the great plumes of the 
 lilacs nodding everywhere, and the grasses all yellow with 
 cowslip bells. The days began to grow long, and be sultry 
 at noon. The mavises and linnets sang all the light hours 
 through, scarce still even at the noontide. But over the 
 place a certain sadness fell in the deserted painting-room 
 the shadows lay unbroken by any passing foot ; to the well 
 in the orchard Madelon went alone ; nor even now would 
 she wait to bind a coil of ivy round the handle of the pail, 
 or gather the big white marguerites that grew there, to 
 make of their petals a sundial for love. In the few times 
 that brought thither a laughing group of students and of 
 girls, she served them silently with wine and milk, honey 
 and meat, coffee and cake, and then withdrew herself, so 
 far as might be possible, from out the hearing of the mirth- 
 ful cadences of laughter ; and in the evenings, when the 
 day was done and the little latch lay quiet in the gate, she 
 would take her work and sit beside the open lattice, look- 
 ing ever and again at the calm gray sky beyond, as in the 
 picture he had drawn. 
 
 But the look that was in her eyes no longer seemed the 
 same. The hush of maidenhood was gone, the rapture of 
 marriage and maternity had not come ; there was only the 
 vague, passionate, dumb anguish of the womanhood, which, 
 in the same hour that it learns passion, learns likewise 
 abandonment. 
 
 Now, amongst those youths who came and went in the 
 golden April days, amongst the lilacs of the Silver Stag, 
 young painters of careless tongue and mirthful mischief, 
 there were many who spoke of the doings of Carlos in 
 Paris, and tangled many names with his, as young men 
 will. But chiefly they quoted one, a name of melody and 
 meaning Cleopatre. 
 
 Madelon grew paler whenever the name was mentioned ; 
 but she never asked whom it might mean. Perhaps she 
 knew. 
 
 ' You are painting the portrait of Cleopatre ? ' she said 
 straightly to him when he next came. He started and 
 looked at her. 
 
 < Who told you so ? 'it was the first thing that he had 
 not of his own accord related to her. 
 
 ' The students say so,' she answered. * Is it true ? ' 
 
 1 Tes \ it is true, for that matter.' 
 
544 PUCK. 
 
 Her voice sank very low. 
 
 ' She is a bad woman, Carlos ? ' 
 
 * A vile woman ' 
 
 ' Why have you aught to do with her then ? ' 
 
 * To do ! she is a perfectly beautiful woman ; she sought 
 a portrait of me. She is an empress in her way. "Was it 
 worth while to refuse ? ' 
 
 He spoke hurriedly, bending to and fro a bough of 
 blossoming lilac. 
 
 ' I thought you would never paint portraits ? * 
 
 ' No, nor do I but this woman is like no one else. She 
 IB a woman that comes once in five centuries ! ' 
 
 1 She is so beautiful ? I understand.' 
 
 'No, you cannot understand/ he muttered. 'Made! on, 
 Madelon, I swear to you that I never hated the Faustine 
 of my fancy more than I hate this hell-born Cleopatre ! ' 
 
 She looked at him earnestly ; and a shudder ran through 
 her. 
 
 * You defied Faustine ! ' she murmured with a shiver. 
 * O, my love, my love, my love, beware ! ' 
 
 It was one of the few moments in which the great 
 affection in her broke up into yearning and passionate 
 npeech. 
 
 Carlos stooped and kissed her ; but his face was flushed, 
 and his caressing answer was incoherent in its breathless 
 and vague promise. 
 
 And with the dawn of the morning he went back to 
 Paris. 
 
 During the week, which was now May, there came many 
 parties of students to the gardens of the Silver Stag ; an*d 
 they often spoke this one name Cleopatre. So they 
 had christened a strange woman, come two summer 
 seasons earlier to Paris. They spoke of her great torch- 
 lighfc fete, of her carriage with silver wheels, of her great 
 sapphire hollowed for a sweetmeat box, of her domino 
 powdered with fire-flies in gold, of her enormous stakes 
 won at games of dice, of her tiny house, that though so 
 small was as perfect as a palace, and filled with all fabulous 
 worth. And they said, also, with gay laughter, that her 
 last caprice was Carlos Merle. 
 
 ' Tour old friend will fare ill, Madelon,' they laughed to 
 her, not meaning cruelly, because they knew not where 
 
'CLEOPATRE.' J45 
 
 they wounded. ' He goes every day to paint the portrait 
 of Cleopatre O, he and no man can look long upon her 
 and live ! They say that seeing how he had painted the 
 Faustine, she was minded to have her vengeance.' 
 
 Madelon never made answer ; except once, when she 
 said, gravely, that to speak at all of such as Cleopatre to 
 honest women was not well. Which silenced the reckless 
 youths j and made them mute on the subject, for they held 
 her in reverence and love. 
 
 As for me, where he left me in the quiet country place, 
 I wondered ceaselessly what she could be, this strange and 
 marvellous creature, whom they had christened thus ; they 
 had depicted her in their words till I seemed to behold her, 
 with her full-lidded lustrous eyes, that had such magnetism 
 in them ; with her curling lips, that so seldom spoke, yet 
 breathed a sorcery over men ; and with her chain of tawny 
 topaz, that seemed like a yellow snake about her throat. 
 
 Any way, I felt that she was evil. 
 
 As the season grew, and the summer came, the men who 
 spent their leisure at the auberge ceased to speak of Carlos 
 Merle when Madelon or her mother were by. When they 
 were alone, I heard them talk of him, of how his head was 
 turned by the delirium of success, of how he was like one 
 drunk with his triumphs ; of how he flung his gold broad- 
 cast, so that he must soon be more utterly than ever a 
 beggar ; of how he was devoured body and soul by one 
 passion, and of how his genius was consuming as a reed in 
 a flame. 
 
 ' It is Cleopatre,' they said. ' She kills them all BO. 
 You remember the Prince de Ferras ! ruined in one 
 winter, and run through the heart for her by a [Russian, 
 when she had pillaged him to her will. Eecall too how it 
 was with Bernaldes, when he had wakened up all Europe 
 with that Venus of his how she set herself to steal the 
 nerve from his arm, and the cunning from his hand, and 
 the fire from his brain, till he never rounded a line of 
 marble more, but died raving mad in Bicetre ! It will be 
 the same here.' 
 
 ' It is Cleopatre,' another echoed one day : an old wise 
 man, grown gray in the service of Art. ' There are women 
 who abhor genius ; women to whom it is horrible that a 
 man should live who can be sufficient for himself ; women 
 
346 PL T CA. 
 
 who set themselves to tempt, and corrupt, and destroy it, 
 as the devils of the legends set themselves to kill innocence. 
 It offends them, insults them, escapes them, outrages them, 
 because it defies them and they set themselves to have 
 their vengeance on it ; and to drag it down into the dust f 
 where they can spit on it. There are women whose whole 
 life is a war against all that lifts men out of hell ; they are 
 scorpions who spit death upon every holy thing.' 
 
 Did Madelon hear as well as I heard ? 
 
 Sometimes I feared that she did, for her face grew utterly 
 weary, and she never once now lilted a song as she worked. 
 What could she do ? 
 
 Ah, nothing ! only wait, and wait, and wait with that 
 sublime patience which is the heroism of such women. 
 
 The throbbing summer came ; all heat, and colour, and 
 storm, and wondrous light. There seemed fire in all the 
 scarlet roses and all the electric skies, and all the hot hard 
 days, in which the very bees seemed drunk, and the verv 
 cattle drugged. Everything was silent, and gasping, and 
 white with furnace heat, all things languished, stupefied 
 yet burning, as a man may lie in the height of a mortal 
 fever. 
 
 In the sultry height of the summer the visits of Carlos 
 altogether ceased. 
 
 There came no word of explanation from him, there was 
 only silence. 
 
 The long evening stole away on every Saturday, and sank 
 down into night, and the little click of the latch sounded 
 no more through the stillness. The Sunday noons brought 
 with them the gay glad parties of youths and maidens who 
 romped together through tho tall seeding grasses and the 
 yellowing corn, who loaded : hemselves with fruits and gar- 
 lands of green leaves, who danced in the dewy starlight, 
 and sang, and shouted, and chased each other through the 
 shady espaliers and the blossoming lime-tree walks. But 
 he came no more with either noon or night ; we heard no 
 more the gladsome challenge of his voice, we saw no more 
 the proud, bright, golden head like the head of a young god. 
 
 To the incessant questions of old Manon Bris, the painters 
 who strayed thither only muttered now in answer that he 
 was well, that he was much sought in the world, that he 
 was busied incessantly upon the portrait of Cleopatre ; and 
 they would add no more, or had no more to add. 
 
'CLEOPATRE.' 347 
 
 ' You are sure it is well with him ? ' Mad&lon once asked 
 of a white-headed artist, laying her hands upon his arm, 
 with a look from which his eyes turned away. 
 
 * It is well with his "body, with his fame, with his riches/ 
 the old man muttered. ' Not well with his soul.' 
 
 On the morrow Madelon told her mother that she was 
 about to go to Paris. The old woman did not seek to op- 
 pose her, and she was merciful enough to ask nothing of 
 her errand. 
 
 Once she grumbled that, in her own youth, she would 
 have thought it shame to go seek one who neglected her 
 for a wanton ; in her own girlhood women had deemed that 
 a lover who was not kept by his fancy was ill-kept by his 
 troth-ring. But her daughter only smiled as she heard - 
 the faint fleeting smile of one whose thoughts lie too deep 
 for tears, and whose love lies too high to be gauged by 
 mortal eyes ; of one who is indifferent to appearance or 
 to misconstruction. And at noon she went, wrapping about 
 her a large dark cloak, and letting the fierce sun beat upon 
 her unshaded head. 
 
 To Buss she signed to stay and guard the house ; for me 
 she stopped, as though seeming to pity my wistful look of 
 unspoken petition, and bore me with her beneath her arm. 
 
 I believe that in a manner the presence near her of a 
 little living thing which he had cherished had its consola- 
 tion, and that I brought her sympathy because I loved him. 
 
 It was a very burning after-day as we entered the city. 
 The dust was thick and gray upon the streets, and the glare 
 was great from the whiteness of the houses ; there was not 
 a breath of wind stirring, and the air smelt hot and sickly, 
 and as though it were loaded with wine fumes, and the reek 
 of opium smoke. 
 
 Here and there a mosquito hooted, and a hornet buzzed, 
 above the thronging crowds. 
 
 Here and there the scarlet glitter of a troop of soldiers 
 flashed through the shadowless sunlight, like a blood-red 
 shape of death. 
 
 She walked on long, not seeming to heed the oppression 
 of the weather, or the scorching of the stones. She was 
 not very certain of her way, and mistook it, and traced her 
 tteps only again to retrace them very often. Presently we 
 tame to a place that was thickly thronged ; and the people 
 
348 PUCK. 
 
 were coming in and out of the house, and talking very 
 <eagerly amongst themselves, and she could hear the word 
 that constantly recurred, ' Cleopatre, Cleopatre.' 
 
 1 Is it there ? ' Madelon asked, and I saw her lips were 
 lry and white as she did so. They told her that it was. 
 She felt for a small coin, and paid it in, where she saw 
 others paying theirs, at a hole in the wall, where a money- 
 taker sat ; then she passed through with the rest into a 
 chamber hung with crimson cloth, into which the people 
 were pressing eagerly. I was hidden beneath her cloak, 
 and passed in with her. 
 
 The room was lighted by a flood of light pouring down- 
 ward from the top, and this light was so managed that it 
 fell wholly on a solitary picture at the further end, set in a 
 carved frame of ebony. 
 
 It was not a large picture ; but the multitude were 
 breathless before it, as they had stood before Paustine. 
 
 1 It is her living self ! ' they murmured. 
 
 They meant the Cleopatre. 
 
 She lay on a couch of purples and of lion skins, with her 
 head leaning back on her arm, and her limbs lightly crossed 
 on each other ; she was unclothed save where sonieHieavy 
 folds of a Tyrian robe were flung across her, and save for 
 heavy rings of massive gold that clasped her ankles and her 
 wrists ; she seemed just waking from slumber, and her eyes 
 looked out from under their languid lids with a peculiar 
 glittering, furtive, voluptuous, merciless regard, whilst with 
 one hand she drew against her scarlet lips one gorgeous 
 blossom of the pomegranate. 
 
 In the distance, beyond a marble archway, were the reeds 
 reddening in the after-glow, the ruby skies of sunset, and 
 one slender palm shaft cutting sharp against the gold of an 
 Egyptian night. 
 
 It was a wondrous picture : marvellous because in its 
 revival of the dead beauty of old Nile it also gave the 
 living presentment of that beauty which Paris saw amidst 
 it every day. 
 
 It was Cleopatre but Cleopatre living, no less thaq 
 Cleopatre dead. 
 
 1 It is she ! ' they murmured in ecstasy; for Cleopatre waa 
 in a measure dear to them, by reason of that supremacy in 
 infamy, that mercilessness in destruction, which made'her 
 
1 CLEOPATRE: 349 
 
 heroic and deified in their sight. And it was she indeed 
 ishey said, as they stood about the picture ; all the dreamy 
 sensualism, all the dormant power, all the oriental langour; 
 all the leonine force that were in the living woman were ia 
 the portrait also. 
 
 * Before he could have painted that' muttered an aged 
 artist as he gazed, ' he must have sold his soul to her.' 
 
 Madelon gazed on it as on some dread thing that com- 
 pelled her regard, even whilst it blinded her, as the light- 
 ning fascinates, yet withers up the eyesight. I felt her 
 tremble as she looked ; and she seized for support the 
 brass rod that ran before the painting, severing the niche 
 where it hung from the crowd of sight-seers. 
 
 The cruelty and the splendour of this beauty seemed to 
 fascinate, arid to paralyse her, almost, as they did all men 
 that gazed on them. She gazed on them. She gazed, and 
 gazed, and gazed, until every drop of blood faded from her 
 lips and cheeks ; as though it were drawn out and absorbed 
 by that imperial, scornful, deep-hued face, that made her 
 own pale as a corpse, and poor as a faded violet. 
 
 ' How shall you be remembered one hour beside such as 
 I?' the mocking, changeless, lustrous eyes seemed to 
 demand of her in their scorn ; and Madelon seemed to 
 shiver, and droop, and die out as it were, beneath that gaze. 
 
 Those smooth, opal-hued, glistening limbs ; that soft 
 velvet skin, with the golden bloom of a fresh peach upon 
 it : that dreaming repose of a half -banished sleep ; that 
 curling mouth that half-caressed the flower ; that deep full 
 bosom that heaved above its ceinture of dead gold : how 
 could the man who studied these, from their warm life 
 abandoned to his sight and touch, have had a thought, or 
 wish, or memory left for any other thing ? 
 
 She blamed him no more ; she marvelled no more ; blit- 
 her head dropped like one who has been stricken a physical 
 blow, and she turned, and went feebly out of the little 
 crimson chamber, with the unsteady nickering step of 
 bodily sickness. 
 
 To resist, to hope, to believe in herself were no more pos- 
 sible to her : with her own eyes she had beheld this power 
 against which she long in blindness had contended ; with 
 her own eyes she had seen what manner of thing it was, 
 this sorcery of the senses, this lust of the flesh, tliis temp- 
 
35 PUCK. 
 
 tation by the breath of a woman, wherein the strength of 
 her enemy lay ; and she contended no more, she no more 
 resisted, but went feebly out into the sunshine, knowing 
 that never again could she have either place or memory 
 within his life. 
 
 Ah ! I have seen the same warfare many times ; the 
 same contest betwixt the soul and the senses, betwixt tho 
 love that is sanctity and the love that is devilry, betwixt 
 the woman who seeks a man for the god-head there is in 
 him, and the woman who seeks a man f orthebeastiality there 
 is in him ; and I have never seen it end in any other fashion 
 than this ; never seen it come to any other close, than for 
 the lily to die away, crushed beneath his foot ; and for the 
 passion-flower to grow high, and wild, and free in triumph, 
 above the ruin of his house. 
 
 Madelon was a woman pure of soul, high of thought, 
 loving nobly and with innocence, desiring the greatness of 
 that which she loved, and seeking its honour before her 
 own joy ; Cleopatre bared her limbs to the painter's gazy, 
 and looked into his with her burning cold eyes ; and gliding 
 forth from her bath to her mirror, with the water glistening 
 on her polished skin, said in her soul that he should love 
 her in such wise, that this love should kill all manhood, all 
 conscience, all godliness, all genius within him, and deliver 
 him over to her prostrate, worthless, a mockery of men. 
 
 Yet it was Cleopatre, and not Madelon, that he loved. 
 
 Wherefore ? Well, not because he was base ; because 
 there is a marvellous sorcery in the mere bodily beauty of 
 women ; and because there is a madness and a drunken- 
 ness in love, that go best, as it seems, with the liberty and 
 fever of vice. 
 
 And this is why in love there is so much of woe, and so 
 little of contentment ; because pure women are too cold, 
 and passionate women are too vile ; and when men stoop 
 for kisses, their lips are either chilled to ice, or scorched 
 with flame. Then, being content with neither, they break 
 the bonds of love, and are pointed at as faithless, not 
 with much justice in the charge. 
 
 Madelon went out into the street with the same feeblo 
 wandering gait ; and her face had a wan, scared, paralysed 
 look upon it, as though she had seen some sight that had 
 frozen her blood and stopped the pulses of her heart. 
 
CLEOPATRE.' 35! 
 
 She moved mechanically out of the throngs, and into 
 some cool quiet gardens of the public, whose trees threw 
 their shadows opposite the house where the portrait of 
 Cleopatre was hung for exhibition. The gardens wore 
 almost deserted, and she sank down into a wooden chair 
 under the shelter of a great sweet-chestnut. One of the 
 guardians of the place approached her, and brought her a 
 drink of water, thinking she was faint. She put it aside 
 gently, and asked him only to leave her in peace. She sat 
 there quite motionless, it must have been nigh an hour ; 
 and the gray, rigid, startled look upon her face never faded 
 away. 
 
 On the clear air the voices of the crowds, from the other 
 side of the rails, came plainly to where we sat. They kept 
 going in and out of the picture-chamber by hundreds all 
 the afternoon long. Cleopatre was known to all in Paris, 
 and this painting of her had a fascination as wide as the city. 
 
 Ever and anon there floated on the wind little fragments 
 of their talk ; words of wonder, praise, and homage : the 
 artist of Faustine had been great, but the artist of Cleoputre 
 was greater. It was well with his genius as yet. 
 
 Madelon writhed as she heard. 
 
 The desire of her prayers had been given to her, he had 
 fame, and the world gave him honour ; and she sat alonn 
 here, forgotten by him as the picture of the woman at the 
 lattice was forgotten by Paris before the portrait of .a 
 courtesan ! She had voluntarily delivered him up to his art, 
 she had willingly surrendered him to the claims of ambition ; 
 and all that art and ambition had done had been to bring 
 him to the murderous embraces, and reward him with the 
 poisonous kisses of the deadliest temptress of Paris. 
 
 * O, could he but have been content without fame/ she 
 cried ; but she knew that he never could have been this, and 
 that, if in selfishness she had striven to bind him down to 
 the obscurity of her own humble and innocent life of labour, 
 the stifled desires and the feverish unrest within him would 
 have killed his peace in a slow torture as surely as hers 
 was now slain at one deathblow. 
 
 She had done that which was right, though the issue 
 thereof was evil. 
 
 After a while she rose and left the gardens, and asked her 
 to the place where his painting rooms were. I do not 
 
35* PUCK. 
 
 think she knew clearly what she meant to do. I believe 
 she only felt some vague impulse, such as a woman, whose 
 great love yet made her humble, might well feel to look 
 once more and for the last time upon his face, and leave 
 him for ever to the infamy of the temptress who had robbed 
 him of her. 
 
 People guided her willingly towards the artists' quarter. 
 She knew little of the city, and in her misery seemed to 
 have forgotten all she did know. 
 
 It was now quite late in the day, though the sun had not 
 set ; it was still intensely hot, and the crowds were growing 
 larger, as all those whose work was done came out to seek 
 a breath of air under the sultry yellow skies. 
 
 She made her way with some difficulty to the street 
 where his atelier was ; there was no one in the building 
 except an an old negress who had the charge of it, and who 
 did such little housework as the four or five painters Irving 
 on its several floors required. This negress knew me again, 
 and roughly bade Madelon enter her little porter's lodge, 
 and rest. But Madelon scarcely heard, she only asked if 
 Carlos Merle was now within the house. 
 
 The old black woman looked at her curiously, standing 
 in her grimy den, a little old uncouth figure, black as soot, 
 with all rude vivid colours in her ragged dress. 
 
 ' Carlos Merle ! ' she echoed. ' No, Carlos Merle rarely 
 comes here now.' 
 
 ' He lives elsewhere ? ' 
 
 ' Elsewhere ! ' the negress laughed grimly, ' elsewhere ! 
 Who are you that do not know of the caprice of Cleo- 
 patre?' 
 
 A shudder passed over Madelon's form, but she was a 
 resolute woman, and brave, and she asked still : 
 
 ' What caprice is it that you mean ? ' 
 
 'Why! her caprice, for sure, for this golden-curled 
 youth whom you speak of, this Carlos whom Paris for a 
 little season has taken to calling a genius. Clcopatre is 
 very famous, very rich, very powerful, she can afford 
 euch fancies ! and she laughs to see all her princes and 
 nobles so mad because she will for a while look at none 
 tut this painter." 
 
 ' But she she ' the words died on Madelon's mouth ; 
 ehe leaned against the wooden shaft of the lodge door, and 
 lier breath came in painful gasps. 
 
"CLEOPATRE. 353 
 
 1 Well ! she what ? ' chuckled the negress. ' She cast 
 afford such a caprice once in awhile, I tell you. Her world 
 will only be the madder for her when she shall have tired 
 of her young yellow-haired god, and that will be before the 
 last summer roses, are dead. He was hard to conquer, looJj, 
 you ; he had a horror of her at the first, he shunned her, 
 and fled from her, and that set her harder on this fancy to 
 beat him. She will have no man look on her face and 
 keep sane. So she set him to paint her portrait you 
 can see the thing now in Paris ; it has taken him three 
 months to do ; and she would have it painted in the noon 
 hours, at her own dwelling, that is all marble, they say, 
 and gold, with purple couches, and strange plants, and all 
 the floors of silver. Well well he went, and before the 
 painting was one-half done the world only held for him 
 that one woman. It is always so w r ith them all. And 
 now it is her caprice, I tell you, to have none but him 
 near her ; whenever she goes abroad he is by her ; and he 
 seldom or never leaves her roof except with her. It is a 
 base life ? O, well, that is as it may be. I think he has 
 shame of it, bitter shame sometimes, but he is drunk with 
 it, as it were ; he has no will but hers. He would fling 
 himself in the river at a sign from her.' 
 
 Madelon leaned heavily against the timber of the door, 
 her eyes closed, her mouth panted for breath, under her 
 clear pale skin the veins looked black. 
 
 The old negress looked at her, and seemed to take a 
 cruel pleasure in the misery she saw she dealt. 
 
 * He is your brother, maybe ? Well, you will scarce 
 get him out of the hold of Cleopatre. Till her fancy 
 slackens, at least ! and then he will be little worth getting. 
 Last autumn she had a like caprice for Hugo Cabarrus, 
 the composer. They all said he was the man of the future, 
 just as they say of this Carlos, how did he end when 
 she had played with him a season and spent her will on 
 him ? Why shot himself through the head one night, 
 after burning the score of his great opera, that they said 
 would have ranked him with Bofsini. She has done some- 
 thing the same with a score.' 
 
 ' And such a woman lives ! ' 
 
 The wo*ds broke with a shriek from Madelon the onlj 
 utterance she ever gave to all the agony within her. 
 
 2 A 
 
35 1 PUCK. 
 
 The negress grinned. 
 
 1 Lives ! She will live every hour <si jber life, however 
 Jong it be. There is not a second that she does not enjoy. 
 Look at her great, brown, sleepy, scornful eyes ! No one 
 ever sees them change, and how they smile at you poor 
 fools that fret yourselves with sorrow ! ' 
 
 Madelon put out her hands with a piteous gesture as 
 though praying peace ; then, tottering like a woman quite 
 worn out with age, she turned across the threshold, and 
 passed again into the streets. 
 
 She had forgotten me : I followed her closely in and out 
 a winding maze of roads. I think she had no sense nor 
 knowledge where she went. 
 
 The day was wholly dying now. It was scarcely any 
 cooler, and the great furnace glow in the west had the 
 earne red of Egypt in it that burned in that accursed 
 picture, and made the very marble of the houses flush to 
 colour, and gave the faces of the women all a weird and 
 fevered look. 
 
 She wandered a''nlessly, stunned with this one grief that 
 Ijft her no other memory than itself. None noted her ; a 
 pale, dust-stained, weary-footed woman, without beauty 
 and with poor raiment, there was nothing to mark her from 
 the crowds that parted to let her pass through them, without 
 so much as noticing the agony upon her face. 
 
 Once or twice a moan broke from her ; but it was too 
 low to reach any ear in those busied and heedless throngs. 
 
 The great doors of an old church stood open ; within all 
 was cool, and dark, and silent. She sought its shadow, 
 instinctively ; turning 9 Me frcrn the red hot glow, and the 
 whitened glare, and the sea cf shifting and implying 
 faces. 
 
 She dragged her tired Ibnbs into a distant corner of the 
 place where one little silver star of light burned before a 
 picture of the Mater Dolorosa. 
 
 There she fell on her knees, and at last wept, 
 
 It was quite night when the peal of the choir aroused 
 her, and she crept forth from her shelter once more into 
 the streets. 
 
 * Ma mere ! ' she muttered, as she raised me in her arms ; 
 her face was calm again, and the long habits of self-sacrifice 
 and self -control had made her remember th <t her old mother 
 
CLEOPATRE: 355 
 
 would be *re that time waiting, and watching, fa loubfc and 
 anxiety for her long-delayed return. 
 
 The church was in a rich and famous quarter of the city; 
 though so still, and gray, and old, the tide of gayest and of 
 wildest life surged round it ; the broad highway in which 
 it stood was brilliantly illumined, and the buildings that 
 flanked and fronted it were all ablaze with light likewise, 
 and bright with floating banners and with gilded balconies. 
 
 As Madelon went out, from under the dark porch, all 
 this radiance seemed to blind and to confuse her ; she 
 covered her eyes with her hand and gazed upward with the 
 helpless look of those that are stricken sightless. 
 
 Straightway, in front and above her, was a square balconied 
 window, open to the night. The balcony was of stone, ana 
 jutted out, canopied with amber silk, and filled with leaf 
 and blossom ; there was a strong light within that poured 
 out through the yellow draperies into the street beneath, 
 and in that light there leaned two forms ; one that of a 
 woman, who was carelessly thrown against the cushions, 
 and carelessly watched the movement of the shadowy crowd 
 below ; the other that of a man who in his turn watched 
 her, with all that passionate ecstasy, that rapt worship in 
 his gaze, which none ever see in a man's eyes but once. 
 And where he bent above her, half shadowed in the curtain's 
 shelter, he stooped his head, till his lips touched the fragrant 
 hair that loosely lay upon her shoulders. 
 
 The woman, not changing her position, smiled, and let 
 her broad, calm, dreamy eyes rest unmoved upon the crowd 
 beneath. 
 
 Then she stretched out her arm, that had one great 
 eastern bangle of dead gold upon it, and pointed to the 
 portico of the church : 
 
 ' See ! There is your poor fool/ she said, with the same 
 'calm scorn upon her smiling mouth. ''Will you go to 
 her ? now ? ' 
 
 W^y did this woman, who [had every earthly gift and 
 grace, and every joy in absolute possession, thus set herself 
 to the destruction of a creature, innocent, obscure, neglected, 
 who had never harmed or crossed her ? I cannot tell there 
 are women who love to murder, and women against whom 
 all innocence is ci'ime. 
 
 The brutal mockery of the words galvanised Madelon 
 
 2 
 
35 6 PUCK. 
 
 into sudden consciousness. She raised herself erect, and 
 looked straight up at the broad golden casement, with its 
 blaze of colour. 
 
 She was a proud, pure, brave-hearted creature, and she 
 found strengtn in that moment to give back scorn for 
 scorn. 
 
 He, leaning there over the white shoulder of his wicked 
 witch, and gazing whither she pointed, met that full, up- 
 ward look of unutterable rebuke, and of unchangeable for- 
 giveness. 
 
 Their eyes rested on one another. 
 
 Carlos, seeming to lose all courage and conreliness, a 
 under some stroke of sorcery, shivered, and c i>vered hi& 
 face with his hands, and shrank back into th< ; abyss of 
 blazing light behind him. 
 
 Madelon passed onward with a steady step, an d with her 
 hands clenched upon the ivory cross above her heart. 
 
 The shadow of the church had screened her from the 
 view of her destroyer before the time that she staggered 
 and fell down upon the stones of the great city, as Ben 
 Dare had fallen in the market-place of the little northern 
 burgh. 
 
 A sweet gay burst of riotous music broke over the 
 crowds and through the summer night. It came from tli 
 open windows of the house where Carlos had made his 
 choice to dwell, 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 IN THE QTLA.BTEB OP THE POOB. 
 
 THE first thing that I remember subsequently was the 
 loosening of some violent pressure about my throat, and a 
 rush of blood through my head and throat that made me 
 blind and dizzy. 
 
 "WTien I fully recovered consciousness, I found myself in 
 a small low place crowded with innumerable flowers, dead 
 and living, which filled it with an intense odour that re- 
 to me, till I shuddered, the beautiful flower -filled 
 
IN THE QUARTER OF THE POOR. 357 
 
 road of the injiorata all covered with a sea of gorse, ami 
 roses, and wild thyme, and snowy cistus-buds, and all fair 
 summer things that grew ; that road on which in Italy I 
 had been hunted and stoned, and singed with torches, and 
 beaten with sticks, and kicked from side to side, in the 
 common fashion at that poetic religious rite. 
 
 A boy with a pale sympathetic face leaned over me ; 
 a woman of noble stature stood beside me. She was silent ; 
 he was speaking eagerly to a withered old man in a blue 
 blouse. 
 
 ' So the little dog bit, and tore, and foamed, and raged, 
 grandpere,' he was saying, ' because they would move him 
 from this poor sick woman who had fallen there, and whom 
 they wanted to carry to the hospital ; and the gendarmes 
 bore her off upon a litter, saying she was not dead, only 
 senseless, and they kicked the dog amongst the crowd be- 
 cause it strove to follow them. Then the people shrieked 
 that it was dangerous and mad, and they called out to 
 one another that it should be killed ; and a soldier caught 
 it and twisted a bit of cord about its throat. He was for 
 stringing it up straightway to the lamp-iron ; and would 
 have done it too, but that madame stayed his hand, and 
 bade him not to be so brutal to fidelity, and forced him to 
 give up the little beast, and put it in my hands for me 
 to bring here ; and the cord was tied so tightly, I could 
 not loose it till I came home to get a knife. I do not think 
 the dog has any harm in it ; it was not mad, it was only 
 faithful.^ 
 
 * Fidelity is madness,' muttered the woman wearily, as 
 she turned to the old man. ' The dog is innocent enough. 
 Let it stay here ; it will be a pleasure to your grandson.' 
 
 1 As madame pleases,' murmured the man, not best 
 pleased himself, but respectfully submissive as to one 
 he honoured and obeyed. 
 
 The woman passed up some narrow, dark, crooked stairs, 
 in which a little dusky oil-lamp was burning ; and the boy 
 followed her until they reached a chamber in the roof. It 
 was a small bare attic, clean as any brown stone that lies in 
 bright brook-water, but without any sort of ornament, or in- 
 deed any sort of comfort. 
 
 The boy talked to me, stroked me, and made me a little 
 bed of straw in one corner of the garret ; the woman seemed 
 
35 8 PUCK. 
 
 to have forgotten both his presence and mine as she laid 
 aside her out-door garments, and went to a table under the 
 lattice, where she seated herself at some kind of work 
 what, I could not see. 
 
 ' ]\Iay I leave him with you, madame ? ' the boy asked 
 after a time, when his efforts to make me eat of some bread 
 and milk were all unavailing. ' He moans and whines I 
 suppose for that poor woman and grandpere might not 
 like him down with Tambour.' 
 
 'Yes, leave him, Bemy/she answered him absently and 
 the boy went out, closing the door softly. 
 
 I supposed from TV hat they had said that my eftortsto 
 serve Madclon had been futile, and that I was severed from 
 her in all likelihood for ever. For several days and nights 
 I mourned unceasingly with restless, feverish grief, refusing 
 to be comforted : the woman bore with me, and was good 
 to me in her silent, passionless, weary manner ; and the 
 gentle-hearted boy did his utmost to console me. 
 
 He was the grandson of the old herbalist in the little shop 
 below a kindly tender-natured child. They were quite 
 poor people ; and the various chambers of the old, dull, an- 
 tique dwelling were let by them to persons no richer than 
 then: selves penniless students and labouring women who 
 lived on black bread and bitter coffee, and studied or toiled 
 early and late, and seemed only to exist to carry on that 
 endless warfare with starvation and ruin which is all that 
 the very poor know the word of life to mean. 
 
 I saw but little of the boy, for a few weeks later he went 
 away to some religious place, where he was in training to 
 be made a priest poor gentle child, who gave his birthright 
 of the future up in such pathetic ignorance of his immea- 
 surable loss. The old man I rarely encountered ; he was 
 learned in simples and other herbal lore, and passed all his 
 time in studying when he waa not vending his shrubs, and 
 herbs, and flowers. Thus I was left entirely to the woman 
 who had saved me from the hangman's cord. This woman 
 was called Madame Heine. 
 
 "Whether this were in truth her name, or whether it waa 
 but one she had adopted for the purposes of her life in Paris, 
 I could not tell ; the people of the place she dwelt in kr:{v> r , 
 I think, nothing of her. She lived quite alone, and seemed 
 never to seek to hold any sort of social intercourse witb 
 any one of tho&e around 'her. 
 
IN THE QUARTER OF THE POOR. 359 
 
 Only to those who were a^ed, or such as were in trouble, 
 she was always merciful ; with that noble, silent, unceas- 
 ing charity of action, which so often, amongst the poor, 
 supplies the place of that charity of alms which poverty 
 ienies them the power to show to one another. 
 
 Herself, she gained a barren living by continual hard 
 toil. She modelled in leather (or, rather, carved the leather 
 as a delicate wood-carver does his wood) for a Palais-Royal 
 house that dealt largely in such things, but paid for them 
 grudgingly. 
 
 She did the work marvellously well ; she could imitate in 
 it the most perfect wood-carving, a fern-leaf, a dead wood- 
 cock, a branch of pine, a water-lily on its green raft oi 
 leaves, she would execute these, or any other similar thing, 
 in leather, until the keenest eye could scarce have told the 
 work from a most delicate and exquisite oak-carving. But 
 it was a slow and toilsome labour ; the single feather of a 
 bird would take two hours in its execution even more ; 
 and the wage for them was exceedingly small, beautiful 
 though they were. 
 
 She was all day long at this species of sculpture, sitting 
 at the little deal-table, with her tools, under the single 
 small square lattice in the roof : and the life was very dull 
 for me. 
 
 There was no sort of change from dawn to sunset. My 
 heart was heavy for all those whom I had lost. It seemecl 
 to me that life was but a sequence of tender ties, formed 
 only to be ruptured, and leave the torn heart aching. I 
 missed, moreover, the glad, sweet summer season in the open 
 air ; the freedom of the old fruit-gardens and flower-covered 
 ways ; the homely, happy sounds of all the stirring bees and 
 chirming birds, of the ducks in the dark cool pond, and the 
 lowing cattle in the poplar-belted meadows. 
 
 This little garret was very clean indeed ; but it was bare, 
 and dull, and lonesome, exceedingly. The scents of a city 
 made hot and sulphurous the winds that blew in through 
 the lattice ; and all the hours through there came up from 
 the streets below the one unceasing muttering of wheels, 
 and cries, and drums, and engines, and all the ceaseless 
 noise of men. It was a quiet ancient quarter, it is true ; 
 but the quietest quarter of a city, after the lull of country 
 silence, makes you know all that your poet meant when he 
 wrote of * the nar that aches with sound.' 
 
& PUCK. 
 
 Of Madelon I never heard. 
 
 But once, whilst the boy Remy was still in the house, 
 and when he took me with him across the bridges to the 
 old green Luxembourg Q-ardens, as he was wont to do in 
 the pleasant evening time when all Paris was out in the 
 sunset hour, I saw a carriage with scarlet liveries and 
 fretting horses and gay harness all hung with noisy silver 
 bells, and I heard the people round us say to one another 
 ' There is Cleopatre.' 
 
 And as it went through the white gilded streets and the 
 green lines of leafy trees, and the air that was bright, half 
 with the gleam of the lamps and half with the glare of 
 the sunset, her face came fully in my sight, lit with that 
 evening light, and I knew her then knew her entirely 
 as that memory stood out clear and fixed before me, which 
 had haunted me, though vague and troubled, when I had 
 gazed at the picture of Egypt. 
 
 Carlos Merle was not with her ; beside her sat a dark, 
 slender, gipsy-eyed man, whom the crowds about named, 
 whilst he passed, to one another, as a prince of some 
 Danubian province, fabulously rich, who had lavished on 
 her black sable skins, and diamonds, and opals, and strange 
 Byzantine things of untold worth. 
 
 And my heart was sick for Carlos ; for it seemed to me 
 that already somewhere in that hot, brilliant, amber-coloured, 
 magnolia-scented summer night, the last rays of the setting 
 sun were seeking ut his colourless face and weary body in 
 some haunt of death ; while she, the Faustine, the Assassi- 
 natress, the Hell-born, was gathering up her skirts, heavy 
 with the golden wage of infamy, and fleeing, with the 
 wicked laugh upon her face, to passion, and to pleasure, 
 and to riotous mirth, and to the witches' sabbath of the 
 senses. 
 
 I longed to seek for him. Alas, what could I do ? a little 
 powerless, insignificant dog ; dragged along with a cord 
 over the asphalte; kicked aside by the hurrying happy 
 throngs that went trooping to theatre and dance-garden ; 
 deafened by the music that swelled from the open-air con- 
 certs where the soldiers were playing ; terrified by the savage 
 glance and word of the gilded and belted gendarmes ; and 
 glad to hide, trembling, beneath the chairs of the gay in- 
 different people who sat before the cafe doors, and ate their 
 ices, and laughed, and cried, 'Hola, there is Cleopatre!' 
 
IN THE QUARTER OF THE POOR. 361 
 
 Ah, I wonder if you ever think of the woe that it is to us, 
 that utter inability to serve or to aid those we love ! 
 
 The life was dreary. To watch the stiff brown sheepskin 
 gradually moulded under the worker's hands into the sem- 
 blage of some drooping, lifeless, moorland bird, or some 
 lovely curl of clematis-flowers, was all the distraction that 
 I had. I was thankful since ingratitude is a human 
 monopoly for my bodily safety, for my corporeal welfare; 
 thankful that I was not beaten, nor starved, nor chained. 
 But I was very sad. I had lost all my friends into the 
 night of an unknown fate ; and I could not forget, for I 
 was a dog. 
 
 The sole interest that this existence awakened in me wa& 
 an interest in this woman, who had delivered me from death. 
 I wondered about her ceaselessly. 
 
 Her garments were of black, and very worn, but they 
 clung about a form fit for a sculptor's dream of a Greek 
 goddess; her hands were for ever working at the manual 
 toil by which her scanty bread was gained, but they were 
 long and white and slender ; her face was very worn and 
 attenuated, as though with infinite want and sorrow, and 
 there were silver threads amongst the luxuriance of her hair; 
 but the shape of her head and throat were haughty and full 
 of stag-like grace, and the eyes were still wondrously 
 beautiful, though the lids were so swollen above, and the 
 shadows were so dark beneath them. 
 
 She had a look that was very far above the place in which 
 she dwelt and the poor people of the tenement. Although 
 she lived more poorly still than many of them, and never 
 appeared to hold herself greater in any way, they yet 
 treated her with a curious reverence, and called her Madame 
 with more of courteous meaning than always lies in the 
 common term. I was ashamed to fret at the monotony and 
 obscurity of my own existence, when I saw how utterly 
 joyless and cheerless her days were. 
 
 To a woman like this, who must once have been of rare 
 beauty, and who evidently had a proud nature and a deli- 
 cate taste, the manner of her life must have been almost 
 intolerable. She rose at dawn to go to the little work- 
 table under the lattice ; she rarely ate anything save some 
 thin soup, some coffee, and some poor rye bread ; she saw 
 no one unless it were some creature yet poorer than her- 
 
3^2 PUCK. 
 
 self, who came to her door for an aid that she never refused ; 
 she rarely went forth save very early, to sell what she had 
 modelled, or to obtain the bough, the fruit or the dead bird 
 that she needed to copy in her dried-skin carving. 
 
 I was sometimes with Tambour, the dog in the place be- 
 low that little flower-shop of herbs and pl.\nts and roses 
 and immortelles, that smelt fragrantly always, and gave a 
 lovely flush of colour in the dark and crowded passage- way; 
 and he told me some few things of her. 
 
 He was an old brindled mastiff, very old ; so old that he 
 remembered the Days of July, and had seen his first master 
 shot down in his youth upon the barricades; but he was 
 very kind and veiy pitiful. AH our race are. Was it not 
 the dogs that succoured Lazarus, when the rich of his own 
 kind scorned him ? 
 
 Tambour told me chat this woman Heine had dwelt w r ith 
 him three years, coming, he believed, from across the Alps. 
 She had never in all that time^lived differently to what she 
 now did ; nay, she had indeed lived worse, for at firfct find- 
 ing none who would recognise her talent ia the leathern 
 carving, nor even purchase sufficient of it to gain her 
 money enough to buy sheepskins and birds for models, sho 
 had been forced for some six or seven months to earn her 
 daily bread by the hard course of toil sewing the hempen 
 shirts that the populace wore. Saving a few coins from 
 this ill-paid labour, she had been able at length to obtain 
 the materials which she needed for her art, and had suc- 
 ceeded in obtaining also a market for that art at a shop in 
 the G-alerie d' Orleans. 
 
 ' Why that woman works so I cannot think,' said the old 
 dog to me, where we rested together under the little low 
 ceiling of the flower-shop, among the quantities of broom/ 
 and lilies, and roses, and sweet herbs, that lay dying sadly 
 here in the heat and dust and turmoil of the city; flowers 
 sick with longing for the cool touch of the dew, as your 
 hearts get faint with longing for the freshness of truth in 
 the fever and the falsehood of the world. ' I cannot think. 
 Why does she not set a pan of charcoal in her chamber one 
 quiet night, and make an end of all this toil for ever? 
 Tulio did that, here in this very house ; and he was ooly 
 twenty. He was a Bordelais ; he was a musician ; he wrote 
 rery beautiful tilings in music; at least they sounded so upon 
 
IN THE QUARTER OF THE POOR. ^63 
 
 his violin, which he would play from dawn to midnight up in, 
 that very little garret where you live now with madame. 
 I have seen the people in the street all gathered mute aa 
 the dead under our casements, listening listening, ay, and 
 sobbing like children too. It must have been good music 
 that could move them so ? I do not know why it was, but 
 none would listen to it in Paris, save these poor workpeople, 
 out of these courts and alleys, who were, I suppose, no 
 good to him. Any way, I know Paris would not listen 
 no one would take his opera not even try it. And they 
 said my people did that when he went to one of the 
 great masters, this great man derided him. It might be so : 
 men, you see, will not recognise that all human genius is 
 like all sun-rays, coming from the same source, and there- 
 fore the same light whether shining on Europe or Cathay, 
 whether beaming on a king's diamond or on a cotter's tuft 
 of daisies. No ; they are so feebly and foolishly jealous. 
 The setting sun denies the sun that rises ! "Well, Julio 
 could get no hearing ; and he was exceeding poor, and the 
 hunger of him killed his soul ; and rather than sink down 
 into his soulless, sightless, bitter life, he chose to die. They 
 found him dead one morning his breath stifled by the fire- 
 fumes, that were kinder than men's neglect. Why does 
 not this woman do the same ? ' 
 
 ' Perhaps she thinks it a sin ?' I suggested, for I knew 
 that Madelon, or Ben Dare would have held it to be so. 
 
 * Perhaps,' assented Tambour. ' It may be one. We 
 always endure, you know ; we never slay ourselves. Yet it 
 seems strange how she can go on with that dreary life. 
 All these three years, no friend has ever visited her. No 
 letter has ever come to her. It must be worse than death 
 to be utterly forgotten, to be utterly alone like that. 
 However, I fancy it will not last much longer. That woman 
 is marked to die.' 
 
 'To die?* 
 
 ' Yes ; hark at her cough ! Look at the flush in those 
 hollow cheeks ! See how weak she is when she rises in 
 the morning ! She is marked to die, and that soon.' 
 
 I shuddered j it seemed terrible. 
 
 * You are unwise,' said the old French dog ; * very unwise, 
 if you wish the woman well. What is life to her ? A 
 burden borne for duty's sake alone. She will be as glad to 
 
3 6 4 PUCK. 
 
 lay it down as a hunted bird is to sink into its nest. There 
 . has come a certain peace upon her face of late ; I think it 
 " has come because she knows death near.' 
 * But she is young still ? * 
 
 ' Ah, what does that matter ? I have seen a girl of 
 seventeen years thankful to die. Her beloved one had 
 been slaughtered in the African raids, and for her the 
 whole world was laid desolate because that one poor soldiei 
 was dead in a nameless grave. You do not understand 
 men and women much ; they are very curious in that. 
 They are at once the most selfish and unselfish the most 
 sublime and the most sordid of all created things. See ! 
 one of their women will kill her lost lover's fresh mistress 
 rather than let him be happy through another, and then 
 kill herself because she cannot endure to exist without 
 him! There is not the slightest sense in any of their 
 actions ; but there are continually the most wonderful 
 egotism, and the most marvellous martyrdom, side by side 
 together.' 
 
 ' You think the life of Madame Eeine a martyrdom.' 
 1 "Well, I do. There is the look of a woman who has re- 
 nounced upon her face. It is she who has forsaken the 
 world ; not the world that has forsaken her.' 
 ' There is a difference, then ? ' 
 
 ' A difference ! The poles are not wider asunder. Look 
 you I was once a convent dog. It was the happiest time 
 of my life. I never went beyond the garden walls it is 
 true ; but then it was so large, it was like a little kingdom. 
 I was there six years ; years of perfect peace. My only 
 office was to guard the convent fruit from marauding chil- 
 dren who would, undaunted by the sanctity of the place, 
 climb the high walls at twilight for sake of the bursting 
 plums and luscious peaches. The nuns made a favourite oi ; 
 me ; and I came to know them all perfectly well. The 
 greater number by far were women whom the world had 
 abjured ; whom nature, denying beauty, or love, or sweet- 
 ness, or some other gracious charm of living, had driven to 
 this solitude ; or who, disappointed of marriage or ambition, 
 or of whatever desire their souls were set on, had come 
 thither because naught else was possible to them. But 
 again, there were a few whom the world would fain havo 
 kept j women gifted, beautiful, victorious, who had been 
 
IN THE QUARTER OF THE POOR. 365 
 
 beloved and tempted ; who came of their own will to a self- 
 chosen sacrifice ; laying down out of their hands the glory, 
 or the passion, or the homage they enjoyed. IS"ow, of these 
 first women the look was always regret, discontent, sadness, 
 helplessness ; but of these latter women it was always half 
 conquest, and half captivity an agony indeed. And that 
 is the look this woman B/eine has on. her face ; and death 
 wiih it, as theirs mostly had.' 
 
 And then he would compose himself to sleep under the 
 yellow plumes of the broom, and the sheaves of great white 
 lilies, and dream, I doubt not, that he was once more 
 amongst the deep unshaven grasses and the drowsy shadowy 
 ways of his old convent-garden. 
 
 This talk of his moved me to quicker and more curious 
 interest than I might otherwise have felt in this lonely, 
 proud, weary woman, who had stood between me and the 
 hangman's cord. There was a strange fascination, too, 
 about her; a fascination that seemed the stronger now that 
 he had shown me that death was hourly stealing the cunning 
 from her hand, and the brilliance from her eyes. 
 
 There seemed in that mute, haughty, passionate, colour- 
 less face, so eloquent a story of a soul so hard to crush, of 
 hopes so hard to die, of a spirit so hard to break ; a story 
 of strong love, of strong powers, of strong woes, of strong 
 will, that had fought so bitter a battle with fate, and at the 
 end been worsted. 
 
 It seemed an idle fancy, of a woman who modelled, in a 
 garret, woodcocks and ferns, and wild vine-clusters for the 
 G-alerie d'Orleans ; yet I could not help believing that she 
 had once been famous in the blaze of the world's light. 
 
 Once, one twilight, Tambour and I were lying underneath 
 the lilies ; the beautiful pure lilies that the flower-girls bore 
 forth every evening to perish in the gas glare of the streets 
 and cafes, as women take their innocence and honour to 
 wither in the corruption of base sins and venal vices. 
 
 There was more stir than usual in the little place that 
 night ; there were eager voices, and sobs and laughter, and 
 flushed wondering faces, all pressed together in the light 
 of the little single oil-lamp, whose feeble rays struggled 
 through the dusk of the evening. In the centre of the 
 breathless groups was a girl of one of the adjacent houses. 
 Her name was Mariquita. She was of Cordovan-Jewisb 
 
366 PUCK. 
 
 "blood, though Paris born, the daughter of a poor fruit- 
 vendor, who dwelt under the tawny leathern awning of the 
 melon and grape-stall opposite. 
 
 The girl was handsome, and of a vivacious, electric, un- 
 tamable temper : she had a voice too, mellow, sweet, far 
 reaching, and a form as lithe as a serpent's. 
 
 She stood, the centre of the excited crowd, with her 
 brown arms outstretched, and her whole body quivering 
 beneath her picturesque rags, and her black eyes full of 
 fire, and her white teeth glittering with a hysterical laugh 
 of joy. Evidently some great joy or wonder had just come 
 to her, in which the sympathetic crowd was sharing ; for 
 Mariquita, despite her gusts of passion and her lioness-like 
 rags, was a favourite with the people of her quarter, by 
 reason of her beauty and her keen and witty tongue. 
 
 As Tambour and I, roused from slumber by their cries 
 and exclamations, lifted our heads and watched then? 
 wondering what had chanced, Madame E-eine entered th .- 
 shop ; which was the only passage from the little street 
 without to the staircase of the dwelling which led to the 
 garret which she occupied. She had been out on one of 
 the two only missions which ever took her forth ; either the 
 sale of her carvings, to the Gralerie d' Orleans, or a visit of 
 charity to some dying or ailing creature. 
 
 She paused beside Mariquita, who was, in a manner, 
 favoured even by her ; Mariquita, tameless to all others, had 
 ever been docile to her, and had always shown a curious 
 attachment and veneration for her. 
 
 * What hast thou, Mariquita? ' she asked, arrested by the 
 girl's aspect, and by the excitement of the little throng 
 that filled all the dark den, whose only light came from the 
 colours of dying flowers, as the only poetry of your world 
 comes from the sadness of ruined lives. 
 
 The girl flashed her glowing eyes upon the weary face of 
 the woman who questioned her. 
 
 ' Madame, Madame ! ' she cried breathlessly, the words 
 coursing each other off her lips. ' Madame ! my fortune is 
 made my fame is made ! I shall be great great, only 
 think ! The director of the Ambigu has seen me and has 
 talked with me, and says that I have the genius of Eachel 
 in me, and that if I will serve him, and him only, for five 
 years, he will bring me out before Paris, *nd make me the 
 
IN THE QUARTER OF THE POOfl. 3 6 7 
 
 talk of all the world, "because I have the three sole things 
 'that women want for greatness beauty, and passion, and 
 voice ! O, look ! It has come at last, the chance for 
 Paris to hear me, to see me, to know me. And I have it 
 in me to conquer them ; I feel it ! I fear nothing, I heed 
 nothing, I hark to nothing only k> this surety in nie that 
 tells me I shall be great great great ! ' 
 
 She was a ragged Jewish girl ; she spoke in the tongue 
 of the populace ; she had lived all her short life under the 
 yellow leathern awning, selling the slices of water-melon, 
 and the handful of roast chestnuts, in which her father dealt. 
 But for all that there was the fire of truth in her, and none 
 who heard doubted that her self-prophecy came, not of 
 vanity, but of vision. 
 
 Over the face and form of the woman who heard her c$ 
 the woman to whom the world was dead there passed a 
 curious and terrible change. She trembled and recoiled, and 
 seemed to sicken, as one might do who saw the grave of 
 some lost and beloved thing suddenly forced, and flung 
 open, by an alien hand. 
 
 ' Great, great!' she muttered in her throat, while her eyes 
 gazed, without sight or sense in them, at the dilated 
 triumphant form of the young girl. ' Great ! Ah, Grod ! I 
 dreamed just such a dream once!' 
 
 Then, without seeming to have any memory or knowledge 
 of those about her, she moved mechanically forward, and 
 up the familiar stairway into the darkness or the steep and 
 gloomy shaft ; away from the rays of the little lamp, away 
 from the fragrance of the fading flowers. 
 
 The group around Mariqirita looked after her, suddenly 
 checked in their riotous wonder and joyous felicitations ; 
 they dimly saw, that in some vague way they had touched 
 and struck the broken chord of this silent life, whose melody 
 was gone for ever. 
 
 The young Israelite stood, hushed, and afraid. 
 
 1 Will it be so with me, ever ? ' she murmured, and her 
 head sunk on her bosom, and the light died out from her 
 face. 
 
 I stole up the stairs into the desolate chamber in the 
 roof, where the woman who had succoured me had passed 
 alone. 
 
 In the faint reflection from the sunset in the evening 
 
368 PUCK 
 
 skies that still lingered here, above, though darkness brooded 
 in the street below, I saw her kneeling as I had seen 
 Madelon kneel in those weary summer nights which had 
 closed the days that had failed to bring her Carlos. 
 
 But Madelon's hands had clasped her crucifix : thia 
 woman's hands were empty. 
 
 From that day her health declined more rapidly and 
 visibly. Her weakness increased, so that she could scarcely 
 move from her chamber. She would drag herself wearily 
 from her bed to the table where her work stood, and strive 
 to model some feather, or leaf, or blossom ; and then would 
 let fall the tool she held, and sink down from absolute 
 exhaustion. 
 
 She could eat little ; and the hard tasteless food she had 
 was ill fitted to tempt appetite. She coughed continually, 
 and her hands were wasted and diaphanous. 
 
 It was touching to see the poor people of her quarter 
 bringing some little fruit, a golden peach, or a leaf full of 
 mulberries, and begging her to taste it for their sakes. They 
 had grown to hold her in great reverence and affection, sad, 
 and silent, and proud though her aspect was ; and they 
 knew that only for a very little longer could this stranger 
 tarry with them there. To her the young Jewess devoted 
 herself with a passionate attachment: Mariquita seldom 
 spoke, but she would watch for her every want with her 
 great radiant wistful eyes : and would crouch on the floor 
 sleepless and motionless through all the night ; and would 
 never tire, or be tempted from her side. Once or twice 
 she brought some clear crystals of ice, some golden luscious 
 wine, some clusters of violet grapes ; the dying woman 
 looked at them and murmured some wonder as to whence 
 these costly things could come. Mariquita grew red under 
 her soft brown skin, and muttered hurriedly of gifts made 
 to her father. 
 
 But Tambour whispered to me : 
 
 'Look you. She has not that golden sequin that she 
 always wore on the silk cord round her throat, the only 
 ornament she had. She has bartered it I doubt not to get 
 the ice and the wine in exchange.' 
 
 And neither do I doubt that the girl had done so, though 
 the golden coin had been the pride of her eyes and the 
 delight of her soul ; an amulet of potent charm, no less 
 than a jewel of price in her sight. 
 
7/7 THE QUARTER OF THE POOR. 364 
 
 Mariquita again and again urged her to see some physi- 
 cian. She always refused. 
 
 ' What use ? ' she would reply ; ' no skill can cure con- 
 sumption. And if such skill even there were, I would not 
 employ it.* 
 
 This was all she ever said in reference to herself, or to 
 the death which she knew to be so near. Usually silent 
 previously, she had sunk now into almost perfect apathy, 
 although the same desolate calm, the same proud serenity, 
 that had always characterised her, were with her stifl. 
 There was this difference only, that whereas before she had 
 seemed a woman to whom no hope of any sort was possible, 
 she had now N his one certainty of death which was release. 
 "Where the look in her eyes had been agony it was now 
 resignation. 
 
 Several months had passed with me here. Autumn was 
 deepening into winter. The only plants in the flower-shop 
 beneath were the immortelles and the wreaths of ivy leaves 
 for tombs. All the rest were pods and seeds, withered 
 foliage, and sheaves of dried herbs, that gave forth a curious 
 faint odour like the scent of herbs that are laid beside the 
 dead in coffins. 
 
 Paris around, doubtless, was awakening to its utmost 
 gaiety, its wildest whirl of pleasure ; but here we knew no- 
 thing of it we only knew that bread would be dearer, and 
 that the very aged, and the very young, would soon perish 
 of cold, and that wood would be scarce for the stove, and 
 that in the little chamber under the roof there lay a woman 
 
 Ah ! vhat is all the poor ever do know of what there is on 
 ea.rth. That there is pain, and there is cold, and there is 
 death. 
 
 With other things they have no part nor portion. 
 
 And all the while I shivered in the dreary attic that was 
 scarce warmed at all by the little fuel that alone was burnt 
 in it ; and pondered ceaselessly and longingly of all those 
 whom I had known and lost ; and wondered if in truth I 
 could have ever really been the little gay white creature, 
 happy and playful and prettily proud, that had been 
 caressed by the hands of fair women, and praised by the 
 voices of nobles. 
 
 One day, one very chill dark day, in that drear Winter- 
 's B 
 
time I sat nuddled beside tHe bed. The embers had quite 
 died in the stove ; the gray December light struggled feebly 
 through the scant inlets of the lattice; the strong scents 
 of the herbs came up the stairs like the odours of sepul- 
 chres. Mariquita was perforce absent, gone to her task- 
 master, who was to give her fame as wages. Madame 
 Heine, half raised upon the hard narrow pallet that served 
 her as her couch, had drawn some letters from beneath her 
 pillow, and was reading them very slowly one by one. 
 
 She had been weaker that day than any heretofore. All 
 the night through convulsions had shaken her wasted form; 
 and the hemorrhage of the lungs been only stayed by the 
 ice that the Jewish girl had held to her parched lips. 
 Although I had never beheld death, it seemed to me that 
 there could not be many more hours to her life; it 
 seemed that very soon this mute, desolate, proud existence, 
 without a history, without a friend, without a lament, or a 
 sigh of self-pity, must end, and take its secrets and its 
 sorrows to the silence of the grave. 
 
 The letters were many, and were hours in her hand; 
 tears had long been scorched dry in her dark weary eyes, 
 but as she read them, one by one, the anguish was upon 
 her face that I had seen on Madelon's when she had heard 
 that her lover dwelt in the house of Cleopatre. 
 
 They were letters in a man's hand ; letters doubtless in 
 which a man's heart had been spent in all a man's frank 
 and honest passion. 
 
 When the last had been read by her the day was done ; 
 the light was well-nigh spent, the evening shadows were 
 long and dark within the chamber. She dragged herself, 
 with slow laborious effort, from her bed to where the scant 
 wood burned in the poor cold stove, and crouched down 
 before it, and slowly thrust one of the letters amongst the 
 fuel. 
 
 Her own secret she could take with her to her grave, but 
 his she could not : she would not leave it for another's eyes 
 to learn. 
 
 One by one the letters were' drawn within the heat and 
 the smoke, and curled, and crumbled, and fell away, a little 
 heap of ashes. And to her it was even as though, with 
 each, her own life consumed and passed away in fire ; even 
 aa her years had perished in the furnace of the past, so 
 perished these records e4! a passion that was dead. 
 
A TORN LETTER. 3/1 
 
 They were all her hold on life ; all the bonds that still 
 bound her to some old sweet unf orgotten time ; all the ties 
 that still held her to some divinest season when she had 
 known of joy : all the witness that still told her she also 
 once had lived. 
 
 "When the last letter alone remained she paused so long 
 that the cold white moon of winter rose and shone in 
 through the lattice in the roof. She waited, as the suicide 
 may wait ere he drives home the thrust that shall still 
 memory in him for ever, and make him dumb, and kill, 
 and senseless, as the earth that will yawn open to receive 
 his corpse. 
 
 It was quite night, the moon was high and full, and the 
 chamber was dark as a grave, when at last she stretched out 
 her hand and let the cruel fire take those living, breathing, 
 throbbing words of a love that wrote itself as deathless ; 
 and burn them, as time burns passion till it dies; and 
 leave them there, a little coil of wind-blown, silent, hue^ss 
 ashes. 
 
 Then, as though her own life indeed went out with theirs 
 her hands moved feebly as though seeking some other hand 
 to hold them; her great dark eyes gazed upward as though 
 searching for some other look in answer; a convulsive 
 shudder moved her once only once then stretching her 
 arms out wearily, in the darkness and the solitude and the 
 silence of the night, she bowed her head and died. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 A TORN LETTEB. 
 
 THEY buried her in the quarter of the poor. They had 
 loved her, these people, and they would not leave her in her 
 death to chance, or charity. They did what they could to 
 honour her in her grave ; and the Jewish girl, weeping 
 passionately, and refusing to be comforted, laid on that 
 nameless grave the earliest white-ladies that bloomed, pure 
 and spotless out of the winter-snows. 
 
 Amongst the trifles of her daily work, of the art that she 
 
37* PUCK. 
 
 .had prosecuted, they found a written fragment in her 
 1i and- writing, a sheet of paper torn obliquely, seeming to 
 be a letter that she had penned upon her dying bed, and 
 then had half-destroyed, in doubt whether or no to leave it 
 to speak for her to some other when her voice should be for 
 ever silent. 
 
 The fragment was this many words propably had pre- 
 ceded it. 
 
 I It is selfish to send you this ; when I am dead it can 
 but rend your heart, if your heart still holds a place for me, 
 And yet I feel that I must write to you this one last word, 
 must bid you know why, why only, I fled from you. O 
 God, you cannot doubt why it was, surely ! 
 
 I 1 left all, I lost all, when I gave up the world for you. 
 I had vanquished them ; I had vindicated iny own powers. 
 I had reached success, if not fame ; I had talents, if not 
 genius ; I had touched celebrity and brilliancy, and wealth 
 and pleasure; I had learnt how sweet the praise of the 
 world can be ; I had tasted how precious is the homage of 
 watching eyes and listening ears : and I gave it up all all 
 for you. Only for you. It was not my duty as a wife, 
 he had forfeited all claim to it. It was not my honour as 
 a woman, you were dearer to me than that. It was neither 
 of those that made me leave you to think me dead so long. 
 No : it was for your sake alone. 
 
 ' It seems such a little thing for a woman to give her life 
 up to love ; and it is little, truly, so little that do you think 
 I should have paused one moment out of selfish fear ? But 
 it is a great thing for a man a terrible thing ; a thing 
 not less than ruin. 
 
 ' You and I have known the world have we seen any 
 fate less deadly to a man than that surrender of himself to 
 the wife of another, in a union that has all the bondage, 
 and none of the honour, of marriage? And the sweeter, 
 the truer, the more loyal the man's nature, the worse is the 
 bondage for him. 
 
 'It was not because I doubted you that I dared not 
 become your mistress: it was because I trusted you so 
 utterly. You loved me with such noble and perfect love ; 
 you would h**e surrendered your life to mine as indemnity 
 
A TORN LETTER. 373 
 
 for what you would have thought my sacrifice ; you would 
 have held that the world's scorn gasre me upon you a claim 
 fast as iron, imperishable, eternal. You would never more 
 have been f rea ! and I I, O my love ! should have been 
 your gaoler, your injurer, your curse. 
 
 * I had strength to save you from myself from yourself ; 
 to set my will for your sake between your passion and my 
 own .... Will you understand this ? you must at 
 least believe. Since for it I have lost all. 
 
 * Do not seek to learn how have I lived : it has been by 
 simple hand-labour alone. 
 
 * The mock passions, the counterfeit woes, the mimicked 
 embraces of the stage seemed profanation to me when onca 
 you had looked into my eyes. Moreover, had I remained 
 before the world, I could not have been withdrawn from 
 your sight, your voice, your presence ; and women are so 
 weak, I could not have been sure an hour of my strength. 
 
 ' It was for you for you alone. I knew so well the 
 loyal knightly sweetness of your nature ; I knew so well 
 that you would have deemed yourself mine till death : I 
 knew so well how it would have ended the old, old 
 history! when some higher, happier, purer love should 
 have arisen to you, and I your mistress should have 
 stood between you and all fair things of innocence and 
 honour. 
 
 1 "Will you believe ? My G-od ! you must ! For you I 
 have bore worse than death ; for you I have killed mysslt" 
 in my youth, my beauty, my power, my victory ; for you 
 I have died, and yet have kept the agony of life awake in 
 me; yet in my grave have I heard the laughter of the 
 happy world, and all the glad and busy sounds of earth. 
 "Will ever woman love you as I have loved 1 No nevec 
 never, never 1 . . . .' 
 
 There the words ceased, and the paper was torn asund&r, 
 as though, when she had written these, she had feared to 
 send them to him lest in them she should leave a legacy of 
 pain, lest by them she should deal the stroke that she so 
 long had spared, lest through them any sort of selfish pity, 
 any breath of unconscious rebuke, should seem to him td 
 \inger in her dying memory of him, 
 
374 PUCK. 
 
 Mariquita took the torn sheet, and caused it to be read 
 .iloud to her by some Jew of the quarter who understood 
 the English character in which it had been penned. She 
 lieard it with wonderful eyes, all ablaze with fire, and yet 
 ull dimmed with tears ; then she folded the paper reverently, 
 and laid it within a little curious leathern locket that sho 
 owned ; and thrust it within her bosom. 
 
 ' Some day I may meet him,' she muttered to herself , 
 and she went on her way with the first snowdrops of the 
 year to that nameless grave in the quarter of the poor. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 THE CHILD GLADYS. 
 
 FOB a brief space afterwards I remained in the little 
 flower-shop. Mariquita vehemently implored for permission 
 to possess herself of me, entreating, and commanding, and 
 execrating, and conjuring all in one breath, in her own 
 impetuous volcanic fashion, but all her prayers were useless. 
 The time had not come for her to have entered on the 
 career that looked to her the high road of glory and 
 affluence ; she was exceedingly poor ; and she had nothing 
 to offer for me save a few old battered centime pieces. 
 The florist shrugged his shoulders and answered that I was 
 of value ; that he had a right to me, as his dead lodger had 
 cost him more than she had paid (this I am certain was 
 untrue), and that he should keep me until he could make 
 an advantageous sale. All the low cunning and the hungry- 
 avarice of the low French nature had awakened in him, 
 without any other counteracting influence to combat it, 
 now that the one woman was gone towards whom he had 
 felt forced to yield a certain reverent submission. So I 
 remained ; dull, weary, spiritless, ill fed, ill cared for ; 
 knowing no moments of pleasure except when the Jewish 
 girl would beg me for an hour, and warm me beside the 
 little stove at which her father roasted his sweet chestnuts, 
 and sit with me under the broad old red weather-stained 
 
'THE CHILD bLADYS.' 375 
 
 umbrella that in winter replaced the tawny awr.ing of spring 
 and summer. But these times were few and far between, 
 for Mariquita went now daily to the theatre, at which 
 she was to acquire the rudimentary grace and science of 
 that Art which, as seen in her marvellous visions, was to 
 make her meet with the empresses of the earth. 
 
 I did not seek to run away, though I was miserable. 1 
 had acquired that sad knowledge which the young are so 
 rebellious against that there are things worse even than 
 a dreary and desolate monotony. I had known the lash, 
 the goad, the life of the public toy, the endless labour of 
 an ever-renewing task ; and I knew that there were worse 
 fates than to see the days and the nights drift dully by, 
 sitting amongst the stores of evergreens and the pale 
 winter roses, even as men and women, when their life is 
 done, sit amidst deathless memories and faint sickly hopes. 
 
 Awhile earlier I should have rebelled passionately against 
 this colourless and weary existence ; but now I knew that 
 not actively to suffer is almost, in this life we lead, the 
 nearest approach we get to joy. So I took the broken 
 crusts and the begrudged shelter, and the chilly hearth 
 where the stove was cold ; and tried hard to be thankful 
 because the snow-flakes could not cover me, and the hail 
 could not t'elt me, and the shivering mountebanks, who 
 came into the quarter of the poor to dance on the icy 
 ground and to shake their spangles in the blue hard frost, 
 could not seize me as a brother and clairc me as a slave. 
 
 ' Ah, little one ! shall we ever live, thou and I ? ' cried 
 Mariquita to me one day, rebelling in her wayward youth 
 against the poor barren life of hardship and of solitude 
 that she led at her father's fruit stall. She might, I knew 
 for she was a woman, and beautiful, and to such the. 
 apple of life will ever be tossed if they do not mind the 
 black speck at its core of dishonour. But to me it seemed 
 that never more could mirth or joy return. 
 
 Yet, as often chances, I think, in this life, both were 
 nearest to me when I deemed them farthest. The time 
 came when the old man sold me sold me just as the new 
 year began. I was now so sick at heart, so tired, and so 
 homeless^ that indeed I cared little whither I went, nor 
 what my fate might be. Only I dreaded with a terror 
 untold, the stick of Gia and the little red coat of La 
 Pipetta. 
 
37 6 PUCK. 
 
 There were the usual chaffering of strange voices ; some 
 broken weeks of unrest and captivity; some misery in 
 strange hands and binding chains ; some piteous, dumb, 
 wondering woe, that none seemed to note or care for ; 
 then there came a day of travel by land and sea, and when 
 my cage was opened and I was loosed from it with eyes 
 blinded by the rush of light, and senses half numbed and 
 half maddened, I thought that I was dreaming a dream of 
 iny old dead life. 
 
 The chamber was strangely familiar. The place seemed 
 Jo me like ' a tale that is twice told.' 
 
 Its cabinets, its bookcases, its mirrors on their ground of 
 ruby velvet, its grand piano in a half -lit recess, its single 
 small marble statuette of the ' Grott und der Bayadere,' its 
 exquisite copy of the ' Depart pour Cythere,' hung between 
 photographs of Rachael and Ristori : did I dream of these 
 in one of the many dreams of them which had haunted me 
 among the long dry Cainpagna grasses, under the orchard- 
 trees of the Silver Stag, and amongst the white lilies and 
 yellow broom of the flower-shop in Paris ? Or was I, in 
 truth, once more in the supper-room of the Coronet ? The 
 door had closed behind me j I was alone, I gazed around 
 in eagerness and amaze. 
 
 There behind the bookcase-gvass were the ereain-hued 
 faces of Scribe and all his brethren ; there on the couch 
 were the sealskins, and the black laces, and the painted fan 
 of a woman ; there on the table were the Majolica fruit- 
 stands that I knew so well, and the little silver wagon that 
 held the cigarettes, and the claret-jugs with their swan-like 
 necks, and the quaint old flasks of Ehineland wine. Yes, 
 surely, it was no dream. I was once more, after my wan- 
 derings, in the pleasant festal-chamber of the unforgotten 
 theatre ; I was once more in the old charming life of ease 
 and fashion, where the wheels of time were oiled with gold, 
 and if Care still clung behind, Pleasure at the least ran on 
 before. 
 
 And I felt half blind with joy. 
 
 For, write as you will of the glory of poverty, and of the 
 ennui of pleasure, there is no life like this life, wherein to 
 the sight and the sense all things minister; wherefrom 
 harsh discord and all unloveliness are banished ; where the 
 rare beauty of high-born women is common; where the 
 
THE CHILD GLADYS: 377 
 
 passions at their wildest still sheathe themselves in cour- 
 tesy's silver scabbard ; where the daily habits of existence 
 are made graceful and artistic ; where grief and woe, and 
 feud, and futile longing for lost loves, can easiest be forgot 
 in delicate laughter and in endless change. Artificial? 
 Ah, well, it may be so ! But since nevermore will you return 
 to the life of the savage, to the wigwam of the squaw, it is ' 
 best, methinks, that the Art of Living the great Savoir 
 Vivre should be brought, as you seek to bring all other 
 arts, up to uttermost perfection. 
 
 I sat down, and gazed around me in a tumult of memory 
 and of expectation. It was very still, except for the roll 
 of the carriages in the street below. In this room you 
 never, at any time, would hear one sound to tell you that 
 an audience of three thousand people was shouting with 
 applause, or shrieking with mirth, only a few feet beyond. 
 
 In this strange silence strange because such intensity 
 of life was so near I thought, I knew not why, of the boy- 
 etatesrnan who had killed himself upon the hearth of this 
 very chamber, to have his jewels rifled, even whilst she 
 kissed his dead lips, by the woman for whom he perished. 
 
 Was it always thus, I wondered? Always the love, and 
 the loyalty and the faithfulness that suffered ; and all that 
 lived in peace and plenteousness the Faustine the Cleo- 
 patre? 
 
 As I mused the door opened, and a woman entered. 
 
 Have you never seen in life or on some old master's 
 canvas, a beautiful child's face, fair, tender, serious even to 
 sadness, with the golden hair cut low and square over the 
 brow, and the dreaming eyes gazing straightly out beyond 
 you, very far beyond you ? If you have, you have seen this 
 woman's face as she came into the lighted chamber, with 
 black folds of velvet sweeping after her as she moved, with 
 that grave grace of motion which always seems to belong to 
 other centuries to the terraces of Marly, to the halls of 
 Harnbouillet, to the studios of Vandyke, to the palaces of 
 Charles the Eirst. And which you have lost yes, lost 
 strangely, in this day of yours, when, all lovely and thorough- 
 bred though many of your women be, they smoke their 
 paper cigarettes, and talk their stolen slang, bet on their 
 gunners in a drove of grouse, and land their gasping grilse 
 to their own line ; take a double and drop like a workwoman, 
 
PUCK. 
 
 and ' get on ' for a ' good tiling ' at the Craven or the July, 
 with a reckless audacity that never flics at anything less 
 than four figures. 
 
 She looked at me with a smile which seemed, I thought, 
 surely that I should have to endure from her neither harsh- 
 nees nor caprice. 
 
 * What a pretty creature ! ' she said as she stooped to 
 touch me; but I stayed not for her caress I forgot 
 her very presence, for beyond her I saw Beltran. 
 
 Time had not dimmed my memory of him, nor had it 
 quenched my affection. With a bark of delight, I escaped 
 through her hands and sprang on him, recalling myself to 
 his remembrance with all the innocent arts of which I was 
 master. He was in nowise altered ; but had he been so 
 ever so greatly, my instinct would have been true to him. 
 
 We, who can only love dumbly, cling to the creature of 
 our affections, no matter how time have blanched his locks, 
 bowed his frame, shattered his whole being. You, who 
 talk so grandly of elective affinities and the unions of souls, 
 pass your early love in the street without knowing her, if 
 she have but wrinkled a little ; and break off your marriage 
 troth with your lover if a shower of shot chance to change 
 his handsome face to deformity. 
 
 He looked at rue in my ecstasies with amused surprise ; 
 he had no sort of knowledge of me ; but as he turned to 
 her to speak of my value, the little collar that I wore 
 caught his sight, and he raised me to read the inscription 
 upon it. 
 
 The bit of metal that had been fashioned for me at the 
 forge in the woods of the Peak was still about my throat ; 
 it was not worth a brass coin, so none had cared to rob me 
 of it. 
 
 If you wish to keep a thing, let it ha?e naught to attract 
 the eyes of others a rule which sometimes seems to in- 
 fluence you too often in the selection of your wives 
 
 His face changed as he read. 
 
 ' Puck ! ' he muttered ; * as I live, it is the same dog that 
 belonged ' 
 
 The phrase was left unfinished ; the woman beside him 
 turned with a flush of surprise, in which one saw how very 
 youthful was that lovely face. 
 
 ' Puck ! Puck ! ' she echoed, as though my name brought 
 
*THE CHILD GLADYS: 379 
 
 also to her some memories. ' Can it be the same ? That is 
 strange, indeed ' ' 
 
 'It is the same dog, oddly enough,' said Beltran, as he 
 gave me to her ; but there was an annoyance, almost a dis- 
 pleasure on his face as he spoke. Whatever might be her 
 remembrance of me for of her I had none to him evi- 
 dently I bore but one association, and that the unwelcome 
 one of Avice Dare. For me personally, I suppose, he 
 cared nothing. Alas for us ! it is almost ever so in the 
 intercourse between our race and yours. Between human 
 beings, when two measures of love are weighed out by the 
 hand of fate, to be mingled together in union, one scale 
 is always light and the other always heavy. How much 
 more so between men and dogs ! 
 
 Although we spend all that we possess of loyalty and 
 strength and courage in human service, and break our hearts 
 oftentimes for human friends, we are seldom much loved in 
 return. A careless touch of the hand, a rough kindly word 
 or two now and then, a broken crust, a tossed bone : these 
 are payments enough for a dog ' only a dog.' 
 
 Here and there a Bab will find a chronicler ; a St. John 
 will beg with his last breath that his bones be laid beside 
 Lion's ; a Byron will value his ' one friend ;' a Walter Scott 
 will think, amidst woe, and debt, and the exhaustion of a 
 mortal disease, of * the dogs ;' and tombs will be raised to 
 lost and lamented dog-comrades, as in the little shadowy 
 yew-circled ceinetry of Wrest. But these exceptions are 
 very rare. For the most part, we are but little loved, little 
 Deeded, and not at all remembered. 
 
 The woman, bending over me, caressed me with a dreamy 
 tenderness, as though thinking of other things that my 
 presence brought from some past time. Her eyes seemed 
 dim as she looked at me with a sweet vague sadness, as for 
 some remembered season of great woe. Beltran drew me 
 away from her. 
 
 ' If he bring you those memories, he shall not stay. I 
 would never have bought him if I had known ' 
 
 * Why ? ' she answered him, still dreamily. * I shall care 
 Jnore for him. As for those memories, when do I ever 
 forget them ? And do you think I would forget if I could ? * 
 
 * I wish that you would at least. There is only one thing 
 you can want to remember * 
 
jSo PUCK. 
 
 'And what is that?' 
 
 'That you are famous now and happy. You ore happy?' 
 
 There seemed, I thought, some little douht and vague 
 apprehension in his question. 
 
 If there were, they must have been contented by the look 
 ;n her eyes as they turned on him : a look so eloquent that 
 it needed not in its confirmation the half -sigh of joy with 
 which her lips breathed the answer. 
 
 1 Happy ? Ah, yes ! Happier than it can ever seem right 
 to me to be ' 
 
 He did not ask her why this should be so, perhaps he 
 knew. 
 
 Almost at that moment the door of the supper- room, 
 which they had left open to the passages beyond, was filled 
 by the forms of five other men: three were strangers to 
 me ; in the two others I recognised the fair features o 
 Lord G-uilliadene, and the lofty form and dark guerrilla-like 
 head of Derry Denzil. To me it seemed so marvellously 
 strange, so breathlessly bewildering, thus to be tossed back 
 once more by the battledore of chance into the heart of 
 these old associations and unforgotten memories that I 
 cowered, dumb and dizzy, in a corner, wondering still if I 
 were not dreaming all these things under the dying lilies of 
 the florist's little den, or the golden-fruited pear-trees of 
 Madelon's orchard. 
 
 But, with them, there appeared a presence which did 
 assure me beyond all doubt or question that I was in the 
 region of fact and not of fancy ; for into the chamber there 
 entered a little black slender figure, hung about with golden 
 bells, with piercing eyes, diamond bright, and a pert, proud, 
 consequential carriage. Need I say it was Panfreluche ? 
 
 She darted at me, angered, curious, brimful of irritation, 
 and readiness for insolence ; then dropped her]nose to mine, 
 and cocked her ears, and screamed * Mercy ! if it's not that 
 little fool!' 
 
 The salutation was not courtly nor complimentary ; yet 
 it fell sweetly upon my ears. Is not the roughness, or the 
 sarcasm, of a friend more welcome than the sauve insincerity 
 of conventionality-clothed foes ? It is so to us : not per- 
 haps to you ; for humanity has learnt to love a daintily. 
 dressed falsehood. "What matter to you if garden snails, 
 pulled off the cabbages, have made your soup, so long a 
 
"THE CHILD GLADYS: 3 Hj 
 
 you don't know it ; and are cheated by a clever cook into 
 murmuring, * What a good consomme I ' 
 
 Fanfrcluche knew me, instantly ; and was glad to see me, 
 with that warmth of heart which had always underlain her 
 cynical assumptions. Quickly, as though we had never 
 parted, we were talking fast in that tongue of ours, which 
 you understand as little as you deaf in your own conceit 
 understand what the rooks talk to one another in the sweet 
 still evening time ; or know the meaning of the night-birds' 
 signals, as they move in the world of shadows ; or catch the 
 word of warning with which the blackcock, on his tussock 
 of heather, tells his brethren of the rifle-gleam ; or com- 
 preheud the coquetries of the prairie fowl's quaint cere- 
 monious country-dances ; or know by what rule of com- 
 mand and subjection the great armies of porpoises move 
 with such precision and wisdom ; or tell what amorous 
 poetry the stock-dove murmurs to her mates through the 
 sweet green summer silence ; or translate any other of the 
 innumerable tongues that daily and nightly fill the woods 
 and waters, the meadows and seas, with their meaning. A 
 meaning to the full as intelligible and as useful as that of 
 your own speech ; only you are too vain to believe it, and 
 too limited indeed in your intelligences to be able to do so 
 much as perceive it.* 
 
 1 Where on earth have you been all these years ? ' began 
 Fanfreluche, showing the passage of the years herself no 
 more than does your ' frisky matron.' ' And you look as 
 much of a baby as ever you did, you poor little atom of 
 ewansdown ! ' 
 
 This was insolent, for I was treble her size, but I was too 
 content to meet her once more, to pause to vindicate my 
 dignity; and indeed she gave me no time to do so, nor 
 any peace, until I had related to her all my vicissitudes 
 from the period of my disappearance. For them she evinced 
 some compassion, and more contempt : as I believe you* 
 friends are in the habit of doing when you tell them how 
 your wife has gone wrong, your bank broken, your horse 
 
 * I hope a certain contemptuous tone of self-glorification, that run 
 throughout will be forgiven to my friend Puck. It is perhaps pardon- 
 able when we reflect that his race always smell out a rogue, however, 
 he mny be clothed ; and that we seldom or never detect one provided 
 only he be, as the French say of their abricots, tr$s lien dore. ED. 
 
3 82 PUCK. 
 
 proved a non-stayer, your pigeon fallen outside the enclo- 
 sure, or any other misfortune of your existence. 
 
 ' I am sorry you have ever been professional,' she said 
 disdainfully, when she had heard of the days of La Pipetta. 
 * You haven't lost caste. We don't : a thoroughbred's 
 always a thoroughbred, if he come down to drawing a cart. 
 But the stage never suits us. It suits them. Human 
 beings are always acting off the boards ; they may just as 
 well do it on ; a lie or two more or less, when they are about 
 it, doesn't matter much. But we ' 
 
 1 Tell me all about yourself. What have you done ? ' I 
 interrupted her, remembering of her old disposition to 
 chatter epigram, or what she thought was such, with about 
 as much reason as your ignorant diner will take a bit of 
 mutton, smothered in sauce, to be an epigramme d'agneau. 
 
 'Done! ' she echoed. l l? My dear, I should talk all 
 night if I attempted to tell you. You've lived in a puppet- 
 box, an auberge, and an attic. I've lived with one duchess, 
 one marchioness, three Anonymas, a rector's wife, a horsc- 
 couper, an ambassadress, a tinker, and a manufacturer of 
 truffles india-rubber, and so true to life that nobody but a 
 dog could have told the difference ; people went into ecsta- 
 sies over their flavour ! Done ? Why, it's an eternity 
 since I saw you ! A bride whom I was bought for when 
 you went off the scene such a pretty creature, and quite a 
 love match ! has had time to get into the " Court of Pro- 
 bate, etc.," and out again, and is just going to marry her 
 lover. By the way, I saw her throw her arms round her 
 husband, and kiss him with her pretty innocent lips, the 
 very night she ran off with the other one from old Lady 
 Tynemouth's " small and early." O ! those dear women ! 
 
 ' And what became of the husband ? ' 
 
 1 How out of fashion you are, thinking of him that comes 
 of living in puppet-boxes and garrets. O, he went mad, I 
 believe : is mad now. A fine, gallant-looking fellow, too ; 
 but I knew from the first he was a great fool : he always 
 preferred sweet c-Kampagnes, and never could eat a raw 
 oyster.' 
 
 'But tell me all that has happened here?' I urged, 
 breathless and curious, as I gazed at the familiar faces, and 
 the familiar things, and heard Beltran's slow melodious 
 contemptuous tones, and Denzil's deep frank laughter. 
 
THE CHILD GLADYS. 1 383 
 
 'Has "he restored the theatre? And who is that lovely 
 woman ? ' 
 
 ' That lovely woman you will know. more about than I, 
 for you are going to live with her, I believe. He restored 
 the theatre, at a ruinous cost, directly after it was wrecked, 
 partly because, out of kindliness, he wouldn't turn his em- 
 ployes adrift in mid-winter; and partly out of pride, because 
 he wouldn't have the town say that the success of his sta^e 
 depended on Laura Pearl, or Avice Dare as you used to 
 tall her' 
 
 ' And she is in Paris ? She is Cleopatre ? ' I demanded, 
 scarce able still to disentagle past from present, dream 
 from fact. 
 
 ' She is Cleopatre just now yes/ assented Fanfreluche : 
 1 what she'll be before she dies nobody on earth can say a 
 peeress, or a princess, I shouldn't wonder. That woman 
 understands the great rule of success "frappez vite, et 
 frappezfort " and don't care a hang where you strike. I 
 was in Paris all last winter, and I thought she was having 
 a very good time, as the Americans say : she spent her 
 thousand francs a day ; she had peaches before anybody 
 else, she changed her dress four times in every twelve hours, 
 she had the best horses in the Bois, the Court wore a robe 
 Watteau she had revived, a new liqueur was christened after 
 her, and tortoiseshell fans became the rage because she 
 carried one. I don't know what a woman w r ants betides all 
 tlrs to be in paradise ! ' 
 
 I shuddered. I thought of Carlos. 
 
 That history seemed too terrible to speak of to this gay 
 satirist. 
 
 ' "What are you thinking about ? You are not the live- 
 lier for your exile,' cried Eanfreluche. ' Ah, my dear, you 
 should have lived as I've done ; with men who make up de- 
 licious truffles out of a little india-rubber, and women who 
 make up lovely f aceB with dead hair and their paint-boxes ! 
 They are the comedy of life. You've been with people 
 dreadfully in earnest, who ate dry bread, and wore their 
 own hair, and looked sallow with sorrow, and did no end of 
 fool's things, and went through life as through a tragedy 
 I know ! There can't be a greater mistake. Everything 
 is amusing, if you'll only look at it in that light.' 
 
 1 Life has gone so well with you,' I retorted. 
 
384 fUCR. 
 
 ' O, well enough, my dear ! And why ? I bite every, 
 body's legs if I'm unhappy ; you should see how quick they 
 get to make me comfortable ! The secret of being happy 
 yourself lies in the capacity to be intensely disagreeable to 
 other people.' 
 
 ' That sounds very unamiable.' 
 
 * Unamiable ! what does that matter ? An amiable dog 
 is a fool every little cur in the streets snarls in his patlT, 
 and every scamp of a boy throws stones at him ! ' 
 4 But his own people love him ? ' 
 
 ^ ' yes, love him so dearly that they give him a sound 
 kick in the ribs knowing he won't return it ! ' 
 
 I thought she had grown soured by growing older, female 
 creatures will ; or at least on our ear, a mot, that only 
 sounds prettily piquant when the speakers are young, has 
 a spiteful ring in its tone, we fancy, when they are young 
 no^ longer. Indeed, these sharp trivialities annoyed me at 
 this moment, when I was all agitation and excitement at 
 my sudden return, and full of eagerness as to all that had 
 happened in this little world during the dreary seasons that 
 I had been absent fromlT. 
 
 ' We are just the same as we always were, my dear,' she 
 Raid pettishly. ' Bless you ! in our world we never alter 
 anything ; our hearts may be broken, our honour be blasted, 
 our peace gone for ever, the one friend we trusted dead, 
 the one woman we cared for lost, we never change anything; 
 we dine and drive, and smoke and saunter, and laugh and 
 drink, and make love just the same. Why not? Our one 
 canon is, not to show that we're beat. Eeau joueur nefaui 
 se plaindre.' 
 
 ' It must be hard to do that sometimes.' 
 ' It is hard to the canaille ; it is second nature to the 
 gentleman,' retorted this determined aristocrat. ' If you 
 want news, of course we have always plenty of that. No 
 end of marriages and divorces, and scandals, and turf -ruin, 
 and cocotte-ruin, and all the rest of it ; there are fresh 
 stories every day, just as there's fresh butter for breakfast. 
 But nothing makes much difference nothing unless per- 
 haps it's the grouse disease.' 
 
 * The grouse disease ! ' 
 
 * Well, yes, there's nothing exactly to put in those birds' 
 places ; out men and women get supplied quite as fast aa 
 
'THE CHILD GLADYS. 9 385 
 
 they get bowled over. " Durham's gone," they were saying 
 last autumn everywhere ; and he was " gone " for some four 
 hundred thousand ; nothing in the world left him except 
 his bare title ; for Eoyeldene wasn't entailed. Now, Sip 
 D'Arcy Durham you remember him ? was, take him all 
 in all, the best-loved man in the country; witty, sweet- 
 tempered, generous to madness, brilliant exceedingly, ha 
 was yet of happy enough nature to have scarcely an enemy, 
 and to be adored nearly as much by man as by woman. 
 Well who thinks of him now ? He's ruined and has gone 
 to Norway, or no one knows where. "Durham would 
 have handled these line hunters better than that d d 
 fool;" or "Durham wouldn't have squandered a fine lot of 
 foxes like this duffer," they have said now and then when 
 wrathful with some M. P. H. And that's all ; except that 
 two or three women have looked white, for a month or two, 
 in spite of their rouge.' 
 
 * Do hold your tongue,' I entreated ; ' or else tell me why 
 I am here, and what has happened to them all, and who is 
 that beautiful fair woman.' 
 
 ' As to why you are here 1 don't know. Simply, 1 believe 
 because Beltran wanted a dog of your sort, and bade some 
 fanciers look out for one ; in consequence of which you were 
 sent him. No design, my dear ; nothing but coincidence 
 the one odd-tempered deity that rules the world. When 
 those poor devils of novelists jumble a lot of impossible 
 coincidences all pell-mell together without building plan or 
 sequence, or any sort of sense, they are all wrong as to Art, 
 clearly, but they are awfully true to life. As to them as 
 I tell you, nothing makes much difference to them. They've 
 dined, and dressed, and shot, and hunted, and played whist, 
 and made love, much the same as ever they did. They're 
 always saying they're tired of the life, but I don't think 
 they can be, for they never seem to try any other. Beltran's 
 been to Africa and killed a lot of things ; and a mare of 
 Ouilliadene's won the Oaks, spread-eagling in splendid stylo 
 all her field, though the very merest outsider ; and Derry | 
 Denzil's published another book that the men swore by in 
 the smoking-rooms, and the women cried over, and the 
 critics called immoral, so that I suppose it was a grfot 
 success with three such vouchers for it. Du reste I don t 
 think there's much to tell. There's been plenty of news, 
 
 2 o 
 
386 PUCK. 
 
 of course ; but now-a-days, when nobody ever takes up a 
 paper without seeing some friend or another divorced, 
 bankrupt, breaking a bank, or writing a novel, no news 
 seems to have much taste in it your bombe is all water-ice.' 
 
 1 But the theatre ? ' I persisted, out of patience. 
 
 ' O, the theatre is doing wonders, they say, since this new 
 miracle came into it. All the cellar-flaps clone away with, 
 you know, my dear, we go in for nothing but high art, or at 
 least as nearly high as is possible in an age that prefers 
 high feeding.' 
 
 'But who issTie?' 
 
 'I can't say. Our stars are seldom lost Pleiades that 
 can be named and placed : they are generally " etoiles qui 
 filenf qui Jilent qui filent et disparaissent!" You are 
 going to live with her. You can't want to ask me.' 
 
 1 And where do you live ? ' 
 
 'WithBeltran.' 
 
 I could not repress a sigh of envy and of sorrow ; my 
 pleasant place in those pleasant chambers ! Nothing looks 
 so sweet to us as a lost home in which a stranger is installed. 
 The flaming sword, betwixt the infuriate cherubim of the 
 brazen gates, was more merciful by far to the Eden-banished 
 sinners than would have been the sight of other human 
 creatures sunned in the lost light of that fair forbidden 
 kingdom. 
 
 4 You are fortunate,' I said with a sharp pang. 
 
 'I don't know about that, my dear,' she made answer. 
 ' I suppose I am. I have always made it a practice to pilfer 
 anything that looks tempting, and bite everything weaker 
 thar myself that I meet with ; I believe that is the sort of 
 practice that makes men's fortunes, so it ought to rnakf 
 ours. I wished to live with Beltran, so last season I just 
 walked into his rooms and stopped there. They couldn't 
 get me to go out, do all they would ; so they ended by 
 making themselves agreeable to my staying. If you want 
 to get a place, try that way. I've seen so many public 
 men keep in offices, that everybody wanted to turn them 
 out of, only by that power of theirs of sticking tight, as a 
 sea anemone sticks to its rock ! " A masterly inactivity " 
 is never so masterly as when it glues you fast to a good 
 berth, no matter whether you're fit or unfit for it. They 
 understand that BO well in aH eabwets !' 
 
"THE CHILD GLADYS? 3 8 7 
 
 'You must know everything about him, then? 1 
 
 She turned her nose in the air. 
 
 'My dear! There are four orders of creatures that 
 always know everything they are journalists, ladies'-maids, 
 priests, and toy terriers.* 
 
 And therewith she left me in the half -lit recess where 
 the grand piano stood, and trotted out into the full light, 
 where she put herself into a pretty pose in order to get 
 bonbons thrown to her. 
 
 Whilst she was gleefully catching the burnt almonds 
 and crystallised cherries, and cracking them with a monkey- 
 like unction, I sat in my corner, not knowing rightly yet 
 whether I were awake or dreaming. 
 
 The very familiarity of the aspect of all around me only 
 increased the confusion of my ideas. There was nothing 
 but what I had dreamily remembered, a score of times, in 
 the visions which had visited me lying under a contadino'a 
 tent in the harvest-fields of the Campagna, or watching the 
 pale moon glide above the metal roofs of Paris ; nothing 
 except the picturesque head of this beautiful fair woman, 
 the like of which I have never seen either in life OP 
 dreams. I sat still and gazed at them ; gazed beyond all 
 at Beltran. Having so long beheld nothing but the 
 passionate, black-browed, sun-bronzed faces of the Roman 
 peasantry, and the lean, swart, keen, eager visage of the 
 Parisian workmen save when I had seen the golden beauty 
 and fervid youth of the painter Carlos these men, once so 
 familiar to me, with their handsome colourless faces, their 
 low serene voices, their tired laughter, their look of fatigue, 
 their consummate tranquillity and indifference, seemed like 
 the creatures of another world. 
 
 Could passion stir them? pain move them? want con- 
 sume them? life be known to them through any other 
 thing save its pleasures and satieties? Idly I wondered 
 this, judging foolishly from the surface. I might have 
 known that no passions burn fiercer, no romances wax 
 stronger, no courage ever flames higher, and no hearts per- 
 chance ache more wearily, than in these lives that look so 
 passionless, so tranquil, so cynical, so selfish, and, as your 
 world will have it, so culpable. 
 
 If you doubt what these men are whilst vou see them 
 live, go and see them die, as they have died again and 
 
 201 
 
383 PUCK. 
 
 again, at Steinkerk, at Edgehill, at Vittoria, at Hougou- 
 mont, at Inkermann. Jacques Bonhomme shrieked and 
 struggled, and writhed and screamed, as they led him to 
 the scaffold ; but think you that Rohan cared nothing for 
 the sweetness of life because the proud blood never paled 
 before the axe, and the mute lips never once lost that smile 
 of serenest disdain ? 
 
 I cannot tell why these disjointed thoughts drifted 
 vaguely through my mind as I looked at Beltran, even 
 in that moment of bewilderment and of restoration. 
 Except, indeed, that in the faces of men like himself, as 
 they lie at length on the heather, or pace their yacht- 
 deck, or smoke their cigar on a battle-field, or murmur 
 love-nonsense in an opera-box, you can trace the old 
 race so curiously. The old race with all its recklesr daring, 
 and its feudal insolence, and its courtly gentleness, and its 
 imperious temper, and its loyal honour, and its simple 
 religion ot noblesse ollige, still alive under all the changes 
 of manner and habit ; the old race, which is still, whatever 
 be its faults or follies, what a mob will cower before, and a 
 soldier will follow to the death, and a people will look to in 
 its hours of action or of need, and a woman will choose 
 before any other type of manhood to be beside her in any 
 time of menace or of peril. 
 
 From my dusky corner, 1 watched, and wondered, and 
 listened, and puzzled my brain : the room was the same, 
 the men were the same, Eanf reluche was the same, the very 
 silver box that held the cigarettes was the same, and yet 
 there was a great difference. The voices seemed much 
 gentler; the laughter seemed much quieter; the wines 
 were but little touched; the conversation, as I caught 
 snatches of it, seemed artistic, pleasant, sometimes playful, 
 sometimes earnest, but at all times the conversation of 
 men, talking at their ease indeed, but still troubling them- 
 selves to talk ably, and conscious of the presence of a 
 woman who could discern such ability. Above all, their 
 speech was fit for a delicate ear even in their sharpest 
 witticisms, and there was not a flavour of that cynical 
 indecency which had been so general to the same speakers 
 here in the days of Avice Dare. 
 
 What had wrought the difference I wondered ? Certainly 
 he who now sat there, with that fair, childlike, and yet 
 
THB CHILD GLADYS.' 3 8 9 
 
 queenlike head, and those dreaming, luminous, grave eyes, 
 and that yoice which made the simplest words of common 
 speech sound music, and that rich old-world velvet dress 
 without a single jewel or ornament of any sort, was very 
 different to the form that I had used to see there; blazing 
 in sapphires or in rubies, and full of the supreme vanity of 
 its own wanton, deep-hued, gorgeous, physical perfections 
 displayed to the eyes of others, as the peacock spreads its 
 plumage to the sun. 
 
 Men are very much in society as women will them to be. 
 Let a woman's society be composed of men gently-born and 
 bred, and if she find them either coarse or stupid, make 
 answer to her: 'You must have been coarse or stupid 
 yourself.' 
 
 And if she demur to the tu quoque as to a base and 
 illogical form of argument, which we will grant that it 
 usually is, remind her that the cream of a pasturage may 
 be pure and rich, but if it pass into the hands of a clumsy 
 farm serving-maid, then shall the cheese made thereof be 
 neither Roquefort nor Stilton, but rough and flavourless 
 and uneatable, 'like a Banbury cheese, nothing but paring.'* 
 Now, the influence of a woman's intelligence on the male 
 intellects about her is as the churn to the cream : it can 
 either enrich and utilise it, or impoverish and waste it. It 
 is not too much to say that it almost invariably, in the pre- 
 sent decadence of the salon and parrot-jabbering of the 
 suffrage, has the latter effect alone. 
 
 * Pray tell me who this exquisite creature is r I begged 
 of Fanfreluche, who returned to me when she had eaten at 
 her own sweet will of bonbons till she was tired of them. 
 
 * You'll hear enough of her, my dear,' she retorted ; * the 
 town talks of her, and crowds this place to see her. She 
 does act well, that I grant ; but if she only knew it, she 
 don't want her genius a bit ; she might act like a stick ; 
 they'd come just the same, once set going.' 
 
 * But to set them going requires the genius ? ' 
 
 ' Gracious, no ! ' returned my ancient monitress, with 
 unutterable contempt. ' If you can just get it well bruited 
 about that a woman's very pretty, or very immoral, or has 
 tried to poison some people, or has got fabulously little 
 
 Jack Drum's Entertainment, 1601. E 
 
T,go PUCK. 
 
 feet, or is going to play a shockingly scandalous character, 
 any of these things will draw a great deal better than any 
 amount of talent. What made this one's fame ? Not her 
 capabilities, though they are great ; but just this one line 
 in the Midas " She is the loveliest woman we have ever 
 seen upon this or upon any other stage, and her attire is 
 simply perfection." The men went to see the face, the 
 women to see the dress : her fortune was made. Voila \ ' 
 
 ' She is a great actress, then ? ' 
 
 ' She is a charming actress. I don't think we can have 
 a great one. We are not barbaric enough ; and we are too 
 incredulous. Tou want a good deal of barbarism and a 
 good deal of faith in an age, to get a really great stage out 
 of it. To us, after our late dinners and with our pleasant 
 indolent spleen, Lady Macbeth looks ridiculous, and 
 Othello seems very bad form. We are as wicked as ever 
 other ages were, as passionate and as vile and as guilty as 
 ever they were ; but it is all in a very different fashion : 
 and the fashion is one which it is much easier for the 
 satirist to deal with pungently than it is for the dramatist 
 to render artistically. Chignons, and co-respondente, 
 plunging and panniers, Americanism and cocotteism, are 
 so much better suited to a Sheridan or Beaumarchais, than 
 to a Shakespeare or a Sophocles. The odd thing is that, in 
 the dearth of the poetic drama, not one satirical comedy 
 has as yet held up the mirror to all that tempts such a 
 mirror so strongly. The odd thing is that, with such a 
 field for them we have no Sheridan, and no Beaumarchais.' 
 
 'I did not ask for a dissertation on the drama,' I 
 interrupted her impatiently. ' I want to know about this 
 woman.' 
 
 'I'll tell you all I know, my dear,' said Fanfreluche, 
 seating herself comfortably. ' You remember the wreck 
 of the theatre, of course ? Well, he restored it, as fresh 
 and pretty and dainty as any enamelled bonbonni&re. It is 
 nicer than ever it was, with statuettes in its corridors, and 
 little boudoirs behind its choicest boxes, and leaves and 
 flowers everywhere. It cost enormously ; but he did it 
 chiefly out of pride, no doubt, that none might say the 
 house had depended on Laura Pearl. Many persons 
 wanted it: when a thing or a woman is known to be 
 certain ~uiu it is always bid for so eagerly ! But Beltran 
 
"THE CHILD GLADYS.' 391 
 
 would rot part with it. " I shall chance it til/ the lease ia 
 ended," he always answered ; and the time came when I 
 thought I knew why he had so answered. 
 
 ' The performance was much the same for a time : Maude 
 Delamere and melodramas first ; burlesque and ballet after- 
 wards. Money was lost every night. I don't know why ; 
 I suppose old Wynch did. The losses were so profitable 
 to him that he retired, bought a small place in Surrey, and 
 lives at ease. Last autumn twelvemonth I belonged to 
 Mrs. Hiversleigh pretty ; notorious ; husband vaguely 
 "in the city;" good for water-parties, fish-dinners, drag 
 seats ; and doesn't resent being cut if you meet her in the 
 Park when you're driving with your wife or your mother 
 you know the style I mean ? Royston Wressyl was he 
 chief friend at tnat time : a Major of Lancers in the old. 
 Sixteenth. She was in town because the Sixteenth were 
 at Hounslow. One night Wressyl and she went to the 
 Coronet with a few others ; they were to sup at the Levia- 
 than afterwards ; and to take me with them for a wager, 
 which they did. Wressyl carried me hidden in a big 
 lorgnon case ; but he needn't have troubled himself, they 
 knew me there. 
 
 ' " "What do they play to-night, Eoyston ? " she asked as 
 we drove. 
 
 ' " I'm not sure," he answered her, " but I'm awfully 
 afraid it's some old duffer's dry-as-dust play. They were 
 saying something to-day, though, in the Bag, about a new 
 actress being announced." 
 
 * She didn't ask any more. She only went to a theatre 
 to show her diamonds, and have a pleasant supper some 
 where, with lots of champagne-cup. They neither of them 
 knew Beltran personally, and had heard nothing. 
 
 * At the entrance we met Gruilliadene, who was intimate 
 with them. 
 
 * " What's up, Ned ? " Wressyl asked him. 
 
 '"Much Ado about Nothing" said the Earl. >r And a 
 new actress as Beatrice. Never played publicly in her 
 life they say. What a part to start with ! " 
 
 * " Awfully plucky," said my Lancer. " Safe to make a 
 mull of it, I suppose ? Who is she ? " 
 
 * " I don't know much about her," replied Ghiilliadene. 
 * Merest novice, I think. Beltran's always picking up 
 
39* PUCK. 
 
 stars that turn out to be sticks, like tlie rockets at 
 Cremorne." 
 
 1 And he went to his stall, and we to our box. 
 
 "The play had begun. This woman was on; you see 
 what her beauty is, and she was costumed superbly ; her 
 hair was cut square on the forehead and waved loose 
 behind, an anachronism, doubtless, but the very poetry of 
 Coiffure. Her audience, which seemed an ordinary one, 
 was apathetic and even hostile. It was the most piteous 
 thing I ever saw. Her tones were almost inaudible ; her 
 colour kept coming and going; her agitation was very 
 groat ; and she looked so young, such a child with it nil, 
 you would have thought that the public must have been 
 touched. But it was not. It hissed a little ; it yawned 
 a great deal ; and Mrs. Kiversleigh and one or two 
 women laughed loudly behind their fans. I think she 
 heard the laughter, for I saw her shiver. Ah ! it must be 
 a terrible thing, that first sound of your own voice in the 
 vastness and stillness ; that first sight of the unknown 
 crowd of satirical, indifferent, unpitying faces ! 
 
 ' The impersonation all through the first act was utterly 
 tame and meaningless. If it had not been for her beauty, 
 I think the house would have howled. As the curtain fell 
 and "Wressyl left the box for a moment, I managed to slip 
 out and through the passages, till I got " behind," where 
 there were only Beltran, Denzil, Dudley Moore, and Stein- 
 forth, the great author, you know. As the girl had come 
 off the stage she had rushed away to her room before they 
 could stay her. Beltran looked grave, and more anxious 
 than I had seen him do one race-day when a beaten horse 
 had cost him half an estate. 
 
 * " One can't say much for your new wonder ! " they were 
 muttering to him. 
 
 1 "No," he answered, very quietly. "But I believe she 
 will do well in time. You have not seen her act in private 
 I have." 
 
 * " I don't doubt her charms for any private performance," 
 eaid Dudley Moore drily ; " but we have really tried to float 
 as great geniuses so many pretty women, with only their 
 prettiness to recommend them that I am getting rather 
 doubtful of the utility of the process it can't claim novelty, 
 and I fear it can't claim propriety." 
 
* THE CHILD GLADYS." 393 
 
 ' Beltran did not show either annoyance or impatience. 
 " Don't judge her just yet," was all he said, very quietly 
 still. 
 
 * When the actress was called again, and left her room, 
 her face was quite white and her eyes all black and humid 
 with a bewildered sort of terror. 
 
 1 " I have acted so ill ! I feel so frightened ! " she mur- 
 mured breathlessly to Beltran, not seeming to see that any 
 others beside himself were present. He stooped to her 
 very kindly and gently. 
 
 ' " Tou nave not done great things at present, certainly. 
 But you can and you will. Try and forget that any one 
 is listening; and only remember how I want you to 
 succeed." 
 
 * The last words were murmured so low that only she and 
 I heard them. She drew a deep breath, the colour flushed 
 her face, a sort of inspiration seemed to seize her, and she 
 went. Prom that moment her acting wns entirely changed. 
 Her voice rang clear, and full of exquisite cadences ; her 
 beauty grew radiant with pride and strength. She seemed 
 to feel her own force, and to be filled with the powers of 
 art. All the beautiful insolences, all the changeful colours, 
 all the splendid audacities, of genius shone out in her ; and 
 triumphed. Her audience, indifferent and even alienated 
 before, were first startled and then captivated. They 
 realised that this creature to whom they had been at best 
 contemptuously indulgent, as to a lovely child whose failure 
 they pitied, but whose weakness wearied them, was in truth 
 their mistress, through the dominion of great gifts ; and 
 could force them to rejoice with her, to weep with her, to 
 laugh, and to suffer, and to love with her, at her will and 
 at her fancy. They woke from their apathy into a sort of 
 fury of admiration ; and the house rang with raptures of 
 applause. 
 
 4 " And there's not an ounce of that bought" murmured 
 Beltran. "It's genuine, whatever it's worth." 
 
 ' " "We were right to suspend judgment," said Dudley 
 Moore, taking snuff. I have never seen anything more 
 poetic and more sincere, more delicate and more vivid " 
 find what he said the town was certain to say after him on 
 the morrow. 
 
 ' Her triumph wa* very great ; only the greater it eeemed 
 
394 PUCK. 
 
 because heralded by failure. The house was convulsed with 
 excitement ; they called for her again and again ; the women 
 laughed no longer, and the roof rang with a tumult of 
 applause. 
 
 * When she came off the stage for the last time after the 
 recall, her face was deeply flushed ; her eyes gleamed like 
 two stars ; her whole frame trembled; she had the look of 
 a creature in delirium. She stretched out her hands to 
 Beltran, with a little breathless hysterical sob, "Have I 
 done well at last?" He took them in his own and bent 
 tenderly to her. " Better than the best : I cannot say how 
 I thank you." 
 
 1 At that moment one of the officials of the theatre, whom 
 Wressyl had sent to seek me, bore me away, and back to 
 Mrs. Biversleigh's box, where that lady was in wrath and 
 dudgeon because the Lancer, in an excitement of admira- 
 tion at the new Beatrice, had, unauthorised, flung her 
 bouquet of red and white camellias upon the stage. "We 
 did not stay for the burlesque that evening, as the delicate 
 little suppers at the Leviathan are too perfect to be kept 
 waiting and I saw no more of the actress. But from that 
 night her fame was made, and her name heard upon the lips 
 of London.' 
 
 * And what is she to Beltran ? " I asked, as she closed her 
 narration. 
 
 Fanf reluche grinned : her worst grin. 
 
 ' Ah, my dear ! That's what the town's been asking ever 
 eince, and never has got an answer yet. But look they are 
 going. Q-ood-bye till to-morrow ; I'm very glad to see you 
 here again.' 
 
 When the little gathering broke up, the actress drew 
 about her those black laces and sealskins lined with rose, 
 which I had noticed on the couch, and stooping for me, 
 raised me so that I could lie curled upon the soft sea-furs. 
 
 An elderly woman, who was in waiting in the ante-room, 
 offered to take me, but she refused the offer, as she had de- 
 clined those of the men about her, and carried me herself 
 through the various passages to the entrance of the theatre, 
 where a carriage stood. They accompanied her, talking 
 the while with her, as men and women do who have the 
 custom of daily association and familiar friendship ; and 
 bade her good-night at the door of her brougham, which 
 
A STORY OF THE SEA. 395 
 
 rolled rapidly away. She and her maid drove on in silence, 
 whither, of course, I could not tell. When the carriage 
 paused, we passed through a fragrant garden, whose leafless 
 boughs were very dark and still in the dim moonlight, and 
 thence through a very small square hall, and up a staircase 
 in which the lights were burning low ; it was too dark to 
 see much, but all seemed pretty and luxurious about me ; 
 and as she carried me into a room on the right, I perceived 
 that it was the chamber of one to whom both art and gold 
 had ministered. 
 
 It was of small size, and of much simplicity ; but it had 
 an exceeding elegance and harmony in all its arrangements. 
 She laid me down upon her sealskins, then sank into a chair 
 before the hearth on which a fire was brightly burning. Her 
 attendant asked her, with a solicitude that seemed quite 
 genuine, if she were not very tired ? 
 
 1 1 am often tired ; that is no matter,' she answered with 
 a smile, which though fatigued was very sweet and glad. 
 ' Take these things off me, please, and bring me some tea. 1 
 
 The maid obeyed, wrapping round her some cashmeres, 
 and letting loose all the fair masses of her hair ; then 
 brought her the tea in a miniature[old-fashioned service of 
 egg-shell china, and left her alone by her desire. She called 
 me from my resting-place and raised me on her lap j strok- 
 ing me, and even laying her lips on my forehead. 
 
 * I shall love you tor his sake. Had it not been for you 
 I might never have known him,' she murmured. * But still 
 you can never be to me what my dear old friend was ! ' 
 
 And, looking at her thus, with the fire-glow upon her, I 
 knew her, despite all the magic changes wrought by time, 
 and gold, and fame. I knew her to be Gladys Q-erant. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII, 
 
 A STORY OF THE SEA. 
 
 I THINK Fanfreluche spoke with reason. Coincidence is 
 a god that greatly influences mortal affairs. He is not a 
 cross-tempered deity, either, always : and when you beat 
 your poor fetish for what seems to you an untoward acci- 
 
39$ PUCK. 
 
 dent, you may do wrong ; lie may hare benefited you far 
 more than you wot. 
 
 Not very long ago, a man and a woman loving each other 
 well, were parted by misunderstanding one of those sad, 
 dreary, proud fantasies, that so often arise between you 
 human creatures and your happiness. Neither would stoop 
 ] to explain, they were divided during two long years ; for it 
 is strange how people living in the same society may yet 
 , grow utter strangers to each other ; how passing one 
 another daily in the park, how brushing against one another 
 in the opera corridors, how hearing one another's names 
 uttered by many lips, how beholding one another's faces in 
 the crowded rooms of great assemblies, or of private views, 
 they may yet remain as utterly divided from one another, 
 as though oceans rolled between them. 
 
 "Well, the time came when the woman, haughty, lovely, 
 and brilliant, was, through a series of family calamities, 
 doomed to an exile that galled her bitterly, iu a far-away 
 lonely German forest-land. 
 
 Awhile later, the man, by what he deemed the bitterest 
 injustice and injury to him in his service, which was diplo- 
 macy, was consigned as envoy to a miserable petty state, IB 
 which his talents rusted, and his name was unheard, and his 
 weeks and months passed by in an unutterable weariness 
 and inaction. 
 
 One summer day, in deep old Teutonic wood, where no 
 footfall but a forester's or charcoal-burner's ever fell, and 
 the millions of pines were wrapped in twilight even at 
 noon, these two, each unwitting of the other's presence in 
 the hated land of banishment, met face to face suddenly, in 
 that stillness and that solitude. And in that moment their 
 hearts went out to one another, and the veil fell from their 
 eyes, and the old love reigned alone ! 
 
 Pride had been strong in the press of the world ; but 
 here, chanco touched and startled them, and surprise from 
 both their secret ; and thus from the thorns of harsh acci 
 dent, there blossomed for them sweet flowers of passion and 
 of peace. 
 
 (' And, my dear, there was something beside chance, for 
 there was ennui,' said that matter-of-fact iconociast, Fanf re- 
 luche, when she heard of them. ' He must have been 
 awfully bored, vou know, and so was much readier to iukd 
 
A STORY OP THE SEA. 397 
 
 it tip with her, than he had been when decently well 
 amused in London. It's an immense pull for a woman, you 
 know, to get at a man when he is thoroughly bored. He'a 
 so much more glad of her then. 1 But this was only the 
 comment of a shallow cynic ; and the story truly ran as I 
 have told it.) 
 
 Coincidence now had tossed me back amongst life, and 
 luxury, and friends; and I was glad and grateful: not 
 querulous as you too often are when what you have long 
 coveted comes to you. 
 
 When the morning broke I found myself in a small 
 elegant house, as warm as an eider-bird's nest, and as pretty 
 as an enamelled snuff-box ; such a house as may be seen by 
 the score along the Thames or the Seine ; shut in amidst 
 miniature gardens, that doubtless were one mass of foliage 
 and flowers in summer, to judge by the maze of greenery 
 that was now snow-powdered and silver-frosted. 
 
 It was so small and so pretty that it was like a toy ; but 
 in common with those little jewelled teapots, and stags, 
 and other trifles that hang to your watch-chain, it was only 
 such a toy as gold could purchase. 
 
 Once more there were the softness, and the smoothness, 
 and all the nameless pleasantnesses of life when money 
 rounds its angels about me. Once more I slumbered OB 
 silken cushions ; and was fed on dainty forms of nourish- 
 ment ; and was prankt up* with bright ribbons upon my 
 throat. And it was sweet to me to be thus soothed, and 
 fed, and caressed, and decked, and dighted, as in my early 
 days of fashion and of favouritism, for such outwari 
 symbols show that the world goes well with us, and that we 
 are of value and of ornament in it. For it is all very well 
 to call these things fribbles and frivolities, they may be so ; 
 but they are a great portion of the pleasure and the ease of 
 existence at any rate. I know a man who was always in- 
 veighing against them (he was rich and possessed them, 
 mind you), he was deeply bitten with many stern philoso- 
 
 * Puck seems fond now and then of retaining some of the archaisms 
 jf the language which he learned no doubt in the north country, where 
 many of the strong picturesque words of Shakespeare and Piera 
 Plowman are still in daily use. Why should such words be lost? 
 Talkers may perhaps shrink from the charge of eccentricity incurred 
 by using them ; but writers surely need not care for it. ED. 
 
39 8 PUCK. 
 
 phies of equality, and was wont to sigh for a time when 
 oread and broth in even portions to all should vouch for the 
 perfect isonomy of the State. 
 
 But whilst he thus theorised, I never knew any one more 
 particular than he as to the age and delicacy of his wines ; 
 and in the autumn when he was belated, and perforce de- 
 tained by a broken ankle, in a rough and remote Highland 
 inn, his rage at the peat, and the fleas, and the oaten cake, 
 and the rusty bacon, and the wretched rooms, was so dire 
 that none durst scarce approach him. 
 
 'Equality would be very charming, dear but still I 
 don't think you'd do for it,' said his pretty provoking wife, 
 as he swore right and left at the Gaels. 
 
 This house in which I found myself was, as I say, exquisite ,' 
 on that first morning breakfast was served in the daintiest 
 fashion, in a bewitching little warm, violet-hued room, in 
 which you caught here and there the glint of dead gold 
 and the mistress of it all (in whom beyond a question I saw 
 the child whom I had once seen so sad and desolate in the 
 streets striving to sell her dying harebells) was fully ID 
 keeping with such a chamber, as she sat in a low chair, 
 beside the fire, reading her letters and papers of the early 
 day, whilst her maid served her with chocolate and delicate 
 bread, and purple hothouse grapes. 
 
 It was all perfectly charming : the fire, the chamber, the 
 colour everywhere, the silence only broken by the singing 
 of a bullfinch in the window ; this beautiful woman, the very 
 cream and biscuits that they brought me for my food, all 
 were charming beyond measure on that winter morning, so 
 cold without, so bright within, so vivid in contrast with 
 those cheerless dawns which had broken so gray and biting 
 in the attic of the house in Paris. And yet my blood for 
 a moment ran as cold as though I were hungry and home- 
 less in the falling snow. 
 
 How could a friendless, penniless, helpless young creature, 
 Buch as had been Gladys Grerant, have come to attain such 
 comfort and such elegance as were present here, except 
 through the ways of evil ! For I knew that such transmu- 
 tations can only be wrought by casting into the crucible of 
 fate the pearl of honour that, perishing, leaves in its stead 
 the coveted philosopher's stone, which is gold. 
 
 And yet I felt ashamed of my own thought, as I looked 
 
A STORY OF THE SEA. 399 
 
 at her delicate proud face, that from its innocence childish 
 and sadness had changed into this exceeding beauty : alter- 
 ing so greatly, and yet retaining the same grave lustrous 
 meditation in the eyes, the same dreaming sweetness on the 
 mouth. 
 
 Whatever her life might be now, it was certain that she 
 was a creature of most unusual loveliness, and grace, and 
 genius ; and no less certain that she was happy happy with 
 more than the mere feverish joys of fame. And to me, re- 
 membering her in her great misery and her desolate youth, 
 it seemed that she could not be so entirely content as this, 
 unless she had in some way killed her conscience. 
 
 For in my brief life I had seen that all which was noble 
 and loyal, and of purity and honour, was most usually 
 doomed to a long and weary thole ; capable indeed of joy in 
 its highest, but seldom if ever knowing it. 
 
 She sat beside the hearth reading ; her room seemed filled 
 with papers and new books ; and I sat gazing at her won- 
 dering, wondering where was Bronze, who had made the 
 wandering child into this exquisite empress, was the poor 
 dead poet forgotten above all, what was she herself to 
 Beltran? 
 
 I shuddered as I thought : that pure child whom I had 
 seen kneeling in the moonlight, with the prayer for her lost 
 brother on her lips, could never have learned the wicked 
 ways, and taken the wicked wage, of Avice Dare ? 
 
 And yet, otherwise, how came she hither in this affluence 
 and ease ? 
 
 The morning passed very quietly ; I was tired and slept 
 a good deal, overcome with fatigue and excitement. I was 
 awakened by the striking of the clock, and the appear- 
 ance of a light luncheon. She scarcely touched it, and went 
 afterwards into her drawing-room, carrying me with her ; 
 the room was as perfect as all the rest of the house, and was 
 quite full of the bloom and odour of flowers, although the 
 time of year was still winter. 
 
 She moved about a little, touching her flowers, pausing 
 beside a picture, rearranging some china in the pretty way 
 women nave, then seated herself once more amidst the 
 books 
 
 Between two and three o'clock there was the grating of 
 wheels in the carriage drive without, the sound of a man's 
 
4-00 PUCK. 
 
 step, the tinkle of little bells, and there entered Beltran, 
 followed whether he would or no by Fanfreluche. 
 
 He cast down a loose coat of sables, came to the hearth, 
 and seated himself in a low lounging chair with the manner 
 of one accustomed to frequent the place daily. 
 
 By the quick turn of her head, by the brilliance in her 
 eyes, by her smile as she saw him, it was easy to tell how 
 welcome his advent was. No formal greeting passed between 
 them ; they began to converse as though they had been 
 together the last hour : people only do this betwixt whom 
 there is an entire accord. 
 
 1 "Well, my dear, how do you find yourself ? ' asked Fan- 
 freluche with a grin. 
 
 I said that I found myself very well. 
 
 ' I dare say you do : it's a pretty place,' she said drily. 
 ' On the whole Platonics don't seem such economical things 
 as one thought they were ' 
 
 ' What do you mean ? ' 
 
 * Never ask a person that. If his epigram or his argu- 
 ment be pointless or involved, you shouldn't show him that 
 you think so, by asking him what he means. I told you I'd 
 see you to-day : we come here most days when we're not 
 hunting or shooting.' 
 
 ' You don't hunt ? ' 
 
 ' No. A terrier isn't such a fool. We nip our prey in 
 the necks in a second : we don't run it across half a county, 
 and lose it in a drain after all. And to see what the hunt- 
 ing is now too ! Knocking the horses all to pieces over 
 cramped ground for sake of a fast twenty minutes ! This 
 is a pretty little house, isn't it ? The rent's three hundred 
 a year, furnished just as it stands ; only the china, and pic- 
 tures, and bronzes, and things are all hers, or his.' 
 
 1 But how rich ' 
 
 1 Well, he pays her at the rate of fifty guineas a week, or 
 rather has it paid to her, for she don't know exactly that 
 it's his. O, she's worth it, no doubt. She'd get it at any 
 theatre, now. Grladys Grerant ? O yes, she is Gladys 
 Oerant; acts in the name to. People think it a fancy 
 name because it's pretty. You see we have so many Polly 
 Smiths and Betty Browns who are Amandevilles and 
 Fitzosbornes upon the stage, that we think no woman can 
 bave a good graceful name really hers, unless she be in the 
 
A STORY OF THE SEA. 401 
 
 Lilro d'Oro, and has 50001 a year of her own. I told you 
 he'd keep his promise, didn't I, when we were at Ascot? ' 
 
 * But how has he kept it ? ' I murmured ; ' it was well 
 indeed with her, so far as success, affluence, ease, beauty 
 talent went, but otherwise ? ' 
 
 ' I don't think that's any business of yours, my dear, 
 snapped Fanf reluche. ' I can't tell you anything. I kne* 
 nothing about her till that night she came out as Beatrice, 
 and then, of course, I recognised the name, and remembered 
 the story you'd told me.' 
 
 * But Bronze ? ' 
 
 ' I know nothing about Bronze either. I was abroad, 11* 
 different plaees, almost all last year, with my ambassadress, 
 and my prima donna, and my truffle-maker. But there's a 
 little low beast here, who can tell you, I daresay. He's 
 called Patch, and lives in the kitchen by choice.' 
 
 'A cur?' 
 
 'Well yes. A cur. Not that I like that word. They 
 have snobs and cads, but we have no CUTS, not in the sense 
 of disparagement that they use the word to imply. Even 
 the Lurcher, the lowest type amongst us, is immeasurably 
 superior to their Rough. With a poached hare in his mouth, 
 he has a brisk, innocent, pleased air, and a conscience well 
 at ease. He has no idea of dishonesty, and has only done 
 his duty as his master taught it him. He is loyal, as far as 
 his light goes ; he has served the power he reveres ; he has 
 obeyed the law-giver of his humble life, in ignorance, 
 indeed, but in fealty and faith. When can they say as 
 much ? No we have no curs in the sense that they hare 
 cads; for we have none in our race who strain to see.u 
 what they are not; who are made hideous by vulgarity^, 
 made grotesque by assumption, or made infamous by lying, 
 The lowest, ugliest, most hungry, most honest mongrel ia 
 always natural and always faithful. It is impossible, there- 
 fore, for a dog to be a snob.' 
 
 1 Does she suffer still for her brother, or still remember 
 him ? ' I asked, not attending to her didactic digression. 
 
 * I can't tell you, I am sure/ she said, with a sniff of 
 scorn. * I never think much of their feelings at any time. 
 They are all words. Creatures that take out their grief in 
 crape and mortuary tablets can't feel very much.' 
 
 1 There are many lamentation*, from Lycidas to Lesb'a, 
 
402 PUCK. 
 
 which prove that whether for a hero or a sparrow ' 
 I began timidly to suggest. 
 
 ' That's only a commonplace/ snapped my lady. ' They 
 chatter and scribble ; they don't feel. They write stanza of 
 " gush " on Maternity ; and tear the little bleating calf from 
 its mother to bleed to death in a long slow agony. They 
 maunder twaddle about Infancy over some ugly red lump of 
 human flesh, in whose creation their vanity happens to be 
 involved ; and then go out and send the springtide lamb to 
 the slaughter, and shoot the parent birds as they fly to the 
 nest where their fledglings are screaming in hunger. 
 SPooh ! Did you never find out the value of their words ? 
 Some one of them has said that speech was given them 
 to conceal their thoughts. It is true that they use it for 
 that end ; but it was given them for this reason. At the 
 time of the creation, when all except man had been made, 
 the Angel of Life, who had been bidden to summon the 
 world out of chaos, moving over the fresh and yet innocent 
 earth, thought to himself, " I have created so much that is 
 doomed to suffer for ever, and for ever be mute ; I will now 
 create an animal that shall be compensated for all suffering 
 by listening to the sound of its own voluble chatter." 
 Whereon the Angel called Man into being, and cut the 
 fr&num of his tongue; which has clacked incessantly ever 
 since, all through the silence of the centuries. 
 
 ' Where is that legend ?' 
 
 ' In our traditions, which differ as much from the huma* 
 ones as the human ones do from each other: on ne pour rait 
 plus i ' 
 
 1 It is a great pity we were denied the power of the art of 
 writing.' 
 
 'Do you think BO? We should never have kept our 
 honesty if we had learnt it. Don't you know what that 
 poor ruined Sir Kobert said when he was dying ? " If I had 
 never known bow to write my name upon paper, I should 
 have been a good man, and a rich one now." My dear, if 
 we had known how to write, we should have taken to " bills 
 at 60 days, etc.," and a hound's kennel would soon have 
 been no better than a club-room, with a sweepstakes card 
 up on the mantelpiece ! ' 
 
 I yawned irritably. I was impatient of her talk. Tour 
 pique-assiette, as Le^er has aptly yclept the professional 
 
A STORY OF THE SEA. 403 
 
 dinner-table jester, is very agreeable over the turtle soup 
 and the trout a la Chambord; but as a continual companion 
 he may be almost as tiresome as the bore of whom he 
 relieves your dinner. 
 
 I prayed her to be quiet a little, and turned my attention 
 to Eeltran. 
 
 He was reading through several letters that G-ladys had 
 given him. 
 
 He looked at home there, stretched on the low long chair 
 beside the fire, with that exquisite woman's face opposite 
 him. He was not in the least altered ; only I thought that 
 his mouth had not quite so sarcastic a curl as of yore, and 
 that his eyes had a very gentle and almost sad look in 
 them that was new to their languor and coldness. 
 
 * You need not answer those at all, 1 he said, laying three 
 of the letters aside. ' To these two dinner invitations send 
 a brief refusal. To this manager, answer him that you 
 have no intention to enter into any other engagements. 
 For these fellows who want to send you MS. plays, ilence 
 will show them that we don't want their wares.' 
 
 ' I would rather let them send their plays, and look at 
 them,' she said pleadingly, as though she were not much 
 used to place her wish in opposition to his. 
 
 ' "Why ? They are certain to be trash. 1 
 
 * Most likely. Only you know, some one among thjese 
 authors may be a poor boy, breaking his heart over his writ- 
 ings as he did. They are all unknown names, and it will 
 not be much trouble to look through them ; and there may 
 be some touch of talent, some glow of genius, in one or other 
 of them, that will die out altogether 5 treated always with 
 silence.' 
 
 He smiled. 
 
 * Well, let them come if you like, though I fear they will 
 hardly be worth the paper they are written on ; and their 
 verse will be emphatically " blank " as regards wit, grammar, 
 meaning, or measure. As for these other two letters- 
 have you read them ? ' 
 
 * No. They seemed flattery and folly. You told me 
 once it was best not to read letters that commenced in that 
 strain, and so I never go further than the beginning now.' 
 
 He looked content, but not surprised. 
 
 4 1 think you are right,' he said simply. ' Just read the 
 
PUCK. 
 
 , however, and send them back whence they came 
 without any comment. They will write these things to 
 you there is no help for it.' 
 
 I suppose they admire me ? ' said Gladys thoughtfully, 
 ' or they think it is the fashion to say so.' 
 
 He laughed ; his old, curt, contemptuous laugh. 
 
 ' Of course they admire you. There is no doubt about 
 that. "What a child you are still ! Is there anything else ? ' 
 
 ' Only this note from Lord Dammerell. He sent it up 
 quite early with a wonderful little coffer, that, you see, he 
 says belonged to the great Catherine. It was a beautiful 
 thing; malachite crusted with opals, and the lock and 
 hinges of gold. I wrote him my thanks, and begged to 
 return it. His messenger took it away.' 
 ^ She spoke quite indifferently, as of an every-day uncon- 
 sidered trifle ; but his face darkened as he took the note. 
 
 ' Cis Dammerell ! ' he muttered ; * I introduced him to 
 you myself/ 
 
 He said no more ; but he tore the note into many little 
 pieces, very slowly, and as if the action expressed anger 
 that he did not put into words. 
 
 ' I remember that coffer at Christie's/ he said, after a 
 pause. ' Dammerell will be slow to forgive you ; he never 
 had a rebuff before/ 
 
 ' You said last night you were quite happy ? ' he asked 
 her a few moments later abruptly. * Are you very sure that 
 is true ? ' 
 
 She looked up with surprise ; her wondering smiling eyes 
 answering before her words. 
 
 ' True ! Indeed it is true ! I am so happy that I feel 
 sometimes that I must be dreaming of this marvellous life. 
 You see, it is still wonderful to me. All my childhood was 
 so uneventful ; we had so much sorrow in our pleasantest 
 days ; we had always the woe and care of such anxious 
 needs ; it was always so still there, and so simple, and so 
 plain, just like one of those peaceful households that we 
 read of in the old Puritan days ; that you, who have had 
 the world with you always, cannot understand how the 
 colour and movement and change and beauty of this 
 existence you have given me, seem to me half miraculous 
 utill. In the old time, when Harold and I used to walk at 
 evening under the orchard trees and talk to QA another of 
 
A STORY OF THE SEA. 4S 
 
 all our fancies and our dreams, we used to picture just such 
 
 enjoyed 
 selfishness, sin ! And to think he cannot even know ' 
 
 She paused, with a quiver in the rich eloquent sweetness 
 of her voice, which told me that her brother was unfor- 
 gotten. 
 
 * You ask me that question often now/ she said, after a 
 little while. ' Why do you doubt, how can you doubt that 
 I am happy ? Think how much I have, how much I enjoy ; 
 and what a desolate, friendless, hopeless child I was when I 
 knew you first.' 
 
 Beltran flung the torn fragments of the note into the fire. 
 
 * I hardly know why I asked you. Only I cannot do ex- 
 actly as I would for you. You should not have such letters 
 as these if I could prevent it ; but it is difficult without 
 doing you more harm than good.' 
 
 * They do not hurt me ; and they go there,* she 
 answered him with a pretty half-haughty gesture of her 
 hand toward the flames. * I remember you warning me 
 before you let me come to the stage, that in an actress's 
 career, annoyances, humiliations, even insults were in- 
 evitable; because, her art being a public one, the world 
 always deemed her life a public plaything too ; and I told 
 you what I thought then ; that though she might be an- 
 noyed, she need neither be humiliated nor insulted, unless 
 she chose to merit such abasement. I am an actress now, 
 and yet I think so still,' 
 
 'You are but a child now, and therefore you think so 
 still.' 
 
 ' But is it not so ? Humiliation is a guest that only comes 
 to those who have made ready his resting-place and will 
 give him a fair welcome. My father used to say to me, "Child, 
 when you grow to womanhood, whether you be rich or poor, 
 gentle or simple, as the balance of your life may turn for 
 or against you, remember always this one thing that no one 
 can disgrace you save yourself. Dishonour is like the 
 Aaron's Beard in the hedge-rows, it can only poison if it be 
 plucked." They call the belladonna Aaron's Beard in the 
 country, you know ; and it is true that the cattle, simple as 
 they are, are never harmed by it j just because, though it ia 
 
406 PUCK. 
 
 always in their path, they never stop and laste it. I thinfc 
 it may just be so with us ; with any sort of evil.' 
 
 She spoke with all the mingled poetry and simplicity, all 
 the tender thoughtful seriousness that I had heard in her 
 when she had told her story to the dancer Nellie. She was 
 a lovely woman now ; sitting there on her own hearth, clad 
 in velvet and in lace, and conscious of celebrity and of 
 victory in her career ; but there was the same nature in her 
 as in the days when she had gone, a famished, desolate, 
 houseless child, to the little garret in Westminster ; and the 
 same accent was in her voice, tbe same accent of mingled 
 pride and innocence, of strength and trustfulness. 
 
 Beltran listened, with a certain trouble in his grey, calm, 
 weary eyes. Something in the words touched him, I think : 
 for he got up and began to tease the bullfinch on its perch, 
 and to criticise the hanging of some cabinet pictures. 
 
 * You have put the Frere and the Taderna together,' he 
 said, going up to them. ' For heaven's sake don't do that ! 
 Can't you see how they harm one another ? The stately 
 elegance and ceremonial of the Eoman patrician life beside 
 the little Breton interior, with two cottage-children at play 
 with some faggots of gorse ! Look how they hurt each 
 other, and make each other look, respectively, coldly 
 artificial and insignificantly homely ! Pictures, like beauties, 
 kill each other ; I am afr.1 3 no sort of skill in the hanging 
 of galleries will alter the tact, that the exhibition of many 
 paintings amounts virtually to their extinction. We are 
 getting too many, even into this little room.' 
 
 And they altered the place of the Frereand the Tadema, 
 and talked of art, to which I did not care to listen. The 
 thoughts of art made my heart ache ; it brought to my 
 memory the low, sunny, wooden chamber at the Silver Stag, 
 with the white fruit-blossoms swaying at the casements, 
 and the long shadows asleep upon the floor, where the 
 Faustine had taken her birth from that prophetic passion 
 which is at once the inspiration and the destruction of 
 human genius a flame which consumes even while it 
 illumines and conceives. 
 
 1 Can you tell what she is to him, my dear ? ' grinned 
 JFanfreluche. 
 
 I admitted that I could not. 
 
 ' W*H, ask Patch ; see if he can tell,' she responded 
 
A STORY OF THE SEA. 407 
 
 One isn't fond of intercourse with common dogs ; but still 
 when one can get anything out of them How civil my 
 Lord A. and the Hon. B. and Sir C. C. can be to a low brute 
 on the racecourse, when they want to get at any straight 
 tip, or be on for dark thing ! I don't see why we need be 
 more particular; and we have no class so slow as their 
 Dookmakers, touters, and nobblers. A dog may be un- 
 polished ; he may gnaw a bone on the hearth-rug ; he may 
 go wild after a herring-trail ; he may carry his flag badly ; 
 he may demean himself to eat tripe ; he may whine instead 
 of bite when he's hurt ; he may do many things which show 
 him an under-bred one ; but he is never a Snob, or a Cad, 
 or a Bough, as I said just now; and thank heavens he's 
 never a Blackleg ! ' 
 
 ' Is it under-bred to whine when one is hurt ? ' I asked, 
 conscious that despite my aristocracy of descent, I sinned 
 in this particular, 
 
 ' Very, my dear,' averred Panfreluche ; ' when you are 
 hit, lite bite deep and bite often. All success lies in the 
 teeth ; I told you that long ago.' 
 
 'But if we bite we are chained, or, etill worse, we are 
 killed.' 
 Panfreluche grinned. 
 
 There was once a dog, my dear, that was hit by three 
 men, one after another, as they went by him where he lay in 
 the sun ; and in return he bit them deep and they let 
 him alone then, and ever after sought to propitiate him. 
 "Well, the first he bit in the arm, where there was a brand 
 for deserting ; and the second he bit in the throat, where 
 there was a hideous mole ; and the third he bit on the 
 shoulder, where there was a mark of a secret camorra. 
 Now, not one of these three durst speak of the wounds in 
 places they all wished to hide; and whenever afterwards 
 they passed the dog, they gave him fair words, and sweet 
 bones, and a wide berth. It is the dogs, and the satirists, 
 and the libellers, and the statesmen who know how to bite 
 like that in the weak part that get let alone, and respected, 
 and fed on the fat of the land.' 
 
 At that moment, there entered the drawing-room Deny 
 Denzil and Florance Fane of the Guards ; two or three 
 other men followed in a little time men of similar rank, 
 who had come to town. I suppose, for the sake of their clubs, 
 
*o8 PUCK. 
 
 in the frost which made the ' grass countries * untenable at 
 that moment. By the way, the other day, this autumn, I 
 heard a woman whose dinners enjoy an excellent reputation 
 ask an ex-Coldstreamer, famous with Tailby and Pytchley, 
 when he would come to dine with her in the winter, which 
 she was about to pass at her town quarters. ' I'll come the 
 first frost,' said he, and she felt no offence ; she understood 
 thoroughly that herself and her menu played second to the 
 ' little red rover,' and would be relegated if no frost came 
 till the April days of budding chestnuts, and spring chickens, 
 and new operas. 
 
 These men wereall pleasant companions, as your thorough- 
 bred man of the world almost always is, with his lazy sar- 
 casms and his good-natured ironies, and his acquaintance 
 with all the fresh mischief afloat, and his facile touches of 
 art-knowledge and political knowledge, and his racy history 
 now and then of some field-sport which he loves ; in the 
 telling of which all his pococurantism fades away, and all 
 his restless recklessness gleams for a moment on the surface 
 of his half-amused, half -weary discontent. 
 
 Such were these now ; the fire burned brightly behind 
 the broad banner- screens ; the light played prettily about 
 *-Jbe delicate colours of the room ; the dainty five-o'clock tea 
 came, with sodas and seltzers ; there were pleasant talk, airy 
 nonsense, good-humoured disputes, melodious laughter. 
 
 It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to believe 
 that I was not in one of these regal country-houses where, 
 in the frosty weather, the men had gathered at the tea-hour 
 in library or morning, room round some fair titled chatelaine. 
 
 ' She is very much in society, it would seem ? ' I murmured 
 to Fanfreluche. 
 
 ' She is not in society at all, my dear,' averred that dicta- 
 tress. 'Ask the Countess of Ben Nevis, who has had liai- 
 sons with every handsome lion out ; or Lady Charles Whyte, 
 who has her cottage in the Forest, to carry on her intrigues 
 with the Guards ; or Mrs. Vereker, who goes to Paris with 
 Hailes Haynes the tenor, and is none the worse for the es- 
 capade, because her own people never have dropped her ; 
 ask them if they'd know Gladys G-erant the actress their 
 outraged virtue would be aghast ! ' ^ 
 
 ' Does she know no women, then?' 
 
 1 None my dear. He wouldn't let her know the bad 
 
A STORY OF THE SEA. 409 
 
 ones ; and the good ones or the pseudo-good wouldn't 
 know her.' 
 
 ' How shameful ! how sad ! ' 
 
 1 Not a bit. As for the sadness, I don't think myself that 
 the British matron, whether heavy or frisky, is any such 
 very great loss ; and the British maiden, in her day of slang 
 and salmon-fishing, of " big coups " and " awful yawners," 
 certainly isn't. As for the shamefulness, that's nonsense. 
 Every pleasure has its penalty. If a woman be celebrated, 
 the world always thinks she must be wicked. If she's wise, 
 she laughs. It is the bitter that you must take with the 
 sweet, as you get the sorrel flavour with the softness of the 
 cream, in your soup a la Bonne Femme. But the cream 
 would clog without it, and the combination is piquant.' 
 
 'Only to jaded palates,' I retorted, for I have often 
 tasted the Bonne Femme, and detest it. 
 
 By the way, what exquisite irony lies in some of your 
 kitchen nomenclature ! 
 
 ' Perhaps not,' assented Fanfreluche, forgetting for once 
 to disagree. ' But in this case a very choice hand prepares 
 her portion, and the cream of it is made so sweet, that I 
 don't think she's even found out yet that the sorrel-leaves 
 lie at the bottom. 1 
 
 And she left me to digest this dark saying as best I might, 
 while she followed her master and the other men out of the 
 drawing-room, and out of the house, as the little timepiece 
 chimed the sixth hour. 
 
 At eight the young actress went to her art and her public. 
 I strove to accompany her, but was not permitted. 
 
 Left to myself, I wandered through the various rooms to 
 dissipate my ennui, and also to search for Patch. 
 
 There was a little chamber, down a few steps, into which 
 I peeped ; it was cosy and warm, but simply furnished ; 
 there on the hearth I saw a small, broken-haired, mongrel 
 dog, with a white spot over one eye, which had doubtless 
 gained him his name. 
 
 He was a little, shabby, wiry, good-natured-looking 
 creature, and I made acquaintance with him a little 
 arrogantly, I fear ; for, with the first glimpse of the blue- 
 ribbon of revived aristocracy round my neck, I had consigned 
 to oblivion the remembrance that I had ever danced for 
 gain in the streets, and walked on my hind legs to beg foi 
 . copper coin. 
 
410 PUCK. 
 
 ' Yes, I am Patch,' lie said. A little, straightforward, 
 timple dog, evidently in nowise ashamed of his humble 
 aspect and station. 
 
 Indeed, you never see any kind of base or petty pride 
 amongst us ; we will guard a knife-grinder's barrow, or sit 
 beside a tinker's wayside work, with perfect loyalty and 
 content, if grinder or tinker be our friend. Not so you. 
 I have noticed in the best of you a certain failure in these 
 respects. 
 
 In the old Oxford days, Bertram Byng, your young rough 
 north-country comrade at Balliol, ground fine, with the 
 wheel of his high intellect, the somewhat blunt edge of 
 your own intelligence, in many an hour by Isis. And in 
 that sad dreary winter at Nice, when you had just lost the 
 woman you loved, and could not find in ecarte the whole 
 end and aim of existence, as the apostles thereof said you 
 should, that poor, witty, dubious, dark-historied Ina Baby 
 amused you immeasurably, and bore with you patiently, and 
 served you in many ways, and gave you many wrinkles for 
 the quatre a and la belle. 
 
 But when Bertram comes up now, rough and shabby, 
 from his Devonian curacy, poor exceedingly, and with those 
 old tendencies to roll &reek out so fearfully loud, and to 
 heed not how many days' dust lie on his boots and his coat, 
 only more intensely developed, you don't take him to the 
 Athenaeum or the Guards' Club for dinner; you dine him 
 alone in your rooms, and tell your man ' Not at home.' So, 
 too, when Ina Baby comes to you, and men drop their eyes 
 and say ' What, that fellow ! thought he was dead years ago, 
 you know, &c.' you make excuses for not riding at noon, 
 and back out of taking him to Hurlingham, though you 
 offer warmly to take him to Sydenham ; and you continue 
 to pass most of your time with your schooner where she 
 lies in the Thames, and where Demi-monde and Bohemia 
 can cruise with you a hint which poor Ina, having been a 
 gentleman in his day, quickly takes, and so pleads business 
 in Paris, and goes back to the old weary lite of whist and 
 winter cities, of ecarte and exile, of piquet and poverty, 
 with a pang the more, maybe, in his heart. 
 
 It is thus with you. Whereas we well, I will tell you 
 a story. 
 
 Once at a great house in the west I saw a gathering on 
 
A STORY OF THE SEA. 411 
 
 the young lord's coming of age. There were half the highest 
 people in England there ; and a little while before the 
 tenantry went to their banquet in the marquees, the boy- 
 peer and his guests were all out on the terraces and the 
 lawns. With him was a very noble deer-hound, whom he 
 had owned for four years. 
 
 Suddenly the hound, Eed Comyn, left his titled master, 
 and plunged head-foremost through the patrician crowd, 
 and threw himself in wild raptures on to a poor, miserable^ 
 tattered, travelling cobbler, who had dared to creep in through 
 the open gates and the happy crowds, hoping for a broken 
 crust. Eed Comyn pounced on him, and caressed him, and 
 laid massive paws upon his shoulders, and gave him maddest 
 welcome this poor hungry man, in the midst of that aris- 
 tocratic festival. 
 
 The cobbler could scarcely speak awhile ; but when he 
 got his breath, his arms were round the hound, and his eyes 
 were wet with tears. 
 
 Please pardon him, my lord,' he said, all in a quiver and 
 a tremble. * He was mine once, from the time he was 
 pupped for a whole two year ; and he loved me, poor soul, 
 and he ha'n't forgot. He don't know no better, my lord- 
 he's only a dog.' 
 
 No ; he didn't know any better than to remember and 
 be faithful, and to recognise a friend, no matter in wh.u woe 
 or want. Ah, indeed, we are far behind you ! 
 
 For the credit of ' the order,' it may be added, that Red 
 Comyn and the cobbler have parted no more, but dwell 
 together still upon that young lord's lands. 
 
 * I am Patch,' said this little cross-bred fellow, ' and I be- 
 long to Margett Llansaint ? ' 
 
 * And who is Margett Llansaint/ 
 
 Patch with a glance showed me an old woman asleep by 
 the fire. 
 
 * She is my mistress. She is "Welsh.* 
 4 And wha't does she do here ? ' 
 
 ' She is here by Lord Beltran's wish. She was house- 
 keeper to two generations of his family. They gave her an 
 annuity and a little cottage on the Island.' 
 
 1 It was where he took Gladys ? ' 
 
 'I don't know exactly what you mean. One summer 
 Gladys Gerant came to us with a blue-eyed girl called 
 
41* PdCK. 
 
 Nellie, who did not remain very long. It was by Lord 
 Beltran' s desire ; and he visited her twice or thrice himself, 
 not often. She was in infinite woe because of the death of 
 her brother. She did not gain health or strength at all till 
 the spring came round.' 
 
 ' And he kept her there at his cost? ' 
 
 * I cannot say. Margett was well paid for her ; but I 
 think it came from some moneys that some book of her 
 brother's had brought. So, at least, I knew that our lord 
 told her. She was with us all the summer. Our cottage 
 is so quiet and so fragrant, with the sea just seen through 
 the great sweetbriar hedges, and the trees f dog-roses and 
 myrtles. She used to dream all her days away by the sea. 
 It seemed to bewitch her ; she would gaze at it for hours.' 
 
 ' Did he come often ? ' 
 
 * No, very seldom. But I think she measured time by 
 his coming only. With the winter we moved near London, 
 to a little quiet place in Esher. I believe still by his direction. 
 Here she had teachers and masters of divers kinds. And 
 ehe studied hard, and long into the night. Her eyes grew 
 brilliant ; her loveliness increased ; her whole soul seemed 
 filled with some great ambition. Then Lord Beltran came 
 oftener, and at the close of the time brought two or three 
 others with him, and I heard them talk of some eminence 
 to which she would rise. One night in the late autumn 
 she went away for several hours, and I suppose it was to 
 this theatre, for ever since I have heard that she had become 
 a great actress ; I am not sure what that is, I do not under- 
 stand much that they say. With the turn of the year we 
 came to this pretty house; we have been here twelve 
 months. I believe Lord Beltran desires Margett to be with 
 her ; but for me I shall be very glad to go back to the 
 Cottage.' 
 
 ' And what is he to Gladys ? ' 
 
 Patch looked at me in honest surprise. 
 
 * What do you mean ? I don't know indeed. Her friend 
 of course, for he is very good to her.' 
 
 I felt abashed at my own thoughts. But this is th 
 worst of seeing the world, that you see so much evil thaa 
 you suspect it everywhere. 
 
 ' You cannot tell me any more, then ? ' I asked. 
 
 * Anything more ? I don't know what you mean. I do 
 
A STORY OF THE SEA. 4*3 
 
 not like exactly what I do see. This Gladys was a woe- 
 begone, white-faced child when she came down to the 
 Island ; and she used to sit staring at the sea, as I say, 
 with her great melancholy eyes ; and she was only a poor 
 yeoman's daughter ; I have heard her tell Margett so, again 
 and again ; and now she is made a great lady of, though 
 she is no one's wife ; and she has all this grandeur about 
 her, and she is caressed, and nattered, and decked with 
 velvet and silks and laces. I do not like it though I 
 grant, when she was in the Island, she was always prettily 
 willing to serve Margett with tending the garden, or the 
 fowls, or anything that chanced ; and now, though she is 
 cockered up like this, she is always gentle-spoken and kindly 
 of thought ' 
 
 ' But why do you not like it ? ' I urged. 
 
 * It seems so absurd, and I am not quite sure what an 
 actress is, but I think it is something wicked ' 
 
 * O no not always ; and she is a genius, they say.' 
 
 1 A genius ? You must mistake. I have always heard 
 that a genius is something that they beat to death first with 
 sticks and stones, and set up on a great rock to worship 
 afterwards. Now they make her very happy whilst she is 
 alive. She cannot possibly be a genius.* 
 
 1 You are sure she is happy ? ' 
 
 J She would be crazed indeed if she were not/ said Patch 
 with a little indignation. ' A girl like that, who came starved 
 and half-dying, to be set up here like a queen, with lords 
 and gentlemen around her of course she is happy, though 
 I know she grieves at times still for her lost people and 
 Bronze.* 
 
 * Ah, Bronze, dear Bronze I ' I cried. Where is he ? ' 
 ' Bronze is dead.* 
 
 Although I had felt so certain of the answer I should 
 receive, that, coward-like, I had shrunk from asking it, the 
 certainty struck me with a sharp and sudden pang. 
 
 'Dead!' I echoed stupidly. 'Dead! of old age P of 
 illness ? ' 
 
 ' Of neither. The sea killed him.' 
 
 I begged him to tell me all ; and he told it, in a quaint 
 poetic, simple fashion which had a sound in it that brought 
 to me the memory of old Trust. 
 
 ' The girl Gladys cams to us in Midsummer, and Bronze 
 
4M PC/C/c. 
 
 came with her, aiid the dancer too, 1 commenced the little 
 seabred dog. ' The dancer did not tarry long ; she was a 
 saucy feckless creature it was easy to see, with ribbona 
 and roses and all manner of follies about her ; but she was 
 soft of voice and of foot, and she seemed quite shy, as one 
 might say, with Gladys, and to have taken quite a strange 
 sort of love for her. I call it strange, because I was told 
 that they had never met until a day or so before they were 
 thus sent to us. The little dancer was loth to leave Gladys, 
 and she was bidden to stay whilst she pleased ; But the 
 silence about and the sight of the sea seemed to daunt her 
 and fright her ; I cannot tell how. " If I stayed long enow 
 here," I heard her mutter one day, " it would kill me for 
 the business. I should think, and think, and think till 
 every bit of heart for my work would go out of me like ; all 
 the jigging, and the singing, and the punning, and the 
 rest of it, would seem such pitiful stuff, and so foolish and 
 vile ; and where, I wonder, should me and granny be then ?" 
 I remember her words, though I only half-guessed what 
 she meant. They let her do as she would, and she went 
 away after a week. It was sorrowful to see how she clung 
 to Gladys and sobbed and Gladys so still and hopeless and 
 silent, like a frozen creature, as she had been, they said, 
 since the news of the death of her brother. " I hope and pray 
 you'll never reproach me, dear ? " Nellie cried over and over 
 again. " I hope and pray you'll never reproach me 1 " I do 
 not think Gladys knew what she sid : she seemed to hear 
 and notice nothing in those days. As for me, I could not 
 tell the meaning of the words. I suppose the dancing-girl 
 must have done her some wrong ? ' 
 
 I said nothing : to me such fear, such misgiving, seemed 
 intelligible enough. I knew that Nellie had sought for her 
 a succour that the world would have said was certain to be 
 such succour alone as the kite gives the wood-dove with 
 talon and beak. I doubted n^t that her mind had misgiven 
 her for the issue of her work many and many a time since 
 the day that she had rejected the old Eoman scarabaei. 
 
 '"Well, she went from us,' resumed the little quaint, 
 bigoted narrator, ' and Hargett Llansaint was glad when she 
 was gone. All Margett's reverence for her master could not? 
 make her see that it was fitting to have under her roof a 
 girl that wore mock roses in her ha^ and mock laces on her 
 
A STORY OF THE SEA. 41$ 
 
 bodice, and mock gems on her fingers, and who showed her- 
 self in a boy's dress nightly to the public, by her own 
 confession. 
 
 ' G-ladys was different, you know, with that noble old- 
 world look about her ; and that great grief that made her 
 so still and lifeless ; and that grave simple fashion of her 
 speech which had a dignity in it too. And, besides, 
 she was an innocent child, and had scarce been off the 
 borders of her father's farm-lands. So the dancer went her 
 ways, but Gladys and Bronze abided with us. It was 
 Margett's lord's will, as I say ; and she strove her best to 
 make them happy. And despair is not natural to youth, 
 you know : through the long autumn and winter Gladys 
 was ill, and very restless and very sad, and seemed to know 
 no pleasure save in watching the sea in its wrath; but 
 when the spring came, and the white sails gleamed in the 
 distance, and the almond-trees put forth their bloom, and 
 the little blue gentian blossomed in the clefts of the rocks, 
 and the fisher-children came out to play on the sands, the 
 young life in her seemed to wake, and to take interest in the 
 life around her. She was always beside the sea morn, 
 noon, and eve, and Bronze never left her side. The fisher- 
 people all came to know her, and to care for her very much. 
 The rudest amongst them grew to think it honour to take 
 her out upon the waters, and would hang an old sail upon a 
 spar to shield her from the sun, and deck their boat as gaily 
 as they could with seaweeds and with speargrass. Margett 
 vised to murmur to herself that it was a purposeless life for 
 one who would have to find her own support in time to 
 come ; and once she plucked up heart of grace and dared 
 to write so much humbly to Lord Beltran. And he 
 wrote back only one line "Let her please herself; and 
 don't trouble me." "Was it not a heartless answer ? I do 
 not think he cared anything for her in those days. He 
 had placed her with us, and thought of her no more ; as he 
 would have thought no more of a spaniel placed with a 
 keeper. 
 
 'Well, through all the summer it was the same. Shs 
 spent well-nigh all her time drifting on the waters, or read- 
 ing and thinking beside the sea. Our home was a little 
 quiet chine, with no harbour or landing-place of any kind ; 
 wLere there was only a cluster of fishermen's cottages ; and 
 
4x6 PUCK. 
 
 where no strange ships or strange people ever came. A 
 yacht, indeed, wouJ4 scud past now aud then, but very 
 seldom ; for you know they go but little on the southern 
 side. She was never disturbed or molested : and in the sea- 
 air, and the southerly sun, and the salt-bitten winds she 
 seemed to get beauty so suddenly ; such a new vivid sea* 
 born beauty, that gave such a glow to her hair, such depth 
 tp her eyes, such warmth to her lips ; and I think she waa 
 happy despite her sorrow and her loneliness happy in 
 her freedom, and in her youth, and in her dreams. 
 
 * And she did dream : I used to see that in her eyes when 
 she would sit at night by the lattice of her little room 
 where the moonlight would stream, bright as any lamp, 
 upon the pages of her book; and through the open case- 
 ment, across the brier-rose hedge, and through the boughs 
 of the almonds, she would see the great silvered width of the 
 sea, the sea that her brother had longed for in thirst and 
 weariness, and had never in life beheld, they say. 
 
 ' "Well, all this time Bronze would never leave her. He 
 was at her feet in the boats, at her side in the woods and on 
 the shore, against her door by night, and continually within 
 her shadow in the day. 
 
 * And Gladys clung to him beyond everything. " You see 
 he is all I have left, and he, too, knew them" she would say 
 to Margett. I suppose she meant her dead people. Bronze 
 had never left her, not an hour, I think, save twice in the 
 rough weather time : once when he went to seek for some 
 men lost on the downs above in a snow-drift ; and once, OD 
 a w^d night, when a cobble (smuggling a brandy keg or two, 
 in trutn; was wrecked on a rock hard by, and he swam to it 
 and brought safe to land the fisherman's two-year-old child, 
 who had been asleep in its cot when father, and mother, 
 and child, and nets and tackle, and kegs and all, had been 
 tumbled out into the sea. For these two deeds the people 
 about, of course, thought great things of Bronze, and always 
 brought him pieces of their freshest fish and fattest bacon ; 
 and he generally gave it almost all away, letting all the 
 email, famished, quarrelsome, unhappy dogs of the village 
 come about him, and share it at pleasure.* 
 
 I have also seen a dog do this sitting by in generoui content 
 his lean brethren made feast on hia goods. ED. 
 
A STORY OF THE SEA. 41 J 
 
 'Well, *jne summer day, in the forenoon, Gladys and 
 Bronze were out on the shore, and I was with them. It was 
 far in the afternoon, a splendid day, with a blue sea running 
 calm yet high. The wind was fresh and the tide was down. 
 We wandered somewhat far out upon the beach. The 
 great rocks, that the water always hid when it was high, 
 were so cool and smooth and brown ; and the grey sand 
 between them had been all waved and marked in such 
 pretty fashion by the waves ; and all about there were such 
 clear, bright, shallow pools, filled with the curling, sweet- 
 smelling seaweeds, and the many-coloured stars of the sea- 
 anemones : and then beyond, on what was always the land, 
 the great wall of cliff, streaked with many hues, and the 
 woods above, and the little cottages underneath, covered 
 with fuchsia and honeysuckle. 
 
 * We wandered far over the beach, so far that we almost 
 reached the lip of the last lazy wave as the sea went out on 
 its southward way ; and we spent some time down there on 
 the low sands. Grladys had with her some books and a 
 great osier kreel that she used sometimes to cast over her 
 shoulder as the fisherwomen cast theirs, and which she in her 
 ramble nearly filled with all kinds of sea-ribbons, and 
 grasses, and shells, and pebbles, and of the moist brown sea- 
 weed, for which Margett had some household use. She 
 used to look very pretty there, with her garments tucked 
 away to leave her delicate limbs free for motion ; and her 
 head bare to the sun ; and the basket slung upon her back, 
 filled with the trailing algae ; and her cheeks warm and her 
 tiands wet with the breath and the touch of the sea. She is 
 a great lady now, of course, in her velvets and lace ; but, to 
 my taste, she was lovelier then. I do not know if Lord 
 Beltran ever thinks so. I should suppose he would ; he is a 
 man of taste, they say. He saw her so ? Yes, once or 
 twice, when he came round to that part of the coast in a 
 Bchooner he has for his use. And, if I remember, he 
 sketched her so once. 
 
 1 Well, this noontide was very warm, and when she had 
 filled the kreel she sat upon a rock to read. As she did so a 
 tiny skiff, with one tiny white sail, was putting off from land, 
 or at least from as near land as the shallow water would let 
 it approach. Catching sight of her, the sailor with it waded 
 back and came to her. He was a good simple fellow who 
 
 Si 
 
41 3 PUCK. 
 
 lived in one of the huts of the beach, and worked sometimes 
 with colliers, sometimes with fishing-smacks. He was fuD 
 of trouble now, and poured his sorrow out to her. It 
 Beemed that he had been on shore seeking her. His wife, 
 who was on board a fishing-smack that lay off the land, some 
 mile or so westward, down the coast, was very ill dying, 
 he feared and had begged of him, if he could find Grladys, 
 to entreat her to go and speak to her. He had been com- 
 pelled to come to the village for bread, and tackle, and other 
 things he needed ; and the doctor he could nowhere find. 
 This woman was a delicate, pretty, good-living creature, and 
 G-ladys had won her heart with many little tender services 
 in the drear winter time gone by. It was a common thing 
 with her to visit the people on board their vessels, for she 
 loved nothing so well as to sail to and fro on the sea ; and 
 they had a superstitious belief in her because she was so 
 different to themselves. 
 
 ' She told him she would come at once, and laid the 
 wicker kreel, and the books, and a little rough waterproof 
 cloak, upon the brown boulder on which she had been just 
 about to make her seat, and on which Bronze and I were 
 lying. "Come!" she called to Bronze; but the sailor 
 stopped her. " I dursn't take him, miss, not for our lives ! " 
 he said earnestly. " He's the weight of a man ; and the 
 boat's so over-crowded now with things as I've had to get in 
 the Chine, that you're to the full as much as ever I dare 
 carry." 
 
 '"I cannot leave him!" she answered, shrinking back; 
 indeed she never had left him. He was always with her, 
 whether on sea or land, and they clung passionately to 
 one another. 
 
 '"I can go and come for you again, miss," said the 
 fisherman ruefully; "but it will take a goodish bit of time 
 and Jenny so bad, and nobody but the boy with her, and 
 the doctor not to the fore neither. Sure the dog '11 wait 
 for you here, miss, safe enow. Not as I'd be pressing you." 
 
 * But he did press her, pressed her sorely. 
 
 1 It was very reluctantly that she was induced to leave 
 Bronze there. Nothing save the knowledge of the value 
 and the misery of each fleeting minute to the sick woman 
 would ever have persuaded her. As it was, she threw her 
 arms about him and kissed him on the forehead; then 
 
A STORY OF THE SEA. 419 
 
 pointed to the krecl of shells and seaweed on the red 
 smooth piece of rock. 
 
 '" Take care of them, dear Bronze," she murmured j "and 
 wait till I come back. Wait here." 
 
 * She did not mean to command ; she only meant to con- 
 sole him by the appointment of some service. 
 
 * Bronze looked in her face with eyes of woe and longing ; 
 but he made no moan nor sound, but only stretched himself 
 beside the kreel on guard. I am always glad to think that 
 as she went she turned, and kissed him once again. 
 
 * The boat flew fast over the water. When boats leave 
 you, and drag your heart with them, they always go like 
 that; and when they come, and your heart darts out to meet 
 them, then they are so slow ! 
 
 ' The boat flew like a seagull, the sun bright upon her 
 sail. Bronze, left upon the rock, lifted his head and gave 
 one long low wail. It echoed woefully and terribly over 
 the wide quiet waters. They gave back no answer, not 
 even the poor answer that lies in echo. 
 
 ' It was very still there. Nothing was in sight except 
 that single little sail shining against the light, and flying 
 flying flying. 
 
 ' Now and then you could hear a clock striking in the 
 distant village, the faint crow of a cock, the far-off voices of 
 children calling to one another. 
 
 'But where we were, there was quite silence, for the 
 things of the sea are so noiseless. The little sea-mouse 
 stole athwart a pool; the grey sea-crabs passed like a 
 little army ; the tiny sea creatures that dwelt in rosy shells 
 thrust their delicate heads from their houses, to peep and 
 wonder at the sun. But all was noiseless. How dared 
 they make a sound, when that great sea, that was at once 
 their life and death, was present with its never-ceasing 
 "Hush!" 
 
 1 Bronze never moved, and his eyes never turned from the 
 little boat that went and left him there the little boat that 
 fast became merely a flash and speck of white against the 
 azure air, no bigger than the breadth of a sea-gull's wings. 
 
 'An hour drifted by. The church clock on the cliffs had 
 struck four times ; a deep-toned, weary bell, that tolled for 
 every quarter, and must often have been heard, at dead of 
 night, by dying men, drowning unshriven and unhousellod. 
 
4*0 PUCK. 
 
 1 Suddenly the sand about ua, so fawn-hued, smooth, and 
 beautifully ribbed, grew moist, and glistened with a gleam 
 of water, like eyes that fill with tears. 
 
 ' Bronze never saw : he only watched the boat. A little 
 later the water gushed above the sand, and gathering in a 
 frail rippling edge of foam, rolled up and broke upon the rock. 
 
 1 And still he never saw ; for still he watched the boat. 
 ' Awhile, and the water grew in volume, and filled the 
 mouse's pool till it brimmed over, and bathed the dull 
 grasses till they glowed like flowers ; and drew the sea- 
 crabs and the tiny dwellers of the shells back once more into 
 its wondrous living light. 
 
 'And all around the fresh tide rose, silently thus about the 
 rocks and stones ; gliding and glancing in all the channels 
 of the shore, until the sands were covered, and the grasses 
 gathered in, and all the creeping, hueless things were lost 
 within its space ; and in the stead of them, and of the 
 bronze palm-leaves of weed, and of the great brown boul- 
 ders gleaming in the sun, there was but one vast lagoon of 
 ^hadowless bright water everywhere. 
 
 ' And still he never saw ; for still he watched the boat. 
 
 ' I roused him, and he looked j only one fleeting look. 
 His eyes went back to the gleam of the distant sail. 
 
 ' By this time the tide, rolling swiftly in before a strong 
 sou' -wester, had risen midway against the rock on which we 
 had been left, and was breaking froth and foam upon the 
 rock's worn side. For this rock alone withstood the passage 
 of tt^. sea ; there was nought else but this to break the even 
 width of water. All other things save this had been 
 ? bdued and reapen. 
 
 * And the sea so long has reaped side by side with the 
 reaper Death, that it reaps full sure and true, and will leave 
 nothing ungarnered. 
 
 ' " Will you die there ? " I cried to him. 
 
 '"If so it be willed," he made answer. 
 
 ' " Are you mad ? See the waters ! " 
 
 ' " I see them." 
 
 * " See them ! and know they are death ? " 
 
 *" I know they are death." 
 
 4 " But you could swim to the shore ? " 
 
 '"Yes." 
 
 4 " Then why do you tarry her ? M 
 
 * " I must tarry till she comes." 
 
" 
 
 A STORY OP THE SEA. 
 
 Though it is death ? " 
 
 Though it is death ! " 
 
 But that is madness ! " 
 
 It is duty." 
 
 To die, choked by the sea, is duty ? " 
 
 To die, anyhow, at one's post." 
 1 " But she had forgotten." 
 ' " That may be. But she bade me wait. 
 
 * " Then you will wait for your death ! " 
 ' " I must wait for whatever chances." 
 
 ' By this time the sea had risen within the height of the 
 rock by the breadth of a man's two fingers. It was all deep 
 water around ; and the water glowed a strange emerald 
 green, like the green in a lizard or snake. The shore, that 
 had looked so near, now seemed so far, far off ; and the 
 woods were hidden in mist, and the cottages were all 
 blurred with the brown of the cliff, and there came no sound 
 of any sort from the land no distant bell, no farm-bird's 
 call, no echo of children's voices. There was only one sound 
 at all ; and that was the low, soft, ceaseless murmuring of 
 the tide as it glided inward. 
 
 ' I entreated him again. 
 
 * Again the same answer returned. 
 
 ' The waters rose till they touched the crest of the rock ; 
 but still he never moved. Stretched out upon the stone, 
 guarding the things of her trust, and with his eyes fastened 
 on the sail which rose against the light, he waited thus for 
 death. 
 
 ' I urged no more, but struck off towards land. I was 
 light, and a strong swimmer. I had been tossed on those 
 waves from my birth. Buffeted, fatigued, blind with the 
 salt sea spray, drenched with the weight of the water, I 
 struggled across that calm dread width of glassy coldness, 
 and breathless reached the land. 
 
 * By signs and cries I made them wot that something 
 needed them at sea. They began to get ready a little boat, 
 bringing it down from its wooden rest on high dry ground 
 beneath the cliff. "Whilst they pushed and dragged through 
 the deep-furrowed sand I gazed seaward. The shore waa 
 raised ; I could see straight athwart the waters. They now 
 were level with the rock ; and yet he had never moved. 
 
 ' The little skiff had passed round the bend of a bluff ; 
 and was out of his sight and ours. 
 
422 PUCK. 
 
 'The boaJb was pushed into the surf; they threw ine in. 
 They could see nothing, and trusted to my guidance. 
 
 ' I had skill enough to make them discover whither it was 
 I wanted them to go. Then, looking in their eagerness 
 whither my eyes went, they saw him on the rock, and with 
 a suddee exercise of passionate vigour, bent to their oars 
 and sent the boat against the hard opposing force of the 
 resisting tide. For they perceived that, from some cause, 
 he was motionless there, and could not use his strength ; 
 and they knew that it would be shame to their manhood if, 
 within sight of their land, the creature who had succoured 
 their brethren in the snow, and saved the two-year child 
 from the storm, should perish before their sight on a calm 
 and unfretted sea and in a full noon sun. 
 
 'It was but a furlong to that rock; it was but the 
 breadth of the beach, that at low water stretched uncovered ; 
 and yet how slowly the boat sped, with the ruthless tide 
 sweeping it back as fast as the oars bore it foreward ! 
 
 ' So near we seemed to him that one would have thought 
 a stone flung from us through the air would have lit far 
 beyond him ; and yet the space was enough, more than 
 enough, to bar us from him, filled as it was with the strong 
 adverse pressure of those low, swift, in-rushing waves. 
 
 ' The waters leaped above the summit of the rock, and 
 for a moment covered him. A great shout went up from 
 the rowers beside me. -Thev strained in every nerve to 
 reach him ; and the roll of a ft esh swell of water lifted the 
 boat farther than their utmost effort could achieve, but 
 lifted her backward, backward to the land. 
 
 ' When the waters touched him he arose slowly, and stood 
 at bay like a stag upon a headland, when the hounds rage 
 behind, and in front yawns the fathomless lake. 
 
 * He stood so that he still guarded the things of his trust ; 
 and his eyes were still turned seaward, watching for the 
 vanished sail. 
 
 ' Once again the men, with a loud cry to him of courage and 
 help, strained at their oars, and drove themselves a yard's 
 breadth farther out. And once again the tide, with a rush 
 of surf and shingle, swept the boat back, and seemed to bear 
 nor to the land as lightly as though she were a leaf with 
 which a wind was playing. 
 ' The waters covered the surface of the rock. It sank 
 
A STORY OF THE SEA. 4*3 
 
 from sight. The foam was white about his feet, and still 
 he stood there upon guard. Everywhere there was tho 
 brilliancy of noontide sun ; everywhere there was the beam- 
 ing calmness of the sea, that spread out, far and wide, in 0110 
 vast sheet of light ; from the wooded line of the shore there 
 echoed the distant gaiety of a woman's laugh. A breeze, 
 eoftly stirring through the warm air, brought with it from 
 the land the scent of myrtle thickets and wild flowers. 
 How horrible they were the light, the calm, the mirth, the 
 summer fragrance ! 
 
 * For one moment he stood there erect ; his dark form 
 sculptured, lion-like, against the warm yellow light of noon ; 
 about his feet the foam. 
 
 'Then all noiselessly, a great, curled, compact wave 
 surged over him, breaking upon him, sweeping him away. 
 The water spread out quickly, smooth and gleaming like the 
 rest. He rose, grasping in his teeth the kreel of weed and 
 shells. 
 
 ' He had waited until the last. Driven from the post he 
 would not of himself forsake, the love of life awoke in him ; 
 he struggled against death. 
 
 ' Three times he sank, three times he rose. The sea was 
 now strong, and deep, and swift of pace, rushing madly in ; 
 and he was cumbered with that weight of osier and of weed, 
 which yet he never yielded, because it had been her trust. 
 With each yard that the tide bore him forward, by so much 
 it bore us backward. There was but the length of a spar 
 between us, and yet it was enough ! 
 
 * He rose for the fourth time, his head above the surf, the 
 kreel uplifted still, the sun-rays full upon his brown weary 
 eyes, with all their silent agony and mute appeal. Then the 
 tide, fuller, wilder, deeper with each wave that rolled, and 
 washing as it went all things of the shore from their places, 
 flung against him, as it swept on, a great rough limb of drift- 
 wood. It struck him, as he rose ; struck him across the brow. \ 
 The wave rushed on ; the tide came in ; the black wood 
 floated to the shore ; he never rose again. 
 
 1 And scarcely that span of the length of a spar had parted 
 us from him when he sank ! 
 
 ' All the day through they searched, and searched with all 
 the skill of men sea-born and sea-bred. The fisher, whose 
 little child he had saved in the winter night, would not leave 
 
4*4 PU-K 
 
 hiir +r> the things of the deep. And at sunset they found 
 him, floating westward, in tke calm water where the rays of 
 the sun made it golden and warm. He was quite dead'; but 
 in his teeth there still was clenched the ozier kreel, washed 
 empty of its freight. 
 
 ******* 
 
 ' She grieved for him ? ' 
 
 1 Yes. She was as one mad with grief awhile ; crying out 
 that he was her only friend upon earth ; and that it was 
 through her that death had come to him. 
 
 ' But human grief passes on swiftly ; see you have heard 
 her laugh to-day ! They buried him there ; on the shore 
 underneath the cliff, where a great wild knot of myrtle 
 grows, and the honeysuckle blooms all over the sand. And 
 when Lord Beltran in that autumn came, and heard how he 
 had died in the fulfilling of a trust, he had a stone shnpen 
 and carved ; and set it against the cliff, amongst the leafage 
 and flowers, high up where the highest winter tide will not 
 eome. And by his will the name of Bronze was cut on it iii 
 deep letters that will not wear out, and on which the euu 
 will strike with every evening that it shall pass westward 
 above the sea ; and beneath the name he bade three lines b 
 chiselled likewise, and they are these : 
 ;ATH RATHER THAN i 
 
 HE KNEW NO BETTER. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXXIII. 
 
 'MILORD, THE HAWK.' 
 
 THREE or four days passed in like manner, and I grew 
 attuned to the gracious harmonies of pleasure and of riches. 
 I wore my blue rosette, without too bitterly remembering 
 the coat of La Pipetta ; and I basked in the fireside warmth, 
 without too poignantly recalling the icy moonlit nights in 
 the drear Parisian garret. I had the blood of aristocrats in 
 me, though I had been reared in a rush basket in a cottage ; 
 and to my temper all ease and elegance seemed even as a 
 second nature. You shall keep the plebeian in a palace a 
 
'MILORD. THE HAWKS 435 
 
 score of years, and lie shall ever wear his purple, and bear 
 his orb, as though the one were a suit of rags and the other 
 a ball of lead. But you shall keep the patrician in a hovel 
 a score of years, and he shall ever wear his hempen shirt and 
 bear his reaper's sickle, as though the one were a princely 
 robe and the other a knightly sword. Bon sang nepeut 
 mentir ; and against a throne it will cry out, 'Ye who sit 
 there are sots and fools ! ' and from a beggar's eyes it will 
 say with a challenge, * My fathers once ruled in the land ! ' 
 It cannot lie ; and perhaps it is for that reason that the old 
 blood is now hated, in an age which has exalted lying to a 
 science the one supreme social science of Success. 
 
 I was soon perfectly at home in this pretty maisonnette; 
 but I was no nearer to penetration of its mysteries if mys- 
 teries indeed they were. Grladys read her days away ; her 
 men friends came and went ; the atmosphere was always full 
 of flowers and birds, songs and pleasant voices, all the colours 
 of art, and all the movements of thought. She lived in utter 
 solitude here ; but the world came to her on the tongues of 
 those who knew it best ; and all that was new, or rare, or 
 welcome, seemed to find its way to her ; and, if at night she 
 went to the physical and mental fatigues of the stage, she 
 went also to the brilliancy of victory and to the sustenance 
 of homage. 
 
 I could not marvel that she was happy ; happy with the 
 vague, untroubled, slumbrous happiness of a dream. Too 
 happy, surely, I thought, for shame to rest with her. I 
 was perplexed ; I was troubled ; I could scarcely doubt that 
 some wrong there was of necessity somewhere: but yet 
 when she came to me, and lifted me against her sweet rich 
 lips, and murmured gentle words to me of that night when 
 we had been first in wretchedness and solitude together, I 
 tfould not disbelieve her innocence. I could not credit that 
 the fair lone child whom I had seen kneel down in prayer, 
 had grown in this brief time callous and dishonoured. 
 
 Besides the cream was so rich; the cushions were so 
 soft ; the cakes were so sweet ; the hands that combed my 
 curls were so gentle. I resigned myself to enjoy them,. 
 asking not if the source of my good fortune were tainted- 
 It was wrong, I know ; very wrong in the creeds of my race. 
 I became almost as selfish as though I were human ! 
 
 On the fifth night after my arrival I contrived to ensconce 
 
426 PUCK. 
 
 myself under the sealskins, and to revisit the coronet uiv 
 repulsed. 
 
 I found it, as Fanfreluche had said, far more attractive 
 than ere the rioters had wrought their wild work on it. 
 Looking on the body of the house from the side I saw that 
 in every detail, the artistic taste of its lordly lessee had 
 prevailed over all considerations of economy. It was indeed 
 a model theatre. The hangings were of amber satin ; the 
 panels of the boxes contained charming little landscapes ; 
 the private boxes, of which there were many, were like tiny 
 boudoirs, with their mirrors, their lounging chairs and their 
 lace curtains. The musicians played out of sight ; the place 
 of the former orchestra was filled by a moss-covered bank 
 covered with evergreens and flowers. The officials were all 
 good-looking girls, dressed in a pretty costume of blue 
 slashed with silver. Out of the first corridor was a spacious 
 smoking-room, with easy couches and a supply of the even- 
 ing papers, where men could enjoy their cigars in the 
 entr'actes without annoying any woman. All was light, 
 bright, luxurious, fantastic, as befits a place that is the 
 abode of amusement, and depends for success on the com- 
 pensation which it offers to people for leaving their dinner- 
 tables immediately after the ice. 
 
 It was as choice, as artistic, as seductive, as suggestive of 
 every indolent enjoyment as a bonbonniere painted by Fra- 
 gonard and fitted by Siraudin ; and all that was fashionable 
 and aristocratic in the town came to it. And yet I heard a 
 man, whom I did not know, say on the staircase to another: 
 
 ' Charming ! perfectly charming ! But it can't pay ! J 
 
 And the other, in whom I recognised Dudley Moore, 
 answered 
 
 ' It would pay if Beltran were Farquhar ; if Gladys Gerant 
 were Laura Pearl ; if the music were from Canterbury Hall 
 instead of the great composers ; if the entertainment were 
 witless buffoonery instead of delicate art ; if everything 
 were not what it is, in a word, which is the common recipe 
 for the regeneration of all matters ! ' 
 
 ' Why say that ? ' urged his companion. ' It was all you 
 describe under the old regime, and it was a dead lose also 
 then ! ' 
 
 Dudley IMoore took snuff. 
 
 1 Ah ! Our clever lessee has a knack of always falling in 
 
MILORD, THE HAWKS 4 2 7 
 
 love with all his First Actresses. I don't know how any 
 theatre can pay under those circumstances.' 
 
 I had no business on the grand stairs ; and I scurried 
 away and took shelter in the dressing-room of Gladys. 
 
 It was tiny, as all such rooms in a theatre are ; but it was 
 tastefully fitted up with white and rose. No one ever came 
 there, save her maid. She was alone sitting still and 
 thoughtful. She was dressed for Lady Teazle, and her face 
 looked so youthful and so ' flower-like ' in its contrast with 
 the powdered coiffure and the magnificent costume of bro- 
 cade and of satin, with its train of cloth of gold, and the 
 great cross of diamonds which glittered on her throat. 
 
 It seemed a strange career for one so young ; a strange 
 fate for a child reared in the grave pastoral simplicity of 
 what must have been an almost puritan household. Yet 
 that she was happy in it there could be no doubt ; and that 
 it had in no way tainted the proud purity of her nature 
 seemed almost as little to be questioned. 
 
 I gazed at her, marvelling greatly, reasoning, as society 
 doubtless reasoned, that a creature of her years, of her utter 
 desolateness, of herabsolute penniles^ness, could never have 
 come to be seated there, with the homage of all fashionable 
 London hers, with those diamonds on her breast, with those 
 golden robes trailing behind her, with that theatre for her 
 arena, and its owner for her only friend, unless with all 
 these vanities and all these successes she had not also 
 accepted the usual price paid for them dishonour ! 
 
 And yet I could not look thus at her without shame for 
 this thought. Despite her beauty, despite her position, 
 despite her luxurious little villa, despite even that match- 
 less rose-diamond cross, gleaming above the beating of her 
 heart, it seemed impious to doubt that the dead boy's sister 
 was one whit less innocent than when she had knelt down 
 in the me onlight to pray for Harold one whit less nobly 
 proud than when she had repulsed the offered charities of 
 the little dancer. The eyes were dreaming, indeed, looking 
 far away, with the imaginative, poetic gaze of ' one who 
 beholds visions ;' but there was not in them the look of on* 
 tvho gazes backward at a sin. 
 
 Though the diamonds seemed to me like the orbs of a 
 snake a snake that coils about a woman never to let her 
 Tree again yet I could not believe that she, though thus 
 
428 PUCK. 
 
 transformed, could be less fit to meet her father's sight than 
 when she had stood beside him to read the Scriptures aloud 
 at evensong in the old homestead of her birth. Evil might 
 be about her ; but surely, I thought, evil had not as yet 
 consumed her. 
 
 As she rose and opened her door there came in from the 
 body of the theatre ringing music of the orchestra, the 
 buzz of the talking audience, the sounds of a rapidly filling 
 house ; the scent of some costly hothouse bouquets that had 
 been sent her, and which her maid -was bringing in ; I 
 shivered and sickened, In this world the world of Laura 
 Pearl was it possible for any woman to hold her honour, 
 to retain her dignity. 
 
 At that moment she was called, and passed on to the 
 stage. The piece played that night was the perennial School 
 for Scandal. 
 
 In such pure comedy and elegant art she was supreme, 
 they said ; though her still greater triumphs were in parts 
 of pathos and of power. 
 
 Lady Teazle is a role which any actress who is graceful 
 and a gentlewoman can play with ease. There are but 
 little light and shade in it ; and there is not any kind of 
 passion. But even here there was so much grace in her; 
 all conventional readings were so utterly discarded ; there 
 were such charming alternations of playful piquance and of 
 scornful dignity ; whilst over the whole was cast the ineffable 
 charm of a youth so seductive, that I no longer wondered 
 at the celebrity with which the town had crowned her. 
 
 She was so entirely self -unconscious, too ; so utterly 
 negligent of the public that hung on her words : she plaved 
 as a lovely woman might play for her own pleasure before 
 her mirror, with none standing by ; given with all this 
 her personal beauty and her grace of motion, it was no 
 wonder that even Dudley Moore confessed himself for once 
 ' satisfied.' 
 
 ' You play that perfectly, my dear,' said the great critic, 
 coming behind the scenes. 
 
 ' Yet you say that they will never come to see anything 
 that is even good,' said Gladys, with a smile and a movement 
 of her head backward to the crowded house. 
 
 * They will always come to see a pretty woman,' returned 
 the censor curtly. ' T know too much of human nature ever 
 
'MILORD, THE HAWK: 429 
 
 to have denied tliat. What beautiful diamonds you have ! 
 They are new ? ' 
 
 * Lord Beltran lends them to me. They are his family 
 jewels.' 
 
 ' That has luckily not "been his habit before with his First 
 Actresses,' murmured Dudley Moore, as she passed on to 
 the stage again. * If it had been, he would not have had 
 them to lend now. If this child understands her droits de 
 largesse the Beltran diamonds are lost to the house.' 
 
 1 thought that, with all his knowledge of human nature, 
 the great critic did not very much understand Gladys 
 Grerant. 
 
 "When the comedy was over I found my way to that pretty 
 chamber over which the marble god and dancing girl of 
 G-oethe presided. "When I entered it was empty ; but the 
 chandelier was lighted, and on the table stood some ice, and 
 wines, and fruits. Supper was rarely had here now, except 
 on occasions when its lessee himself entertained after the 
 first representation of a new piece, or on the opening night 
 of the season. But she was accustomed to receive here, for 
 an hour or so after her performance, all personal friends or 
 persons of celebrity. The number of these was kept ex- 
 clusively and carefully narrowed ; and the cordon that was 
 drawn around this place was quite as rigid in its way as that 
 before the doors of a great duchess's drawing-room. 
 
 I had scarcely been there a moment ere Beltran and 
 Denzil entered together. They had been dining with the 
 Duke of Holyrood. Dudley Moore, Gruilliadene, and one 
 or two others followed ; chatted of the gossip of the hour; 
 lighted some rose-scented cigars ; and drank some of the 
 hissing iced waters. 
 
 In a little while she joined them, dressed in that simple 
 black velvet, without jewel or ornament of any sort, except 
 here and there a touch of old point lace, which always be- 
 came her, I thought, almost better than any other fashion 
 of attire. 
 
 The fire burned brightly, whilst its rosy glow beamed on 
 the marble beauty of the god ; the scent of the bouquets 
 placed there in glass and china filled the air ; the news of 
 the hour paused laughingly from mouth to mouth ; now and 
 then Denzil struck out from the piano in the recess some 
 deep fulUhords of German melody, or some half -gay, half- 
 
430 PUCK, 
 
 pathetic cadence of soft Irish song. It was all pleasant, 
 amusing, blameless enough ; but I suppose it would have 
 been vain to tell the town that the society gathered round an 
 actress in her supper-room was to the full as refined as, and 
 not a whit more harmful than, the society gathered round 
 a young peeress at her afternoon tea-table. 
 
 ' The exception proves the rule,' runs your proverb ; but 
 why, I wonder, is it that you always only believe in the rule, 
 and are always utterly sceptical as to the existence of the 
 exception ? 
 
 ' Why are people still amused by Sheridan, but always 
 bored by Shakespeare ? ' propounded the mighty Editor, as 
 Denzil brought to a close a buffo song of some Neapolitan 
 composer, in which his voice had filled the room with 
 melody. 
 
 ' Why do people only tolerate Sheridan, and go into ecsta- 
 sies over burlesques ? ' said Beltran. 
 
 'Because we want to laugh, and not to think,' said 
 Denzil. ' Now, to laugh at Sheridan, you must first think 
 with him.' 
 
 ' That is begging the question/ said Dudley Moore. * J 
 don't want to know what the great mass of fools may do ; I 
 want to know why people of intelligence and taste, who 
 fully appreciate the riches of Shakespeare when they read 
 him, are bored undeniably bored by him on the stage ? ' 
 
 He turned to Q-ladys and she smiled. 
 
 ' They will come to my Beatrice.' 
 
 ' No answer ! They come because you look like a picture; 
 though they might prefer even your picture if set in Offen- 
 bach. What I ask is, why is Shakespeare a drug on the 
 English stage, ennui to audiences, and perdition to managers ? ' 
 
 1 If it be so, I think it is this : the Shakespearian plays 
 are all so utterly unlike our own life it is so utterly im- 
 possible that men and women could ever have spoken such 
 verse as that their words and deeds are so immeasurably 
 removed from all kindred with the language and the actions 
 of this present time that when called from the world of 
 the imagination, and presented visibly on the stage, the} 
 weary the audience where they do not strike it with an 
 irresistible sense of incongruity and ridicule. It would ba 
 the same with any of the great dramas of antiquity with 
 those of Euripides or Sophocles, if we could play them. The 
 
\VILORD, THE HAWK: 43* 
 
 more cultured the mind, the more impatient does it grow 
 of. any attempt to clothe in palpable shape any of the sublime 
 ideals of a great poet. Besides, surprise and expectation 
 are charms essential to the drama for all minds. How is it 
 possible for people to be either excited or surprised by 
 plays that they have been more or less familiar with ever 
 since they learned to spell ? ' 
 
 ' That is partially true,' said Dudley Moore. * I am dis- 
 posed to agree with you, that high culture makes the visible 
 personation of a poetic ideal both distasteful and vulgar. 
 High culture needs no aids to its imagination. But why, 
 then, do the French, the most cultivated people as a whole 
 of the world, still care so much for their Phedre and its like? ' 
 
 ' The French are naturally more declamatory than we are/ 
 said Beltran. ' Attitude and sublime diction do not strike 
 them with the same sense of unnaturalness that it strikes 
 us. They are always posing, in school life, in home life, in 
 public life. Besides, the workmen flock to see E/acine, 
 specially when Eacine is to be had gratis ; but the idle 
 people have much the same preference for Herve* and 
 Offenbach that we have.' 
 
 'And it is ridiculous to quote the French, 1 averred 
 Denzil, ' in any sort of dramatic contrast with us. Though 
 they have not, to my thinking, one poetic drama in their 
 language, except Victor Hugo's, they have excellences of 
 every other kind in the intellectual, the social, the satirical 
 play, they are unapproachable.' 
 
 ' And then such power of adaptation in their actors ! ' 
 pursued Beltran. * Such mutations, such ease, such effortless 
 eloquence, such inimitable art ! If we had such actors, we 
 might perhaps tempt some English Hugo or Sardou to give 
 his talents to the stage, instead of to the novel or the 
 dinner-table. As it is, no genius or wit will write for our 
 stage, on which he knows but too well that his gentlemen 
 will be represented by counter-jumpers, his repartees be 
 given with grins and "gag," and his good society be 
 rendered by a replica of Margate or Cremorne.' 
 
 1 All this,' said the Editor doggedly, ' chiefly brings ua 
 fcack to Denzil's first proposition, that most educated people 
 dislike to think, ergo, are fools. A curious fact, if true, and 
 not in favour of education. 
 
 'I deny your deduction. It may be because we think 
 
43* PUCK. 
 
 over-much in our science, our profession, our jurispru- 
 dence, our intellectual composition, our political career, or 
 whatever be the pursuit which we follow that we are dis- 
 inclined to think in a place of mere amusement, after our 
 dinners.' 
 
 'It would seem, then, that the decline of the drama 
 resolves itself into a mere question of eating.' 
 
 ' You are very perverse,' said Denzil. ' What I say is, 
 that the mind is always so highly strained at its work in 
 our day, that it refuses to make any additional effort in its 
 mere relaxations. When you have been thinking all day, 
 with little pause or peace, you do not want to think in the 
 evening, when your mental strain is relaxed. You want 
 light, gaiety, noise, pretty pictures something that needs 
 no thought whatever.' 
 
 1 And culture, though it have heightened one kind of ima- 
 gination, has deadened another. And it has also sharpened 
 the sense of ridicule,' said G-ladys. ' In the old time, people 
 wept for Imogen, and loved with Romeo, without any one 
 of the aids to fancy of what we call " scenic effect." But 
 now you would only laugh at the most poetic Juliet if she 
 played as she did of old, with a sign-post behind her that 
 eaid, " This is Yerona. " And even with all the aids of ad- 
 mirable scenery, how seldom you seem to torget for one 
 moment that you are sitting out a play ! How seldom we 
 can beguile you into the sweetest homage to us of all 
 delusion ! ' 
 
 ' I don't think you need say so,' said Beltran. ' But I 
 admit it is difficult. "We are not imaginative in that way. 
 We are moved more now-a-days indirectly by suggestion, 
 by illusion, by a line in a poem, a meaning in a picture, a 
 gleam of insight in a writer, than we are by the broader 
 and more direct appeals to our fancy of the drama. A 
 generation which has found out that the moon is only a 
 dried-up ball, and the Ultima Thule only a bit of water ; 
 that Wallace never lived, and Joan of Arc never died, 
 may be pardoned for not very easily yielding itself to delu- 
 sions.' 
 
 ' And therefore burlesques on delusions suit us best,' said 
 Denzil. * When we feel tickled at hearing Medea bawl 
 that she'll whip her children, or (Edipus smash his tinted 
 spectacles in a passion, we are f^nused, because, without 
 
MILORD, THE HAWK: 433 
 
 snowing it, we feel a comical likeness, in such caricatures, 
 *ith the strong tendency of our own time to dwarf all 
 heroism, and make absurd all dignities.' 
 
 1 That sounds fearfully subtle, Derry,' said Beltran ; ' but 
 I doubt if audiences like burlesques for any other reason 
 than because they are nonsensical, showy, and full of jing- 
 ling rhymes and catching music. And why shouldn't they 
 like them ? They can't be less intellectual than the old 
 Farce was ; and certainly they are much prettier.' 
 
 * All this,' cried Dudley Moore, ' does not answer my 
 question, 'Why does Sheridan keep his ground so much 
 better than Shakespeare ? ' 
 
 ' She answered you as to Shakespeare,' replied Beltran. 
 ' As for Sheridan, he amuses us because his satires suit us 
 BO well still, and his characters are our own people dis- 
 guised in wig and powder. Our society is artificial, passion- 
 less, insincere. So is his. He is a mirror in which we see 
 our own faces ; it is the costume only that differs.' 
 
 ' But we should not be driven to use a mirror sixty yeari 
 old, if there were any quicksilver of wit extant wherewith 
 to set up another,' said Dudley Moore. ' If the English 
 stage be ever again to be worth anything which I doubt 
 lies not in its destinies it must be rendered so, not by re- 
 vivals of King John or of Comus, but by plays which shall 
 fathfully show, and unscrupulously satirise, modern society. 
 Our society is never represented on the stage. "We have 
 steam-engines, fire-engines, police-courts, gin-palaces, cabs 
 and horses, pots and pans, all to the life, inimitably ; but 
 Society, our Society that wonderful mass of indiflerence,. 
 intelligence, ennui, energy, licentiousness, decorum, corrup- 
 tion, and conventionality is utterly unrepresented. On 
 not one single stage do we ever see anything even dimly 
 resembling the life of men and women of the world. Now, 
 this must indicate one of two things : either that the power 
 of satire and of representation is altogether dead, or that 
 it finds in literature the vent that half a century ago it 
 found upon the stage/ 
 
 ' The latter, no doubt,' said Denzil. 
 
 ' You think so, of course, as you write novels,' assented 
 the great censor. 'But there is another reason, too- 
 Society, like most fashionable dames, is fond of self-delu- 
 ion, and is very apt to break in shivers the mirror that 
 
 Sv 
 
434 PUCK. 
 
 reflects her dtcolleUe too faithfully. Now the novelist is 
 a painter who draws his portrait on canvas which a stone or 
 two of censure will not break ; but the playwright's fragile 
 glass falls to atoms unless braced in a gilded frame of popu- 
 larity. Critical hostility is often the breath of life to the 
 writer : but to the actor it is absolute damnation ' 
 
 * How many have you damned then ? ' 
 
 ' Ah ! ' said Dudley Moore, taking snuff with an air of 
 pleasant remembrance. 
 
 * What a deal of words they waste over it ! ' scoffed Fan- 
 freluche to me. ' I said all that they've been saying now a 
 great deal better to you the other day in two minutes. The 
 simple truth of the matter is that human beings love mere 
 fun, mere prettiness, and a sprinkling of indecencies, all of 
 which burlesques supply only they hate a truth so ; when 
 it shows them just a little silly, and just a little childish, 
 despite all their worshipful wisdom ! ' 
 
 I did not heed her much. I was lost in wonder that the 
 child whom I had first seen with her dead bluebells, unpitied 
 in the streets of Westminster, should have become this 
 elegant actress, with her grace, her ease, her ready inter- 
 change ef thought, her patrician calm of manner. 
 
 It was only when I saw the old childlike innocence in the 
 eyes, the old childlike trustfulness in the beautiful arched 
 mouth, that I could persuade myself she was in truth the 
 same. And yet I remembered even then, in her helpless- 
 ness, and her bewilderment, and her wistful, defenceless 
 misery, there had been a certain noble pride, a certain 
 grave repose, in this young daughter of an old Saxon race, 
 whose forefathers had ruled as Earldermen ere ever a stone 
 had been raised of "Windsor or Warwick, of Longeat or 
 Haddon. Eace is stronger than circumstance. She had 
 been reared in the severe simplicity of a yeoman's house- 
 hold, and amidst the harsh pains and privations of poverty; 
 blown on by the winds of earth, sunned by the morning's 
 rays, and drenched with the dews of the dawns, trusted to 
 the freedom and the instincts of an open-air and hardy life; 
 knowing not the world, nor the world knowing her ; having 
 no teachers save Shakespeare and Milton, save the sunrise 
 and sunset, save the flocks and the herds. And yet Eace 
 fcad conquered Accident, and vindicated her title to it in 
 every limb and lineament; in every motion and gesture? 
 
MILORD, THE HAWKS 435 
 
 in the accents of her voice, in the gaze of her eyes. The 
 world may give costume, beauty, brilliancy, beguilement, 
 many charms, many attractions ; but Race alone can give 
 the hands, the glance, and the voice. 
 
 ' Have you found out what she ia to him, my dear ? ' 
 grinned Fanfreluche that night. 
 
 ' "What do people say ? ' I asked cautiously. 
 
 * As if there were two opinions ! My dear is it possible 
 for a woman not twenty, without any sort of kith or kin ; 
 famous on the stage ; living alone, in a charming villa with 
 only men of rank for her companions, rich enough to drive 
 in her own carriage and to give her own dinners is it 
 possible for her to have any verdict save one pronounced on 
 her by Society ? ' 
 
 ' Society's verdicts are often unjust ? ' 
 
 ' Perhaps. But Society is a Vehm-Gericht from whose 
 sentences there is no appeal. You may have all the inno- 
 cence in life, yet if the dagger stick through you and the 
 red hand point at you, why your innocence is very little 
 odds to anybody.' 
 
 ( But I am sure ' 
 
 ' What's the good of buts, my dear ? If people choose to 
 occupy questionable positions, they shouldn't murmur be- 
 causr Society looks on them as questionable characters. 
 The lamb that wore a wolf's skin couldn't with justice com- 
 plain if its flock ran away aghast from it.' 
 
 * But, with Society, it is the wolves who pretend to be 
 horrified at what they know well to be a lamb, much purer 
 than they themselves are ! ' 
 
 ' Ah well ! Then that only shows what a fool the lamb is 
 not to become a wolf altogether' fangs as well as skin 
 and so get a brotherhood with the strong ones ! Nothing 
 is so bad for a woman as to be innocent and to look guilty ; 
 she gets the sympathies of neither side, and finds herself 
 out in the cold altogether/ 
 
 ' You believe Q-ladys only slandered, then ? ' 
 ^ ' My dear, I have seen moths in candles that were only 
 singed, to begin with ! ' 
 
 * But he is so gentle to her, so generous to her ! * 
 Fanfreluche grinned. 
 
 1 Did ever you hear of the hawk who took into his pro- 
 tection a wood dove P There was not a question but that 
 
PUCK. 
 
 Milord the hawk could, better than any ne else, preserve 
 her from all the perils of the woods ; all traps, and nets, and 
 gins ; all ambuscaded sportsmen, all wandering night-owls, 
 and above all, from all the wiles and ways of hawks them- 
 selves, for who should know these so well ? And yet 
 when one fine day Milord the hawk took the fancy of a nice 
 dove for his own eating, I am half afraid she did not find 
 herself to be in such perfect security after all ! ' 
 
 * Beltran has no such treachery in him ! ' 
 
 ' My dear, he has been a hawk all his days, and it can't 
 be supposed that he can change his nature. Birds of prey 
 never do.' 
 
 I soon came to know that Fanfreluche was right. Of 
 the relation of Gladys to her friend the town had but one 
 opinion. 
 
 It judged from the surface, as it always does judge 
 therefore fallaciously. Appearances are so and so, hence 
 facts must be so and so likewise, is Society's formula. This 
 sounds mathematical and accurate ; but as facts, nine times 
 out of ten, belie appearances, the logic is very false. There 
 is something, indeed, comically stupid in your satisfied be- 
 lief in the surface of any parliamentary or public facts that 
 may be presented to you, varnished out of all likeness to 
 the truth by the suave periods of writer or speaker. But 
 there is something tragically stupid about your dogged 
 acceptation of any social construction of a private fife, 
 damned out of all possibility of redemption by the flippant 
 deductions of chatterbox or of slanderer. 
 
 Now and then you poor humanities, who are always so 
 dimly conscious that you are all lies to one another, get a 
 glimpse of various truths from some cynical dead man's 
 diary, or some statesman's secret papers. But you never 
 are warned : you placidly continue greedily to gobble up, 
 unexamined, the falsehoods of public men ; and impudently 
 to adjudicate on the unrevealed secrets of private lives. 
 
 Ah, if we could write your archives ! we who lie under 
 your council-chambers, and sleep by your emperor's pillows, 
 and watch your statesmen in the dead of the night, and see 
 your mistresses in their solitude, and hear your absent 
 friends when they speak of you, what a revelation there would 
 09 { I scarce can decide which you would find the falser, 
 your mistress's kiss or your newspaper's news. I hardly 
 
'MILORD, THE HAWK.' 437 
 
 know which would be the more at variance with their pro- 
 fessions, the friend's opinion or the statesman's soliloquy. I 
 do not think that any two members of society would keep 
 on speaking terms ; I doubt very greatly if any two lovers 
 would remain in love ; but there would be very few wars 
 conjured up, I fancy, because leading articles would go out 
 of fashion ; and there could hardly remain any political 
 differences, because you would see that all political creeds 
 resolve themselves into the old moss-trooper's formula, 
 * Grab a ' ye may, an ' fire the rest ! ' 
 
 Could I have told the town that there was no life simpler 
 tha this of Grladys Grerant's ; that there was no honour 
 higher than that of this yeoman's daughter; that her 
 friend had never touched even her hand with his lips ; that 
 although a beautiful and courted celebrity, she hardly knew 
 more of the world's evil now than when she had been in 
 her father's homestead; that of the darker lines of her 
 career she had no knowledge, but lived in an idealic sphere 
 of fair faiths and of golden fancies ; could I have told them 
 this the mere truth, as I came to find it none would have 
 believed me. 
 
 And yet the truth it was. Life had opened before her 
 like a dazzling wonder flower ; and she had taken it with- 
 out question, and rejoiced in it without fear. 
 
 As I came to know later, Beltran had glided imperceptibly 
 into his present relations with her. His pity had been 
 first aroused for the helpless, lonely, graceful child ; there 
 had been much in her to charm the taste of a fastidious and 
 cynical man of the world ; he had been interested, which 
 was not with him of common occurrence ; and he had 
 discovered in her singular abilities, which it had pleased 
 him to develop. His first gifts to her he had induced her 
 to accept by leading her to believe them the fruits of her 
 brother's talent ; when it was no longer possible to sustain 
 this delusion, he had placed her in a career where he could 
 continue them to her as the fruits of her ov, r n gifts. As it 
 chanced, her success in that career proved singularly great, 
 yet not so great that it could, of itself, have brought her in 
 so brief a space all the pleasures and all the luxuries which 
 he contrived she should enjoy. 
 
 Owing to him she never traversed all the steep and weary 
 stops of that winding stairway of struggle and privation by 
 
PVCA. 
 
 which most actresses are forced to toil. She never knew 
 the bitterness of probation, the fury of adverse cliques, the 
 insults of opposition, the slow agony of humiliating ordeal; 
 all the antagonism, annoyance, and insult inseparable to 
 her career, were warded off from her, and whatever he might 
 encounter of them, none of it touched her. From the first 
 he had led her to look to him for the guidance of her life ; 
 from the first he had never allowed her to suppose that any 
 of the gold she received was his. The wage of the theatre 
 was paid to her in his treasurer's name ; she never knew 
 that he owned the house ; but she believed'that his interest 
 obtained her honours. From her youth and her ignorance 
 of all practical things he had taken the management of her 
 affairs and interests entirely to himself. When he told her 
 that she was rich by right of genius, she believed him, and 
 only felt that such riches had charming uses and gracious 
 ends. 
 
 Perhaps he had done unwisely in thus bringing her into 
 the midst of the world, with no more knowledge of the 
 world than a child gains from a tale of fairyland. Perhaps 
 in the very excess of his liberality to her he erred against 
 her. It was not a safe life for her ; none knew that better 
 than he. It was a life, moreover, whereby her name was 
 inevitably associated with his own in injury to her. But it 
 had been hardly possible for him to give her any other. 
 From the onset he had found this young creature resolute 
 to receive no aid save such as she could be brought to 
 believe that she had really earned. Finding in her both 
 grace and genius, he judged it the simplest and straightest 
 service to her to give these free scope. By her absolute 
 desolation her fate was cast into his hands entirely ; he 
 dealt with it after the fashion of a man's liberal judgment 
 and kindly indulgence ; naturally he did not regulate it by 
 a matron's prejudices or with a philosoper's severity. 
 
 He had ever seen the women about him surrounded with 
 elegance, pleasure, and pretty luxuriouness ; he gave her 
 these because they appeared to him the privileges of her 
 sex and youth ; and because a lavishness in giving was a 
 characteristic of his temper. But in all this he had been 
 tioved by the generous impulses of a gentleman ; never by 
 those cold, measured calculations of a liber tine which society 
 Attributed to him. 
 
MILORD, THE HAWR? 43y 
 
 When he had endeavoured to induce women of his own 
 class to take interest in her, he had been baffled by their in* 
 difference or their incredulity, and could make no impression 
 Cither on their coldness or their scepticism. All things had 
 combined to throw her straight into his power. That he 
 did not abuse that power was, to my thinking, a gleam of 
 purer gold in the tangled web of this man's life than many 
 more virtuous men, of better repute than he, can show in 
 theirs. He was careless, contemptuous, indifferent, hardened 
 in many things ; holding women lightly, and setting most 
 moralities at naught, after the manner of men of his kind. 
 He had never been a good man, as the world counts such. 
 He had wasted his possessions, spent his years in pleasures, 
 and gained himself an evil name, often perhaps, for evil he 
 had not done ; but of old, when I had first seen the kindly 
 smile gleam in his tired grey eyes, I had known that he was 
 more to be trusted than very many better men, and that no 
 living thing would ever place its faith in him in vain. And 
 even so she now had found it. 
 
 With women of the world he was as uncrupulous as 
 occasion might need ; with other men's wives he had never 
 been famed for discretion ; his loves had had very little 
 heart in them, and as little scruple. He had been quite capable 
 of forsaking with easy negligence at the end of the season 
 the same woman whom he had wooed with courtly beguile- 
 ment at the commencement of it ; some women indeed, they 
 said, had found that gentle manner hard as steel, and that 
 slight smile cutting as the north wind. But all this was but 
 Greek meeting Greek ; all these women were much aa 
 world-worn and as heartless as he, if they were more pas- 
 sionate and more tenacious. If here and there one of them 
 had staked her life on his, the stake had seemed to have but 
 little worth in it, because she who put it down was so 
 inveterate a gamester, and had so often ventured ' all upoii 
 a cast.' 
 
 But many a man has honour who has not morality; manr 
 a man can be touched into generosity when he cannot be 
 induced to care for duty ; and he who smiles at all other 
 religions may yet steadfastly obey the instinct which f orbida 
 him to abuse faith placed m him. 
 
 Such a man was he ; and being moreover of a temper 
 that, when once moved to do either never gave rneasuredly or 
 
44~ PUCK. 
 
 defended feebly, he nad lavished all things possible on GKadyi 
 G-erant, and from the first t?me that her innocent eyes had 
 met his own had dealt with her gently, reverently, purely: 
 breathing no word to her that her dead boy-brother, living, 
 could ever have needed to avenge. 
 
 Fanfreluchehad said that birds of prey cannot change their 
 natures ; and, doubtless, you will say that it is entirely impro- 
 bable that such a man could ever act thus by such a woman. 
 
 "Well, I can only answer you as a little while ago I heard 
 a novelist, as famous in the drawing-room as on cover-side 
 and moor-side, answer his companion, when she demonstrated 
 to him that one of his stories a love-story, which haa 
 thrilled the hearts of many was, charming as she and the 
 word found it, after all very improbable. 
 
 1 Improbable ? ' he repeated. ' Improbable ? Yes, no 
 doubt it is utterly improbable, Only, you see, it happens 
 to be all true, every word of it. But I don't know that 
 that makes much difference to your theory.' 
 
 CHAPTEE XXXIV. 
 
 1 THE morality of society is very beautiful. Look there.' 
 said Fanfreluche. 
 
 It was a mild noon in March, there were sables and seal- 
 skins in the Bow, but the wearers thereof were already 
 numerous and aristocratic, and along the rails there already 
 stood some score of dainty equipages, all with fretting horses, 
 and some with coroneted panels. 
 
 The east still prevailed in the drift of the wind, but the 
 ennui had departed from the smoking-rooms of the clubs. 
 There might still be frost on the pavements, but there was 
 fashion in the footsteps that touched them. The spring had 
 scarce put forth her primroses, but Christie had put forth 
 his porcelains. The chestnuts had hardly their buds yet in 
 embryo, but the studios had already their paintings in 
 maturity There were few leaves uncurled on the trees, but 
 there were several dinner-parties given in Belgravia. The 
 mignonettes had not begun to sprout in the window-boxes, 
 but the love intrigues had commenced their up-springing. 
 
' THE WOMAN AT THE LATTICE. 1 44* 
 
 London was at its pleasantest season, when dinners are 
 few enough to be charming ; when little suppers succeed an 
 hour or two in the stalls ; when the afternoon tea gathers 
 its chit-chat round a fire ; when men and women have leisure 
 to make amusement a pastime and not a toil ; when the 
 great race meetings are still distant enough not to absorb 
 every thought and word ; when the pictures of the year are 
 only vaguely known by tradition and prophecy breathed 
 from private views; when scandal, and laughter, and 
 flirtation, and gossip, all are unjaded ; and when the 
 soul of the cook, if it breathe a sigh for its game-loves 
 departed, is yet filled with a soft glow of comfort before 
 its visions of salmon and quails, its possessions of lamb and 
 asparagus. 
 
 4 Look where ? ' I asked her as we passed together down 
 the Eow, where my mistress, alighting from her brougham, 
 was walking awhile, accompanied by Beltran and G-uillia- 
 dene ; all who passed her turning to look at that delicate 
 face with the gleam of its golden hair, and the flush which 
 the wind brought to its skin, set in the dark softness of 
 sables, and velvets, and laces, as the bright hues of a porce- 
 lain painting may be set in an ebony frame. 
 
 4 Everywhere,' returned Fanfreluche comprehensively. 
 * Look round, my dear, at them all. Look at that pretty 
 woman in chinchilla and violet. That is Lady Hilda St. 
 Maurice, who is not two-and- twenty, and who has had more 
 " affairs " already than there are rings in her dressing-case. 
 Last year I lived with her a few weeks ; one day at luncheon 
 time, Colonel St. Maurice, her husband, you know, walked 
 in to her with all her letters to Charles Flickers, the actor, 
 in his hand. Dollie Flickers, his wife, who is horribly 
 jealous of him on and off the boards, had got at them some- 
 how, and had sent them on to St. Maurice. Hilda never 
 winced once, though he made a scene out of it. " Do be 
 sensible, Frank," she said when he'd stormed himself hoarse, 
 she all the while sublimely indifferent. " People who live 
 in glass houses, you know how would you look if we had a 
 * show-up ' ? " And she ate a greengage as she spoke : and 
 the Colonel was " sensible ; " and Lady Hilda went next day 
 to the Drawing-room, as she will go next year. 
 
 * Look, now, at that haughty piece of dark still beauty in 
 her carriage : that is the Countess of Gracedieu. With 
 
PUCK. 
 
 her blue blood, and her immense possessions, and her stain, 
 less name, she is the very type 01 the lofty and chaste aris- 
 tocrat. Well, I have lived with her too ; and if I spoke 
 their tongue, and told of things that I have seen as 1 lay in 
 my lady's private rooms when all the great house was still, 
 they might maybe find that the days when Faustine called 
 her paramour from the circus to the palace were franker and 
 not deeply darker than ours. 
 
 ' Look, too, at that graceful creature so exquisitely painted, 
 and dressed up to the eyes in the imperial sables ; that is 
 the Duchess of Llandrysyl. She, the greatest of great 
 ladies, has royalty in her veins ; has revived the salon ; and 
 got her husband the vacant ribbon. People say that his 
 grace is a gloomy, taciturn, listless, discourteous man, ill 
 worthy of his matchless wife. An autumn or two since my 
 people stayed at her magnificent domain in North Wales, 
 and I with them. One evening before dinner his voice woke 
 me in the great, dusky, splendid library ; I listened ; he was 
 there, alone, with his wife. I heard enough to pity from 
 my soul for evermore that great noble, who was more 
 wretched than any cotter on his lands. And yet he held 
 his peace, has always held it, so that the bright-haired lad 
 that will reign after him, the only child of them all that haa 
 any look of his face or his race, may never know the truth of 
 the mother who bore him. 
 
 'Look there, too, at that lovely, passionless-looking 
 blonde, with all that guipure about her ; that is Ida War- 
 wick. Dudley Warwick is a baronet's son, very poor, very 
 idle, very goodnatured ! He has about 500Z. a year and 
 debts. Ida, a peer's daughter, has nothing and debts. 
 Yet they keep a charming little house in Belgravia ; 
 give very good dinners; have the first of fruits and the 
 choicest of wines ; two high-stepping bays and an opera- 
 box ; and their creditors never trouble them. How do they 
 do it ? Well, the Duke of Holyrood's bankers could tell, 
 and handsome Holy's presence is a thing of course in the 
 bijou house. But, then, Ida is quite "in society;" her 
 children are cherubs ; her own people are fond of her ; her 
 husband lives with her. What more would you want t& 
 please all the Proprieties ? O, it is a beautiful thing this 
 morality of English Society ! Look around, my dear, and 
 only reflect that not one of these women whom I have 
 
WOMAN AT THE LATTICE.' 443 
 
 named, and not one of their seb or their order, but would 
 deem her fair fame polluted, and her fair dignity insulted, 
 if only asked to know Q-ladys Grerant !' 
 
 She spoke the truth : the truth not only of those few, but 
 of many as corrupt as themselves, and of many more whose 
 lives were really just, and whose honour was really 
 honourable. 
 
 As Q-ladys passed under the leafless boughs the women 
 of his world looked away from her, with that serene 
 passionless look which ignores, and which is far colder as it 
 is far courtlier than any scorn. She herself, vaguely con- 
 scious of its insult but unconscious of its meaning, gave 
 back the look with a grave proud meditation in her e^es. 
 She dimly felt that all the women of his order held them- 
 selves aloof from her ; she thought it was because she pub- 
 licly pursued an art for fame, and because she came of an 
 old, humble, impoverished race, whose decay all, and whose 
 ancientness none, had known. 
 
 Of the truth she had no nearer conception ; all men who 
 came near her dealt with her with an infinite respect ; she 
 did not dream that the mothers, and wives, and sisters of 
 these men classed her with all that was basest and most 
 venal. She knew that there were vile women ; often she 
 heard men talk of them ; there were even those in her own 
 theatre with whom he had requested her not even to ex- 
 change speech. But her knowledge of such was still vague. 
 She thought scarcely at all of them save with a shuddering 
 tender compassion. That she was classed amidst them 
 never dawned, by its faintest suspicion, on her. 
 
 She was conscious of no sin ; she was proud by nature j 
 she was content in his protection and his friendship ; she 
 was of a temper to which the mingled isolation and publi- 
 city of her life added both strength and sweetness ; she only 
 knew the world as he chose to show it her : that in the 
 estimation of that world she was no better than Maude 
 Delamere, no higher than Lillian Lee, no purer than Laura 
 Pearl, was a fact that never brought its indignity within the 
 scope of her sight or the sphere of her thoughts. 
 
 And she went now in the sunny noon of the still wintry 
 Horning, with her graceful head turned to him in happy 
 eareless speech, and a wild-rose flush brought to her cheeks 
 6y the wind; and her eyes glancing, clear as a deer's, 
 
444 PUCK. 
 
 dauntless as a child's, dreamy as a poet's, at the sneering, 
 smiling faces of those women of whom he had forbidden her 
 to have any knowledge ; and at the cold, immutable coun. 
 tenances 01 those other women who had refused to have any 
 knowledge of herself. 
 
 I think there was something in that look which baffled, 
 perplexed, annoyed both classes of these her foes ; for as I 
 followed her I heard one of the former mutter with a laugh, 
 noting the delicate warmth which the wind had fanned in 
 her face, ' Has to rouge a'ready, by daylight ! bet Fred 
 Bruce a pound o' cigars that she did ! ' 'And I heard one of 
 the latter murmur to a friend, noting the worth of the al- 
 most priceless black Chantilly which she had gathered about 
 her, ' How they do imitate all laces now ; did you see that ? 
 You would almost think it was real ! ' 
 
 Now I believe that when a woman's own fair skin is call- 
 ed rouge, and her own old lace is called imitation, she must 
 in some way or other have roused sharply the conscience or 
 envy of her sisters who sit in judgment. 
 
 Fanfreluche and I, as we ran, caught many such little 
 phrases from the peripatetics of the Row- Almost all whom 
 we passed had some word or another as they saw her. 
 
 'Is that the great actress ? ' said a country cousin with a 
 stare. * How young she looks ! ' 
 
 * They know how to make themselves look young when 
 they are seventy ! ' said her companion, who no doubt was a 
 woman that knew the world. 
 
 I 1 wonder who she really was ? ' said a man who had the 
 look of the Bag about him. 
 
 * Don't you know ? ' said his friend arm-in-arm with him. 
 ' She was the natural daughter of the old Duke of Holyrood 
 by an opera-singer. I can see a likeness in her to the young 
 Duke myself.' 
 
 1 So can I, now you name it,' responded his ally. * But I 
 have heard so many stories that ' 
 
 ' O, this is the perfect truth,' interrupted the other. ' I 
 had it from a man who used to know old Holyrood very 
 intimately.' 
 
 ' Is that she ? ' asked a handsome young girl very eagerly. 
 ' O, I never saw a real actress out of doors before ! Some- 
 body told me they were always so yellow by daylight. But 
 he is as fair ' 
 
'THE WOMAN AT THE LATTICE.* 445 
 
 ' As you are,' added the man with her, apparently her 
 brother. 'Actresses are the prettiest women we have. 
 "My face is my fortune, sir, she said," is true of an actress, 
 if not of the traditional milkmaid of the song/ 
 
 1 0, if I were but as lovely ! ' sighed the girl, who could 
 only have been ' just out,' and unspoiled, by lovers and 
 ladies'-maids. ' And what beautiful furs, and what exquisite 
 lace! Ah, I am so glad you have got those stalls for 
 to-night! And it is such a pretty name too G-ladys 
 G-erant. Is it really her name ? ' 
 
 ' Heavens, no ! I daresay her real name's Mary Stubb, 
 or Martha Grubb, or something as euphonious,' laughed 
 the brother, moving her onward. 
 
 ' Who is she really ? ' murmured an elegant woman,whom 
 I knew to be Lady Cississiter, to her companion, who had 
 the look of a bow- window frequenter. 
 
 * God knows ! ' he responded. ' Last thing they say is 
 that her father's one of Beltran's gamekeepers ; and that 
 the keeper cut up rough about dishonour and all that, and 
 got firing at him from a cover, Irish fashion, last time he 
 was down at his own place. Keeper missed him by a hair's 
 breadth ; and is put away somewhere in an asylum. Wish 
 we could do as much by the Eibbonmen.' 
 
 ' Yery romantic!' said Lady Cississiter with a little incre- 
 dulous contempt. ' What sables those are she has ! Eeally, 
 how preposterous ! ' 
 
 Whether she meant the keeper's vengeance, or the sables' 
 worth, I know not, for she also passed onward. 
 
 ' My stars, what lace ! ' muttered Lillian Lee, putting up 
 her eyeglass as she checked her horse by the rails. ' By 
 Jove, Jack, the virtuous dodge seems uncommon good to go 
 in for ' 
 
 1 1 wouldn't try it if I were you,' said John Beaudesert 
 who rode with her. ' You wouldn't look the part quite.' 
 
 1 Beatrice Leintwardine has had an awful row with him. 
 They'll never speak again,' said a Guardsman, meaning the 
 Countess of Leintwardine, Beltran's sister. 
 
 1 About the property ? ' said another, who was arm-in-arm 
 with him. ' I daresay she's fidgety. He's got rid of all 
 he can : and her second boy's in the entail, you know.' 
 
 * O, hang it, no ! About the diamonds,' answered the 
 first speaker. ' He's given the Beltran diamonds to that 
 girl, and the Leintwardines are furious.' 
 
446 PUCK. 
 
 ' The deuce ! that's a new trick,' murmured his friend, 
 * Awfully pleasant. All St. John's-wood and Bromptog 
 wil!1)e flying at one's family jewels now ; I'm sorry he's 
 put it into their heads. All the racing-plate and shooting, 
 shields will have to go next, I suppose.' 
 
 4 That's begun. Last season Mrs. Delamere asked poor 
 old Brune to lend her his St. Leger cup for her sideboard 
 at one of her big dinners ' 
 
 ' O, Lord, yes, I remember. And when he sent for it 
 next day she wrote him word back that she " never returned 
 gifts if people pleased to repent of them." He raved ; 
 talked of law' 
 
 * But he never went to law, and the vase is the Delamere's 
 now.' 
 
 * Did you get that box at the Coronet for to-morrow, 
 Charlie ? ' asked a handsome matron of a handsome youth. 
 
 I Couldn't, aunt. Everything taken for a fortnight. Put 
 our name down. But you can see her for nothing here 
 look.' 
 
 I 1 never look at that class of persons,' said the handsome 
 woman severely. 
 
 ' And yet you send me to take a box on purpose to look 
 ab her ! ' 
 
 1 Don't be stupid, Charlie. That is on the stage. That 
 is quite different.' 
 
 ' Who was she re ally ? ' asked a pretty dainty widow in 
 pearl grays and swansdown : the fortieth time that I heard 
 the same question asked in three turns of the Row. 
 
 ' "Well really I believe the story is this,' returned the 
 man with her. * She was the wife of a poor devil of a 
 painter, who married her when she was fifteen. Viscount 
 Beltran met them at Dresden, where they were living in 
 great wretchedness ; took a fancy to her ; and entered ir.t* 
 an agreement to bring her out on the stage her, and pay 
 the husband five hundred a year to absent himself. But 
 they do say that the husband is waxing wroth because she 
 makes so much money, and that we shall have the divorce 
 on, and the whole story out before long.' 
 
 'Dear me!' sighed the widow, who evidently thought 
 simplicity her own great point. * But that seems a very 
 kicked thing of Lord Beltran ! ' 
 
 ' I never heard a good thing of him. It is hardly so bad 
 
' THE WOMAN AT THE LATTICE: 44? 
 
 as some others I could tell you,' said the speaker, who, as I 
 found afterwards, was a young clerk at the War- office, who 
 knew Beltran about as much as he knew the Queen by 
 sight. 
 
 ' Pray don't ! ' murmured the widow. ' But how does it 
 come, tnen, that she has the same name as that pretty green 
 book you bought me. I thought somebody said she was 
 the poor boy's sister ? ' 
 
 ' Pooh ! The boy's dead ; he can't contradict them iF 
 they do. But it is all bosh. She is the wife of this painter 
 in Dresden. McGrilp, who is studying in Dresden, told me 
 so. The name's a mere nom defantaisie, picked out of the 
 poems.' 
 
 And they also passed on, amidst the chit-chat, the cigar- 
 smoke, the perfumes, and the gay dresses, under the scarcely 
 budding boughs of Rotten Row. 
 
 ' Mercy on me ! ' said Fanfreluche. ' And to think all 
 these people devoutly believe what they say ! That is what 
 is so comical. When Libel lies for a purpose it is compre- 
 hensible, if criminal ; but when G-ossip lies from mere wan- 
 tonness it is such an awful fool ; for pretending to have the 
 eyes of an Argus it has all the blindness of a bat ! ' 
 
 1 And yet you once said that the scandals of society, if 
 false in the letter, are often true in the spirit/ I said, tor I 
 loved to twit her with her own would-be smart sayings, 
 
 * I never said anything, so foolish,' snapped Fanfreluche. 
 ' What I did say was, that if you haven't the story you 
 ought to have ; society always supplies you with it, as a good 
 corset-maker supplies a poor lath of a girl with a comely 
 figure. If you occupy an equivocal position, you clearly 
 ought to have an equivocal history. Supposing you are 
 really innocent, and nave not one, society weaves one for 
 you, suitable in every respect, if not comfortable.' 
 
 1 A fire web for the glance it enfolds/ I murmured. ' Is 
 it true that Lady Leintwardine has quarrelled about the 
 diamonds ? She used to be very attached to her brother.' 
 
 * Could they speak truth here ? ' retorted Fanfreluche. 
 1 No it was not about the diamonds. Beatrice Leintwa^ 
 dine is far too much of a gentlewoman to dispute about 
 them. It was one day last month, in the rail way- carriage. 
 Beltran and she had been down with her boy, Beaulieu, to 
 Eton, and coming back we were alone she took him to 
 
44* 
 
 task about navmg old Margett Llansaint living with " that 
 girl," as she called Grladys Gre ant ; and went so far as to 
 lament that she herself could n ^ver take any notice of faith- 
 ful old Margett now that he had placed her under the same 
 roof with with she did not quite finish her sentence. 
 Beltran was looking straight at her ; and he has a way of 
 doing that which often incommodes people. When she 
 paused he answered her very qui tly, " My dear Beatrice," 
 said he, " I suppose even brothers and sisters may know 
 each other for over forty years and be strangers all the time. 
 Since you fancy I could turn my dead mother's old servant 
 into a pander to my vices, the less you see of me the better, 
 I fancy. I'll order Beau's new boat, and look after him 
 down there good-day to you." And as the train stopped 
 just then at a station he got out, lit a cigar, and went into 
 a smoking-carriage. He has never spoken to her since 
 then, and to the best of my belief never will speak to her. 
 And yet he is much attached to Lady Leintwardine. 
 
 * Did he ever ask her to know Gladys ? * 
 
 ' Yes, he did. He tried hard when the child first came 
 out and before, I think to make the women of his own 
 family feel some interest in her. But they were stubborn, 
 and would not do so much as see her ; and you know very 
 well that he is not a man who will ask twice.' 
 
 1 And yet she is as innocent as their own little children 
 that are at play in their homes,' I cried indignantly ; for by 
 this time I had come to the sure knowledge that, howsoever 
 it might look in the sight of the world, this life was stainless. 
 
 1 What's that to do with it, my dear ? ' retorted Fan- 
 freluche. ' She is an actress." 
 
 ' But still there are men who will believe in her ? men 
 beside himself ? ' 
 
 1 Ah, my dear,' Fanfreluche replied with much energy ; 
 ' but don't you know that whilst broad, intellectual, scepti- 
 cism is masculine, narrow, social scepticism is feminine ? 
 To get hearty, reverent, genuine belief in the innocence of 
 a slandered woman, go to a man : where the world has once 
 doubted, women, the world- worshippers, will for ever after 
 doubt also. You can never bring women to see that the 
 pecked-at fruit is always the richest and sweetest; they 
 always take the benison of the wooing bird to be the malison 
 of the hidden worm ! ' 
 
"THE WOMAN AT THE LATTICE* 449 
 
 Which metaphoric sentence seemed to please t;er, A or she 
 shook her golden bells, and went to gossip with the arrogant 
 Astolat poodle. 
 
 A little later there passed us, going to her carriage, a 
 very handsome woman, with gleaming hazel eyes, and a 
 haughty languid mouth. 
 
 ' That was Lady Otho,' I cried to Fanfrelucho when sh* 
 rejoined me, 
 
 'Yes, my dear. There is nothing "between them now.! 
 Two autumns ago he went to Africa and she went to Rome. 
 He potted maneaters and she monsignori. Love died a 
 natural death with absence ; and when they met, with the 
 next London season, they agreed by tacit consent to bury 
 it decently in pretty cere- clothes 01 courtesy. Love used 
 to die violent deaths, you know, in the old times of passion 
 and poignards ; but now-a-days its common disease is that 
 gentle form of atrophy called ennui, and it yawns itself 
 softly out of existence, polite and lien post to the last, like 
 the moribund beauty who asked for fresh ruffles and rouge 
 ere she took the last sacrament, and drew the last breath. 1 
 
 ' He never cared much for her ? ' said I. 
 
 ' He never cared much for anybody. And that is why all 
 of them care so much for him. Men of the world, to whom 
 their loves are about aa much account as their cigarettes, 
 get all the worship and all the devotion. ' How can you 
 care so awfully for me, Effie ? You know I care nothing 
 about you," I heard a man of that sort say once to a woman 
 who had clung to him for years, with a vehement adoration 
 which moved him with a little gratitude and a great deal of 
 ennui. "I know you don't, dear," she answered him 
 humbly ; " but I think that is just why I do care for you. 
 You see men who love ua much, always look such fools to 
 us." And she spoke with knowledge, for many much better 
 and wiser than he had loved her.' 
 
 ' And yet you sometimes say men lore more truly than 
 women ? ' 
 
 ' So they do. I have seen fifty instances of it. But it is 
 true that their strongest loves are not always their most 
 legitimate. " The wife " may be poetised about and 
 preached about ; it is not always she of whom he thinks 
 when he lies wide awake on a brown moonlit moor, or dull 
 with fever in a hot eulphurous eastern city ; but oftener of 
 
 2 o 
 
45 PUCK. 
 
 some fair sweet fate that might have been, or of some fond 
 dead thing that loved him with tenderest unwisdom.' 
 And I think she was right. 
 
 Not very long ago I was down away in the vale of Belvoir. 
 I stayed with my friends at a great stately place, owned by 
 as gallant a gentleman as ever swung himself into saddle. 
 His wife was a beautiful woman, and he treated her with 
 the courtliest tenderness : indeed, I often heard their union 
 cited as one of almost unequalled felicity. ' He never had 
 a thought that he did not tell me,' I heard his wife once say 
 to a friend. ' Not a single thought, I know, all these twelve 
 years of our marriage.' -It was a happy belief many women 
 have the like but it was an unutterably foolish one ; for 
 the minds of the best and truest amongst you are, in many 
 things, as sealed books to those whom you care for the most. 
 
 One bitter, black hunting-day, a day keen and cold, with 
 frost, as men feared, in the air, and with the ground so 
 hard that even the Duke's peerless * dandies,' perfect hounds 
 though they are, scarcely could keep the scent, there came 
 terrible tidings to the Hall he had met with a crashing 
 fall. His horse had refused at timber, and had fallen upon 
 him, kicking his head with the hind hoofs repeatedly. They 
 had taken him to the nearest farmhouse, insensible ; even 
 dead already, they feared. His wife and the elder amongst 
 the beautiful children fled like mad creatures across the 
 brown fallows and the drear blackened meadows. The 
 farm, happily, was not far : I sped with them. 
 
 When they reached him he was not quite lifeless, but he 
 knew none of them ; his head had been beaten in by the 
 plates of the kicking hoofs ; and they waited for his death 
 with every moment, in the little old dusky room, with its 
 leaded lattices, and its odour of dried lavender, and its 
 bough of holly above the earth. For this had chanced 
 upon Christmas Eve. 
 
 To his wife's agonies, to his children's moans, he was 
 silent : he knew nothing ; he lay with closed eyes and crushed 
 brain deaf, blind, mute. Suddenly the eyes opened, and 
 scared at the red winter sun where it glowed dimly through 
 the squares of the lattice-panes. ' Dolores ! ' he cried aloud ; 
 1 Dolores ! Dolores ! ' It was the name of none there. 
 
 * My Q-od ! What woman is it he calls ? ' his wife asked 
 in her torture. But none ever knew. Through half the 
 
'THE WOMAN AT THE LATTICE: 45* 
 
 night his faint pulse beat, his faint breath came and went ; 
 but consciousness never more returned, and for ever he 
 muttered only that one name, that name which was not her 
 own. And when they laid the dead body in its shroud, 
 they found on the left arm above the elbow the words 
 ' Dolores ' marked on the skin, as sailors stamp letters in 
 their flesh. But whose it was, or what woe or passion it 
 recorded, none ever knew not even his wife, who had 
 believed she shared his every thought. And to his grave 
 his dead and secret love went with him. 
 
 This man was but a gay, frank, high-spirited gentleman, 
 of no great knowledge, and of no great attainments, riding 
 fearlessly, laughing joyously, living liberally ; not a man, 
 one would have said, to know any deep passions, to treasure 
 any bitter memories and yet he had loved one woman so well 
 that he had never spoken of her, and never forgotten her ; 
 never not even in his death-hour, when the poor, stunned, 
 stifled brain had forgotten all other things of earth. 
 
 And so it seems to me that it is very often with you, and 
 that you bear with you through your lifetime the brand of 
 an unforgotten name, branded deep in, in days of passion, 
 that none around you ever wot of, and that the wife who 
 sleeps on your heart never knows. 
 
 It is dead the old love long dead. Ajid yet, when 
 your last hour shall come, and your senses shall be dizzy 
 with death, the pale loves of the troth and the hearth will 
 fade from you, and this love alone will abide. 
 
 At that moment both Panfreluche and I were summoned ; 
 and while Beltran walked homeward, the little brougham, 
 with its pair of small, spirited horses, swept Gladys away to 
 the studio of Marmion Eagle. 
 
 Marmion Eagle was as handsome as ever, and had become 
 much more famous ; so famous, indeed, that he was almost 
 fashionable, and that where people before had talked of his 
 insanities, they now only murmured of his eccentricities. A 
 man may flirt as wantonly as he will with colour when once 
 the Midas has pronounced that his drawing is anatomically 
 perfect, ajad that his meanings, even when obscure, are 
 always profoundly poetic ; and he may indulge as he will in 
 stalking through the Park in an olive velvet Velanquez 
 dress, with a mahl-stick in his hand, and a fez cap on his 
 head, when once it is thoroughly well-known that he goes to 
 
 2o2 
 
45* PUCK. 
 
 the Premier's At-homes, and is admitted to the dinners of 
 the Duchess of Llandrysyl. 
 
 His fair patrician, Gwendoline, had wedded her coronet ; 
 and he had locked up in a cabinet the miniature which he 
 had once privily made of her, as he had met her first, when 
 he was a wandering sk etcher, under the oaks of her father's 
 park. But she asked him to dinner with great regularity, 
 employed her influence to have his picture hung on the 
 line ; and, in fine, got him much talked about. Menus and 
 notoriety are the favourite coins with which Love pays his 
 debts in the nineteenth century. 
 
 We were soon at his studio in the heart of the ' wilder 
 west,' where the brethren of the brush do congregate. When 
 last I had known him, his atelier had been a big and barren 
 room, with a few casts and a bronze or two, down somewhere 
 in Chelsea, overlooking the Thames. Now it was placed in 
 an atmosphere that is perfumed with successful talent, and 
 in a suburb where the carriages throng by the hundreds on 
 * Art Sunday ' with every spring. And now the painting- 
 room itself was cedar-panelled, velvet-hung, full of beautiful 
 iiues and grand outlines. 
 
 So swiftly will the word of the Midas and the cards of a 
 Duchess persuade the public that genius is a thing, eccentric 
 no doubt, but still not absolutely damnable even, indeed, 
 almost deserving of a stockbroker's patronage, and of a 
 millowner's cheques. 
 
 G-ladys now went to give him her last sitting for a portrait 
 which he had painted of her for that year's exhibition, He 
 had drawn her as the Saxon daughter of Hengist, bearing in 
 her band the golden mazer, wherewith she bade her lord 
 Vortigern ' Waes heal,' and gave to the high tides and holy- 
 days of England the pledge and custom of the wassail-cup. 
 
 The picture was beautiful ; and a few great connoisseurs, 
 permitted to see it in progress, had pronounced that it would 
 be the picture of the year, when, with the king-cups and 
 Viawthorns of May, the picture exhibition should unclose. 
 
 The figure was life-size, clad in white, with no colour at 
 all about it, save in the massive gold cup of wine which she 
 bore ; in the purple border of the robe ; and in the cool 
 pure blue of a northern sky at noon. The few great con- 
 noisseurs talked very grandly, if not very luminously, of 
 this wondrous white ; of its purity, of its crystal clearness 
 
'THE WOMAN AT THE LATTICE.' 453 
 
 exempt from coldness, of its soft shadows that yet were white 
 likewise, and of its admirable management against the azure 
 that alone relieved it. But though they talked thus, the 
 true charm of the picture abode in the face which gazed out 
 of it : the grave, tender, proud, wistful face, with its medi- 
 tative eyes, and its exquisite hues, and its eloquent mouth, 
 that had all the smile of youth, and all the sorrow of genius. 
 
 The portrait was so perfect that I believe the artist 
 only demanded another sitting that he might have the 
 pleasure of noting the light glow on the fair waves of hair, 
 and of seeing the gracious form of the young actress move 
 amongst the dusky magnificence of his atelier. 
 
 There was scarcely anything more to be done , but he 
 stood for habit's sake touching this fold, and that detail, 
 whilst Gladys sat on a sort of dais above, which was hung 
 with maroon-hued velvet, and filled with soft, pale, hothouse 
 roses for Marmion Eagle had all that love of fragance and 
 beauty of grouping and grace, which is called, not with 
 much wisdom, the effeminacy of genius. 
 
 Presently there entered Dudley Moore, who criticised 
 the picture with pungent acerbity, and complimented the 
 original of it with all the suavity of which he could when he 
 chose be master ; a little while later there sauntered in 
 Lord Guilliadene, who had been breakfasting with the 
 Guards at Knightsbridge, and who was in his indolent way 
 a dilettante of no mean knowledge or discernment ; awhile 
 after there came Beltran himself, bearing with him a small 
 picture, and a very quaint piece of old Capo di Monte, on 
 which he wished for Marmion Eagle's opinion. 
 
 Whilst the Capo di Monte passed from hand to hand, he 
 set the picture before Gladys. 
 
 She looked long, and did not speak. 
 
 ' You do not like it ! * he exclaimed in some disappointed 
 surprise. 
 
 ' It is exquisite,' she made answer. ' But it pains me : it 
 is unutterably sad.' 
 
 ' Nonsense ! It is only a little study of pearls and grays; 
 I bought it for its admirable management of half tones.' 
 
 * It is sad,' she answered him, ' intensely sad. Look it 
 is a woman alone ; a woman without hope, a woman tired, 
 not by work or years, but by the sickness of hope deferred. 
 It is all twilight ; rue, only, blossoms in the lattice, the 
 
454 PUCK. 
 
 ^plant they used to give to captives at the bar ; in the bowl 
 of water a purple butterfly lies drowned ; in that landscape 
 beyond there are evening shadows, but no evening stars. 
 The whole picture has history.' 
 Beltran laughed. 
 
 * You have the swiftest and dreamiest of fancies ! The 
 grays and the pearls would please me just as well if their 
 jubject were any old Ogham stone, or ayra de Flandresjng. 
 Ned, what do you say ? ' 
 
 The Earl sauntered up with his eyeglass. 
 
 ' By Jove, where'd you pick up that ? I offered any 
 money for the thing twelve months ago, and couldn't 
 buy it.' 
 
 Dudley Moore just then, with the Capo di Monte for a 
 theme, had commenced one of those charming disquisitions 
 on Art with which he would occasionally favour people; 
 learned, ironic, sometimes abstruse, always full of sugges- 
 tion, to which painter and virtuoso were alike glad to listen. 
 
 The opinions he gave forth in them were seldom, indeed, 
 similar to what flowed from his pen for the Midas : he waa 
 one of those they are many who deem the Public a child 
 to whom it is not well to tell over-much truth. In the 
 Midas he would uphold that a recent National- Gallery pur- 
 chase was a quite undoubted Correggio, when in private he 
 would rend the Correggio to atoms as the most miserable 
 of impostors. 
 
 * Tom Grlaze, who is my particular friend, bought it j Lord 
 Esprit, whom I always make it a point to disagree with, 
 attacked it ; and the nation itself could not tell a Eaphael 
 from a Frank Stone,' he would say with a grim chuckle 
 to his intimates. ' Besides, it is infinitely amusing to 
 hear Esprit raging like a wounded boar in the House of 
 Lords, and to see the public on its knees before that 
 wretched bit of canvas, begotten yesterday by some lad on 
 the Pincian hill, who couldn't pay his padroua's bill. I 
 would not disturb so admirable a farce for the world.* 
 
 And so he would calmly continue to laud the Correggio 
 in print, and to chuckle in private, and would atone to the 
 public by flaying alive before it every hapless living artist 
 he could find. 
 
 * Modern painters do not owe you much, sir/ said a 
 mngster to him once, writhing under the Mida*' ruthleii 
 
 'citation of his first Academy picture. 
 
'THE WOMAN AT THE LATTICE.' 45$ 
 
 ' On the contrary,' said the great censor, taking his snuff; 
 * they owe me much, or might have owed me much. If they 
 had only listened to me, they would have saved every shilling 
 that they have thrown away on canvas ! ' 
 
 Whilst they were busied in discussion with him, I stole 
 up to the little picture which Beltran had placed upon a 
 low easel. There, with the soft warmth of the hothouse 
 roses about it, I saw in its grayness, and sadness, and lone- 
 liness, the sketch of the Woman at the Lattice. 
 
 To that easel, when the great critic had left, Marmion 
 Eagle came, and paused long before it. 
 
 ' You have bought this ? ' he asked. 
 
 1 1 found it in a bric-a-brac shop the other day in Paris, 
 answered Beltran. 'Do you know the artist? Is it of 
 value ? ' 
 
 Marmion Eagle did not answer ; he was lost in thought 
 before the little painting. 
 
 'Twelve months ago he refused its weight in gold,' he 
 muttered after a while. 
 
 Who did ? ' 
 
 ' The painter of it.' 
 
 * And why did he refuse gold then,' asked Gladys, ' and 
 yet now lets it lie for sale in a public place ? ' 
 
 ' Because he is no longer in love with the woman who sat 
 for it, I imagine,' said Beltran with his slight tired laugh. 
 1 The Madonna that we consider priceless at midsummer has 
 a knack of turning, by Christmas, into a mere venal model, 
 who may go for whatever her charms chance to fetch ! ' 
 
 'Because he is no longer living,' said Marmion Eagle 
 gravely. ' To few men is it given to be able to secure fame 
 for their work when their hand has no longer its cunning, 
 and their brain no longer its skill.' 
 
 ' There is a story, then. Come, tell it us ! ' 
 
 ' It is a very common story, 5 answered the painter with a , 
 smile that had a little bitterness. ' It was only that a man ' 
 had some genius, and that a woman killed it.' 
 
 Gladys, where she sat amidst the fragrance of the frail 
 hothouse roses, turned her head towards them. 
 
 1 The picture told us something ; but do you tell us mora 
 It was not that woman who killed him ? ' 
 
 ' This woman ? No ; I do not know very much j what I 
 do know, I will tell.' 
 
45 6 PUCK. 
 
 He sank into a chair near her, his hand playing with the 
 delicate bloom of the roses, the faint afternoon light falling 
 upon the little portrait that had been painted in the drowsy 
 golden days of summer, at the Silver Stag, with the bees 
 booming amongst the lime-blossoms, and the seeding grasses 
 blowing in the wind. 
 
 * A year or more ago, Paris was mad about one young 
 painter. Paris had seen his pictures for ten years, and 
 refused to believe ; then suddenly it took a fit of belief, and 
 could not atone enough. It is the public way. Only, un- 
 happily, the public is so often like a child, and leaves its 
 neglected bird so long to starve in an empty cage, that when 
 it comes to caress the bird, it finds but a ruffled heap of 
 dead plumage, which cannot feel its kisses. This young 
 man was kissed before he was dead ; he had the goo'd for- 
 tune to conceive a picture which drew the whole city to it. 
 Tou will remember it it was called Faustine.' 
 
 1 Faustine ! ' echoed Beltran, to whom he had turned. 
 1 Of course, a marvellous painting.' 
 
 "Well, the painter of Faustine painted also yonder sketch 
 of the Woman at the Lattice. I wonder that you should 
 have overlooked that sketch when it was shown in the 
 Salon. He was offered any money for it, but he refused to 
 sell it. " Shall a man sell his soul ? " he used to say ; but 
 I believe no one knew what he meant. I was in Paris a 
 great deal last year, and I saw but never spoke to him. He 
 was the handsomest man I ever beheld. Handsome is no 
 word for him ; he was as beautiful as a god. When he 
 walked in the Bois, people turned after him as though he 
 were a king or a woman ; he was like some Phydian statue 
 incarnated. Unhappily, in an evil hour Cleopatre saw his 
 beauty.' 
 
 ' I remember now,' murmured Beltran. 
 
 1 Who was Cleopatre ? ' asked Gladys. 
 
 1 Cleopatre ? Well, she was Cleopatre. Paris knew little 
 more, neither need you. But it is told of her that when she 
 saw the scathing satire of the Faustine, she said, " He has 
 dared to scourge us ; very well, then, we will scourge him." 
 I do not know whether this is true, or whether it was 
 invented afterwards as an apropos. If people do not say a 
 suitable thing, Paris always takes care that one is invented 
 for them. 
 
' THE WOMAN AT THE LATTICE: 457 
 
 3t matters little what she said, or whether she was moved 
 \>j devilish vengeance or by devilish love. She set herself 
 to gain possession of him of his heart, of his passion, of 
 his genius, of his life. She has a matchless beauty herself. 
 She succeeded. The leaves were just budding when she 
 saw him' first, at sunset, by the lake in the Bois ; by the 
 time that the trees were in full foliage, he had no god but 
 his passion, no heaven but her face. 
 
 'She made him paint her portrait in the first burning 
 days of the summer; and when all Paris flocked to the 
 Cleopatre, the Faustine was avenged. The satirist had 
 fallen, and kissed the feet of the courtesan. Well, just so 
 long as the portrait took to paint, just so long had he his 
 fool's paradise. When it was finished, and in it all Paris 
 glorified her afresh, then she turned and laughed him to 
 scorn, and took in his stead a gipsy-eyed prince, who came 
 from the woods and the plains where royalty still is half 
 savage, and the European is half Oriental. 
 
 ' We know how men of the world take these things ; but 
 this painter knew the world so little. He was young, igno- 
 rant, maddened ; and he loved a woman to whom love was a 
 jest, a scoff, a byword of theft. It is very terrible when a 
 man really loves a woman that is vile : it is terrible, but it 
 happens. 
 
 1 When he was jeered at, forbidden her presence, finally 
 thrust aside by her lacqueys, whilst she drove from her 
 gates with the gipsy-eyed prince by her side, and the 
 jewels of the prince on her bosom, then this man whom she 
 had deserted grew mad. Forgive him he knew so little of 
 the world, and he loved a creature without mind or soul a 
 splendid animal, made but to prey. I think the world does 
 not hold a greater curse for a man than that. 
 
 ' He was mad ; and he followed them on foot, turning 
 once only aside, and that once into a place where he had 
 used to paint, and where his colours, and draperies, and old 
 armouries were still kept. They drove with swift horses, 
 and he turned aside this once ; yet hardly had they entered 
 the Bois before he entered it also. I saw this, because I 
 myself drove scarcely a yard behind them. 
 
 * It was at the close of a late summer day, I had gone 
 there, and hundreds were there also, though the city was 
 thinning. The sun was setting. Everything was reddened 
 
458 PUCK. 
 
 ty the flush. The very waters seemed dyed crimson. Every- 
 where there was a hot hungry glare. I even heard the hoit 
 ftf a mosquito it did not seem to be Paris. 
 
 1 Through the clouds of dust and the throngs of people he 
 came, as swift as a hound runs ; his head was bare, his hair 
 was streaming back, his face, commonly so fair, was dark 
 with a rush of blood ; his eyes I see them sometimes at 
 night still. All his wonderful, god-like beauty seemed gone ; 
 he looked like some goaded wild beast goaded to fury, and 
 dying. 
 
 ' He passed ine like the lightning ; there was a rush to 
 atop him ; but he tore through the crowd, breaking loose of 
 all opposing hands, and darting like a meteor through the 
 light. There was a flash a shriek a sudden oscillation 
 of all the gay, laughing, pleasure-seeking mob. Through 
 the dust I saw a straight steel dagger-blade glitter in the 
 air ; then the wind whirled, the dust rose again : I saw no 
 more. But the voices that cried out around told me that 
 in that moment of time he had stabbed both himself and 
 his rival. With the prince the blow had missed of its aim, 
 merely^grazing the flesh as it passed ; but he himself lay 
 bathed in blood, in the dust, under the trampling hoofs of 
 her horses. 
 
 ' She supped that night in the Bois, in the cafe by the 
 cascade ; and she laughed, and she drank, and she talked of 
 her diamonds, as she ate the sweetmeats a duke had pro- 
 vided. On the whole, no doubt, she was glad : the tragedy 
 sent her name but more loudly down the stream of the 
 world's babbling voices. 
 
 ' For him they took him to the horrors of the Bicetre 
 He was not quite dead ; when men loathe life they are hard 
 to kill. Life lingered in him for five weeks five weeks of 
 raving fever, of intolerable torture. One burning, stormy 
 night, a night w4th fire in the skies, and death in the air, 
 Ms agony was ended. He died in unutterable torment, 
 delirious to the last, gnashing his teeth like a mad dog at 
 all who strove to draw near or aid him ; and like a mad dog 
 dead, they buried him.' 
 
 There was a long silence as his voice sank away. "Whet 
 one hearer raised her head, her eyes were heavy with teara 
 'And she?' she murmured, glancing at the portrait o? 
 Ae woman at the lattice. 
 
TOY-SOLDIERS. 459 
 
 All, I know nothing of her, not even who she was,' he 
 Hade answer. ' I know no more than I have told. But this 
 Kras the end of his genius; and already Paris has forgotten 
 that ever he lived ; and your friend has bought that picture 
 for a song in a bric-a-brac den yesterday.' 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 TOT-SOLDIEBS. 
 
 IT is needless to say that I had quickly asked Fanf reluche 
 of what had chanced to Nellie, the Wood-Elf; she had 
 treated the inquiry with some scorn, as touching a little, 
 half-obscure burlesque player, beneath the attention of nous 
 autres. 
 
 ' My dear, 1 she made answer to my renewed inquiries, 
 ' girls like that little Courcey always remain just where they 
 were. They are the rank and file of the theatrical army ; 
 they get little loot and still less promotion. They go on the 
 stage, when they are in the freshness of their youth, because 
 they have pretty little faces, trim limbs, and a fancy for 
 jumping about in gay dresses, instead of sweeping, op 
 baking, or washing, or trudging through life as a shop- 
 woman, or as a mill-hand, or as a maid-of -all-work. They 
 have very small talent, they have no education at all ; they 
 dislike work, and they like gaudy attire. The modern stage 
 wants hundreds of such ; and to it they go. They are all 
 just so much tinder lying all ready for the devil's flint we 
 say the devil still, you know, because he is such a con- 
 venient synonym for all our vanities and wickednesses, 
 though he went out long ago with the coming in of light 
 wines, long beards, cigars, clubs, croquet, chignons, railways, 
 ive-twenties, and other conveniences. The life these girls 
 lead is about as hard as most domestic servants', and they 
 haven't their " washing and board found ; " but they like it 
 because they can dress as they choose, and have a chance of 
 bad champagnes and casino flirtations. They're not all im- 
 moral, poor children ; some few are good enough girls, who 
 keep their families out of their wages. But they are all of 
 the same class ; the class that naturally likes noisy fun, and 
 tawdry glitter and a sight of what they, Q-od help them, , 
 
460 PUCK. 
 
 call " Life/' better than they do industry, and quietude, 
 ftnd the drear sameness of an English workwoman's exist- 
 ence. And now uid then, out of their rank, a Lilian Lee 
 or a Laura Pearl rises ; and the poor little fools believe 
 that the exception of one in ten thousand is the sure and 
 invariable rule for all. The life is not, maybe, so odious 
 when they are young and pretty ; but it can contain no 
 asylum for them as they grow in years and lose in beauty : 
 and then then one wonders vaguely what on earth can 
 become of them, for they are seen no more, just as idly as 
 one may wonder what becomes of all the lost pins.' 
 
 * The pins, they do say,' I returned, ' are always found in 
 the bottoms of sewers in a hard, shapeless mass that they 
 call, I think, " slag." I am afraid that these girls whom you 
 talk of are found at the bottom of the social strata, har- 
 dened into evil, or, at the best, into wretchedness.' 
 
 ' Most likely,' returned Fanfreluche, with asperity ; she 
 never liked anyone to say a neat thing save herself. ' The 
 stage certainly has nothing to say to them. The stage may 
 want armies of round-faced girls to skip about as mazurka- 
 maidens, or as elves, or as shepherdesses, or as soldiers, but 
 it never wants armies of middle-aged women. I suppose 
 they do go to wretchedness of some sort they must. But, 
 then, so, I'm afraid, do whole multitudes of governesses, 
 and housemaids, and shopwomen, and cottagers, who never 
 did a naughty thing in all their days, and yet are left to 
 starve on half-a-crown " relief," or drag out their decaying 
 years in workhouses. There are so far too many women ! 
 if two-thirds of all the female children that are born 
 were put in the water-butt, where they put two-thirds of 
 c^ur puppies, the world might be comfortable.' 
 
 1 If women had more spheres ' I commenced, but she 
 cut my words in two. 
 
 4 Where did you learn that miserable cant ? There are 
 more men then there is work for already : do you suppose 
 you would increase the harmony of the earth by setting 
 women to squabble with them for it as two of our mongrels 
 may quarrel over a bone ? ' 
 
 ' But if they were educated ? ' 
 
 * Ah, my dear,' said Fanfreluche with a grin, * we are going 
 to educate everybody, they say, so that everybody shall be 
 above doing anything. What a millennium that will be I ' 
 
TOY-SOLDIERS* 461 
 
 4 But where is Nellie ? ' I persisted. 
 
 * She is just now, I believe, at the Palace Theatre, in the 
 Strand ; a pretty theatre, as you may know, though not to 
 be called fashionable, and the chief home of burlesque and 
 ballet, now that we have gone in for Legitimate Art 
 whatever that may mean: of course, every playwright 
 thinks his own bantlings " legitimate," and other people's 
 plays all bastards ! ' 
 
 * She is doing the same as ever then P ' 
 
 'Yes. They always stick to the same, till they are 
 shelved altogether. You know she is a spirited little 
 dancer, and has a certain small bright talent of her own, but 
 she will never be anything except Prince Goldenhair or 
 King Charming in a burlesque. She might have all the 
 genius and poetry of a Ristori, nobody would ever see in 
 her anything except a " jolly little girl " in a slashed tunic 
 and white-satin tights, singing doggrel to a catching air. 
 If you begin with being a job-horse, though you should win 
 the Derby itself, nobody would ever believe that you could 
 have either pace or race in you. Nellie has always done 
 "burlesque, and she will have to do burlesque till the end of 
 time. There are such scores of such girls ! well, I sup- 
 pose it is a good thing ; if everybody would only play Lady 
 Macbeth, where would the theatres be ? ' 
 
 ' But the stage is such hard life anyhow ! and without 
 eminence in it ' 
 
 * It is worse than making lace at a profit of a farthing an 
 hour, or sewing fifteen hours for fourpence-halfpenny, or 
 carding cotton in the mills at four-and-sixpence a week, or, 
 for a few pence a ton, panning salt in the scorching steam, 
 till their pallid faces are like a sodden sponge ? Well, yes, 
 I think it may be even worse. We know that. But how 
 should the girls know it when they are ignorant, and con- 
 scious of good looks, and wanting a bit of finery and a 
 fling of dancing ? and the floats and the green-room seem 
 almost to them like paradise. The lives of women of the 
 English poor are so abject, so colourless, so dreary, without 
 any break of joy, or any pause of toil, or any gleam of 
 hope, and full of such noise, and stench, and cursing riot, 
 and bloodless apathy, all commingled, that one cannot 
 wonder if they would sometimes exchange such lives 
 
 for hell itself!' 
 
4&* PUCK. 
 
 And I knew that she said truly ; for indeed to live only 
 to know the pains, the needs, the agonies, and the travail/ 
 that lie in living, is a hard fate, though it be the fate of 
 millions. 
 
 ' And where they might be happy and innocent they will 
 not,' I answered, for my thoughts went back to the little 
 cottage beneath the rosethorn, and to the honest smith's 
 forge amidst the woods, where the woman who had chosen 
 vice and pillage, might have dwelt in honoured virtue and 
 in homely peace. 
 
 Fanfreluche grinned. 
 
 c No, my dear not often and I suppose it's a very for- 
 tunate thing that they don't. If they would, we might 
 perhaps get our salt panned, and our cotton carded, but we 
 certainly shouldn't get our material for scenic effects of 
 fine legs, and of gauzy tunics ! I often think when I hear 
 them talking, as it's the way to talk now, of bringing 
 everybody to be so very virtuous, and so very refined, and 
 so very intellectual, and so very divine, where on earth, if 
 they were ever to succeed, would the world go for the 
 human chiffons out of whose bodies and souls it manufac- 
 tures all its amusements ? So long as amusement must be 
 had, I am sure they cannot afford to ask their common men 
 and women to be virtuous. The residuum that they sigh 
 over is what yields them gaieties, as the foul-smelling ditch- 
 mud yields the pretty painted myosotis. A thousand 
 nightingales died to make the Roman epicure's pate; tens 
 of thousands of human beings perish in moral death to give 
 to one city its pleasures.' 
 
 And this was all that, for a time, I heard of Nellie. 
 
 She was playing at the pretty little Palace Theatre, which 
 was of some repute at that moment for burlesques ; and 
 now and then I heard two or three men say how awfully 
 jolly little Courcey was in that funny parody of the Bride 
 of Larnmermoor, or how tremendously well got up she had 
 \>een, in crimson, and white, and gold, as the King of the 
 G-olden River, in the pantomime that had been based upon 
 that story, at the Palace, at Christmas. She was leading 
 the old life, no doubt, learning doggrel, singing^ rubbish, 
 dancing hornpipes and jigs, delighting the gallery with 
 appropriate ' gag,' quarrelling in the green-room, supping 
 noisily over kidnevs and * fizz,* trudging home afoot in the 
 
TOY- SOLDIERS. 4 6 3 
 
 gray break of the dawn, or jolting wearily over the stones 
 in an omnibus, with its gland ered dying horses; her ap- 
 pointed portion hard work and coarse pleasure. 
 
 No other life was possible to her, once having enlisted 
 herself in this. 
 
 She was one of the ' rank and file ;' one of those innumer- 
 ables who, tambour battanl, serve to make up a spectacle. 
 The conscription of Fate had drawn her to be one of the 
 toy-soldiers of King Joujou, who has a terrible knack of 
 killing his soldiers himself sometimes. So long as she could 
 wear her little gilded uniform jauntily and well King 
 Joujou paid her wage, and she held a place on his great 
 parade-ground of public amusement ; if she were ever to 
 taint or to fall it would not matter there were plenty as 
 pretty and as alert as she to catch her little pennant as it 
 dropped, and fill her place in that great army wherewith 
 King Joujou plays the mimic war of pleasure. 
 
 She was no genius, she was no beauty, she was only a little 
 blue-eyed, sturdy-limbed girl of the populace, with the 
 leautc du didble in her cheeks, and her curls, and the fresh- 
 ness of youth in her voice that gave something of charm 
 and of melody even to those vile slang inanities that she 
 was appointed to sing. There were scores like her : what 
 happened to her mattered to no one. She came to a work- 
 house at her birth : she would go to a workhouse for her 
 grave. To the world this seemed exceedingly fitting ; an 
 arrangement proper, and quite harmonious. 
 
 And meanwhile was it not much that a young creature, 
 born of a pauper, and reared by the parish, should know 
 the feel of silks and satins if only in her stage dresses, and 
 should know the taste of champagnes if only made of goose- 
 berries ? On the whole, when you consider that a pauper 
 child is an animal absolutely undesired by any one ; very 
 much lower than a pig, which can at least be sold so much 
 per stone ; and possessing nothing on the face of the earth 
 except its hunger and its heartaches ; it may be conceded 
 that Nellie had done very well for herself when she had got 
 leave to dance about in bright colours for some half-dozen 
 years, and then could go leisurely to either death or per- 
 dition quite at her own choice and fancy. Several millions, 
 you know, have to die in rags, and inf anoy whether they 
 may like it or not. 
 
4&4 PUCK 
 
 One day I got out ' on the loose,' as your slang phrases 
 it ; a reprehensible practice, no doubt, but one dear to dogs 
 as to men, for better is a bare bone in the gutter, with the 
 sweetness of free-will, than are fatted meats eaten within 
 the curb and the gall of a chain. 
 
 My little wanderings were innocent enough in those 
 streets and gardens of artistic South Kensington which 
 stretched around the pretty villa where we dwelt. I was 
 about to return of my own accord homeward, when I saw a 
 girl walking down one of the small and narrow lanes that 
 do so curiously intersect even your proudest lines of palaces. 
 
 There was something in the lithe step, the clusters of 
 auburn hair, and the supple yet sturdy figure that I knew ; 
 I felt sure that they were Nellie's, and, quick as thought, I 
 darted after her. I could not reach her to attract her no- 
 tice before she turned in at the doorway of one of the small, 
 poor houses of the place, but I was near enough to follow 
 her in unseen, and mount the stain up which she had 
 disappeared. 
 
 There were three nights of these ; and on the landing of 
 the third a door stood a trifle open : my instinct told me 
 that she had passed through it, and I squeezed myself 
 through its inch-wide opening, and entered the chamber. 
 
 It was a poor, meagre, little room ; very dull, very mean ; 
 looking upon leaden tiles and red chimneys, and grey gusts 
 of sulphurous smoke. There were the mansions of the 
 nobles* and of the traders, the villas of the fashionable 
 actresses, the artistic homes of the successful painters, all 
 around in the sweet, cool, living sunshine, with the 
 greenness of budding trees about them, and the colours 
 of art and luxury within them. But this little room, 
 with no look-out save on those endless roofs and those 
 drear columns of smoke, was almost as cheerless and 
 as wretched as though it had been in the haunts of White* 
 chapel ; whilst through its one narrow window there only 
 came upon the vind the scent of frying meats, the stench 
 of decaying vegetables, the screams of children, and the 
 throbbing of a steam-hammer at its never-ending work. 
 
 There was a little linen-curtained bed standing in one 
 corner ; and on it was stretched a girl, dying it was easy to 
 see, of fever. She was very young, and though her face 
 was now BO drawn and scarlet, it also was easy to see that 
 
TOY-SOLDIERS. 4^5 
 
 but a very little time before it must have been a pretty 
 brown, baby face, with a little cherry-like mouth, and robin- 
 like eyes ; such a face as would have been the pride of 
 'mother' and of 'teacher' in some cottage home and 
 village choir. 
 
 She also, doubtless, had been one *of the toy-troopers of 
 King Joujou. He sweeps into his conscription all whom 
 he can find from far and wide, over all his kingdom ; from 
 the shepherd's hut on the moorlands, as from the crowded 
 lanes and gullies of the city ; from the little, humble, ivy- 
 hidden village on the hills, as from the vast wards of the 
 poor-house and the factory. And those he once has gained 
 can never leave his service ; until he breaks them in hi? 
 gay caprice, or leaves them perishing by the wayside. 
 
 She was lying quite still and straight ; with her brown 
 eyes wide open, burning, and without sense in them ; her 
 cloud of dusky curls had been shorn short ; her lips were 
 parted with quick, painful, gasping breaths. She was mut- 
 tering vague, broken words about father, and harvest^ 
 and going gleaning, and going blackberry ing ; her thoughts, 
 no doubt, with some peasant life that she had led in child- 
 hood in the green level lands of the corn countries, or under 
 the shelter of the oak woods of the west. 
 
 The other girl, auburn-haired and blue-eyed, who I saw 
 was indeed the little ' Wood-Elf,' had dropped beside the 
 couch, and was murmuring gentle words to her, and husn- 
 ing her tenderly, and holding to her some fresh, cool, orange, 
 scented drink. 
 
 The fever-stricken child drank eagerly ; but she had no 
 knowledge or consciousness in her regard, and when she 
 had drained the draught she lay still and straight again, 
 muttering huskily of the blackberries that were ripe in the 
 lower wood, and that they would be late for school if they 
 stayed to gather them. 
 
 On such a scene I did not dare to break ; and yet I had 
 not the heart to leave ; so I crouched down in the shadow 
 behind the door, and waited. 
 
 An aged woman caine slowly in ; a gaunt, shrivelled, 
 cruel-eyed hag. 
 
 ' It arn't no good fussing about her,' the old woman mut- 
 tered in a low voice. ' The doctor say as ho ,. she can't live 
 another day. And you're well-nighed wored out.' 
 
 2 H 
 
466 PUCK. 
 
 Nellie shook her head si'ently. 
 
 * This day do begin a new week,' muttered the old creatur* 
 hoarsely. ' I thought as how she'd have gone off quiet by 
 now. Do you stand another week's rent eh ? She han't 
 got a shilling, you know.' 
 
 Nellie, in silence still, opened a little purse, and counted 
 into the woman's wrinkled palm sixteen shillings. It was a 
 shabby, littie, mean chamber ; but rent, like all other things, 
 is BO dear to the poor. 
 
 ' You won't ever sit up this night again ? ' pursued the old 
 dame, doubtless softened by the thrice blessed music of silver 
 pieces. * You've sat up nine nights already. You'll kill your- 
 self and with all your work at the theayter, too, as well.' 
 
 ' I sha'n't be harmed,' said Nellie briefly, and turned her- 
 self away, and again sat down beside the bed. And there 
 she remained for more than two hours, whilst without, in 
 the soft, bright, cool spring afternoon the tender leaf -buds 
 
 nBred in the sunlight ; and the carriages swept in hun- 
 s through the streets ; and the fashionable crowds flocked 
 to saunter through the palm-houses, and to listen to music, and 
 to laugh, and to flirt, and to make their pleasant appoint- 
 ments, and to draw their magnificent dresses slowly over 
 the lawns, at the first azalea show of the year. 
 
 It is the sharpness of its contrasts that lends all its poetry, 
 Its vigour, its ambition, and its colour to your life ; but 
 sometimes they are bitter. 
 
 Nellie sat motionless beside the bed, with the light from 
 the casement coming in upon her ; in it I saw that she was 
 much altered. 
 
 The round cheeks, the smooth forehead, the ruddy 
 mcuth, had all hardened, and got a curious, worn, coarse, 
 pained look. The soft skin and the bright colours of a 
 woman cannot stand long the rouge, and the white paint, 
 and the steaming gas, and the late hours of the theatrical 
 life of a burlesque-dancer. They will ' make-up ' just as 
 well as ever by night ; but by day they make your heart 
 ache, as does a fresh rose lying soiled and stamped in the 
 mud of the streets. 
 
 And yet, despite this rack and wear of time, there was a 
 sweeter look in her eyes than of yore, a sadder, steadier, and 
 purer look, as of one who had suffered, and not vainly. 
 
 "When the dying girl in the little white bed tossed and 
 
TOY-SOLDIERS. 47 
 
 moaned, Nellie touched her gently, moved her carefully, and 
 murmured to her a few soothing words, which, though they 
 could not reach the dulled and wandering brain, seemed yet 
 to bear with them some balm and hush. She was a little 
 wicked thing, of course ; accursed of all good souls ; gam- 
 ing her livelihood by ministering to the base senses of coarse 
 sight-seers ; purchasing her daily bread by moral degrada- 
 tion, and in a sensual spectacle ; and yet she came hither to 
 soothe the last dread hours of a creature poorer and lonelier 
 even than herself ; and when her heart throbbed, and her 
 eyes smarted, and her limbs ached, after the work and the 
 noise of her theatrical labour, she had sat, night after night, 
 sleepless, worn-out, weary unutterably, only just for the 
 mere sake that a fever- stricken girl should feel a friend's 
 hand near when it sought one on its death-struggle. 
 
 Another hour went by : there was no change in the suffer- 
 ing she watched. 
 
 Sometimes the girl lay quite quiet, sunk in apathy, breath- 
 ing hardly ; at others she tossed, and moaned, and cried out 
 in pitiful ways of all the remembered things of some lost 
 country home of pastured cattle ; of running waters ; of 
 the hymn that should be learnedf or Sunday ; of the bilberries 
 that were ripening in the old birchwood on the moor ; of 
 the verses that mother had given her to learn by rote in 
 punishment for saying that she wished she were a lady. 
 
 In all the sorrowful, wistful, shattered words, it was so 
 plain to see the story that went with that little brown win- 
 some face ; the story of the rebellious petulance, and fretful 
 impatience, and vague discontent, which had brought the 
 cotter's prettiest sunniest child from moor and meadow, 
 from burn and byre, from the old safe ways, and the old 
 healthful labour, and the old summer gladness by hill and 
 dale, and the old fireside nook by ' mother's' side, to perish 
 here of fever, and alone, amidst the noise, and smoke, and 
 stench, and misery that are the birth-chime and the death- 
 knell of the poor in cities. 
 
 ' She had wished to be a lady,' and she died here. 
 
 Poor little pretty sunburnt face, once bright as a brown 
 6rook, and ruddy as a berry of the yew ! 
 
 Doubtless in that little cottage, wheresoever it stood, fat 
 Vway amidst gray hills, and soft mists, and sunny birchen 
 *oods, and calm green pastures, there was one name that 
 
468 PUCK. 
 
 was aever spoken; one chair that was never dra\vn to the 
 noonday meal : one voice, like the robin's, that the father 
 missed from the girls' choir at the church ; one kiss, given 
 in smiles and tears, that the mother felt only in her dreams, 
 when sleep came to her beneath the old thatched roof. 
 
 Yet another hour passed ; the slow dull chimes of some 
 distant clock swung six strokes through the air. Nellie 
 started, rose, looked wistfully at the little bed, then stooped, 
 and touched with her lips the child's flushed, knitted, aching 
 brow. The girl moved wearily under the touch ; her dark 
 eyes still wide open, still without light or sense in them. 
 
 ' Mother mother,' she murmured, ' don't be angry. I 
 did not mean to stay away from school. It was me, not 
 Susie, did it. The wood was so pleasant this mornin', and 
 the birds was singing so sweet, and the vi'lets was so many, 
 I forgot I quite forgot ! ' 
 
 And in answer there only came the dull fall of the steam- 
 hammer, the dull breath of the poisoned wind. 
 
 Nellie turned slowly away, and passed from the chamber, 
 and down the steep nights of the stairs. Ear below she 
 met the old woman to whom she had given the money. 
 
 ' Do look at her ; pray do look at her ! ' she entreated. ' I 
 will come the moment the play is over.' 
 
 The old woman muttered assent. 
 
 * But where's the good on't ? ' she asked ; ' 'tis waste of 
 time. The girl's a dead un, a dead un.' 
 
 Nellie went in silence out into the street. I followed 
 her, and fawned on her. 
 
 She looked down, and started violently, as though she 
 recognised me ; with a quick glance at the name upon my 
 collar, she raised me in her arms. Then, silently still, she 
 went as rapidly as she could through the various ways that 
 led to the gardens of Grladys' residence. Before the walls 
 a groom was riding his own horse, and leading up and down 
 a beautiful black mare, in which I recognised a favourite of 
 Belt run's, by name Eblis. 
 
 AH we drew near the gate it opened, and Beltran himself 
 came out from it. 
 
 J. felt her heart beat thickly against mine. She trembled, 
 and would have fled ; but he had seen and already ap- 
 proached her in the quiet road, under the shadow of the 
 trees overtopping the wall. He thanked her for seeing to 
 my safety. 
 
TOY-SOLDIERS. 469 
 
 * Not for the first time, either,' he added. * It is the same 
 dog you used to know. You are coming in here, are you 
 not?'' 
 
 Her voice shook as she answered him, * No.' 
 1 And why not ?* he asked. * Gladys so continually regrets 
 the way you shun her ; you are always absent when she 
 tries to see you, and you will never come here, or accept 
 anything at our hands. Why do you do it, Nellie ? ' 
 
 * It's best, my lord,' she said curtly. 
 
 ' I am at a loss why you say so. She feels herself driven 
 into a sort of ingratitude that is most abhorrent to her. 
 Indeed, you give her great pain.' 
 
 Nellie said nothing. 
 
 ' Come in now,' he urged. She is alone ! she will be 
 rejoiced to see you.' 
 
 ' No, thank you ; no, sir,' she answered him. ' Please let 
 me go 1 ' 
 
 * This is sheer obstinacy, Nellie. You rendered her too 
 great a debt for her ever to forget, or wish to forget, it. You 
 should not make her look, or feel, so negligent of it.' 
 
 ' She's neither, my lord. But but I'm not fit for the 
 likes of her. There's harm enough said of her without me 
 adding to it.' 
 
 His face flushed a little : it was he, now, who made no 
 answer. 
 
 ' Tell her tell her,' murmured Nellie, * that it's because 
 I love her that I won't come anigh her ; and tell her, sir, 
 that I know her sweet, generous, tender nature a deal too 
 well as ever to think she'd forget me quite. Let me go 
 please let me go.' 
 
 * Why, Nellie, what is the matter? You are crying.' 
 
 1 Am I, sir ? It's only I've just come from little Annie 
 Dell as is a-dying she's a dancer, like me ; they calls her 
 on the playbills Clarice Vaughan. It's fever ; and she's 
 only been a year on the boards ; and she's a little soft 
 thing like a kitten it seems sad.' 
 
 ' Eever ! Can I do nothing ? There are many things she 
 must want. Do let me help you ' 
 
 ' She'll want nought no more, sir, when this night's over- 
 passed,' said Nellie very softly. ' But you're very good 
 very. You've had a deal of goodness, my lord, again and 
 again, to poor girls as was in want or woe; and all you've 
 ever got back for it is a bad name.' 
 
470 PUCR. 
 
 Then she turned and rushed swiftly down the street, as 
 though ashamed of her temerity, or fearful of his questions. 
 
 Beltran stood still and looked after her. 
 
 'A bad name! A bad name!' he muttered. 'What 
 does it matter for me ? But for this glorious creature 
 when my lips have never even touched hers ! ' 
 
 Then he flung himself into saddle and rode away with 
 Bblis. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXYI. 
 
 APEIL FLOWEBS. 
 
 * THEEE was rather a good thing happened last night,' 
 said Eanfreluche to me a few evenings later in the supper- 
 room of the Coronet, where Q-ladys had been playing in 
 that favourite part of hers, the Beatrice, in which she had 
 first challenged and won the suffrages of the London 
 public. 
 
 Eanfreluche was accustomed to spend her nights out at 
 pleasure ; her present owner never heeded what she did nor 
 where she went ; she had established herself in his chambers 
 unasked and undesired ; and she had liberty to do just as 
 she pleased to go to perdition if she preferred. 
 
 Sometimes I think that this is one of the most exquisite 
 enjoyments man or dog can have ; no doubt we ought to be 
 very grateful to those who will drag us to our good with 
 collar and chain, but the process is apt to get excessively 
 irksome to us ; and I doubt very much if the poor suicides 
 amongst you, who are hoisted out half-drowned from the 
 mud of the Thames or the stench of the Seine, when they 
 see all their trouble gone through for nothing, feel verv 
 grateful to the grappling-irons and the hot bricks that call 
 them back nilly-willy to the woe and weariness of life. 
 
 ' There was rather a good thing last night,' she pursued. 
 1 We dined at Eichmond ; only men ; a dinner that Claud 
 Lucy gave to some members of the Circle des Patineurs. 
 
 'The men were all right, except one, and he was an 
 underbred one Abney Arcott. I don't think you know 
 him. He's only been heard or the last year. He made a 
 big fortune in agencies and things abroad ! and by money 
 and luck, and ilunkeyism, and a gorgeous place in the 
 
APRIL FLOWERS. 471 
 
 Forest, with a first-rate cook in it, lie has got pushed 
 amongst some of our beaux messieurs dores. Only we don't 
 take him amongst our own women ; and always blackball 
 him carefully all the way down St. James's-street, from the 
 Bow- window to the Thatched-house ; and only treat his 
 Forest place like a very good inn, where the host don't 
 present you a bill. Lucan Phipps brought him out ; and 
 Lucan generally trains pretty decently. Even he can't 
 polish this fellow, quite ; but as Arcott always seems to get 
 awed when he's amongst his betters, he has never made a 
 real blunder before. Florance Fane used to give him awful 
 facers last season ; and it always seemed to put him into 
 tolerably fair form. 
 
 ' I remember when they went first to dine at his place, 
 Flo and seven other men of the Brigades, old Flo, as they 
 went into the dining-room, stared hard through his eye- 
 glass at the dinner-table, and at the ninth place at the top, 
 to which Abney Arcott was moving. 
 
 '"I think you mistook us quite," said Flo, in his 
 quietest and most amiable tones ; " we said we'd dine here ; 
 we never said we'd dine with you ! " 
 
 ' "Well last night Arcott was more loquacious than 
 common. Somebody said he was tete monte, because the 
 Duchess of Astolat had actually sent him a card : some- 
 body else said it was because he was out without his 
 trainer ; Lucan being over in Paris. Whichever it was, 
 he let his tongue run far more than usual. On his off side 
 sat Lord Cississiter you may know the man ; stout, florid, 
 with a-ruddy beard, and a shadv name on the turf; looks a 
 bully, and is one when he " feels a winner ! " Beltran, 
 whom he happens to hate, because our friend thrashed him 
 at Eton some twenty-five years ago, and has been down 
 upon him on every possible occasion ever since, sat on the 
 other side of the table, some way nearer to Lucy. 
 
 'Around Cississiter they got talking of theatres and 
 such-like; and of all themes in this world Arcott must 
 needs harp upon Gladys G-erant. He talked a great deal 
 of her ; and all more or less in an offensive fashion. 
 
 ' Beltran did not miss a syllable ; but he went on with 
 his dinner and his own conversation as if he heard nothing 
 Presently the millionaire grew coarser, and said one or two 
 things the meaning of which there can be no mistaking, 
 
47* PUCK. 
 
 and which can only be said of women of the lightest name 
 and lowest life ; and he ended with a sneer at her continual 
 absence from places and pastimes that "her sort" were 
 only too glad to be invited to enjoy. 
 
 * " Quite right, Mr. Arcott, quite right ! " called out Cis- 
 sissiter in his loudest tones. " It's the damnedest affecta- 
 tion. She's as wild as any of 'em. But she's chosen to 
 run dark in that form, you know they often do when 
 they're young uns. It's the commonest stable trick." 
 
 ' Then, and only then, Beltran looked up, and without 
 his face changing a muscle, glanced across the table, and 
 " fixed " both the men with eyes that can be very hard 
 and cruel when he chooses. 
 
 * " I'm glad you've come within range, Cississiter," he 
 said very slowly and distinctly. " One can't spoil powder 
 on vermin. I suppose you don't in the least know what 
 you're talking about. I do. The lady you speak of is 
 quite as good as your mother ; and a very great deal better 
 than your wife." 
 
 ' Can't you fancy the dead silence that fell over the gay 
 and boisterous talk ? 
 
 ' It was straight hard hitting, a little more in the rough 
 and ready style, and less subtle than his reprisals usually 
 are ; but he knew his foes, and it was the most effective he 
 could possibly have used with them. It fell with the force 
 of a sledge-hammer. Lady Cississiter is the wildest and 
 worst of her order. 
 
 * What happened after ? Nothing ever happens after in 
 these days. There was a tumultuous, tempestuous scene 
 for a few moments ; but Beltran calmly ignored the wrangle, 
 and only addressed himself to his host. 
 
 ' " I'll bid you good-night, Lucy," said he. " I don't 
 want you to be bored with a row. Your friends know 
 where to find me if they want." 
 
 * But the sympathies of the table were with him ; the 
 common feeling was that he had been only dans son droit. 
 Of course they all believed that he had lied ; but it was 
 the sort of lie that gentlemen like from a gentleman's mouth, 
 and tthich becomes him well always. 
 
 ' The upshot of it was that he did not leave the dinner, 
 but Cississiter and Arcott did. That is Beltran's way of 
 dealing with people who rouse him. But whether he cares 
 
APRIL FLOWERS. 473 
 
 for the woman he defended is quite another matter he 
 would take the part of an ugly old apple-seller if he were 
 in the mood, and thought the odds strong against her.' 
 
 As she concluded her narrative Beltran and Denzil 
 sauntered in; they had just come into the house, it ap- 
 peared, from a dinner with her Grace of Astolat. 
 
 They were speaking of this very occurrence of the pre- 
 vious night. 
 
 ' It was hitting with the gloves off, Vere,' said Denzil, as 
 he cast himself into a chair. ' It wasn't quite so polished 
 as your usual style.' 
 
 ' I never put the gloves on with men like those,' said 
 Beltran, going up to the mantelpiece to light a cigar. 
 Pummel them as you may they don't feel, that's the worst 
 of it.' 
 
 * I should think they do feel rather with the story 
 running wild this morning about the clubs and drawiog- 
 rooms.' 
 
 * I'm afraid Bully Cississiter don't. Do you remember 
 my thrashing him at Eton for stealing little Holyrood'a 
 champagnes ? ' 
 
 ' He felt that he was black and blue for a month. 
 Have you heard anything from him ? ' 
 
 ' Not a word/ 
 
 ' I don't suppose you will. It would be too ridiculous 
 for him to meet you on the sands by Ostend about his wife, 
 of all people in the world.' 
 
 Beltran laughed. 
 
 ' O, I don't know. As long as your wife is your wife, I 
 suppose she's casus belli enough for everything.' 
 
 * All the men were with you ; feeling ran very strong 
 about it ' 
 
 ' What's the good? Do you suppose any one of them 
 thinks one whit better of the child ? ' 
 ' I don't know that they do ' 
 ' You know that they don't ! ' 
 
 * I fear that they don't, certainly. That is one of the 
 peculiar successes of modern society that there is no 
 means whereby a man can declare the innocence and 
 honour of a woman that shall not at once stigmatise her 
 with darker slanders than ever touched her before.' 
 
 1 Tes. Now and then, though we know that, we are 
 
474 PUCK. 
 
 weak enough to let a cur get a rise out of ns ; but we are 
 safe to repent it, or ought to do for the woman's sake.* 
 
 Then he began to talk of other matters, hearing a step 
 that he knew without, and a moment later there entered 
 the only person in all the town who had heard nothing of 
 the scene at Claud Lucy's dinner. 
 
 Of course she had not heard it ; would never hear of it ; 
 you never do hear of any one of the million ways in which 
 your world ruins, ridicules, marries, divorces, attaints, 
 decides for you, prophesies of you, and even murders you 
 in your absence. 
 
 I asked Fanfreluche that night if Denzil had altogether 
 forgotten his lost lore ; whereat she grinned. 
 
 ' I don't know, my dear. Men do forget in seven days 
 Bometimes, and sometimes they don't in seven years. It 
 just depends. They remind me of Clyde Paulett, when 
 they were woodcock-shooting in the west of Ireland last 
 year. They had very fine sport all the week, but Paulett 
 was not in his usual spirits. No bags that he made seemed 
 to give him much pleasure ; and though, when they totted 
 up the whole, he was found to have shot more than any 
 other, he appeared to care little. They asked him what en 
 earth was the matter with him was it women or Jews, a 
 plant on the turf, or a bad vein at ecarte? " "Well," he said 
 slowly and sadly, "to tell you the truth, I can't forget that 
 one grand old cock that I blazed away at, like a duffer, and 
 didn't bowl over. I have felt such a fool ! " Now, you 
 know, I think it's very much with their loves as it is with 
 their sport. However many head of game may lie slain at 
 their feet, they can't forget what they " blaze at and don't 
 lowl over." ' 
 
 A brief while later, in the balmy spring weather, we had 
 a little river-party surely the pleasantest of all sunlit 
 pastimes. Because Gladys was in a manner excluded from 
 most pleasures by her rejection of one world, and by the 
 other world's rejection of her, her friend did all in his 
 power that she should feel her loss as little as possible. 
 Happily for her, she was of a temper to which the medita- 
 tive and intellectual pleasures of thought and art were far 
 more suited than the noisier and more frivolous diversions 
 of society. 
 
 But yet there were in her the natural impulses of youth 
 
APRIL FLOWERS. 475 
 
 towards gladness and gaiety, which, although bruised by 
 the sorrows of her brief life, had not been wholly broken. 
 And these he always sought to meet and to indulge, as far 
 as it was possible to do so without exposing her to that 
 companionship from which he had always warded her. 
 
 The boating-party usually consisted of two four-oars, of 
 which the crews were chosen from his own chief friends. 
 They used to take to the river some half-dozen miles out of 
 town ; scull leisurely down to some pretty wooded resting- 
 place, to which servants had been sent earlier with choice 
 meats and light wines ; lunch there ; laugh and smoke ; 
 paddle a little about amongst the tall reeds and the floating 
 forgot-me-nots ; and so row back to London in time for 
 twilight and for dinner. There were few pleasanter days, 
 of simpler or more careless open-air amusement, than these 
 river-days of Beltran's ; and it was held as an eagerly- 
 coveted distinction to be one of those invited by him to 
 take a place in his boats. It was well known that, though 
 a man not commonly scrupulous in such matters, he was 
 excessively scrupulous as to whom he introduced to asso- 
 ciation with Q-ladys. 
 
 Men held their own opinions, doubtless, as to his rela- 
 tions with her ; but they saw that he chose to treat her 
 with perfect deference, and they had to follow his lead. 
 Two or three of them even, I think, credited the truth, and 
 believed in her innocence almost as thoroughly as he did 
 who knew it. 
 
 You, indeed, are very curious in this. In your clubs and 
 your camps, in your mischievous moods and your philo- 
 sophic moods, always indeed theoretically, you consider all 
 women immoral (except, just, of course, your own mothers) ; 
 but practically, when your good feeling is awakened, or 
 your honest faith honestly appealed to, you will believe in. 
 a woman's honour with a heartiness and strength for which 
 she will look in vain in her own sex. According to your 
 jests, the world is one vast harem, of which all the doors are 
 open to every man, and whose fair inmates are all alike im- 
 pressionable to the charm of intrigue or to the chink of 
 gold. But, in simple earnest and reality, I have heard the 
 wildest and most debonair amongst you once convinced 
 of the honour and innocence looking from a woman's eyea 
 stand up in defence of these when libelled in her absence, 
 with a zeal and a stanchncss that did my heart good. 
 
47 6 PUCK. 
 
 The boats this day went Henley way, and the pause waa 
 above Wargrave. 
 
 The river was a sheet of dusky sunlight ; the meadows 
 and banks were all golden with kingcups and daffodils ; the 
 hawthorn-buds were blooming on the great coiled swinging 
 branches ; the leafage was in all its sweetest and freshest 
 green, and here and there a little water-bird was darting 
 amongst the tall bulrushes and the green river-plants. 
 
 Under the skilled sinewy hands of men who, in their 
 time, had won their honours on the Isis, the boats went as 
 the rowers would now skimming as fast as a swallow, now 
 loitering like a slow-winged eider duck past the green, 
 level, daisied fields, and the lofty walls of woodland, and 
 the dark gateways of the locks, and the sunny reaches 
 where the cattle stood, and the tufts of reeds and sedges 
 that hid the soft blue of the forget-me-nots. 
 
 They landed, and lunched, and lingered over the fruit 
 and the ice and the wine, under the blossoming hawthorns 
 and the great boughs of the chestnuts ; and then strolled 
 hither and thither, pulling down the plume-like hawthorn, 
 for a standard for her boat, and gathering the primroses by 
 thousands to fill her hands ; carelessly enjoying such simple 
 country things, and wandering, these men of the world, as 
 though they were shepherd? in a pastoral save for the 
 cigars that were for ever in their mouths, and for the 
 worldly gossipry that they laughed over with one another. 
 
 With the freshness of the springtide, with the sunshine 
 of the waters, with the cool odours of herbage and foliage, 
 with the light easy laughter, and the gay friendly converse, 
 how charming they were, those river hours ! And for one, 
 at least, amongst them, over the broad bright Thames, and 
 over the fields of flower-sown grasses, there shone the 
 * light that never yet was upon land or sea,' save in the 
 eyes of a woman, when she lives in the first full sweet faith, 
 the dreaming idolatrous ideals, of a love half known, half 
 answered, yet still in all the deep untroubled peace of its 
 birth-slumbers. 
 
 "When the sun was slanting to the west, the boats were 
 sought for the return. Whilst they went for them, Gladys 
 remained where she had sat some time, couched in the 
 curving roots of a great beech, whilst at her feet the water 
 flowed amongst the rushes, and the great green lily-leaves 
 epread out their splendour, though flowerless as yet. 
 
APRIL FLOWERS. 477 
 
 She had been very still awhile, and Denzil also, who re- 
 mained with her, and not spoken. 
 
 She was often very grave, when the stillness of the country 
 was around her. I fancy that her thoughts were with the 
 years when the boy Harold had been a child beside her, in 
 the old, cool, moss-grown paths of orchards and in the 
 tangled ways of nut-tree coppices, binding the cowslips and 
 the primroses and the daffodils with withes of ivy, and 
 dreaming of the imperishable things he should achieve when- 
 manhood came. 
 
 After a while she raised her eyes from the water and 
 looked at Denzil. He had thrown himself on his side on 
 the grass ; and his face, in the shade of the trees, was dark, 
 stern, sad exceedingly. 
 
 ' "Where are your thoughts ? ' she asked him. 
 
 Beltran's best-beloved friend seemed to her almost as a 
 brother. 
 
 Her voice found its way to the closed recesses of his 
 memory, and he answered her simply and truly, * Of a 
 woman I loved/ 
 
 Her eyes rested on him with their serious, meditative 
 sweetness. 
 
 * Tell me of her,' was all she said. 
 ' I never speak of her.' 
 
 1 Never ? She is dead, then ? ' 
 
 ' Not that I know ; she is dead to me. That is enough, 
 you see.' 
 
 ' Who was she ? What was she ? ' 
 
 4 She was an actress, like you. You may hear them re- 
 call her now and then, when they speak, as they speak still 
 sometimes of Gertrude D'Eyncourt.' 
 
 She raised herself on one arm; her eyes lighted and 
 charged. 
 
 * Ah, I know ! that beautiful woman whose portrait he 
 has shown me so heroic a face, so full of thought, of 
 patience, of courage. But she was some one's wife, surely ? 
 She was married ? ' 
 
 ' Ah, child ! do not speak as if you had caught the world's 
 cant. Yes, she was married to a beast, who only prized 
 her proud beauty, and her bright graces, and her glorious 
 gifts, as so many tools that were to bring gold to himself. 
 There are men, you know, to whom their wife's honour is 
 
47 8 PUCK. 
 
 like their own only a chattel to be sold, when they can ! 
 She loved me, and knew that I loved her. I had urged her 
 to leave her husband for me with all the eloquence I knew ; 
 I don't deny that. I was justified. Although he hated 
 me, beause I treated him like the cur he was, he was ready 
 enough to sacrifice her to any one of the richer roues, who 
 would have purchased her of him, just as one may purchase 
 some beautiful wild hawk of a brutal keeper. But I ought 
 not to speak to you of these things.' 
 
 ' Q-o on,' she said quietly. Her great eyes were glowing 
 where she sat in the shadow of the boughs, and her lips 
 were parted. 
 
 ' She loved me. It cannot hurt her to say it now. And, 
 indeed, she could not have loved me much, or she never had 
 done what she did; for one night in the height of that 
 London season, seven seasons ago, she disappeared. Not 
 a living soul knew whither she went. The town supposed 
 I had taken her, but it was not so ; I knew no more than 
 the rest of them why nor where she was gone. I had left 
 her that night in her own drawing-room, after the theatre 
 was over. There had been other people present. I had 
 been unable to see her alone, and I relied on seeing her, as 
 usual, with the morrow. I recollect that she came out on 
 to the balcony, and stood there looking after me as I went 
 down the street. There was an awning over the balcony, 
 for it was warm weather : the moonlight was strong and 
 bright ; she wore black, that drifted about her like a cloud, 
 and she had a great gorgeous Brazilian lily that I had 
 given her in her bosom. G-od! what fools men are to 
 remember the veriest trifles that once belonged to women 
 who never cared for them ! ' 
 
 ' Did she not care ? You sakl she loved you.' 
 
 ' Could she lore me ? Not as I count love. "With the 
 morning there came one of her letters to me ; she often 
 wrote to me and I to her, though we met twice every day ; 
 in it she told me that she had D?ft the stage and the world 
 for ever ; that her husband had given her no choice betwixt 
 flight and a lucrative dishonour; that she refused my love 
 not less than she refused this abhorred passion that was 
 pressed on her ; and that she implored me not to seek to 
 pursue, or to discover her. That was all. Am I not right 
 to say she never loved me ? Of course I did not obey her. 
 
APRIL FLOWERS. 479 
 
 i set ail possible modes of inquiry at work. First, I wem 
 straight to their house and thrashed him till he was Jeft 
 half dead ; then I began my search for her. It was utterly 
 useless , it has been so ever since.' 
 
 ' She could not go to any evil ? ' 
 
 ' Evil ? No ! Evil was not possible to her. She was 
 the truest and the proudest woman that ever lived. "Why 
 she went I know no more than the dead; but I would 
 stake my life on the purity, on the nobility, of her reasons, 
 however exaggerated they may have been.' 
 
 ' And have you never found her ? ' 
 
 * Never. Once I heard of her accidentally ; if the man 
 who spoke were right, she was living then in penury and 
 wretchedness. I have tried every means, but all have 
 failed. It doesn't matter, I suppose ; they say that these 
 things don't greatly. Only, you see, I cannot forget her , 
 and I cannot find heart in me to give to any other woman j 
 and I talk to you, child, and look on you, not stirred one 
 whit by your beauty ; knowing you are fair indeed, but 
 caring no more for that than an old worn dotard of ninety. 
 Do you know that I would give my soul to love, and I 
 cannot ; just because this one lost woman will never release 
 me?' 
 
 There were the fierce vibrations of an intense passion 
 and sorrow under the half-quiet, half -reckless words : and 
 his face was very dark where ths shadows of the spring-born 
 leaves drifted over it. 
 
 I cannot tell why, but I thought of the woman who had 
 died in the bitterness of the winter time, in the poverty 
 and the misery of Paris. 
 
 Through the silence there came at that moment the soft 
 sound of moving oars and of rippling waters ; amongst the 
 twilight of the boughs a boat, with plumes of young green 
 branches at its bow, glilded gently to the little landing- 
 place. 
 
 1 Where are you, Deny ? ' asked Beltran's voice. * That 
 duffer Ned has given over says he can't pull back to town 
 Must get across and catch the express. He declares it's a 
 sprain ; I believe it's nothing but laziness and champagne 
 Take his oar, will you ? They can have a waterman with 
 your sat.' 
 
 ' All right,' responded Denzil, as he assisted Q-ladys into 
 
480 PUCK. 
 
 fte boat amongst all the big bulrushes, and the broad water- 
 docks, ana the pretty, feathered, rosy-hued river reeds ; 
 and taking his coat off, seated himself on the bench that 
 G-uilliadene had vacated. 
 
 As he pulled us back to town in the stilly balmy evening 
 with his handsome head bare in the moonlight, and his grip 
 giving true as ever the old marvellous Oxford stroke, he 
 laughed as pleasantly and as often as any. It was Gladys 
 whose eyes were dreamy, and whose face was troubled, as 
 she sat under her fragrant banner of the hawthorn boughs, 
 with a dark cloak drawn about her, acd the field flowers 
 that her friends had gathered for her dying in the coming 
 of the night. 
 
 That night her acting lacked somewhat of its force, and 
 had a languor and a lifelessness in it that were new to 
 her. 
 
 As soon as her own share in the play was over she went 
 to her home ; Beltran was not in the theatre that night, 
 and when he was absent she never received there. 
 
 She sat very silent, very thoughtful, before the fire that 
 still burned in her pretty drawing-room, for the evenings 
 were chilly, though the days were warm. Bright and full 
 of rich hues though the chamber was, it seemed very still 
 and solitary after the blaze and buzz of the crowded 
 theatre. 
 
 Vaguely, perhaps, she felt how great this loneliness was 
 in which she lived, at years when other women have all the 
 light of home about them, all the tenderness of their 
 mothers, all the gay companionships of their girlhood. It 
 seldom weighed on her, because her life was brilliant and 
 full of pleasures of its own kind ; but to-night she seemed 
 to feel how utterly alone in truth she was. 
 
 Her eyes were dim and full of languor as she looked at 
 the delicate tender primroses of the woods and meadows, 
 where they had been placed in an old costly vase of Venice 
 glass. 
 
 ' VThom did Tie ever love ? ' she murmured, with her lips 
 against my forehead. ' Did he love like that ? So that he 
 never again can forget ? ' 
 
 Benzol's words had stirred her heart from its rest ; but 
 it was for another, not for himself, that it awoke, troubled 
 and still but half-conscious. 
 
481 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIL 
 
 ' V1CTRIX.' 
 
 4 WELL, my dear ! ' said Fanfreluche, frantically rushing 
 to me next day with breathless excitation and her mosf 
 diabolical grin. * "We have done pretty well, haven't we ? 
 Marchioness of Isla! Marchioness of Isla! When we 
 began life, as you say, with bare feet, and home-spun skirts, 
 and potatoes for dinner, in the Peak ; and, as I know, with 
 a shilling a week, and penny gaffs, and a glass of gin for a 
 treat at Highbury Barn.' 
 
 * What on earth can you mean ? ' I asked in some fear, 
 thinking indeed that she had lost her senses. 
 
 * I mean what I say/ she snapped angrily. * Marchioness 
 of Isla ! It is pretty well for a woman who began life by 
 selling you in a market-place. Pooh, child, don't look so 
 scared ! Tour friend of the Derbyshire wakes has won the 
 great marriage-prize of the year. True; certainly it is 
 true. The town is talking of nothing else. Avice Dare 
 Laura Pearl Cleopatre ; what does it matter what one is 
 called so long as one ends as Marchioness of Isla ? What 
 do I mean? O, you little fool! I mean this Malcolm 
 Kenneth, sixteenth Marquis of Isla, comes of age this 
 winter ; he has had a long minority ; he has been educated 
 by a foolish mother and a rigid Calvinist ; he has seen no 
 more of life than a young nun ; he is a stubborn, simple- 
 minded, frank, foolish boy ; the first thing he does, on be- 
 coming his own master, is to go to Paris. Paris, in all the 
 wonder of her exquisite spring season, for a lad who had 
 only seen and known grim Scotch castles and sour Scotch 
 matrons ! The first night he went to the opera : there, in 
 lier box, blazing in the splendour of her beauty, and the 
 Uving light of her sapphires, surrounded with princes and 
 gentlemen, he saw " Cleopdtre." Prom that moment the 
 world only held for the boy that one woman. She had the 
 wit and the ambition to see that here was a greater prize 
 than mere pillage. The boy was mad with his first delirium 
 she could do as she chose with him. She chose to marry 
 him j she has done so. Ths marriage is valid ; no efforts 
 
 2l 
 
PUCK. 
 
 of his family will dissolve it ; and the woman whom you 
 once knew as the " light o' love " of the lad at the mill in 
 the Peak, is now a Peeress of England and Scotland, 
 Marchioness of Isla, and Countess of Allanmore ! That is 
 to-day's news. Ah, my dear ! I told you right that all the 
 comedies of the playwrights, and all the romances of the 
 fictionists, are not one tithe so amusing, nor one thousandth 
 part so startling, as are the comedies and the romances that 
 JHeet one at every turn in Life ! * 
 
 Fanfreluche had in nothing exaggerated. To this 
 amazing altitude had the betrayer of Reuben Dare arisen. 
 
 One sunny noon in that pleasant glad season when the 
 caves are as fresh as the toilettes, and the laughs are as 
 light as the showers, I sprang down from the little carriage 
 and roved to and fro, whilst the men passing by clustered 
 round Gladys. 
 
 I roamed at leisure, viewing that scene, always familiar 
 yet never hackneyed, because, on its wide stage the three 
 imperious impresarj, Q-old, and Huin, and Death, never 
 permit the same drama to rest nor the same players to 
 tarry ; but bring ever fresh names and fresh faces, if the 
 old farces and tragedies still will react themselves under 
 new titles. 
 
 The place was full : and all its crowd turned by one 
 accord to gaze at a carriage which drove slowly down the 
 road, as though to challenge that universal observation 
 from that fashionable mob. It was an equipage fitter, with 
 its outriders, its postillions, its superb liveries, its fracas, 
 its display, for a ducal procession on the Heath or the 
 Town Moor, than for a simple noon drive in Hyde- 
 park. 
 
 Its occupants were a fair lad, with a stupid, feeble, ruddy 
 face, and a woman of splendid beauty, enveloped in black 
 guipures and black sables, for the last of which a chill in 
 the air gave excuse. 
 
 ' There go the biggest fool and the blackest witch in 
 Christendom/ muttered old Lord Shamrock. ' Q-ood Q-od! 
 If Eonald Isla had foreseen it, sir, he'd have strangled this 
 .ad strangled him in his cradle ! ' 
 
 * Boy looks like an Ayrshire gilly,' said Lord Ghiilliadene, 
 to whom he had spoken. * Fearfully bad form : never saw 
 
* VICTRIX.' 483 
 
 4 Malcolm Isla, his father, married a shepherd's daughter, 
 off his own hills/ growled Lord Brune. ' Crosses always 
 tome out.' 
 
 ' But Ms grandfather, poor Ronald, was a gentleman all 
 over/ said Lord Shamrock, 'though an awful fool to be 
 sure. Do you know how he died ? ' 
 
 ' No ! ' the earl responded with a yawn. 
 
 ' He was shot in a duel/ answered old Lord Shamrock. 
 ' Shot dead, outside Bruges. I was his second. " It was 
 all a mistake," he gasped as I caught him. " But I couldn't 
 have explained unless I'd shown up a woman ! " So he 
 died, saying nothing. And that's the man whose grandson 
 has made a wife and a peeress of ' 
 
 The language wherewith he designated her I dare not 
 record for a polite age that blushes at Shakespeare and 
 smiles at Schneider. 
 
 ' I suppose she came over to make a dash here out of 
 bravado/ murmured Denzil, with a glance back towards 
 Beltran. 'The marriage only took place the other day. 
 She will do just as she chooses with that wretched boy, no 
 doubt.' 
 
 'Isla House in Belgrave-square is being redecorated/ 
 said one of the loungers. 'She is very stupid not to keep 
 abroad: she will always be "pilled" here.' 
 
 ' She will get the society she cares for/ said Denzil, 
 ' All the men on the town will go and see her ; and she 
 will have a whole cdhue of parasites clergymen among 
 them, if she like to become a " patroness " of churches and 
 hospitals, and I daresay, in time, even a bishop will dine 
 with her.' 
 
 ' And I will bet you what you like/ interrupted Ghiillia- 
 dene, ' that she will hold huge gatherings at Blair-Isla, and 
 have festivities that will make all Scotland stare/ 
 
 ' If she don't give Isla's people a chance for a divorce/ 
 put in Lord Shamrock. ' They will catch at a straw. I 
 should not wonder if she were divorced by the autumn and 
 married afresh by next Easter/ 
 
 ' Nor should I. She's awfully handsome/ said Claud 
 Lucy, 'and awfully clever. She got De Terras, and Ber. 
 aaldes, and Prince Egon of Wallachia killed, and Lord 
 Knows how many she's ruined.' 
 
 1 Clever \ She's the mwt rfcupid and most illiterate crea- 
 
4*4 PUCK. 
 
 ture that ever breathed,' said Denzil contemptuously. ' Shi 
 never said a decently sensible thing in all her days.' 
 
 'Bat she never did one not sensible,' said Lord Bruiif 
 quietly. ' All her victims were solvent ; she never forsook 
 a man till she had plundered him as far as she could ; sh| 
 returned all small presents as " insults; " she never got any 
 one killed unless he were useless and troublesome ; and she 
 anally has married this lad. O, a clever woman, certainly ; 
 I do not believe she will be divorced. I believe she will now 
 train for the Morality Stakes. They generally do when 
 they have won a Q-old Cup.' 
 
 I overheard these remarks ; my mistress did not. 
 
 ' How beautiful a woman ! ' she murmured to Beltran, 
 looking earnestly at the carriage as it passed. * She looks 
 strangely at you. Who is she ? ' 
 
 1 The Marchioness of Isla,' he answered her with all gra- 
 vity, but with a little, serene, contemptuous smile about 
 his mouth. 
 
 4 1 have never seen her before, I think ? ' 
 
 * No. But you have heard of her r,s " Cl^opatre." ' 
 
 Fanfreluche had in nowise exaggerated : the woman 
 whose first lovers had been found amidst the boisterous 
 dalesmen and savage miners of the north, was now high in 
 title, high in affluence, high in station. All the world knew 
 her infamy ; but by the gracious fiction of your divine in- 
 stitution she had become blameless and without reproach 
 by marriage. 
 
 It seemed that she had drawn in this hapless boy beyond 
 escape ; and had wedded him with such scrupulous heed of 
 all formalities that nothing which his frantic family could 
 do could obtain any reversal of the hideous folly that had 
 given all dignities and all nobilities to the wanton of the 
 northern wakes. 
 
 He was but a lad ; he was stubborn and simple ; he had 
 been reared in grim creeds and in childish ignorance ; in 
 the blinding blaze of his first liberty, in the sudden attain- 
 ment of his mighty heritage, this woman had seized him aa 
 she might have seized some poor dazed bird long kept in 
 darkness and confinement, and suddenly cast forth to stretch 
 its untried wings in the full sunlight. He had been 
 powerless to resist : he had been held, and hooded, and 
 fastened to that cruel and close-shut hand without a 
 struggle. 
 
VICTRIX: 
 
 You have seen such things before in this society of yours 
 seen them at least often enough for it to have become 
 a known and dreaded thing that when the beardless boy of 
 rank and wealth sits in the public places of pleasure beside 
 the gorgeous thing of infamy whom you have made a house- 
 hold word, it will be possible almost probable that she 
 will not pause at stripping him of riches, at forcing him to 
 pawn all future heritages, at making him a gamester, a 
 bankrupt, a beggar, an outlaw, but will go farther, and 
 <?/)mpel from him the old gallant name of his fathers, the 
 old fearless repute of his race ; the old gems that flashed in 
 his ancestors' faulchions, the old home where his mother 
 reigned in honour. 
 
 It is not moral to tell you this, you say ? Ah, no ! life 
 itself is not moral. But it is true it is undeniably true- 
 that whilst you repulse with a shudder the poor painted 
 outcasts of the street, you gaze with interest on the famous 
 wanton throned in her jewels at the opera ; and from this, 
 your countenance and complaisance, whilst the painted out- 
 cast goes to the police-court and the prison, the jewelled 
 wanton may steal the honour of your name unchastised, 
 and wed your young heir to eternal shame, unarraigned. 
 
 Need you marvel then that, beholding this contrast of 
 issue, women low, ignorant, made full of greed by want, 
 made sick for money and pastime by the inordinate envies 
 and tawdry fashions of the poor of this age say dimly te 
 themselves, ' Let us only be vile enough, we shall do well. 
 All that are wanted are beauty and luck.* 
 
 And verily they have cause to say it. 
 
 It has often seemed bo me that you might do much to 
 scare the female vultures from their prey upon the youthful 
 curled darlings of your proud races, if you declared by law 
 all marriages invalid wherever the vileness of the wife's 
 previous life was a fact beyond dispute. It would be simple ; 
 it would be rightful : for shall the meed of the just pass to 
 the unjust ? shall the guerdon of honour abide with the 
 thief? Shall Faustina claim a place beside Lucretia? 
 Shall Phryne with the wine-dropping roses of shame on her 
 temples, presume to mate herself with Arria Paeta, with 
 the white lilies of courage and innocence bound on her 
 ieautif ul brows ? 
 
 But it is not done ; and meantime the courtesan can 
 
486 PUCK. 
 
 laugh her cynical laughter, and say in her heart, ' I will Bin 
 whilst it shall please me. When it ceases to please I can 
 take the communion and marriage ! ' 
 
 As for me, when I heard the world thus talk of her, I felt 
 stupid and aghast. My thoughts were busied with that 
 old dead time, when the woman who now drove there 
 in her pomp and power, watched by all eyes, and spoken of 
 by all lips, had stood in the cottage-door under the rose- 
 thorn, and chaffered for glass beads and penny ribbons, 
 with the old pedlar of the Peak. 
 
 From the hour when she had stolen the coins of he* 
 brother's thrift and toil from under the moss by the apple- 
 tree, this woman's life had been one long theft. Her hands 
 had spared naught that her eyes saw and coveted ; she had 
 had no pity for youth ; no mercy for ruin ; no remorse at 
 love ; no shame at trust ; she had had but one law for her 
 life the law of greed. If you would only bear in mind 
 that this is the law of all such women's lives, the world 
 would be spared much maudlin sentiment, and men much 
 undeserved reproach. 
 
 That law Avice Dare, in all things the type and model of 
 her class, had obeyed, without one pause for its infringement 
 by any sort of gentler thought or better deed. She was 
 cruel, because all low untutored human creatures ever are 
 mere cruel than any desert beast, or python of the swamps : 
 she was licentious, because women of her likeness, having 
 but splendid vitality and bodily beauty, without any con- 
 science, or intelligence, or soul within them, are always sur- 
 rendered to the dominion of the senses : but beyond all, 
 more than all, she was possessed with greed ; the same 
 greed which had made her gloat over the mock stones and 
 brazen jewelry of the pedlar's pack, and steal, and pillage, 
 and forsake all duty, and betray the loyal heart which 
 trusted her, that she might flee to the ways of iniquity, and 
 to the wages of shamefulness. Greed of the basest sort 
 greed for the things of the senses ; for raiment, and food, 
 and wine; for horses, and chariots, and treasure, for the 
 daughter of fools, and the licence of venal kisses ; for the 
 6nvy of other women of the gems on her breast, and the 
 gold in her hands. 
 
 And having fallen upon an Age which has elected to deify 
 the courtesan, and wherein hard avarice, and keen passions 
 
VICTRIX: 487 
 
 for pelf and self, do prosper more greatly than any genius or 
 attainment, or quality of the mind or character, this woman 
 was rewarded for her sin. 
 
 She had not intelligence, she had not knowledge, she had 
 no kind of pity nor any sort of comprehension ; she was 
 brainless as any savage that squats in his African hut ; she 
 was only capable of such joys as the drowsy jewelled snake 
 may know in his Mexican swamps ; she could eat, and 
 drink, and could glitter gemlike in the sun, and could un- 
 coil from gorged torpidity to kiss or kill. 
 
 In a word, she was the courtesan of the nineteenth 
 century, who, to all the licence and all the cruelty of the 
 wantons that turned their thumbs downward for their 
 brawny paramours to die in Home, has added all the vul- 
 garities of modern ribaldry and all the chicaneries of 
 modern civilization. 
 
 Hence, being thus suited to the Age which had begotten 
 her being thus its creature and its likeness she had 
 thriven in it'as the snakethrives in hotand poisonous waters, 
 which for all pure and healthier things breed death. 
 
 Luck, of course, there had been in it ; luck is the divinity 
 of the soulless. Many women, having all the will to do the 
 evil that she did, find themselves barred out for ever from 
 the chance. Many fishers in the sea-depths of vice angle 
 all through the day and bring to land nothing for their 
 pains. Many like her in their natures, and their passions, 
 and their aims, but lacking either her supreme physical 
 beauty, or her supreme good fortune, wander drenched and 
 starving in the slimy rains of city streets at midnight, curs- 
 ing vice, as others curse virtue, because its service is 
 wretchedness, and its wage famine. Luck, truly, there had 
 been in this amazing fate, which lifted the once sullen, 
 ragged, unkempt peasant on to this eminence where all the 
 world observed her clothed in the purple, and environed : 
 with the * divinity that doth hedge ' the royalty of G-old. <! 
 
 But beyondall favours of chance, or circumstance, all aids 
 of accident or opportunity, the chief reason of her fortune 
 <kras that this woman was so entirely harmonious with her 
 time, so utterly its true daughter in rapacity, in licentious- 
 ness, in egotism, in coarse hard lust of gold, and in dull, 
 dead indifference to anything save gain. She had been 
 callous to all misery she dealt, all need she left, all horror 
 
488 PUCK. 
 
 she entailed throughout her whole career as callous when 
 she had drawn from the earth her brother's silver pieces 
 that had been saved by the hardness of his toil and the 
 sweet patience of his self-negation, as now when she trod 
 under her foot a boy's guileless youth, and the lofty name 
 of his race, and raised her head in the world's sight, 
 crowned. Crowned in greatness, if crowned with a diadem 
 from whose jewels the eagle-stone* of Hononrhad dropped, 
 with the same moment that had raised it up to her shame- 
 less brow. Ah, well ! let but Kaiser or Courtesan seize 
 their crown and wear it, they shall find courtiers and 
 coveters enow; and for its gems the eagle-stone that 
 knights held high as a stainless talisman, and that kings 
 wore in the old, fair, fearless years of old, is out of use and 
 out of fashion now. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXYITL 
 
 -BOJTFET BLAJTC. 
 
 1 "WHAT a wonderful woman that is ! * said Fanfreluche 
 to me a day or two later, with a sigh of passionate envy. 
 ' What do you think she has done ? Not content with all 
 the goods of earth, she has even secured herself im- 
 mortality she has hired Philippe Sissole ! ' 
 
 And Fanfreluche for once neld her breath in an absolute 
 awe of amaze. 
 
 ' Immortality ! ' I ventured to echo in bewilderment. 
 ' And who, then, pray, may be Philippe Rissole, who can 
 confer it ? ' 
 
 ' O heavens! ' cried Fanfreluche, in a whirldwind of con- 
 tempt, * what a thing it is to have lived in a puppet-box and 
 a garret ! ; you ignoramus, you barbarian, you most 
 miserable of outsiders ! Who is Philippe Rissole ? He ia 
 the artist that made the Guards' Club sublime with his 
 eauces ; he is the poet that made the French Embassy 
 divine with his hors d'ccuvres / he is the maestro that made 
 
 The ancient pierre d'aigle t supposed to be found in eagles' neste 
 
 ED. 
 
BONNET BLANC. 
 
 the Emperor of Eussia cry, " I am greater than CaBsar," as 
 tie ate a cutlet in curl-papers ; he is the genius of whom it 
 has been said that the Pope, emb racing him, after &jour 
 maigre of thirty services, mourned with tears that it was 
 forbidden to send the Q-olden Eose to heads crowaed with 
 the glorious bonnet llanc of the kitchen. He is Philippe 
 Eissole, THE COOK ! And she has hired him she ! whom 
 you once saw washing her own potatoes to eat with black 
 bread for a noonday dinner. O Lord! can the " masses " 
 ask for a more absolute millennium of democracy than this 
 topsy-turvy age in which an Avice Dare can live to hire a 
 Philippe Eissole!' 
 
 I was silent : I was not alive to the imperial greatness of 
 a Eissole, but I was struck dumb with a curious sense of 
 marvellous strangeness as I thought of the woman whom I 
 had once seen greedily devouring the gilded gingerbread 
 and the painted peppermint- sticks of a wake fair-stall, now 
 being qualified to dazzle the sight of the world with 
 banquets fitted for princes ! 
 
 'They call her a stupid woman,' pursued Eanfreluche. 
 1 Pshaw ! she has the very wit and wisdom that suits her 
 Age. She is a splendid strategist ; there is not a man in 
 the town, however lofty his rank, that will not accept in- 
 vitations to dinners designed by Eissole. She knows that 
 those who are wise, seeking to rise, and desiring to win the 
 kudos of their compeers, will not ask themselves, have they 
 genius ? have they beauty ? have they wit ? have they 
 power ? but will ask themselves only can they give a good 
 dinner ? If they are sure that they can not a good dinner 
 in the mere ordinary meaning of the word, but a dinner 
 original, voluptuous, harmonious, dulcet, a " tiling of beauty 
 and a joy for ever," then they may know that sooner or 
 later the world will be theirs. She sees this : she does not 
 trust to her beauty or her splendour, to her riches or her 
 wickedness, the world is full of such as these ; but she 
 obtains Eissole ! The only living man in Europe who can 
 make an epic worthy of epicures ! To secure the cook of 
 the century is to obtain the roc's egg. Who is the most 
 successful diplomatist ? He who most successfully enter- 
 tains. Is there anything so humanising as a perfect dinner ? 
 Anything that so tends to reconcile differences, and t? 
 smooth aside prejudices ? When a man eats exquisitely, he 
 
49 PUCK. 
 
 feels harmoniously and he thinks placidly. WHat epicure 
 would propel a war that should ban the truffled turkeys of 
 Paris from his own frontier ? What gourmet would urge a 
 " crusade for ideas " when the campaign would deprive him 
 of the pates of Strasburg, of the ortolans of Lombardy or of 
 the caviare of Russia? A statesman will cast a nation 
 recklessly into feud and famine when it is only the bread- 
 rate of the poor that will have to rise, nly the porridge- 
 pot of the poor that will have to be empty : but when 
 he is a dinner-giver of consummate art, and understands 
 the imperishable qualities of the truffle, and the imperative 
 necessities for the foie ffras, he will be no party to dis- 
 sension that shall leave his menus incomplete, and his cook 
 disconsolate and unnerved. No one understands so well as 
 an epicure the mutual dependence of the nations ; for what 
 dinner is worth anything to which all nations do not con^ 
 tribute ? Strike any one nation off the list of commerce, 
 and you strike some one dainty off the bill of fare. Were I 
 a sovereign all my ambassadors should be the best dinner- 
 givers of their times. Years ago I heard the appointment 
 of Lord Courtly to the Viennese Embassy sorely questioned 
 and sneered at ; a man whom I know well openly attacked 
 Lord Parmesan, then chief of F. O., up on the unjustifiable 
 choice. " What simple qualification does Courtly possess 
 for such a post ? " he persisted. " What single talent does 
 he evince for such an eminence ? You cannot point out 
 one ? " Parmesan laughed. " Yes, I can ; he possesses 
 Rissole." Parmesan was shrewd and all-seeing amongst 
 men ; he knew that the pivot of all diplomacy turns within 
 a stewpan. Avice Dare knows as much. Ere the season 
 be over every man of note will have dined with the Mar- 
 chioness of Isla. Philippe Rissole will give her eminence in 
 the present, and in the future immortality for will not 
 the dinners that he conceives and executes for her table be 
 shrined in the G-olden Books of gastronomic science for 
 ever? 
 
 1 The worst is,' added Fanf reluche, ending with a sigh her 
 impassioned period*, * the worst is, how can a woman who 
 once peeled her own potatoes be ever capable of apprecia- 
 ting the genius of a Rissole? She loves eating, indeed, 
 but what has a vulgar love of eating in common with the 
 exquisite delicacies of ^astronomical discrimination ? The 
 
NELLIE'S PRAYER 49* 
 
 palate requires education from birfch upwards : your only 
 true epicure is ever of gentle breeding. But now now 
 the canaille have all the cooks ; and Milord Hoture ana 
 Miladi Cocotte give dinners that would have brought tears 
 of ecstasy to the eyes of Brillat-Savarin, and all the while 
 could not themselves tell for their lives an ortolan from a 
 sparrow, or a canvas-back duck from a quack-quack of the 
 gutter ! ' 
 
 I paid little heed to her; but her prophecies proved 
 correct. 
 
 Isla House was opened with all the fresh magnificence 
 of Louis- Quinze decoration ; the great cook created a series 
 of dinners which surpassed anything that he had ever con- 
 ceived for prince or minister ; and whilst the town talked 
 of her dauntless effrontery, of her luxe effrayant, of her 
 infamy, and of her ostentation, half its lords and gentlemen 
 went to criticise the wonders of her table ; and their fair 
 wives regretted her shame and her sin because these de- 
 barred them from honouring banquets prepared by Philippe 
 Hissole. 
 
 OHAPTEE XXXIX. 
 
 NELLIE'S PRAYER. 
 
 ' I WAS at the Private View yesterday/ said Fanfreluche 
 with a grin. 'How'd I get in? As I get everywhere, 
 simpleton. I hide myself under a woman's dress, for all 
 the world as if I were a sin ! And I keep so quiet ; not a 
 soul suspects me a bit more than the public suspects the 
 money that changes hands when the journals write a states- 
 man into office, or an archbishop into the primacy. I was 
 at the Private View. There is nothing there that comes 
 near G-ladys' portrait. All that mob of ministers, fine 
 ladies, critics, dandies, and litterati were unanimous about 
 it ! It kills every other picture near ; and yet there is so 
 little colour about it ! " That wonderful white ! " they all 
 ay; but it is the wonderful face above the white that 
 charms them. Lady Otho was there; and Beltran was 
 entangled with ber party. He is always very courteous 
 
49* PUCK. 
 
 and friendly with her ; he always is with his old loves. She 
 looked very long at the picture ; but she said nothing, 
 except a few words of praise to the artist ; but awhile after, 
 in the miniature-room, he stood beside her, some way apart 
 from any others Then she addressed him suddenly : 
 
 '" That girl is very beatiful! " 
 
 '" You have seen her on the stage, surely ?" he answered 
 carelessly. 
 
 1 She replied to him with a touch of impatience : " On the 
 stage, of course ! But they are so made up there one 
 never knows " 
 
 ' He smiled. 
 
 '" She does not need to 'make up.* Have you any idea 
 how young she is ? " 
 
 * I saw her long hazel eyes flash fire. 
 
 1 " Is she not the girl you spoke to me of most romantically 
 once long ago ? The sister of that dead boy, of that 
 poet?" 
 
 ' He laughed. 
 
 ' " / 'romantic !' rarely that can never have been ! Tea 
 she is the same." 
 
 '" And is it true what the world says of you and her 
 now?" 
 
 * She spoke hurriedly and almost fiercely ; impulse must 
 have been strong on her, or she would never have deigned 
 to stoop to such a question. 
 
 '" Not in the least true," he answered in his most negli- 
 gent fashion ; " though I don't know whom it can concern." 
 
 '" Not true !** she echoed; "when you lavish all your 
 wealth on her, spend all your time with her, are seen every- 
 where beside her ! " 
 
 '" Not true," he answered again more coldy. "As for 
 wealth I have none left, and if I had she would only take 
 the fair wage of her talent." 
 
 ' She laughed a little ; that laugh that it never does one 
 good to hear. 
 
 *" Indeed ! Ah ! pardon me if I cannot believe in your 
 platonics." 
 
 '"Perhaps it is natural you should not," he murmured, 
 as he drew her attention to a miniature. She turned to 
 the art- subject with ease and indifference ; but her cheek 
 burned hotly under its delicate rouge : she spoke no more 
 
NELLIE'S PRAYER, 493 
 
 of Q-ladys. Do you think it was severe? Well she 
 should not have provoked him. "Women will never under- 
 stand the wisdom of the non quieta movere, and they never 
 will let " the dead past bury its dead," and comprehend 
 that to open ciosed graves is "unsightly. 
 
 1 But it she could still care for him ? ' 
 
 ' My df^r, as I told you, she cares enough to dislike to 
 see him care for any other. Every wojaan loves enough for 
 that. Even Avice Dare would kn w so much of the grand 
 passion. " Love ! " it is such a pretty synonym for all 
 klnas of envies, and egotisms, and jealousies and vicious 
 iesires. They are choice in their graceful synonyms, these 
 dear auman beings. They wrap a nauseous fact up in a 
 gilded phraseology, until they take the pill like a bonbon. 
 Pshaw . without that felicitous art do you think they would 
 ever have managed to cheat themselves into forgetting their 
 cousins the apes, and only acknowledging their cousins the 
 angels ? 
 
 * There are men who hold to, and revere, straight simple 
 truths/ I said stanchly, for I thought better of men than 
 he did. 
 
 * Are there, my dear ? ' she replied with a grin. ' I never 
 met thorn. I have heard a very great many men and 
 women call the crows carrion birds, and the jackals carrion 
 beasts, with an infinite deal of disgust and much fine horror 
 at what they were pleased to term "feasting on corpses; " 
 but J never yet heard an rf one of them adiiit their own 
 Appetite for the rotten " corpse " of a pheasant, or the 
 putrid Launch of a deer, to be anything except the choice 
 taste of an epicure ! ' 
 
 ' But they do cook the corpses ! ' I remonstrated ; where- 
 upon she grinned with more meaning than ever. 
 
 * Exactly what I am saying, my dear. Their love of syn- 
 onyms has made them forget that they are carnivori, be- 
 eause they talk so sweetly of the cuisine. A poor, blunder- 
 mg, honest, ignorant lion only kills and eats when the 
 famine of his body forces him to obey that law of slaughter 
 svhich is imposed on all created things, from the oyster to 
 flie man, by what we are toid is the beautiful and beneficent 
 tconomy of Creation. Of course, the lion is a brutal and 
 bloodthirsty beast of prey, to be hunted down on the face 
 of the earth as fast as may be. Whereas man what does 
 
494 PUCK. 
 
 ae do ? He devours the livers of a dozen geese in one 
 ydt6 ; he has lobsters boiled alive, that the scarlet tint may 
 iook tempting to his palate ; he has fish cut up or fried in 
 all its living agonies, lest he should lose one nuance of its 
 flavour ; he has the calf and the lamb killed in their tender 
 age, that he may eat dainty sweetbreads ; he has quails and 
 plovers slaughtered in the nesting-season, that he may taste 
 a slice of their breasts ; he crushes oysters in his teeth 
 whilst life is in them ; he has scores of birds and animals 
 slain for one dinner, that he may have the numberless 
 dishes which fashion exacts ; and then all the time talking 
 softly of rissole and mayonnaise, of consomme and entremet, 
 of croquette and cotelette the dear gourmet discourses on 
 his charming science, and thanks Grod that he is not as the 
 parded beasts that prey ! ' 
 
 * Well,' said I sulkily, for I am fond myself of a good 
 vol-au-vent, * well, you have said that eating is a law in 
 the economies or the waste of creation. Is it not well 
 to clothe a distasteful and barbaric necessity in a refining 
 guise and under an elegant nomenclature ? ' 
 
 ' Sophist ! ' said Fanfreluche, with much scorn, though 
 she herself is as keen an epicure and as suave a sophist, for 
 that matter, as I know, ' I never denied that it was well 
 for men to cheat themselves, through the art of their cooks, 
 into believing that they are not brutes and beasts of 
 prey it is well exceedingly for their vanity. Life is sus- 
 tained only by the destruction of life. Cookery, the divine, 
 can turn this horrible fact into a poetic idealism ; can twine 
 the butcher's knife with lilies, and hide the carcass under 
 roses. But I do assuredly think that, when they sit down 
 every night with their menu of twenty services, they should 
 not call the poor lion bad names for eating an antelope 
 once a fortnight.' 
 
 And, with the true consistency of preachers, Fanfreluche 
 helped herself to a Madeira stewed kidney which stood 
 amongst other delicacies on the deserted luncheon table. 
 
 We were in the inner portion of Beltran's chambers ; I 
 occasionally strayed across the length of the park, and 
 found my way thither. I had grown wary of all 
 thieves' beguDements and stratagems ; and I liked dearly 
 to find myself once more in those well-beloved spacious 
 apartments, with their deep, soft, blue colour, and their 
 
NELLIE'S PRAYER. 495 
 
 charming confusion of bric-a-brac ; their masculine litter 
 tnd their artistic luxuries ; their familiar scent of cigar 
 smoke, and their quaint bits of priceless vertu. 
 
 For picturesque charm, and for true comfort and luiu- 
 riousness, I do not think there is any mansion in the town 
 which can approach some of those perfectly arranged cham- 
 bers that look out on the Green-park, or stud the various 
 streets of the quarter of St. James. They have all a 
 woman's elegance and all a man's negligence : the combi- 
 nation is perfection. 
 
 Whilst she ate her kidney, and I dozed on a couch, there 
 entered into the outer room his sister, the Countess of 
 Leintwardine ; a woman of noble presence, wearing her 
 forty or more years with bloom and majesty. Beltran, 
 who was at that moment going out to his phaeton below, 
 met her face to face ; he stood still and bent his head to 
 her in silence. 
 
 She came quickly up to him ; she was an impulsive 
 woman despite her dignity. 
 
 ' Vere don't let us be estranged/ she said softly. <I 
 did not think what I said ! ' 
 
 He gave her his hand instantly ; he was not a man to 
 refuse to meet such an advance. 
 
 ' I am afraid you did think,' he said with a smile. ' It 
 was the thought I resented ' 
 
 1 O no O no,' she said a little hurriedly. ' I never 
 think anything against you. Surely you know that ? ' 
 
 ' "Why do you not take my word, then ? ' he asked quietly. 
 
 * They are such very strange circumstances,' she mur- 
 mured ; * so very equivocal ! ' 
 
 He raised his eyebrows a little, and moved an armchair 
 towards her in silence. 
 
 * No, thanks. I am in a hurry homeward,' she said, lean- 
 ing her hand on the back of the chair. ' I only came to see 
 if you were here one never has a chance to speak a serious 
 word in society. As you were alone I could not help say- 
 ing to you let my injurious words be forgotten, and 
 believe, O, always believe, Vere, that you have no truer 
 friend than I am, no one who loves you more dearly than I 
 do. And if I grieve over over some things in what 
 seems to me a wasted career, it is only, only, my brother, 
 because I remember too tenaciously and too fondly the 
 hopes and the promises of your youth. 1 
 
496 PUCK. 
 
 He listened, touched by the words, moved yet more by 
 the tears that stood in the eyes of this haughty and worldly- 
 wise woman of his race. He was silent a moment, then he 
 answered her : 
 
 ' You cannot be more dissatisfied with my life than I am ; 
 but which of my contemporaries is more content with his 
 own ? Satiety lies like a curse on us all ; and it is little 
 odds whether it be born of ambition or of pleasure. 
 Perhaps, if you knew all, you might not think mine so 
 utterly wasted, though it is idle and barren of renown ; 
 but that does not matter much ; it is certainly selfish and 
 useless enough not to be worth a defence. Yet listen to 
 me an instant. You know that I should not lie to you ? * 
 
 ' Nor to any one,' she said, looking on him with a proud 
 and sad tenderness. 
 
 He bent his head. 
 
 "Well you say, too, that you bear me some love. Listen 
 to me, then. More than a year ago, I told you that had 
 my mother been living I should have taken Gladys G-erant 
 to her. You heard but you refused to assist me ; you re- 
 fused to lend her your countenance. What you refused to 
 do, I could not ask of any woman less dear to me. When 
 I sought to interest any in her they met me with the ques- 
 tion, " What does your sister say? " To such a question I 
 could give no answer ; you had deprived me of one. What 
 has been the consequence ? That in lieu of being honoured 
 by the world as her gifts and her purity demand, she is 
 classed by the world with its most venal order, and nothing 
 that I can do or declare can move one hair's-breadth of the 
 weight of calumny off her. Now, on my faith as a gentle- 
 man, this woman you condemn is as innocent as your own 
 daughters ; of her beauty and her genius you have judged 
 publicly ; to the exquisite grace and nobility of her mind 
 and heart no words of mine could ever render justice. 
 You have spoken of my youth ; in her presence alone do 
 its better instincts revive, does its dead promise still seem 
 capable of resurrection. Beatrice, it is not too late. Will 
 you even now go to her ; have faith in her ; lend her 
 the shield of your high name, prove to the world that my 
 sister at least believes that I do not lie ? It is not loo 
 late you occupy the station from which it is possible t;i 
 stem the tide of slander Let her once be seen with you, 
 
NELLIE'S PRAYER. 497 
 
 and you will save her for ever from the vilenesa and the 
 cowardice of calumnies which she is too innocent ever to 
 imagine can assail her ; and from which I a man, and her 
 reputed lover am utterly powerless to defend her life. 
 You believe me, you say will you do this for my sake, and 
 the sake of truth ? ' 
 
 He spoke for the sole time in his life with sad and pas* 
 sionate earnestness : it was not for himself that he pleaded; 
 and his words followed one another eagerly, eloquently, 
 unselfishly ; with a prayer which one would have thought 
 no woman ever could have heard in vain. 
 
 His sister listened, the tears in her haughty eyes; she 
 bowed her head as he paused, and over her bent face passed 
 tremulous shadows of yielding and of regret. She sighed, 
 and stretched out her hands to him. 
 
 ' Anything but that anything ! It is not possible an 
 actress my daughters think what the world would say of 
 me! ' 
 
 His teeth clenched on his lip ; he was bitterly wounded. 
 
 * Need a woman of my race pause for that ! ' he muttered 
 with passionate scorn. He had been unwise enough to 
 hope : he had stooped his pride to plead. His disappoint- 
 ment was intense ; his mortification supreme. 
 
 She laid her hands upon his arm. 
 
 * O Vere I I do believe I do indeed. She is beautiful, 
 exceedingly, and no doubt she is all else that you say, but 
 the world holds her as your mistress ; I cannot subject my 
 children ' 
 
 * That is enough ! ' he said sternly. ' If you came here, 
 for peace, not for feud, you had best say no more ! ' 
 
 * But you forgive me ? You will not be angered again ? * 
 He smiled ; his coldest and most evil smile. 
 
 * Angered ? Because you prove so true to your sex and 
 your order ! O no O no ! ' 
 
 She would have answered him, but he went to the door, 
 bade his servant call the Lady Leintwardine's carriage, and 
 led her with grave and graceful courtesy down the stairway 
 to the street below. 
 
 ' Do you know what Q-ladys is to him now, my dear f : 
 said Panfreluche grimly. 
 
 * Scarcely! ' I murmured, bewildered. 
 
 ' Then I will tell you,' she answered with caustic curtnes* 
 
PUCK. 
 
 1 She is the only woman whom he has loved in all the 
 length of his life.' 
 
 The voices of the dilettanti were echoed by the public 
 crowd when the doors of the Academy were opened to these 
 last. There was no picture so sought as that of the Cup- 
 bearer of Vortigern. Its recognition as a portrait was its 
 chief interest to the multitude ; but even those who only 
 came to it for this coarser reason were touched into silence 
 and admiration before that spiritual, proud, poetic face, that 
 had so little in its look of earthly care or earthly thought. 
 Over the lightest and lowest that came thither it had a 
 strange subduing power, which hushed the common parlance 
 on their tongues, and sent them mute and wondering away. 
 
 'Ul-iis picture has increased your celebrity tenfold, 
 Gladys,' said Beltran to her on the third day of its exhibi- 
 tion, when he strolled beside her through the green aisles 
 of her pretty garden. 
 
 She smiled : the smile so pathetic in its meditation and 
 its eloquence, that was on the mouth of the daughter of 
 Hengist. 
 
 ' I do not care for that ! But if it would make the 
 people love me a little I should be glad/ 
 
 ' Why do you want that ? ' Beltran asked her gently. 
 
 1 1 do not know,' she said with half a sigh. ' But when 
 you see those thousands looking at you night after night, 
 all strangers, all nameless to you, yet all caring so little for 
 you that, if you died ere the play were ended, they would 
 only feel themselves cheated of their spectacle, you cannot 
 help wishing that you had a little of their friendship, a 
 little of their love, and were not only to them just a mere 
 toy to be watched, a mere mechanism to be dissected.' 
 
 ' With all your genius how little you are fit for the stage 
 for our stage ! Great heavens ! ' he muttered, and he 
 paced the lawn with his head bent as he spoke. 
 
 Then he came to her, and took her hands in his. 
 
 ' Gladys, sometimes it seems to me like a crime to have 
 brought your youth, your innocence, your divine nature into 
 such a world as this of ours. O, my child, if ever you should 
 reproach me ! ' 
 
 She lifted her eyes to him in wonder ; she seldom saw him 
 thus moved. Then she stooped, and with an exquisite 
 grace and obeisance in the action, touched his hand with 
 her lips. 
 
NELLIE'S PRAYER. 499 
 
 1 Heproach ! I ! If you choose to kill me you would 
 have a right to iny life you, who have bestowed on me 
 everything on earth ! ' 
 
 * Hush, hush ! ' said Beltran almost harshly. ' You owe 
 me nothing ! Q-od grant only that you may never blame 
 me.' 
 
 She looked at him with a smile that smile of ineffable 
 exhaustless faith which ever makes the face it lightens ha"" 
 divine. 
 
 She loved him it was so easy to see with such perfe* 
 tenderness, such absolute adoration. She hardly knew it $ 
 he was ' her friend ; ' he used none of the language of lovers j 
 he had never, as he had said, touched her lips with his own j 
 he subjugated whatever passion he might feel with a stern 
 self-control unlike any other thing in his self-indulgent and 
 too reckless life. But love for him had grown into the religion 
 of her existence. 
 
 Although he had never let her know the extent of the 
 services he had rendered her, veiling them under generous 
 fictions of her heart, and of its values, yet there was much 
 that he could not conceal. Through him alone she had been 
 raised as by magic from utter misery, want, obscurity, and 
 desolation, to perfect ease, elegance, peace, and fame. I& 
 truth, her debt to him was measureless ; and yet vaster than 
 she even dreamed : for she knew not of those depths of the 
 world's dangers, or of the perils to her of his own passion, 
 from which he continually defended her : defended her even 
 against himself, because his simple creed, ' the good faith 
 of a gentleman ' forbade him to injure what lay defenceless 
 at his mercy. 
 
 Ah ! revile that old faith as you will, it has lasted longer 
 than any other cultus ; and whilst altars have reeled, and 
 idols been shattered, and priests changed their teachings, 
 and peoples altered their gods, the old faith has lasted 
 through all ; and the simple instinct of the Greek eupatrid 
 and of the Roman patrician still moves the heart of the 
 English gentleman the instinct of Noblesse oblige. 
 
 She loved him, as I say, with sweetest, highest, most 
 innocent, and yet most passionate demotion. In her eyes 
 in her voice, in her unasked submission to him, in her coun- 
 tenance when he entered the place where she was, &he 
 betrayed it utterly, because utterly ignorant of the true 
 
 2 K 2 
 
500 PUCK. 
 
 meaning of this concentration of her whole life in his which 
 to her seemed simplest gratitude. 
 
 He had been much loved by many women ; men of hia 
 type ever are so ; many a woman of the world had been 
 stung by his listless contempt, or beguiled by his indolent 
 wooing, into a passion that had become the one real, vital, 
 undying thing in all her artificial existence. Many a young 
 girl, like poor Nellie, had spent on him all the freshness 
 and fervour of her heart in a worship won merely by some 
 gentle, careless word, or some kindly glance from those eyes 
 commonly so cold and weary, in which he had meant no 
 more than a man means when he gives a caress to a playful 
 horse. But although far and wide he had awakened more 
 love than he ever needed or heeded, he had not ever been 
 loved as he was now by this creature who owed all to him ; 
 this poet who had all the strength and the elevation of 
 genius, this child who had all the innocence and trustfulness 
 of infancy. To few men is it given to be thus loved, with a 
 love in which the mind bears as great and pure a part as 
 the heart, and the intelligence is centred no less than the 
 passions. 
 
 It was a jewel of price which fell in his path, and often I 
 wondered whether he would tread it down in the earth at 
 the last beneath his foot, or whether he would raise it up 
 as he went, and cherish it in safety in his breast. 
 
 Sometimes I thought that the mists of the sins and the 
 satieties of the world were still so darkly about him that he 
 saw not its value, and would crush it carelessly in mere 
 negligence: and at others I thought that he knew its 
 beauty so well that he deemed his own hand not unsullied 
 enough ever to touch and to take it. 
 
 The world held him closely : he had been with it and of 
 it so long ; he was so deeply steeped in its tired, sceptical, 
 gay, dissolute temper ; he had so longed learned to think 
 v;ith it that nothing was desirable save the distraction of 
 the immediate moment, and the banishment of all emotional 
 weakness. 
 
 But the world could not wholly absorb a man to whom, in 
 the years of his youth, a lofty ambition had murmured its 
 dreams, and an ideal love had shadowed its meaning. The 
 ambition had died, stifled by pleasure ; the ideal had been 
 forgotten, supplanted by the senses. But sometimes I 
 
NELLIE'S PRAYER. 501 
 
 thought that, when he gazed in the soul-lit eyes of Q-ladya, 
 and heard the eloquence of her poetic thoughts, both the 
 dreams and the faiths of his boyhood carne back to him, and 
 that he no longer sought an intrigue, an idleness, a selfish 
 indulgence, a plaything for the passions, but at last also 
 loved. And loved at length so well, that he denied desire 
 and restrained passion. 
 
 Meanwhile whilifc this struggle hid its violence in his 
 proud silent heart, and this self-negation was covered by 
 his proven armour of careless and caustic indifference all 
 his familiar friends had, of course, decided for him that he 
 was a libertine, successful as usual, and that she was a 
 toy for whom he showed somewhat more gentleness than 
 common. 
 
 Indeed I often wonder to hear the complaints that ara 
 made as to the slightness and scarce sincerities of the friend- 
 ship of this day. 
 
 1 know not why you complain ; there was surely never 
 an era when your friends took more active interest in the 
 discussion and disposal of your affairs, or took more trouble 
 to ensure that the very worst possible should be said of you. 
 
 "What more can you want ? I assure you that society 
 thinks much better of you the more evil it deems you. They 
 called him now fearfully immoral, and respected him : if 
 they had been told the truth and been brought to believe 
 it, they would have certainly thought him a fool or a mad- 
 man, and he would have sunk in their estimation ac- 
 cordingly. 
 
 "When any of this that they said of himself drifted home 
 to him he smiled ; he was a man of the world : but now and 
 then when he was alone he ceased for a moment to be a man 
 of the world, and then his teeth clenched and his eyes 
 darkened because he thought of her. 
 
 'Good God! what a society we live in, in which a 
 woman's innocence is a thing incredible ! ' he said once in a 
 rare moment of impulsive utterance to his friend Denzil. 
 
 * Nay,* said Denzil with a smile that had all the bitterness 
 of his dead love in it, ' let her lose her innocence, and she 
 will find champions enough ! ' 
 
 Is the saying dark to you who read ? Ah, then ! you do 
 not know society. 
 
 In the same week that the Academy opened I was lying 
 
503 PUCK. 
 
 in the sun upon the lawn ; the garden of the villa was 
 blooming with jonquils and hyacinths ; the hawthorn shrub- 
 beries were in their first budding bloom ; the birds in the 
 conservatory were singing amidst azaleas and camellias, and 
 their music came through the open doors. 
 
 All was sweet and sunny ; through one of the pretty mul- 
 lioned casements I saw the luxurious little library within ; 
 G-ladys sat there, reading at an old lectern ; the rich dark 
 velvet of her skirts had the colour of a Titian picture ; and 
 her delicate head seemed painted in gold upon the shadow 
 of the deep-hued chamber. All was picture-like ; all full 
 of fragrance ; all eloquent of a peace around which gold had 
 drawn a charmed circle that pain could not break. 
 
 The roll of the carriages in the streets and roads beyond 
 the walls was only dully heard ; only pleasantly suggestive 
 of the gay and endless life around. 
 
 As I half dreamed and half slumbered in my calm reverie, 
 in my sunlit resting-place, there came to me Fanfreluche; 
 pressing through the bronze scroll-work of the entrance gate 
 with the daring independence of her habitual movements. 
 
 She approached more slowly than was her wont, and I 
 saw that her brilliant eyes were for once dim and troubled. 
 
 ' I have ill-tidings,' she said simply. * Nellie is dead.' 
 
 * Dead ! ' I could only echo the word dully and stupidly. 
 
 c Yes you asked me of her some time ago. She is dead 
 of cold, and exertion, and fever ; brought on by sitting up 
 many nights with a little ballet-girl of the Palace Theatre ; 
 little Clarice Vaughan, who sickened and died first of a sort 
 of low fever, they say.' 
 
 'Dead, dead, since when?' I muttered stupidly still; 
 death seemed to me a thing that it was impossible to utter 
 in the same breath with the name of that sturdy, rosy, blue- 
 eyed young creature, saucy as a boy, blythe as a bird, un- 
 tiring" as a chamois, the little dauntless dare-devil, who 
 feared neither man nor woman ! 
 
 'Since an hour ago only,' Fanfreluche answered me 
 gravely, without a touch of mockery or any caustic word. 
 1 She was ill but a brief time, I think. We were about to 
 drive to Hurlmgham to-day, when a little tattered boy came 
 up ; the grooms pushed him away, but Beltran listened to 
 him. He said that Nell Brown was dying, and the old 
 Granny had sent him ; would my lord let Nell see him afore 
 
NELLIE'S PRAYER. 503 
 
 he died P they thought she wouldn't live an hour. Beltran 
 without a word, turned his horses' heads to that poor place 
 where she dwelt. You saw it once ? I was already in the 
 phaeton; and descended and followed him as he went 
 through the house ; the old woman weeping and wringing 
 her hands, and crying sorely because she was all alone in 
 the world at eighty years, and moaning out how " Nellie, as 
 was such a rare good child, if 'twarn't for her wild humours, 
 had been so wilful and so mad, and had dug her own grave 
 Bay all as one would, a-tending little Annie Dell, as > -* 
 been down with fever, and dead and buried mor'n two 
 weeks agone." Beltran answered her with a few words of 
 pity and consolation j and was ushered by her into the little 
 chamber where you once saw Gladys Q-erant saved from 
 famine and worse. 
 
 ' Nellie was stretched upon her little truckle-bed ; the sun 
 came in over the roofs, the canary moped in his cage, the 
 golden creeper hung withering for want of water ; the little 
 room was full of gay and tawdry ribbons, and gauzes, and 
 tinsel, and all the glitter of stage costume. Her eyes were 
 closed ; her face had lost all its colour and roundness ; there 
 was a terrible blue pallor about the mouth. I thought that 
 she was dead already ; so did he. 
 
 * He went up to the bed, and stooped over her with a few 
 gentle words. His voice seemed to electrify her ; her eyes 
 opened suddenly, with a blinded senseless look ; her breatb 
 came fast and stifled. 
 
 '"Do you not know me, Nellie?" he asked her so 
 gently still. " My poor girl why not have told us of your 
 illness earlier? If I had only heard if I had only 
 dreamt " 
 
 ' She gazed at him with more of comprehension, and a 
 sudden flash came over the grayness of her face that gave 
 it once more something of its fresh and rosy hues. 
 
 ' " I sent I sent," she gasped. " I don't know how 1 
 dared but you was always so good, my lord." 
 
 ' " Dare is no word between you and me, Nellie," he an* 
 swered her. " You had the courage to stay my hand once, 
 in a passion that was making me a brute. I owe you much : 
 only tell mu how I can pay it." 
 
 ' Her dull strained eyes, that had lost all their old, smil- 
 ing, azure light, looked up at him piteously. She gasped 
 for breath for speech once or twice vainly. 
 
504 PUCK. 
 
 * " If only you would have let me help you ! " he said to 
 her. " But you would never take anything from me not 
 even such influence and interest as I may possess. It is not 
 too late now, you are so young, so strong; I will get you all 
 the aid, all the science, that the town holds " 
 
 ' She interrupted him with a plaintive motion of her 
 bright curly head, that hung so languidly, like a wounded 
 fcird's 
 
 ' " I'm as good as dead," she muttered, slowly and feebly ; 
 " else I wouldn't have sent never never ! But I want 
 to say one word, sir if you won't be angered " 
 
 ' " Say on, Nellie." 
 
 * There was an infinite pity in his voice ; he had seen death 
 often enough to know that the hope which he had held 
 out to her was utterly vain. 
 
 ' Still, with her eyes gazing up at him, so woefully, so 
 prayerfully, she spoke her feeble and broken words : 
 
 ' " I wanted to say I've heard, my lord, all manner of 
 evil things of her and you. I've heard that that she 
 have come to shame, though it's a gilded one ; and I know 
 I know as it's a lie!" 
 
 1 " It i* a lie." 
 
 ' His face was very dark, his voice was very grave, as he 
 answered her. 
 
 ' " I said so ! I said so ! " she murmured, her hoarse 
 weak voice for the moment ringing with melody and strength 
 once more. " I said as she was innocent and pure as any 
 little child lie all they would. And I kep' away from her, 
 because the likes o' me seen near her couldn't but do her 
 harm ; me being so common, and so ignorant, and so low 
 like upon the stage ; and she so beautiful, and so learned, 
 and so great a lady, one may say. But but you know as 
 they do say all them things of you and her ? you know 
 what she be thought to be ? You know as she'll never be 
 cleared of what they talk never, never, never ! " 
 
 I know ! " 
 
 *The wooden rail of the chair, on which his hands rested, 
 was broken by the clench of them upon it as he spoke. 
 
 ' " But it won't ever be true T " she cried, raising herself 
 upon one arm, and conquering for that brief space the 
 agonies and the weakness of death. " Tou'll never make 
 it true ? It don't half matter if it isn't true. You see 
 you see, sir it all came through me, her knowing of you 
 
NELLIE'S PRAYER. 505 
 
 first. I don't think I could lie quiet in my grare if she 
 ever lived to curse me for it. And she would curse me 
 when she came to see as she was scorned ! O, promise me, 
 my lord, as she sha'n't ever have no cause promise me, 
 promise me, she'll live and die in honour! " 
 
 ' He was silent awhile ; then he gently bowed his head. 
 
 ' " I do promise you so far as in me lies to keep her 
 
 80." 
 
 1 Her eyes closed ; her chest heaved. 
 
 c " Thank God," she murmured. " I never doubted you 
 J never doubted." 
 
 * " If you did not, you had a rarer faith than any friend 
 I hold ! But, Nellie, speak rather of yourself ; tell me what 
 I can do for you. My poor child, you shall not die at such 
 years as yours ! " 
 
 1 A wan, faint, bitter smile played over her drawn parched 
 lips. 
 
 ' " "What matter years ? " she muttered. " Maybe it's best. 
 I'd have had to go on for ever, act act act. And even 
 now I was tired ; very tired sometimes. Tell her I loved 
 her always will you ? Don't let her think as I'd ceased 
 to care " 
 
 * " But tell me something you wish done for yourself 
 for yourself alone ! " 
 
 * He spoke earnestly, urgently : he saw that, with every 
 second, sense and thought and sight were dying in her. 
 
 1 " There's nothing," she gasped feebly. " Perhaps if 
 you'd be good enow to keep old G-ran from want ? She's 
 nobody but me ; and I couldn't save much." 
 
 ' He stooped over her tenderly. 
 
 ' " She shall never need whilst she lives. Is there nothing 
 else nothing ? " 
 
 ' Her curly head drooped more heavily still ; her eyes 
 looked once more up at him through the dulness and mists 
 of death. 
 
 * " No no. If so be you wouldn't mind put your hand 
 once on my forehead ; I think I'd die easier so." 
 
 ' He stooped lower, and in answer laid his lips softly on 
 her brow. 
 
 * A flush of dreamy warmth drove for one moment the 
 ghastly pallor from her face; she trembled from head to 
 foot, and her eyes shone with a deep ecstasy ; then even 
 
506 PUCK. 
 
 in that same moment she shivered, itretched her limbs 
 out, and died. 
 
 ' He stood beside her, with his head bowed and his eyes 
 dim ; he, whom the world deems callous to all pain and in- 
 different to all tenderness, was touched to the heart by this 
 simple, pure, unspoken love that had been borne him, all 
 unasked and unrecompensed, so long and BO silently by this 
 little untutored, careless, audacious child of the populace, 
 who had shown her lithe form and her fair face to the public 
 gaze for the wage of his coin. 
 
 1 The sun shone in over the roofs ; the bird in its cage 
 began a low tremulous song ; the murmur of all the crowded 
 streets came up upon the silence ; and Nellie lay there dead ; 
 the light upon her curly hair, and on her mouth the smile 
 that had come there at his touch. 
 
 ' Ah, my dear ! ' said Fanfreluche, as she ceased her story, 
 with a half-soft and half-sardonic sadness, ' she was but a 
 little, ignorant, common player, who made but three pounds 
 a week, and who talked the slang of the streets, and who 
 thought shrimps and tea a meal for the gods, and who made 
 up her own dresses with her own hands, out of tinsel and 
 tarlatanes and trumperies, and who knew no better than to 
 follow the blind dumb instincts of good that, self-sown and, 
 uncultured, lived in her God knows how ! as the hare- 
 bells, with the dew on them, will live amidst the rank coarse 
 grass of graveyards. She was but a poor little player, who 
 had tried to be honest where all was corruption, who had 
 tried to walk straightly where all ways were crooked. So 
 she died to-day in a garret, my dear ; and have you heard 
 that the young Lord of Isla has bought his wife an estate 
 in the south that covers nearly one half of its county ? ' 
 ****** 
 
 The night of Nellie's death there was a late card party in 
 his rooms. I had strayed there, and stayed with Fanfre- 
 luche. There were none but men ; they played long and 
 gamed high; it was the rule in his set. It was almost 
 morning when they broke up, and went on their ways. 
 Denzil remained behind them. He had strolled away to 
 the great piano, and was playing quaint, dreamy fragments 
 of various melodies, whilst he smoked. 
 
 * Go on/ said his friend briefly, where he lay stretched OB 
 a couch by the hearth, and Denzil obeyed. 
 
NELLIE'S PRAYER. 50?, 
 
 The grey smoke-clouds circled round them, as the dull 
 vapour of satiety had drifted around all their pleasures and 
 passions ; the waves of sound rolled through the silence- in 
 soft, sad, weirdly eloquence ; Beltran never stirred, he was 
 lost in thought, Denzil rose and came to the hearth. 
 
 ' "What are you thinking of ? ' he asked. 
 
 * Tour music.' 
 
 ' No doubt ! But besides ? ' 
 
 ' Besides/ echoed Beltran slowly, as he raised himself and 
 stood erect. ' "Well, besides I was wondering whether 
 Ca3sar was true to his Order when he said that it was not 
 enough for his wife to be pure, since she was not also above 
 public suspicion or whether he was but a cowardly cur, 
 who cloaked social timidity in a grand period, and shrank 
 before the mud pellets of social opinion. Which was it 
 eh?' 
 
 Denzil looked at him quickly : ' You mean ? ' 
 
 ' I mean that I must either be traitor to my race or 
 traitor to a woman. I am undecided which to select. No- 
 blesse oblige. It is an admirable creed, only a little unsatis- 
 factory when it points two diametrically opposite ways. 
 G-et out with you ; it is late. Good-night ! ' 
 
 "When his friend was gone he paced to and fro the length 
 of the chambers. 
 
 * Am I a brute or a fool,' he muttered, ' when I know the 
 purity of that perfect life ? ' 
 
 And he walked to and fro, to and fro, in that ceaseless, 
 restless measure, till the sunrise glowed ruddily through 
 the closed shutters. 
 
 As at length he passed to his bed he paused a moment 
 before another portrait ; a portrait of age, not of youth, 
 but of age in all its noblest benignity, its most venerable 
 beauty. It was the portrait of his dead mother. 
 
 1 The House might deem itself sullied ; but you would 
 not, were you living,' he murmured. Then he went and 
 threw himself on his bed, and slept as the sun rose. His 
 rest was troubled, and on hi? face in his dreams there were 
 the shadows of sleepless passions, 
 
503 PUCK. 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 * GITEA.' 
 
 1 IF this play should succeed it will be a triumph of true 
 art,' said another critical writer to Dudley Moore, on the 
 eve of a fresh play at the Coronet Theatre. 
 
 That great personage tapped his Louis-Quinze snuff-box 
 with some impatience. 
 
 ' Pardon me, but it is not possible to have Art at all on 
 the stage. Art is a pure idealism. You can have it in a 
 statue, a melody, a poem ; but you cannot have it on the 
 stage, which is at its highest but a graphic realism. The 
 very finest acting is only fine in proportion as it is an 
 exact reproduction of physical life. How, then, can it be 
 art, which is only great in proportion as it escapes from 
 the physical life into the spiritual ? ' 
 
 ' But may not dramatic art escape thither also ? ' asked 
 the critic, who was young and deferred to him. 
 
 * Impossible, sir. It is shackled with all the forms of 
 earth, and worse still with all its shams and common- 
 places. AVhen we read Othello, we only behold the tem- 
 pest of the passions and the wreck of a great soul ; but 
 when we see Othello, we are affronted by the colour of the 
 Moor's skin, and we are brought face to face with the vul- 
 garities of the bolster ! ' 
 
 ' Then there is no use in a stage at all ? ' 
 
 *I am not prepared to conclude that. It is agreeable to 
 a vast number of people : as a Frith or an O'Neil is agree- 
 able to a vast number of people to whom an Ary Scheffer 
 or a Delaroche would be unintelligible. It is better, per- 
 haps, that this vast number should look at Eriths and 
 O'Neils than that they should never look on any painting 
 at all. Now, the stage paints rudely, often tawdrily ; still 
 it does paint. It is better than nothing. I take it that 
 the excellence, as the end, of histrionic art is to portray, 
 to the minds of the many, poetic conceptions which, with- 
 out such realistic rendering, would remain unknown and 
 impalpable to all save the few. Histrionic art is at its 
 greatest only when it is the follower and the interpreter of 
 
QITHA: 59 
 
 literature ; the actor translates the poet's mennings into the 
 common tongue that is understood of the people. But how 
 many on the miserable stage of this country have ever had 
 either humility to perceive, or capability to achieve, this ? ' 
 
 The other critic smiled. 
 
 ' I imagine not one in our day. Their view of their pro- 
 fession is similar to Mrs. Delamere's, when Max Moncrief 
 wrote that sparkling comedy for her. " My dear," she said 
 to him, " why did you trouble yourself to put all that wit 
 and sense into it ? We didn't want that. I shall wear all 
 my diamonds, and I have ordered three splendid new 
 dresses ! " ' 
 
 Dudley Moore laughed curtly. 
 
 1 That is Delamere aux louts de ses angles. Our stage is 
 but an asylum for men who are tired of sitting on clerks* 
 stools, and women who are tired of using a seamstress's 
 scissors. Yet such a stage as this we passively oermit to 
 be lauded by our public writers, while we inanely chatter ol 
 the decadence of taste. Good G-od ! we might with as 
 much justice make the House of Commons a cage for 500 
 parrots and apes, and complain of the decadence of oratory 
 and of statecraft! And, indeed,' he added with a grim 
 chuckle, ' the parrots and apes would more nearly resemble 
 the politicians they would displace than do the players of 
 our day resemble the art which they affect to represent.' 
 
 The eyes of the younger critic went to the figure of 
 G-ladys. 
 
 ' Surely she has genius ? ' he murmured ; 'you have your- 
 self said so.' 
 
 * Sir,' said Dudley Moore very curtly, ' I have said so cer- 
 tainly ; though what men say of a lovely woman is generally 
 to be taken with a pinch of salt ! But because acting is 
 not art, it does not follow that an actor or an actress may 
 not, here and there, be an artist. The great player is like 
 the great orator half a poet.' 
 
 It was a few days previous to that pleasant water-party 
 that the mighty magister spoke thus, at a morning rehearsal 
 ivhich he had deigned to attend the rehearsal of a new and 
 picturesque play, which had been written for her by a 
 scholarly and famous author, and cast in those old poetic 
 and ieroic iioulds "which had been broken into potsherds 
 under the ^row-bars of the felons, and the wheels of the 
 gtreet-cabs, of the modern drama. 
 
5io PUCK. 
 
 The play was indeed fraught with many perils. To conv 
 mence with, it read so well in the closet, that it was almos/ 
 certain it must go ill on the boards ; farther, it was cast IB 
 a bygone time the Saxon time of England and wal 
 penetrated with the high and simple spirit of that dead 
 age. 
 
 It was slight of structure, inasmuch as the writer- 
 wisely doubtful of the powers of the herd of men an$ 
 fromen who, calling themselves artists, and receiving higfc 
 wage in your capital, would be hissed off the boards of an} 
 minor provincial town of France or Italy had centred all 
 the strength, pathos, and sustaining power of the piece on 
 the one central figure a woman. Of course, this absorp- 
 tion of all interest into one focus was not artistically sym- 
 metrical ; but what is a poet to do when he writes for a 
 stage whereon the actors declaim with the accent of Cock- 
 aigne, and move with the grace of wooden fantoccini ? His 
 noblest diction will, he knows, halt in false quantities 
 through n fault of his own ; and the supreme art of the 
 histrion the art of gesture will, he knows likewise, be 
 either unattempted or caricatured. 
 
 With these difficulties before him, he had cast almost the 
 whole burden of his dramatic creation on the one woman in 
 whose hands he felt that such a trust was safe. 
 
 He was sensible of the offences of his play ; he was aware 
 that it was harmonious in treatment, subdued in colour, calm 
 m action, pandering nowise either to the prejudices or the 
 puerilities of the multitude j and yet it was hoped that all 
 these offences might be pardoned to it through not her 
 genius, for genius alone is a rococo thing, who speaks in 
 archaisms but through the fashion of Q-ladys Q-erant 
 
 Besides, it was to be made a gorgeous spectacle ; and it 
 was trusted that in the splendid series of pictures, and the 
 masses of men brought on in its groupings of camp and 
 castle, monastery and witenagemot, the public would be for 
 once induced to pardon intellect in the dialogues and nobility 
 ra the passions. 
 
 'Utterly unfitted for the present stage,' said Dudley 
 Moore, when the play was accepted after a noon reading of 
 it at the theatre. ' Utterly ! But it is just possible that 
 if you smother the sense of it under a weight of gorgeous 
 decoration \ that if you disgrace its classic treatment by a 
 
GITHA: 511 
 
 quantity of barbaric magnificence, such as the age it is 
 cast in can afford ; if you get some novel effect in moon- 
 light or on water, and give two set scenes to each act, call- 
 ing them tableaux, you may contrive, by dazzling the sight 
 of the audience, to make them pardon their being asked to 
 sit out a work of eloquence and of sense. Indeed, if you 
 could introduce a jongleur or mumming scene midway, and 
 get that new conjuror, who is performing miracles at the 
 Egyptian Hall, to appear in it with his bouquets and ser- 
 pents, the piece might not perhaps quite ruin you ; it might 
 even keep the boards for a month.' 
 
 These sarcastic counsels had been followed seriously all, 
 indeed, except the adoption of the juggler and the p]ay 
 Rras magnificently put upon the stage in a series of exquisite 
 historic pictures, carefully compiled from Holinshed and 
 Sharon Turner, Gruillaume de Poitiers and the Roman Da 
 Bou. 
 
 ' It will ruin you,' they said to Beltran, who laughed in 
 his negligent fashion. 
 
 1 When one is to break one's neck, it don't much matter 
 whether it's over a five-bar or a six, that I can see.' And 
 with the inborn recklessness that was covered under his 
 quiet manner, he spared no cost accordingly. 
 
 So the play was to be put forth with the springtide of the 
 year, and its various scenes the encampment, the abbey, 
 the vast untouched forests, the gathering of the monks for 
 respers, the noontide fight by the ford over the sumpter 
 mules, the feasts of the Eorldermen in their Mead Halls 
 all were to afford spectacles that would to the uttermost 
 serve to induce the public to pardon the startling heresies 
 of meaning and of feeling in the words that were uttered. 
 The scene-painter's skill had been strained to the farthest 
 to purchase forgiveness of the poet's presence. 
 
 If you perfectly occupy the eyes of a London playgoer, 
 he will not resent, because he will not note, that you offend 
 his ear with the dead languages of eloquence and sense. 
 Perhaps he may regret that such fine grouping and charm- 
 ing * sets ' are not more worthily wedded to some punning 
 doggerel ; but he will not resent actively, though he wilj 
 doubtless feel that he has scarcely had all he ihould have 
 aaa *or his monoj . 
 
 Moreover, this play was prepared 
 
512 PUCK. 
 
 young April weeks, when first on men's lips came the 
 rumours of the picture of the Cupbearer of Vortigern. 
 Those who had seen it in the studio spoke widely of it in 
 language that awoke interest and curiosity ; and the por- 
 trait had scarce been revealed to the general public when 
 the play of Githa was put forth, and it was known that she 
 would appear in the old Saxon garb that was worn by the 
 daughter of Hengist. 
 
 A trifle like this goes far to arouse and to rivet public 
 attention ; and served, amongst others, to make the town 
 ready, and even willing, to excuse the mistake which had 
 chosen an author in lieu of an adapter, a poem in the place 
 of a police report. 
 
 The first representation was appointed for the day that 
 followed on Nellie's death. Of that death he did not tell 
 her : and it was too obscure for public rumour or record to 
 take it to her ear. A little dancing-girl one out of hun- 
 dreds worth nothing when the lissom energy was once out 
 of her limbs, what name could she leave ? What moment 
 of recollection could the busy world give her ? 
 
 He knew that he must tell her sooner or later, but he 
 shrank with that kind of tender cowardice which so pecu- 
 liarly belongs to men who are for themselves sternest, 
 hardest, and least apt to fear from wounding in any way 
 this heart that had known so much of sorrow in its child- 
 hood, and had only so lately basked in joy. He withheld 
 from her all things that could pain her, with an excess of 
 care that had its perils for her ; for, so perfect did this life 
 seem in which she dwelt, that insensibly she grew to believe 
 that its beauty must endure, shadowless, for ever ; and in- 
 sensibly, in her trust in him, she lost the strength and 
 self-reliance that she had once possessed amidst adversity. 
 
 When her brief life had been but a little frail field- 
 blossom, left desolate on the crumbled walls of a fallen 
 house, to bear night and storm as best it should, and to be 
 blown on by all rude winds of heaven, it had been steadfast 
 and unblanched. But now that it was a hothouse flower, 
 guarded from every chilling breath, and environed with 
 perpetual sunlight ; now I sometimes feared that it would 
 break and perish at the first rough touch wither in the 
 first lone hour of midnight. 
 
 ' You are not afraid of your powers to-night ? ' he asked 
 
'GITHA: 513 
 
 her in the afternoon of this day on which Githa was first 
 to be given to the world. 
 She smiled in his eyes. 
 
 * When you tell me to be afraid I will be, not until 
 then.' 
 
 The trustful words smote his conscience ; if he dealt 
 truly with her truly as he had promised to the dead girl 
 would he not bid her be ' afraid ' now ? Afraid, not of 
 herself, but of him ? I saw this thought told in his eyes. 
 
 * Do not depend so much upon me,' he said gently and 
 sadly. ' Tou are a poet ; you are an artist ; you have 
 genius ; you must not rest your nobler existence on such a 
 useless and prosaic life as mine. I am no poet, Grladys ; I 
 am only a tired, selfish, good-for-nought man of the world.' 
 
 She smiled still ; that beautiful serene smile of divinest 
 faith. 
 
 1 It's ever the noblest who most undervalue themselves,* 
 she said simply. 
 
 ' O, child, I have no nobility 1 ' he said, with a quick, im- 
 patient sigh. If you knew me as I am you would hate me.' 
 
 ' / / ' it was only that one word she uttered, but in it 
 there were all the glorious incredulity of a love which could 
 never harbour credence of a stain on its idol, and yet ; 
 higher than this the grandeur of a love which even if 
 forced to condemn in judgment, would only still cleave the 
 closer in tenderness. He looked at her and was silent 5 
 he had not the heart what man would have it? to 
 shatter that exquisite, pure, untroubled faith in him. 
 Perhaps also he thought 
 
 'Almost them makest me that which thou dost believe me.' 
 
 that night was the first night of Githa. When the people 
 came to its representation they were a little uneasy at the 4 
 period in which the play was cast, and at the name of its 
 author, which was of classic and scholarly repute. But the 
 grand art de plaire had been long studied at this house ; and 
 a reassuring consolation had been prepared for them in a 
 new drop-scene, which represented Dufresny in his Garden 
 of Roses. 
 
 I do not suppose that many of them knew who Dufresny 
 was : but the rose-garden was charmingly painted, and the 
 handsome grandson of la plus fraiche rose de mon parterre 
 
 2 L 
 
514 PUCK. 
 
 was in his court suit and his lace ruffles : and these we 
 know to those who don't wear them always seem sug- 
 gestive of much elegance and amusement. 
 
 The play opened with a gorgeous festival scene, of the 
 Saxoii thanes with their purple peacock-broidered robes, 
 their harpists, their skins of wolf and bear, their golden 
 chalices, their rough and riotous revelry. This charmed 
 the assembled house as a mere spectacle, and when, later, 
 Gladys swept across the stage, with her slow, soft, haughty 
 grace, and her white, purple-broidered robe, and her dark, 
 lustrous, grave eyes gazing from under the golden fringe 
 of her hair, they were in no mood to grudge her one iota of 
 the triumph she might win. 
 
 And that iriumpli was great. Until now she had been 
 but a gifted actress of extreme youth, for whom high 
 patronage and favouring circumstance had done so much 
 that it was almost a question if they had not done all. But 
 with this night they knew that by her voice genius alone 
 had spoken. 
 
 When the first two acts were over, friends and critics 
 pressed eagerly around her. She bent her head with a 
 dreamy smile : she was too truly an artist not to shrink 
 from the language of flattery when it jarred on the conse- 
 cration of her thoughts, the passion of her art. 
 
 Beltran scarcely spoke : but when her eyes met his she 
 had the only tribute, the only answer, for which she cared. 
 
 Dudley Moore addressed her almost with emotion. 
 
 'You prove what none save fools but many fools- 
 doubt,' he said to her. ' Tou prove that the public can no 
 more refuse to obey the influence of genius, than the tides 
 can refuse to obey the laws of their flux and their reflux.' 
 
 And he was right. 
 
 Breathed through her, shadowed forth by her, having in 
 her all its vital yet spiritualised being, the vague dreams of 
 Ihe poet took life and became great. Interpreted by her 
 voice, her eyes, her eloquence, her gestures, the shadowy 
 fancy of the writer became a living creature, pure as the 
 dew, generous as the sun, innocent as the blossom, grand 
 as the tempest. 
 
 And the listless, ironical, surfeited, debased mental temper 
 of the world of this your day was enthralled and subdued 
 by an incarnation so unlike to itself, so far removed from 
 
GITUA: 515 
 
 its own narrowed passions and its own venal materialism , 
 and yet which had reality within it, because it had the 
 greatness, the truth, and the divine fire which can be evoked 
 from your human nature in its highest forms and in its 
 noblest moments which, indeed, are rare, and found only 
 in your impulses of heroism, in your hours of self sacrifice, 
 but yet, though thus rare, still are existent. 
 
 "What is beyond all humanity ever fails to move it j it i 
 the reason why all the religions of your earth are tLings o 
 the lip, which scarcely influence the life : it is what remains 
 human, yet is human only in the highest sense, and by the 
 deepest woe, that can sway your hearts as the winds the 
 reeds. 
 
 It is scarce too much to say that such a creation was this 
 which the mind of the poet had conceived, and which the 
 living power of the actress placed visibly before the dimmei 
 eyes and the grosser intelligence of those who, without her, 
 would have missed its meaning. 
 
 There were cold cynics there whose eyes were dun with 
 tears ; there were frivolous women there whose tongues 
 were hushed and whose fans were still ; there was a fashion- 
 able throng there that wa forced to feel, that^was compel- 
 led to honour, that forgot to be inane, and did not dare to 
 eavil or to sneer. 
 
 Do you; imagine that a corrupt age cannot revere, that 
 an artificial age cannot be stirred by truth, that an abject 
 age cannot rise to comprehension under the compelling 
 force of genius ? you are wrong to doubt. Was it not 
 the vilest of the pagan ages that gave credence, and foot- 
 hold, and tenure, to the faiths and the philosophies of 
 Paul? 
 
 E^en as men are to the kine of the fields, so is genius to 
 Inen . when its eyes are on them they dare not refuse tc 
 obey, even if they obey in fear and in hatred. Stone it b 
 the dark they will, indeed because men are oftentimes* 
 lower th&n the beasts of stall and sty. 
 
 "When tie end had come, and the pent-up emotions of the 
 spectators had found their vent in tumults of applause, in 
 thunders of homage, the triumph that she had won was no 
 ephemeral glorification of a fair woman, but was the in- 
 voluntary witness borne by a multitude to power that had 
 vanquished it. 2 L 2 
 
516 PUCK- 
 
 As she left the stage for the last time, the echoes of the 
 vociferations that still called for her, from an audience never 
 weary of beholding her, were yet resounding through the 
 house. Here face was very pale ; her eyes were heavy ; on 
 all her beauty there was a look of languor, of exhaustion, 
 of profound sadness : the forces whereby genius moves the 
 people ever recoil upon itself. 
 
 The story of the swan's song in death may be a fable, 
 doubtless ; yet it is true in allegory of the suffering where- 
 from is drawn the melodies that thrill the souls of men. 
 
 She turned with almost a shudder of distaste from the 
 congratulations around her. 
 
 1 Let me go away ; let me go home/ she murmured to 
 her friend as he stood by her. * I could not bear the laugh- 
 ter the flattery in the room to-night.' 
 
 He led her almost in silence from the house. 
 
 It was a still, clear, moonlight night ; above the narrow 
 street on which the side door opened the stars were shining ; 
 it seemed strangely cool and calm after the crashing plaudits 
 with which the theatre had re-echoed. 
 
 In that soft shadowy light her eyes met his. A quick 
 shudder ran through him. 
 
 ' O God/ he muttered half aloud, * that the world and I 
 were worthier of you ! ' 
 
 A sigh stirred her lips as she answered him : 
 
 ' But for you what could the world have known of me ? ' 
 
 Her face was white as death ; her eyes were languid with 
 fatigue ; the suffering which is ever the tribute that genius 
 pays for its sovereignty was upon her ; but as the moon- 
 light fell on her uncovered head, with the golden gleam of 
 its hair, her loveliness was greater than in her proudest 
 hours. He looked at her, then led her to her carriage ; he 
 pa.used a moment irresolute, then for the first time entered 
 it also. 
 
 As he sank beside her, his hands touched hers ; his lips 
 sought hers ; he drew her to his embrace in the first impulse 
 of passion that had ever escaped him. 
 
 Quivering and mute, she rested in his arms, and hid her 
 face upon his breast. The high courage, the poetic strength, 
 the eloquent powers wherewith a moment earlier she had 
 swayed the crowd, forsook her ; and the woman whose di- 
 vine gifts had held a multitude in servitude shrank weeping 
 to him like a tired child. 
 
*G2THA.' 517 
 
 The swift horses swept fast through the night, flying fleet 
 as the moments. 
 
 In the silence I could hear the loud hard beating of his 
 heart ; in the dusky gleam of the lamp I could see that his 
 eyelids were wet with tears. 
 
 Brokenly, breathlessly, she sobbed as a child sobs on its 
 mother's bosom. The proud, passionate strength of a 
 woman breaks ever thus into weakness when the hour that 
 needed the strength has passed by. He let it have its way, 
 waiting patiently its exhaustion ; but his arms pressed 
 closer and closer around her, and his kisses burned upon 
 her trembling lips. 
 
 "When the carriage paused at length before her home, she 
 broke from him, and fled swiftly through the leafy shadowy 
 ways of her garden into the chambers of the house. He 
 followed her rapidly into the little fragrant, velvet-hung 
 room that served her as a study. 
 
 The lights were burning low, the air was heavy with many 
 flowers, the casements were still open to the balmy spring 
 night. 
 
 She stood upon the hearth, her hands pressed upon her 
 breast ; her face now deathly pale, now flushing scarlet ; 
 her mouth quivering with swift breathless sighs, half terror 
 and half rapture ; her eyes dilated with startled fear, like a 
 roused deer's, yet lustrous with an unutterable tenderness, 
 an unutterable glory. 
 
 * Leave me leave me ! ' she murmured brokenly. ' I am 
 base in your sight I am worthless for ever ! ' 
 
 Eor to her pure lofty instinct, to her innocence reared in 
 simple stern creeds, which held honour a thing that a touch 
 could attaint it, it seemed to her that he must have scorned 
 her utterly ere ever he had sought her thus with the wild- 
 ness of love : it seemed to her that because his kisses had 
 burned thus on her, she must be debased in his eyes and 
 her own for evermore. And yet with all this, beyond all 
 this, there reigned over her her belief in him as the law ol 
 her life, the lurer of her fate, the saviour of her existence; 
 and there stirred in her, imperious and exulting, the sweet, 
 blind, tumultuous madness of the woman who loves and is 
 loved. 
 
 He stood before her silent. His face was dark with 
 riotous passion held hard in curb, yet it was changed to a 
 surpassing softness and reverence. 
 
518 PUCK 
 
 He stood silent a while ; how tempted, how assailed, his 
 own heart alone ever knew. 
 
 Then his hands touched her and drew her to him, and his 
 eyes gazed into hers. 
 
 ' But as my wife ? ' 
 
 Those brief broken words were all he said ; it was his 
 life, his honour, his world, the fame of his race, the repute 
 of his name, that he gave her. Great gifts need slight 
 phrase. 
 
 CHAPTER XLI 
 
 SLAIN. 
 
 WITHIN a day or two from that time he married her, by 
 those special laws which can be convened by gold. 
 
 In the humility of her intense love she had resisted him ; 
 she had pleaded that she was not worthy ; she had entreated 
 him to pause. But she could not withstand the force of 
 his persuasion and the yielding of her own heart. And she 
 became his wife. 
 
 Denzil and old Margett were the only witnesses of the 
 marriage, and for a while no others knew it. His fortune 
 was so close to ruin, his affairs were so deeply entangled, 
 that the declaration of such a uaion at that moment waa 
 impossible. So bitterly against his will he let her re- 
 main on his stage a while, and the town was left in igno- 
 rance of the relation that he bore to her. 
 
 Perhaps the tie had greater sweetness to them both be- 
 cause thus untold; the ecstasies of passion seemed yet 
 more exquisite because seized from the midst of the world's 
 brilliances and levities. When their eyes met across the 
 crowded theatre, their secret was dearer because unprofaned 
 by publicity j when the laughter and gaiety of others were 
 about them, their hearts thrilled at a chance word or a 
 chance touch from each other, with purer rapture because 
 their secret was unguessed. 
 
 Pshaw ! Why need I dwell on what no words can paint 
 
 They loved ; they were undivided. In that brief phrase 
 the uttermost passion of life's one perfect joy is told. 
 
 The hours fled apace. The spring grew into 
 
SLAIN.' 519 
 
 and the summer grew languid with odorous heat. Three 
 months drifted by ; months filled, for her, with colour, with 
 melody, with public homage, with brilliant scenes of plea- 
 sure, with sweet, dreamy days in the heart of blossoming 
 woods, with hours of proud eloquence and lofty triumph, 
 with the voluptuous trances of passion, and with the divine 
 visions of love. 
 
 The last nights came, on which alone the public would 
 ever behold her. "With the height of summer the theatre 
 closed : she loved the art which she followed ; but his will 
 was her law, and he had forbade her ever again to give the 
 loveliness that was his to the eyes of a multitude. To go 
 seaward awhile ; to wander in those southern and eastern 
 lands of which her bright fancy had dreamed, and whilst 
 absent, to let the knowledge of his marriage be given to 
 the world, was the future he promised her: there were 
 uow but six nights left betwixt that promise and its fulfil- 
 ment. 
 
 On one of those nights there came to the royal place in 
 the theatre a woman who took her seat there as though she 
 were in truth a sovereign, her bosom and her hair blazing 
 with the deepest lustre of sapphires, her fan flashing thou- 
 iands of small diamonds in the light each time it stirred 
 her great, slumbrous, brown eyes watching the stage in- 
 cessantly with a scornful laughter just stealing under their 
 heavy amorous lids. To and from her box there passed 
 continually half the * gilded youth ' of the town ; at the 
 back of it, timidly hiding in the shadow like a chidden child, 
 was a boy of ruddy cheek and simple air, who started now 
 and again like a shy frightened hare: none noticed him; 
 all passed him j he was her husband. 
 
 I shuddered as I saw: it was the same face that had 
 glowed from the canvas of ths Cleopatre. 
 
 She spoke little : people would have said that she was 
 devoted to the stage. (She sat there almost motionless, \ 
 gorgeous in the glare, nothing moving but those great dusky 
 sleepy eyes, that glanced hither and thither over the house 
 under their drooping lids. 
 
 Many present knew that her thoughts must be with the 
 time when she, who sat there in her pomp and pride, had 
 shown her half-aude beauty to the populace in the lowest 
 pastime of the mime. 
 
5* PUCK. 
 
 I alone knew that her though to might drift back to a 
 still further seasoD, when she who sat there, covered with 
 jewels that were heirlooms, had envied the strolling players 
 of the village-booth their spangles and their gewgaws. 
 
 "Whenever Gladys was upon the stage this one gazer 
 never withdrew her eyes from it, and they lost their 
 laughter, and grew cold, intent, studious. 
 
 Wider contrast she could scarce behold to herself any- 
 where on earth, Perchance she felt it, for I saw her brow 
 lower, and her red full lips tighten as though with a quicker 
 drawn breath. 
 
 It might be that she felt even as others did that before 
 this lofty, poetic, soul-lit loveliness her own voluptuous 
 eplendour was hard, sensual, earthly ; for, look up from the 
 diamond to the planet, what will you then see of heaven in 
 the gem ? 
 
 For me, I trembled as I saw that baneful presence there. 
 
 Looking on her as she watched thus, I thought of a 
 glittering, jewelled, ruby-orbed snake, reared motionless to 
 watch the grace of a lithe-limbed, soft-eyed, and unconscious 
 antelope motionless, but ready to strike. 
 
 ' Did you see that woman's eyes upon me ? ' Grladys 
 murmured as they drove homeward. * She whom they say 
 was " Cleopatre ? " 
 
 4 Yes, I saw them/ he answered simply. 
 
 There were things in his life that he loathed, now that 
 he loved. 
 
 That night in her sleep she moaned with a restless fear 
 ami awoke trembling. 
 
 4 1 dreamed of that woman ! ' she cried ; ' of that woman ! * 
 
 1 My love, my love,' he murmured, * what can harm you, 
 dreaming or waking, whilst I live ? ' 
 
 And she sighed softly, and fell asleep again on his heart, 
 content. 
 
 On the following night he did not come into the theatre 
 as usual : she drove homeward immediately that the great 
 play ended. She seemed anxious at his absence, the more 
 BO because she had not seen him since the noon of the day ; 
 and she sat awhile in her chamber, feeling sleepless and ill 
 at ease. 
 
 The night was very hot; the casement stood wide open, 
 looking out on to a mass cf moonlit myrtle and syringa 
 
SLAIN. 521 
 
 leaves ; the heavy scents of dew-laden roses came up from 
 the garden below ; it was so still that all the starlit peace 
 of some hill-sheltered country might have stretched around, 
 rather than the countless roofs of a great city's fashionable 
 outskirts. 
 
 She sat beside the window ; the white folds of some loose 
 neglige floating about her; her rich hair lying on her 
 shoulders, gleaming to a dusky gold in the low lamp-light ; 
 her throat and chest half bare as the wind stirred her dress ; 
 her eyes looking out on to the dark, dewy, still night, with 
 those dreams in them that only the happy dream. And her 
 happiness was to her still a thing so breathless, so strange, 
 so entrancing. 
 
 A church-clock somewhere without tolled midnight. Ae 
 the last stroke sounded through the hot summer hush of 
 the darkness, a man's step came up the stairs ; the door 
 opened, and he entered the chamber. She rose and went 
 to him, with that beautiful flush and radiance which ever 
 came on her face at his presence ; and in his embrace there 
 was a strange strength of passion rather like that of sever- 
 ance than of meeting, 
 
 1 "What has chanced ? ' she asked quickly, with the swift 
 instinct of love, looking upward to his face, which had lost 
 somewhat of its habitual colourlessness and calmness, and 
 had warmth, and unrest, and almost eagerness upon it. 
 
 His eyes gleamed darker, and his lips quivered a little ns 
 he answered her : 
 
 ' This, my love, that I am rich once more ! ' 
 
 Her own eyes grew full of a tender surprise. 
 
 ' Once more ! But you have been so always, surely ? * 
 
 He smiled. 
 
 " My child, I have been nearer to ruin than I cared to 
 tell you, or than I care to remember now. For some years 
 past I have had the worst sort of poverty, G-ladys, the 
 poverty of a man who has rank to uphold, and self-indul- 
 gence to satisfy, and who has dissipated his heritage in 
 pleasures which have palled on him, though he cannot yet 
 bring himself to break with them. I have been as near 
 ruin as a man may be whose good name has not been lost 
 or jeoparded. But there is no need to think of it now. I 
 am rich once more. I can command the world for you ! ' 
 
 She. looked at him still in wonder: to her he had evei 
 seemed even as a god in power and in possession. 
 
52^ PUCK. 
 
 ' What is your joy, is mme. But for the world, it in 
 here for me,' she answered him softly ; and she pressed hia 
 hand to her breast, and bowed her head and rested her lips 
 upon it. 
 
 He was silent ; touched to passionate, dumb emotion. 
 This man, whom hia world believed indifferent to all tender- 
 ness, and callous to all devotion, felt a measureless grati- 
 tude to this creature who loved him for himself alone. 
 
 ' All other women I have known would have had but one 
 thought how much my riches may be ! ' he muttered as he 
 drew her to the couch beside the open casement, and sank 
 down himself beside her. 
 
 ' How lovely you are ! ' he murmured, as he moved back 
 the heavy masses of her hair and watched the soft night 
 wind stir amongst her dress, and drew her arms about him 
 whilst he told the history of his new-born wealth. 
 
 The tidings had come but that day to him. A distant 
 relative, old aud childless, had left to him the whole accu- 
 mulations of a penurious and solitary life; utterly un- 
 locked for, undreamt of, because the dead man was of 
 another branch of his family ; one which had ever been at 
 variance with the elder and loftier house. ' Because he is 
 the head of my race, and because he never sought me, 
 noticed me, even knew me, therefore I bequeath, etc.,' ran 
 the strange testament ; and the bequest was one, in lands 
 And in gold, to place him amongst the richest and most 
 powerful of his Order. 
 
 To all men such sudden heritage is sweet ; to him, at this 
 moment, it was precious, far beyond its actual and social 
 worth. He could not utter his thoughts to her, for he had 
 never let the phantom of the world's scorn come before her 
 glad and innocent eyes ; he had never let the shadow of the 
 world's wrath fall across her sunlit, flower-sown path. But 
 none the less himself did he know that it would need all 
 the force of the fulcrum of wealth, all the massive weight 
 of a great dignity and a great position, to compel from the 
 world to her that world's honour without which both her 
 life and his own would be poisoned and incomplete. 
 
 For, to the man who is proud and of pure lineage, it is 
 not enough that he may know the innocence of his wife to 
 be without soil ; it is as the very breath of his life, that it 
 should be unassailable by living lie or by dead rumour, an< 
 unapproachable as the stars on high. And, sooner or later, 
 
SLAIN. $23 
 
 the woman who learns that she has beeii suspected by the 
 srorld will learn that, however deep her husband's love, or 
 however imperishable his trust, there is one galled wound 
 jc. his strength by which a passing touch can force hia 
 haughtiest pride to wince. 
 
 He knew this : she did not. 
 
 She could not comprehend the source of this vivid re- 
 joicing which moved him at these tidings of his splendid 
 inheritance ; but she rejoiced with him, in all the sweet 
 instinctive sympathies of love. And yet that humility, 
 which is ever the companion of such love as hers, filled her 
 with a vague sad sense of some unworthiness, of some 
 unfitness, for such fortunes as his were. 
 
 ' Perhaps it is not well that I should be your wife ? ' she 
 said softly, whilst her face grew pale and her breath grew 
 still, before that first shadow of a great unknown fear. 
 ' My people were poor and obscure ; and I have followed a 
 public art for gain ; and when I cease to pursue it, as you 
 desire, I shall have nothing of my own. I should not have 
 been your wife ! There are so many women, great, beauti- 
 ful, noble, worthy of your name : will you never wish that 
 one of them ? I can only love you, I have nothing else to 
 give!* 
 
 He stayed her words with his kisses. 
 
 * O, child ! Cannot you see that, with wealth and the 
 world mine, such love is all, lacking, that I need? My 
 Grod ! how can I declare to you my pride in you ? How 
 shall I make you believe what greatness and what purity 
 your genius, your loveliness, your nature, your mind, will 
 bring to my race and my name ? Stay but three days more, 
 Q-ladys, and the world shall see in what estimate I hold 
 these, in what honour I hold you/ 
 
 She sighed, with a deep content. 
 
 'But will the world honour you for it ? ' she asked him, 
 with that dim and wistful sense of some unfitness in her- 
 self that had but newly touched her, and was still so 
 shadowy and so slight. 
 
 ' It shall, my darling.' 
 
 In another hour the memory returned to her that, ere he 
 answered her, he hesitated for a moment ; and that, as he 
 answered her, his eyes darkened and his brows contracted, 
 as with the resolve to encounter, to compel, to vanquish. 
 
524 PUCK. 
 
 But in that moment she only heard the assurance given ; 
 she only felt the clasp of his arms and the touch of his lipg. 
 
 She rested against him long in the deep, sweet, stillness 
 of a joy, too sure and too perfect to be broken by words. 
 
 Once only she roused herself and spoke. 
 
 * Shall I know your friends your sister then ? ' she 
 asked, with that happy light playing in her eyes, as she 
 lifted them to his in the soft obscurity of the night. 
 
 * I hope so, love.' 
 
 But I heard a short, impatient sigh from him as he 
 spoke ; and I knew that in his heart he was full sure that 
 never would his sister's hand take hers in welcome and in 
 friendship. 
 
 He was silent some time, his touch absently caressing 
 the thick and gleaming waves of ker hair. He had too true 
 a manhood in him, and too haughty a temper, not to be 
 ready to proclaim his honour of her to the world with all 
 widest and highest publicity, and not to feel, with passion- 
 ate sincerity, that pride in her in her innocence, and her 
 loveliness, and her genius which he had avowed. But to 
 every man it is bitter to know that the creature he delights 
 to honour will be refused all honour by the world ; to every 
 man does it strike home, with a hateful pang, that the 
 bearer of his name, the owner of his rank, the mother of his 
 children, should be breathed on with the breath of libel and 
 of imputed shame. 
 
 He knew the world too well not to fully appraise the 
 cruel force of its incredulous contempt, its merciless cen- 
 sure ; he had lived in it too long not to fully foresee the 
 humiliations and insolences which it would be beyond all 
 power of his to avert from the woman whom he loved. 
 "With time, indeed and riches he might be able to compel 
 for her the lip homage of social respect, and to unclose for 
 her the doors of the palaces of his order. But he knew 
 that the work would be long toilsome and in the end but 
 half accomplished. 
 
 For he knew that slander, having once seized on a fail 
 name for its prey, does never altogether loose it; but, 
 slumbering for a score of years, will yet, when it looks 
 dead, have power still to lift its hydra head, and spit poison. 
 And so he sat there, thoughtful, weary, and half sad ; yet 
 with a thrill of old, dauntless, chivalric gladness in him, 
 
SLAIN. 5 2 5 
 
 because to him it had now been given to show, at least in 
 the world's sight, how high in honour he himself had heli 
 this life that trusted him with so supreme a faith. 
 
 Moreover, old aspirations stirred in him; old dreams 
 arose. 
 
 Sitting there in the still summer night, with the light of 
 the stars on the leafage without and looking down into 
 those deep, tender, soul-lit eyes, old fancies of his dead 
 youth came to him. With gold, ' the compeller of men/ all 
 things seemed possible to him. His wealth would be vast ; 
 his ambition might keep peace with it a lofty and pure am- 
 bition, seeking the welfare and not the suffrage of men : 
 seeking to rule and not to use them. 
 
 Of pleasure he had known every sense and satiety ; of 
 passion he had known every fury and folly ; of the world he 
 had known every bitter and every beguilement ; a brief 
 while ago his life had been tired, ruined, reckless, exhausted ; 
 but now now in this soft midnight hour of summer the 
 fair and noble dreams of his boyhood returned to him, and 
 it seemed to him that to give them fruition yet lay in hia 
 gifts and his destinies. 
 
 ' You are thinking ? ' she said, looking up at him whilst 
 her arms were about his neck. He smiled, and drooped his 
 lips to hers. 
 
 ' Yes. I am thinking of the future this day and you 
 have given me.' 
 
 And I believe that those dreams abode with him in his 
 slumber ; for ever and again I saw a smile come on his face, 
 as he slept, where the moonlight fell in upon it through the 
 dewy foliage that half hid the casement. 
 
 Ah, God, that from some sleep men never awakened ! 
 
 Early on the morrow he left her, compelled by some 
 exigencies of his new possessions to be absent in the north 
 two days. 
 
 There were but three nights more of her public career. 
 He would fain have shortened even these ; but the interests 
 of many were involved, and with the true soul of the artist 
 in her, she parted from her world of art with pain and almost 
 with unwillingness ; and she clung to these few remaining 
 hours in which alone the genius in her would ever utter 
 itself to the multitude, and feel and use its powers. 
 
526 PUCK. 
 
 He feared that it would be impossible for him to return 
 before midnight of the second day at earliest. He left her 
 with singular reluctance, with longing regret, even for so 
 snort an absence. 
 
 Towards the close of that day she sat alone in her little 
 library ; without there was all the glow of a summer evening 
 at seven o'clock, but within the violet hues of the room 
 seemed like twilight. She sat lost in thought ; a smile and 
 a flush now and then crossing her face at some memory ; 
 her book had fallen to the floor ; her head was bent ; in her 
 bosom some little scarlet love-roses were fastened. 
 
 She did not hear the sound of steps without ; she did not 
 even hear the soft slow unclosing of the door, and the sweep 
 of a woman's robes over the velvet of the floor. Lost in 
 thought, the deep, sweet, visionary thought of a love that 
 is half-earthly, half-divine, she did not even feel that she 
 was no more alone. 
 
 The woman paused and looked at her, herself unseen. 
 Her great, brown, slumbrous eyes glittered like jewels; her 
 ruby mouth curled with a cruel scorn ; her teeth set 
 slightly, like an animal about to spring. I knew her thus 
 had I seen her, though then obscure of beauty as a diamond 
 still dull in its bed of quartz, look thirstily on the tawdry 
 treasury of the pedlar's pack ; thus had I seen her in all 
 the haughty insolence of her shameful pomp when she had 
 sat in her amber-hung casement, and mocked the poor, 
 lowly, stainless life whose innocence and sublimity offended 
 her. 
 
 She stood quite still, looking, looking, with the heavy lids 
 dropped over her eyes ; she was attired for some festival of 
 the coming night ; jewels glanced at every point upon her ; 
 a gold-hued, tropical bird was fastened against her breast, in 
 its beak a flower of diamonds ; with that scorn upon her 
 mouth, with that gleam beneath her lids, with some gold- 
 hued tissue, light as mist, about her, she seemed to me to 
 burn with an insufferable brilliancy through the dusk as 
 a tiger's eyeballs may flame through the darkness of an 
 eastern night. 
 
 Suddenly Gladys felt, rather than heard or saw; felt 
 that she was watched, and was no more in solitude j she 
 started, turned her head, and sprang to her feet, erect. 
 
 For the moment she was speechless in surprise ; for the 
 
SLAIN. 527 
 
 moment this woman's face was strange to her, telling no 
 tale, bringing no history. 
 
 Avice Dare smiled where she stood. She had come un- 
 announced, unaccompanied; admitted doubtless, through 
 some bribe of her gold, or some awe that her rank carried 
 with it. 
 
 ' You know me ?' she said carelessly, * I know you. We 
 are both on the world's stage.' 
 
 Grladys gazed at her, still silent with amaze ; remembrance 
 of the sole history that she had heard tangled with this 
 woman's name returning slowly through the confusion of 
 her shattered thoughts. 
 
 1 1 know you thus much,' she answered, her clear pure 
 tones striking across the harsh voice of her questioner as 
 the note of a silver bell may strike across the dissonant 
 clangour of brazen cymbals. 'Thus much, that your 
 presence only is a dishonour. Why do you bring it 
 hither?' 
 
 Avice Dare laughed aloud, with caustic insolent ease, and 
 for answer sank on to a couch by the hearth, and leaned her 
 elbow on her knee, her chin upon her hand, in indolent 
 action of familiarity. 
 
 'Dishonour? are you a fool? I am what all women 
 would give their lives and souls to be, now. I came to 
 look at you, stand more to the light, so ! you are hand- 
 gome enough ! ' 
 
 Grladys stood erect upon her own hearth, the last glow of 
 the sunset falling upon her ; her hand rested on the marble 
 shelf, her eyes were dilated with a deepening amazement 
 half touched with loathing and with fear. 
 
 She deemed this woman mad. 
 
 ' Whatever be your errand, say it and depart/ she made 
 answer. 'Though you now were an empress, not less 
 should I hold your life infamy.' 
 
 Avice Dare laughed once more; with one hand she played 
 with the diamond in the mouth of the bird, on the other she 
 rested her chin, whilst her slumbrous, ruthless glances 
 searched out every trait of face and of form, of limb and of 
 feature, in the living loveliness that faced her. 
 
 ' My errand is to look at you,' she said curtly. ' Well, 
 you are beautiful, though not in my fashion. You are a 
 genius, they say. What use is that? I had only good 
 
PUCK. 
 
 looks, and see where I am ! Genius ! Pshaw ! what do 
 they care for that ? If you were an ill-favoured wench, 
 though you had all the genius of heaven and hell, what 
 would it serve you ? You might die in a gutter.' 
 
 The'voice of Grladys, withits proud serene utterance, rang 
 again across hers : 
 
 ' Do you come here to tell me this ? It was not worth 
 while. I know nothing of you, save that you have been one 
 who destroyed the lives and the souls of men ; I desire to 
 know no more. I only bid you go.' 
 
 Avice Dare laughed aloud ; her eyes glittered with a more 
 sinister and savage meaning under the weight of their blue- 
 veined languid lids. 
 
 ' Destroy the lives and souls of men know no more of me 
 than that ! Pshaw ! what is that more than to know me 
 a woman ? You speak fine and fair. I never did either. 
 I am a dullard at their hearts and their learning. But I am 
 no such fool but what I think, sometimes. I think what 
 fools and what beasts they are : maddened by]the red of our 
 lips and the white of our skins ; ready to sell themselves to 
 any devil, if we will only be theirs when they craze for us ; 
 flinging away all their gold, and their youth,'and their good 
 repute, that we may spurn them, or kick them, or kill them 
 as our choice goes. I do think, sometimes. I think what 
 fools and what beasts they are. There is your lover he 
 was mine once.' 
 
 The face of Q-ladys grew suddenly white as death ; she 
 pressed one hand to her heart unconsciously, crushing the 
 roses. 
 
 ' Will you go ? ' she said, calmly still, whilst her teeth 
 were tignt shut. ' Or you will force me to summon my 
 servants ? ' 
 
 AviceDare bent forward, the golden bird glowing brighter, 
 the diamond in its mouth shining with rosier light, the 
 laugh in her eyes growing broader and coarser. 
 
 ' Call whom you like. It is no news to the town, if it be 
 news to you. It was only when I left him left him because 
 he was well nigh a beggar, and had dared to taunt me for 
 having no talent it was only then that he gave his theatre 
 to you.' 
 
 1 His!' 
 
 She echoed the word unconsciously in the stupor of amaze 
 
SLAIN- 4?^ 
 
 with which this woman's words had stifled her. Some vagtu? 
 shape of some hideous truth, that loomed out from the gloom 
 of hidden years, was all she had vision left to see. 
 
 * His, surely his, what of that ? ' retorted the sullen, 
 scoffing, victorious voice, which in its moments of passion 
 lost all the finer and purer accent of tuition, and lapsed into 
 the rude and homely words of its birth-tongue ' H.U 
 theatre ! You knew that well enow. It have always been 
 his toy, to set up his fancy of the hour in. and make the 
 gabies of the world run and'stare to see a thing of wonder 
 in his mistress. He's had it now a many year ; and he've 
 never had one as good in it as me, though he chose to dare 
 and gibe me, and to say as I could only do the dancing. 
 You were a girl he found in the streets, I've heard ? 
 selling flowers and starving ? And you'd a pretty face, 
 and he took a liking to it ; and he made a lady of you f 
 It's his way ; and it pays too. Nought draws like a hand- 
 some face to the stage. You are an artist, they say, and 
 God knows what ; I never did nought but dress and dance 
 But the town was mad about me as you. So was he. 1 
 pillaged him pretty well ; but they do say as how you have 
 ruined him out- and-out. A playhouse is apretty toy enough ; 
 but it beggars men quick when we help too ! You live 
 very quiet, and proud, and innocent -like, they say. Well, 
 it seems to pay you high that way ; but you chose to talk 
 about " infamy " a second ago. Now I have been honest* 
 at least ; while you ' 
 
 Her laugh filled up the pause ; more brutally than by jest, 
 ir gibe. 
 
 G-ladys stood erect ; her hand clenched on the marble ; her 
 face blanched with a mute breathless disgust ; her lip? 
 dumb in her defence. An unutterable horror had seized 
 her ; in one instant all the truth, so long screened from her 
 with such tender hands, was laid bare to her sight as the > 
 fl ash of the lightning lays bare the abyss. 
 
 For the moment she was speechless ; her heart beat with- 
 a slow sickening effort that seemed to drain all strength from 
 her limbs and all life from her veins ; her eyes lost sight ; 
 her ears lost sound ! a deadly faintness held her in its bonds. 
 
 Avice Dare watched her with a sleepy voluptuous cruel 
 pleasure ; even as in the old time gone I had seen her watch 
 the lingering torture of a high-couraged, luminous ^yed 
 
53 PUCK. 
 
 falcon, caught in a trap in a green beechen bough, and 
 struggling passionately for freedom, all through the hours 
 of a burning thirsty summer day, till death released it. 
 
 ' Tour eyes look strange ; is this news to you ? ' she said 
 coldly. ' Ignorance is odd enough, surely. If it is not his 
 gold that you live on, whose is it? Does gold grow, like 
 your roses ? You were a beggar, without bread, without 
 home, without a hope in the world ; yet when you were 
 lifted up into riches and ease you never asked whence the 
 wealth came that did it ! Faugh ! what liar durst tell any 
 baby such a fable as that ? ' 
 
 The foul word roused her hearer like a dagger's thrust ; 
 the sickly faintness passed away ; the blood rushed to her 
 face in a bright passionate flood ; her eyes flashed fire ; her 
 whole form grew instinct once more with strength and gra- 
 cious pride. 
 
 ' Silence ! Silence ! ' she cried, with calm contemptuous 
 command. ' "What my life is, matters not to you. It can- 
 not come for judgment to your vile imaginings. Q-o, and 
 let me forget, if I can, that lips so foul as yours have 
 ever dared to breathe to me the name I honour only second 
 to my God's.' 
 
 For one moment the low brutal nature of her antagonist 
 was awed and cowed before the grandeur of that noble sim- 
 plicity, the purity of that perfect faith ; for one moment 
 she in whom womanhood was but a base and venal infamy, 
 saw by one fleeting vision how great by the divinity of love 
 can womanhood become. 
 
 With the next instant, the evil in her scofied to scorn 
 that one relenting impulse. 
 
 It has bsen written that there is not one man without 
 some gleam of tenderness and pity ; it is not written that 
 there is not one woman. 
 
 Her dusky, sleepy eyes flashed with a sudden stupid 
 wonder. 
 
 * Is it true ? ' she said curtly j * true, as some say of late, 
 that you be his wife ? ' 
 
 Gladys answered nothing, but her face spoke. \VTiere 
 she stood, with her hands crossed upon her breast, and her 
 eyes gazing against the sunset light, there was more elo- 
 quence than lies in words in that fearless dignity, in that 
 conscious gladness and glory of a life which knew itself 
 one with his for ever. 
 
SLAIN. 
 
 531 
 
 Avice Dare laughed aloud, gnawing with her ruby lip the 
 diamond which the bird bore. 
 
 ' So-ho ! you have done worse by him than ever I did ! ' 
 she cried, her hard exultant voice ringing through the soft 
 sweet silence of the chamber; *I have done it by another 
 it's true. But my dupe is a witless lad, too great a fool to 
 know what honour is. But yours ! Nay, hear me out. 1 
 have little to say, but I'll say that. I know him right well # 
 he's a fool in his gifts, and a devil in his pride. Like enow 
 you've drawn him on to give you even his name, out of 
 pity. But maybe you've never thought how you've killed 
 his pride in him for ever and aye. Do you know that the 
 women of his rank would no more come nigh you than nigh 
 me ? Do you know that his world will say he has married 
 his mistress, and that your sons will be taught, soon or 
 late, to blush for their mother ? Do you know that to live 
 with you he must give up his order ; and that, though you 
 may carry its title, you will never pierce into its ranks ? 
 I tell you the truth ; I've done the like myself. But I'm a 
 " vile woman," you know ; you you're an angel of inno- 
 cence ! WelJ, you may be; you've a fair face, I see; and 
 you hold yourself rarely and loyally. But look you here. 
 When, through you, he is the scorn of friends and the jest 
 of fools ; when for you he gives up his old world, and his 
 own race ; when by you he has children who can be taunted 
 by schoolmates with your name ; when for you he lives 
 beggared, restless, half obscure, shunning the eyes of the 
 world because of the stain the world thinks that it sees on 
 his scutcheon ; then he will find little choice, I fancy, be- 
 tween my "infamy" and your "innocence." You are his 
 wife, no doubt ; your eyes say so, though you stand dumb. 
 "Well, he will never tell it to you, because he is a gentleman 
 born ; but as sure as he lives, so sure will the day come 
 when in his soul he will curse you for the selfishness that 
 you cloaked in purity, for the cruelty that you masked in 
 love. I am a bad woman ; yes, but I was never so base to 
 him as you ! I only took his gold; I never stole his name ! ' 
 Then, without another word, she passed across the cham- 
 ber, the gleam of her golden tissues flashing on the gloom. 
 On the threshold she paused one moment, the brutal 
 smile gleaming on her full red lips. 
 
 ' We go to see you act to-night ; you will scarce be aX 
 your greatest, I fancy 1 ' 2 M ? 
 
53 2 PUCK. 
 
 And the door closed on her slow hard mockery of joyless 
 laughter. 
 
 Gladys stood erect on her own hearth. A mute, breath- 
 less, numbing horror stole over her face, and blasted the 
 light from her eyes, and drained the life from her veins. 
 She gave no cry, no sign ; she did not move ; her eyes still 
 looked out steadfast at the light; and yet, ah, God! to see 
 that horror in her face was to behold death seize a living, 
 happy, sinless creature in the first fair radiance of its 
 beauty, in the first sweet summer of its years ! 
 
 * * * # * * * 
 
 Eight of the evening chimed softly through the silence. 
 It was the season when the world claimed her. She had 
 flung herself on her knees beside her couch, and still 
 kneeled there with her head bowed upon her arms, though 
 more than an hour had drifted by since the words of her 
 destroyer had echoed through the stillness of that peaceful 
 place. At the sound of the chimes she started, and rose to 
 her feet ; she was white as marble ; her breath came in slow 
 agonized labour ; her eyes had a bewildered tearless terror 
 in them. 
 
 So brief a while before, a rapture so perfect had environed 
 her a passion so shadowless had entranced her ; and now 
 the whole force of a hideous truth was round her like a web 
 of fire. 
 
 She knew that in the world's sight she was a thing dis- 
 honoured, and that the reflex of such dishonour was the sole 
 dower that she had brought her husband. 
 
 'To have harmed him to have harmed him O, my 
 God ! ' That was the sole cry that was wrung from her. 
 Before her sight, like an abyss on which the lightning plays, 
 there spread all the depths of infamy on which she, un- 
 witting, had stood in joyous ignorance so long, and all the 
 undreamt-of wealth of pity, tenderness, and countless gifts 
 that she had owed to him. 
 
 All things were bared before her ; she saw herself the 
 creature of his alms, the beggar enriched by his mercy, the 
 debtor kept in blindness because vision would have shown 
 her all her debt. She knew now why all the women of his 
 race had held aloof from her ; she knew now why the assur- 
 ance of the world's honour had hesitated on his lips, and 
 his promise of it been, not confidence, but defiance. Even 
 in her ignorance even when she had deemed herself the 
 
SLAIN. 533 
 
 creatrix of her fame, and the gainer of her gold she had 
 paid ever in her soul, ' What shall I render thee, O princely- 
 giver ? ' deeming that the world could never hold fit pay- 
 ment to him. But now now she beheld the past in all 
 its nakedness; and now she knew likewise that her only 
 recompense to him was to take to him, in marriage, the im- 
 puted shame wherewith the world had laden her! With 
 all the sweeping cruelty of bitterest truth, the words of her 
 enemy had scourged her, till they cut the living flesh of her 
 bared heart. 
 
 Without a thought that was regret, without a dream that 
 was fear, without a vision of dishonour that could ever taint 
 her, of repentance that could ever assail her, she had lived 
 her radiant life until this hour. And now now she knew 
 that though she should live to the extremest years of age, 
 she could never undo the evil wherewith she had paid him 
 back his good. 
 
 Baser and more self-steeped natures would but have seen 
 that, come what would, her own place as his wife was be- 
 yond challenge and beyond change. But to her the know* 
 ledge that the wrong wrought to him could never be undone, 
 though ever so passionately he should crave his freedom 
 though ever so wearily he should lament his loss was an 
 agony greater than any woe or martyrdom she could herself 
 have borne. 
 
 * If only he were still free ! ' she cried aloud in her tor- 
 ture. 'If only I could be his servant his mistress his 
 dog so that the world should honour him still ! ' 
 
 Ifor to her, in the deep humility of her passionate grati- 
 tude, it seemed that there was nought in herself to recom- 
 pense him for his surrender to her of his honour and his 
 troth : to her, in the high, pure, stainless creeds of her old 
 grave poetic race, it seemed that to have lived upon his 
 gold, though all unwittingly, and to have been libelled by 
 his world, though all unrightfully, took from her for ever 
 all fitness to the place and to the name of his wife. 
 
 She was but a child, still; she was a poet, she had 
 the pride of lofty creeds, she had the self-abandonment of 
 a love that was absolute in its idolatry ; she saw no- 
 thing, felt nothing, heeded nothing, save that she was 
 shameful in the sight of the world, and that she had paid 
 a measureless debt only by acceptance of as measureless 
 a sacrifice. 
 
534 PUCK 
 
 One thought only folded her in its poisonous net, as the 
 fire folded Grlauce. The thought that she had dishonoured 
 him dishonoured him ! she, who would have given up her 
 young life to any torture or to any death, to spare to him 
 one moment's pang, to save to him one breath of scorn ! 
 
 It may be, that if in this hour his voice had fallen 
 on her ear, his kiss had touched her lips, this paroxysm 
 might have passed, this horror might have unloosed her. 
 But he was absent : there were none near to counsel or to 
 soothe ; she was alone with all this brutal truth that rose 
 before her, all this sense of irrevocable ruin brought on 
 him by her love. 
 
 And in such an hour she could not reason : she could 
 only suffer : suffer those tortures of hell which on earth 
 
 only come to the innocent. 
 
 ****** 
 
 The eighth hour sounded. 
 
 She started to her feet. She knew that the public waited 
 her. 
 
 ' O God ! I cannot go ! ' she murmured ' I cannot ! ' 
 
 Her head fell on her breast ; her white lips gasped for 
 air ; the crushed roses fell on the ground dead. 
 
 But that moment passed. She had the courage of the 
 soldier ; the endurance of the martyr. Such women have. 
 It was the fulfilling of his appointed place; it was the 
 execution of his appointed duty. 
 
 On a side-table near there stood a flask of rich amber- 
 tinted wine, that he had left there in the early day. By 
 sheer instinct she poured it forth, and took deep draughts 
 of it ; it was rarely that she ever touched wine ; its stimu- 
 lant revived the warmth in her veins, quickened the dull 
 uncertain beating of her heart, restored her for the hour 
 to strength and consciousness. 
 
 ' She shall not see me fail,' she muttered in her teeth. 
 ' She shall see what force his love and honour give.' 
 
 Then she rang and bade them tell her people she was 
 ready, and went, with a cairn step and all her old grace of 
 bearing, to the carriage that already waited at the accus- 
 tomed hour. I followed her ; she was not sensible of my 
 presence. 
 
 The horses flew like the wind; it was already late; I 
 looked up at her face in fear and trembling : it might have 
 
SLAIN. 535 
 
 been cut in marble, it was so still, so fixed, so colourless 
 Her eyes still held that look of breathless pain, and her 
 heart beat so loudly that I could hear the throb of its 
 heavy and irregular pulse above the sound of the horses' 
 noofs, and all the manifold and confused noises of the busy 
 streets. 
 
 The simple gold of the marriage ring was hidden under 
 a weight of other jewelled circles on her slender hand ; she 
 drew the jewels from it, and looked at it with a strange 
 passion, half glory and half horror. 
 
 It was the sign of her honour amidst women, it was 
 true ; but none the less did it seem to her the sign of his 
 bondage, of his sacrifice, of his degradation in the sight of 
 the world. 
 
 * They must not know : they must never know,' she mur- 
 mured : and she put back over it the gemmed rings that 
 screened it from others' eyes. 
 
 What she would do in the future she knew not ; she only 
 vaguely felt that never, by the derision of the world for 
 him, should the honour of the world be purchased for herself. 
 
 The carriage flew through the lighted town, in which the 
 glare of the gas crossed the lingering light of the glad 
 summer evening. 
 
 It paused before the familiar place where the world waited 
 for her. 
 
 ' If they see that I suifer, they will say evil of him/ she 
 muttered half aloud ; and the meditative calm came back 
 into her eyes ; her colourless mouth wore a proud resolve ; 
 her head was lifted with a haughty grace : as she passed the 
 
 ?eople in the passage to go onward to her dressing-chamber, 
 heard one stranger say to another : ' Is that fair-headed 
 woman the actress ? Heavens ! she might be an empress 
 by her look ! ' 
 
 It was later than the appointed hour ; the house called 
 for her, growing impatient ; there was not a moment to be 
 lost. She robed herself hastily, and swept on to the stage 
 with slow, graceful, negligent dignity, whilst the homage of 
 the crowded theatre rang out again and again in their accla- 
 mations of welcome. 
 
 She looked once at the house ; there, true to her words, 
 her enemy was throned ; seated laughing amidst her cour- 
 tiers, as Faustina sat beneath the purple canopy of the 
 
53 6 PUCK. 
 
 Antonines to watch the gladiatorial show upon the blood- 
 steeped sands below. 
 
 The amber tissues glowed around her, till she seemed 
 bathed in light, and the golden bird in her bosom held his 
 diamond in the light, as though in symbol of the sole wage 
 for which the wise amidst womanhood sell love. 
 
 Her eyes met those of Gladys ; they were full of the same 
 merciless exultation, of the same sleepy, brutal, and volup- 
 tuous pleasure. As the noble courser answers to the barbed 
 cruelty of the spur, so did the high courage of the creature 
 that she tortured answer to that tigress' glance. The blood 
 flushed to her face ; strength rang in her voice ; eloquence 
 and inspiration returned to her. She played with yet more 
 consummate art, with yet more dauntless genius, than the 
 world had ever beheld in her. For she played to justify 
 iiis love ; she played to save his honour ; she played, not 
 for the world, but him. 
 
 I felt a strange fear as I watched her : I knew not why. 
 
 It seemed to me that the force of her self-command was 
 too great, the fever of her strength too high, for the victory 
 not to cost her some fa/al price ere it should utterly be won. 
 
 And at those times when she was no more in the public 
 eight, but waited in the solitude of her chamber, my terror 
 grew : for that deathlike whiteness of her face never changed, 
 and I could see and hear the laboured beating of her heart, 
 as though the youth and vital gladness of its pulse were 
 crushed and suffocated beneath the weight of deadly know- 
 ledge. 
 
 Yet still she moved with a grace so exquisite, with a 
 power so matchless, before the assembled multitude ! She 
 held them entranced as even she had never held them. 
 When their cries rang to the roof, they were no empty or 
 careless homage, but the tumultuous fury of a people moved 
 to passionate and rapturous emotions. And where her 
 enemy sat, with the golden bird nestled in her bosom, and 
 the brutal triumph in her eyes, the eyes glanced with furtive 
 doubt, and the wicked lips curled with an uneasy smile 
 her prey escaped her ; her hate lost its sting. 
 
 The end drew near ; the strain was well-nigh over. 
 
 As she went once more before the sight of the people I 
 knew that the ordeal would soon be passed, the victory be 
 eoon accomplished, if if she had strength to endure to 
 the last. 
 
SLAIN. 537 
 
 She went: and the echoes of the public acclamations 
 greeting her again rolled in their muffled thunder on my ear 
 where I waited in the loneliness of her little chamber. 
 
 Suddenly the door unclosed : Beltran himself entered. 
 His return had been earlier than he had deemed possible. 
 
 He glanced round the empty place, and left it hurriedly: 
 I heard his step die away down the long corridors which 
 led to the public portion of the house. 
 
 I went forth from the chamber, and stole to that familiar 
 corner where I so often had tarried to watch the play of the 
 stage, and the crowds of the house. He, I saw, had passed 
 amidst the audience, and was standing in his sister's box 
 with his head bent to her. The theatre was hushed into 
 intense stillness ; some woman's sob, some man's deep- 
 drawn breath, alone quivered on the silence ; the listening 
 multitude was held in the trance of sympathy in which 
 genius can hold a world at will. 
 
 She was alone upon the stage ; it was that supreme 
 moment in the tragedy wherein the woman, whom she 
 portrayed, learned thatthe love which she had deemed divine 
 as heaven was but a thing of desolation and dishonour. 
 
 She stood erect, her hands crossed on her breast, the 
 white folds falling about her limbs ; the gleam of her hair 
 like light above her brow ; her eyes gazing out upon the up- 
 turned faces of the crowd beneath her feet with a mute blind 
 anguish which chilled them as though they looked on death. 
 
 Her voice thrilled through the house with a strange, 
 sweet, unutterable passion in it that brought tears to the 
 eyes of those who heard all meaning of the verse she spoke 
 was lost to them, they only felt the meaning of that music 
 of the voice, sad as the last sigh of a dying child, passionate 
 as the last look of love in eyes that never more will meet 
 on earth. 
 
 One alone in all that vast audience one alone, hep 
 destroyer knew what memories were in her thoughts, 
 what truth was in her utterance, as the words of the poet 
 left her lips : 
 
53 8 PUCK. 
 
 xhe only gift I ever had to give will be 
 Dishonour and corruption in men's sight. 
 The harlot's jeer, the hired jester's gibe, 
 And all the mockery and malison of tongues, 
 Will now hoot at him and drag down his name 
 Through the foul mire of their public ways. 
 And I I I, his slave, his love, his wife, 
 Shall take him moral death and endless infamy. 
 Ah, God!' 
 
 The breath paused on her lips ; the words were broken and 
 ceased ; her gaze had fallen upon him where he stood 
 amidst the women of his order in the centre of the lighted 
 house, and in that one moment of sudden recognition the 
 world about her died from her sight ; and all she saw were 
 those eyes, familiar and beloved, that smiled on her. 
 
 Her strength snapped like a bow overstrung. Her senses 
 sickened and grew dull. With a faint cry she stretched her 
 arms out to him, and reeled, and fell. 
 
 The curtain sank, and hid her from the public sight. 
 
 Through the tumult of the panic-stricken multitude there 
 ran the awe of one dread murmur ' death.' 
 
 In one moment he was beside her ; he scattered the 
 people like sheep ; he seized her in his arms, and bore her 
 through the open-doors of the supper-chamber where in 
 other years the boy-statesman had fallen dead upon the 
 hearth because a woman, vile of soul, had kissed him, and 
 betrayed him. 
 
 Some fled in terror to seek succour ; others huddled in 
 terror on the threshold ; about him his friends gathered, 
 helpless, horrified, aghast, afraid. 
 
 He never spoke ; but as he laid her down and threw 
 himself beside her, he tore aside the lace and linen off her 
 bosom, and sought to feel and listen for the beating of her 
 heart. 
 
 Its pulse was still. 
 
 He flung himself upon her ; he called her name with 
 every caress of words that passion holds ; he covered with 
 his kisses her lips, her bosom, her limbs : he crushed her 
 in his arms as though in his horror he could seize her and 
 withhold her from the brutal ravishing of death. 
 
 The warmth of that burning embrace, the fire of those 
 quivering lips, gave back for one fleeting moment a pang 
 of movement to the numbed and strengthless heart; gave 
 
VALETS. 539 
 
 back a flush and glow of life to the langour and the cold- 
 ness of the feeble blood. 
 
 Her eyes unclosed, and looked at him with that perfect 
 love which never again on earth would come to him. 
 
 * The world need never know it now,' she murmured. 
 ' Kiss me once more O Q-od ! love ! forgive ! ' 
 
 And with that prayer for pardon on her sinless lips, she 
 feebly turned, and wound her arms about his neck, and 
 drooped her head upon his breast, and sought his lips with 
 hers. 
 
 In that last kiss, her last breath fled. 
 
 He, who so long had known no grief, and smiled at everj 
 pang, grew like a madman in his agony ; he drove forth 
 from the chamber every human creature, and barred the 
 door upon them, and spent the watches of the night alone 
 alone, save for that beautiful dead thing that he had 
 loved ; alone save for the gold of the heavy hair, for the 
 calm of the closed eyes, for the caress of the lifeless lips, 
 which stirred no more beneath his own, for the loveliness 
 of the cold limbs and of the pulseless breast which thrilled 
 and flushed no more beneath his touch. 
 
 All through that night I saw the deadliest sight that the 
 world holds ; the despair of a strong man. 
 
 When, with the full light of day, his friends broke into 
 the room, in terror at the silence that had lasted there 
 from midnight unto noon, they found him stretched upon 
 the hearth ; his head upon her chest, his hands clenched in 
 her loose hair, the full sun falling on her fair dead face and 
 through the festal chamber of so many nights of mirth. 
 
 When they raised him they saw that her breast and hair 
 were stained and wet and red he had ruptured a blood- 
 vessel, the dark stream had gushed from his throat and 
 he. was senseless. 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 VALETE. 
 
 I HATE not heart in me to dictate more. 
 There are many things that I thought to chronicle. I 
 have many adventures left untold, many portraits left un- 
 
54 PUCK. 
 
 sketched, many memories ieft unrecorded. But I have not 
 the heart in me to tell m^re now; and besides, I am only 
 to fill a certain number jf pages. 
 
 Strange generation ! which has its literature measured 
 like its yards of coventiy ribbon, or its pounds of Cam- 
 bridge butter ! I suppose, however, that it is a good thing , 
 thnt there is some such ruthless restriction, for, Heaven ' 
 kno\vs, without it poets or autobiographers might spin on at : 
 the wheel of their vanity for ever : for the thread of Amour ' 
 Propre is a thread without an end, and tough as it is end- 
 less in vain do the world's sharp scissors of scorn snap 
 at it and cry, ' Hold, enough ! ' the thread is of stuff 
 indestructible, and it only thinks that the scissors are 
 jealous ! 
 
 Since that awful night I have never quitted Beltran. 
 
 His life was long in jeopardy ; but with time his strength 
 prevailed. Those who care not for life commonly have life 
 cling to them. 
 
 He never knew the truth of that early death. Men of 
 science agreed in their judgment that her heart had been 
 long feeble of action, and at length had suddenly given 
 way ; it is a disease not rare with those of vivid mind and 
 delicate frame. 
 
 There was no one nothing which could reveal to him 
 the secret of Avice Dare. For I could not bear witness 
 against her. 
 
 G-ladys' grave was made in the old green country of his 
 birth, amidst the sepulchres of his ancient and stately race. 
 This was all the honour left for him to yield to her. By that 
 grave the world learnt that she had been his wife during 
 that one, sweet, short summer-time. 
 
 One day I saw Dudley Moore stand by that simple 
 tomb, almost hidden in the white blossom of roses, and 
 his hard, cynical, keen eyes were dim with tears, the 
 first that had ever dimmed them since they had seen the 
 light. 
 
 Prom that night the theatre was closed. It can never 
 more bring ruin to any, or echo with the laughter of a 
 crowd. It has been razed to the ground, and on its site 
 stands the poor-house. 
 
 Beltran does not heed that I am near. But I can watch 
 him, follow him. guard him in his sleep it is enough. 
 
VALBTB. 541 
 
 I ask no more. I am only a dog I dare to love, I dare 
 not even seek to be loved in answer. 
 
 Ah! when your poets have painted the fidelity of woman, 
 they have found its likeness on earth, perhaps, in their dog. 
 
 He leads the old life in the world. Why not ? If all 
 men in whose hearts lives a dull, abiding grief, whose throbs 
 death and death only ever will still, deserted for desert or 
 ocean your world of fame and of fashion, how strangely that 
 world would look ! How much eloquence would be dumb 
 in your senatorial chambers ; how many a smile would be 
 missing from your ball-rooms and hunting-fields ; how many 
 a frank laugh would die off for ever from your ear ; how 
 many a well-known face would vanish from your clubsv 
 from your park, from your dinner-tables, from your race- 
 stands ! 
 
 And how seldom it would be those that you had pitied 
 who would go ! how often would the vacant place be that 
 place where so many seasons through you had seen and 
 had envied, the gayest, the coldest, the most light-hearted, 
 the most cynical amongst you ! 
 
 Ah ! let Society be thankful that men in their bitterness 
 do not now fly as of old to monastery or to hermitage ; for, 
 did they do so, Society would send forth her gilded cards 
 to the wilderness. 
 
 He lives the old life in the old world still. He could not 
 dare to trust himself to solitude. Solitude ! sweet to the 
 youth who first suffers ; to the poet who finds in his thorn- 
 crown his aureole ; to the lover who is half-enamoured and 
 half-proud of the pangs that devour him ; sweet to those. 
 But to the man of the world, to the man past his youth, 
 to the man whose last hope is dead with his last joy and 
 last passion solitude would be but the gate of the mad- 
 house. 
 
 He is in the world, of the world ; the great fortunes 
 that have come to him bring the world about his feet. The 
 man who is nobly born, and lately enriched, can have of the 
 world what he will except happiness. 
 
 1 He is a man without a heart 1 ' I heard a mothet 
 murmur, whose daughter he would not woo. 'A man 
 without a heart, and he has never loved. There was a 
 beautiful young actress his wife, we learned later, whom 
 he had driven into public life to maintain himself in the 
 
54 2 PUCK. 
 
 days of his ruin and she died on his own stage from h?g 
 cruelty ; and look ! how utterly he has forgotten her now ! ' 
 
 Forgotten her ! Heartless ! 
 
 "When they they who are many as the woes and sins of 
 the earth are many whom he seeks out with unceasing 
 patience, in their manifold sufferings, their innumerable 
 needs, look up in his weary passionless eyes, and bless him 
 for aid, for bread, for existence itself, given to them by a 
 mercy which the world never dreams of they know 
 whether he is heartless. 
 
 "When, in the stillness and darkness of dawn, I watch him 
 pace his chamber, sleepless and haunted by a ghost that 
 will not leave him with the rising of the sun that day, or 
 any day, in all the years to come when I see him fling 
 himself upon his bed as the morning light streams in, and 
 see him writhe in his agony, whilst the great tearless sobs 
 shake his frame in the torture of a memory that can never 
 die while he has life I know how he has forgotten. 
 
 Well it boots little to dwell on this. 
 
 A ' vie manquee I ' says the world, when it speaks of him, 
 re-calling the old fair promise of the talents of his youth. 
 
 Is there any threnody over a death half so unutterably 
 sud as that one jest over a life ? 
 
 ' Manquee ! ' the world has no mercy on a hand that has 
 thrown the die and has lost ; no tolerance for the player 
 who, holding fine cards, will not play them by the rules of 
 the game. * Manquee ! ' the world says with a polite sneer, 
 of the lives in which it beholds no blazoned achievement, no 
 public success. 
 
 And yet, if it were keener of sight, it might see that those 
 lives, not seldom, may seem to have missed of their mark, 
 because their aim was high over the heads of the multitude ; 
 or because the arrow was sped by too eager a hand in too 
 rash a youth, and the bow lies unstrung in that hand when 
 matured. It might see that those lives which look so lost, 
 so purposeless, so barren of attainment, so devoid of object 
 or fruition, have sometimes nobler deeds in them and purer 
 sacrifice than lies in the home-range of its own narrowed 
 vision. ' Manquee ! ' do not cast that stone idly : how shall 
 you tell, as you look on the course of a life that seems to 
 you a failure, because you do not hear its ' lo triumphs * on 
 the lips of a crowd, what sweet dead dreams, what noble 
 
VALETE. 
 
 rain desires, what weariness of futile longing, what con- 
 scious waste of vanished years nay, what silent arts of 
 pure nobility, what secret treasures of unfathoined love 
 may lie within that which seems in your sight even as a 
 waste land untilled, as a fire burnt out, as a harp without 
 chords, as a bird without song ? 
 
 There are but three more things that I will tell you 
 now. 
 
 In the spring-time of this year I was in Paris. It- 
 was a beautiful brilliant night in the height of April. The 
 chestnuts were full of bloom ; the air was full of fragrance ; 
 there were a million stars above and a million lamps below; 
 lilacs and hyacinths filled the balconies and casements; 
 there was the sound of music and of laughter everywhere. 
 
 I was curled on a satin cushion in one of the supper- 
 chambers of a great gilded house, where all that is lavish, 
 and brilliant, and desolate in the city is wont to come. 
 My friends had come thither after the opera ; one of their 
 guests was a great actress, with a wondrous dark beauty, 
 and the luminous eyes of the East a woman of many 
 passions, of many follies, of many talents, of many caprices, 
 yet of many virtues ; a woman whom they called always 
 Mariquita. 
 
 After a while, the supper ended, she moved a little away 
 from the table and went out on to the balcony and sat there, 
 leaning her arm on the gilded rail, and glancing at the 
 crowds that stirred beneath the boughs below. One man 
 followed her and sat there too, away from the laughter and 
 glitter within, in the cool of the night, amongst the white 
 and purple hyacinths that filled the place, and with the 
 quiet stars above. 
 
 It was very still there ; it' was late in the night, and the 
 street beneath was scarcely seen for the leaves of the limes 
 and the hyacinth blossoms. 
 
 ' You do not love me, Denzil,' she said suddenly, when 
 she leaned in the shadow, with her diamonds gleaming as 
 they caught the rays of the moon. 
 
 He answered her simply, 'No.' 
 
 She looked at him with a curious, steadfast, dreaming 
 icok ; whether she loved him or not I never knew. They 
 at love together. 
 
544 PUCK. 
 
 You are frank ! ' she said at last, with a smile ; ' and yon 
 
 e very singular! * 
 
 No doubt. But you may as well know it years ago I 
 loved one woman so well that I never shall love another.' 
 
 ' Ah, how like a man ! you can never love ; and yet you 
 
 ave a thousand passions ! ' 
 
 He flung his cigarette into the street. 
 
 ' What has that to do with it ? Nothing! ' 
 
 She watched him curiously for a while. 
 
 'Where is she ? ' she asked at length. 
 
 ' God knows ! If I knew, do you think I should be here ? * 
 
 The dark magnificence of her face paled under all the 
 scorn of the answer uttered. She was used to have the 
 world at her feet, and the passions of men at her will. 
 
 She was quiet long ; then she spoke : 
 
 1 Listen, Denzil, you write stories that the world read ; 
 I will tell you one that the world never knew.' 
 
 He listened listlessly, leaning against the balcony, wearily 
 watching the ebb and the flow of the street crowd beneath, 
 under the linden boughs. From within there echoed the 
 noisy laughter and the banal wit ; out here the stars were 
 shining. 
 
 She told him the story ; it was one that I had known. 
 He heard indifferently, striking alight another cigar, with 
 his handsome dark head bent down in the moonlight. 
 
 When she had told it, she drew a little amulet-case from 
 her bosom an old worn leathern thing, though hung on to 
 a necklace of onyx the same case into which I had once 
 seen placed the fragment of the paper that she had found in 
 the death-chamber in the Quarter of the Poor. 
 
 * Here is the letter,' she said, taking out of it a folded 
 sheet torn. ' I never showed it to any before. I do not 
 know why I do to you. Only see how women love.' 
 
 He took it indifferently still ; but as he saw the writing, 
 he started and grew deadly pale ; he read it by the white 
 clear moonlight, read it to the end. And as she watched 
 him she trembled, and was afraid, she, the famous and fear- 
 less and reckless woman, was afraid, with a terrible fear of 
 this memory that she unwittingly had awakened. 
 
 She seized his arm in terror. 
 
 ' O G-od ! what have I done? ' 
 
 He looked at her with a look that she will never till her 
 
VALETE. 545 
 
 dying day forget, though she live to the extremest yeans of 
 fcge. 
 
 ' Done, done P Nothing that I know, *>nly it was I who 
 loved her ! ' 
 
 The laughter echoed from the supper-room, the sounds of 
 music floated on the air ; through the open window the 
 lights of the chamber glowed ; beneath the leaves the crowds 
 were passing to and fro ; from within the gay outcries of 
 the women of pleasure challenged his return : and he stood 
 there in the moonlight with the letter in his hands, only 
 hearing a voice for ever silent, only seeing a face for ever 
 gone. 
 
 And thus the dying words of Gertrude D'Eyncourt came 
 to him at the last. 
 
 A little while latter, more in the summer-time, leaving 
 Paris itself, we tarried a brief while in one of those charming 
 places in its precincts that lie hidden in those woods which 
 still seem to echo with the careless laughter, and breaths 
 out the amber perfume, and murmur with the mocking love, 
 of the dead B-egue Galant. 
 
 I was left entirely to myself, and wandered as I chose 
 about the woods. One day I strolled afar ; and there 
 seemed to come to me a strange familiar feeling from the 
 low level meadows, the lines of poplar-trees, the fields of 
 colza, and the grassy orchards which met my sight. Gazing 
 awhile, and awhile drawing in that sweet scent of red rich 
 earth, of cool fresh air, of the breath of lowing cattle, and 
 of the hearts of unfolding spring-flowers, I knew it then. 
 It was the country of the Silver Stag. 
 
 Beside me there was a low wall overtopped with prickly 
 golden furze ; beyond this stretched an orchard, its grass 
 all unshaven and daisy filled, its old tree-stems gray with 
 the fairy-like leafage of lichens. 
 
 I crossed the orchard, knowing it well ; here often I had 
 rolled the wind-fall apples to and fro in play, and here had I 
 often seen the homestead doves sway drowsily in the mov- 
 ing boughs. 
 
 It was evening now ; the shadows were growing long ; it 
 was all still ; there was only the singing of the birds ; fop 
 wliQAO amongst you believes that birds do not sing after the 
 
 2 K 
 
546 PUCR. 
 
 sunset-hour can sureiy have walked but little in the fields 
 and woods. 
 
 I passed on to the garden full of lilac and of chestnut 
 bloom ; treading the ground reverently as the soil of a place 
 that had given me shelter. 
 
 We are ever mindful of succour bestowed, of hospitality 
 received ; where we have eaten bread there do we ever go 
 with remembrance and thanksgiving ; we have not learned 
 your art of oblivion, your science of neglect ; we cannot turn 
 upon the hand that once tended us food ; we cannot make a 
 mockery of the kindliness that once befriended us : we 
 cannot emulate you there we are but dogs. 
 
 Outside the porch, it a table of rough-hewn wood, under 
 the old-remembered sign of the Silver Stag that swung above 
 amidst the foliage, there sat a little group of student lads 
 lads with flushed happy faces and noisy ringing voices, who 
 were breaking white wheaten rolls and jostling their glasses 
 together. 
 
 They were served bv a stout strong woman, with a scarlet 
 kerchief bound about ner black brows. Within the chambers 
 there was noise, laughter, strange faces, the glimmer of can- 
 dles, the sound of chinking glasses. 
 
 In the doorway there stood a burly and bearded man, in 
 a gray blouse, and with a pipe in his mouth. At his feet a 
 yellow terrier was worrying, and worried by, an angry cat. 
 
 In the wide vine-hung casement of what had once been 
 the painting-room of the Faustiue, the lattices were pushed 
 back, and there a handsome dissolute girl with a velvet-tas- 
 selled cap on her head, and great ear-rings in her ears, and 
 a square-cut scarlet bodice showing her bare chest. She was 
 framed in the leaves and coils of the vine ; and was calling 
 out, and laughing back, to the youths at the table in the 
 garden, 
 
 At a glance I Knew that there were no more present in this 
 place the brave forbiddance of vice, the sweet clear ways of 
 household service, the cheerful grace, the perfect purity, 
 the honest kindliness to man and beast, the order and the 
 quietude that had reigned beneath this roof when Madelon 
 >nd her mother had been sheltered by it. 
 
 As I gazed out from one of the leafy grassy ways that 
 traversed the garden by so many paths, there came a youth 
 who had been smoking in a little arbour formed by lilacf 
 
VALETE. 547 
 
 that arched above a rough-hewn bench. He was grave of 
 face, and clad in velvet ; I recognised him as an artist who 
 had used to frequent this place until in the y?ar of the 
 Faustine he had gone to Rome. 
 
 ' You are landlord here- -now ? ' he asked. 
 
 The man kicked the cat off the terrier, and assented. 
 
 ' Where is Madelon Bris ? ' 
 
 The man kicked the terrier in its turn off the threshold 
 ere he answered : ' Madelon Bris P She is in a religious 
 order/ 
 
 ' And the old mother ? ' 
 
 ' Manon Bris ? She is dead.' 
 
 * It was on the death of the mother that Madelon became 
 & nun ? ' 
 
 ' Eh P Yes : I think so. There was a day when Madelon 
 went to Paris ; and was taken ill there ; and the old mother 
 did not hear what had become of her for weeks, for months. 
 People were kind, but old Manon fretted herself into her 
 grave. When Madelon recovered of her fever and left the 
 hospital, she found her mother dead. It was a shock, I 
 suppose. Anyway she took the vows. She is a Sister of 
 Charity. Her hair was quite white when she came home ; 
 she looked quite old ; I suppose it was the fever/ 
 
 He paused, and blew a cloud of smoke, and killed a night- 
 moth fluttering near. 
 
 ' She is living still ? ' the artist asked. 
 
 1 Ay for what I kaow. When the cholera raged last 
 year she worked very hard, I heard, and, they do say, saved 
 many : as if by a saint's miracle/ 
 
 ' She was a saint herself/ the painter murmured. Have 
 you the living things she cared for ? the birds, the dog ? * 
 
 ' The birds are here ; at least the fowls are ; all but the 
 doves. I wrung their necks because they made such a noise. 
 They were very good in a pasty/ 
 
 ' And the dog Euss ? ' 
 
 The man blew smoke into tlio si? with a sullen shame 
 upon his bloated face. 
 
 ' He was here when I came. She was trying for leave for 
 him to go to the convent. But he was always howling for 
 her, and growling at us. So I got a fowling-piece, and shot 
 him. He was very old, you know, and savage. It was 
 only safe to put him out of the way/ 
 
54$ PUCK. 
 
 The artist turned from the porch without a word, and 
 wont down the path, and out by the little gate : I stole 
 away, sick at heart, back through the wood and the 
 meadows. 
 
 From the broad, vine-hung chamber where the Faustine 
 had glowed into life, the laugh of the wanton, where she 
 leaned from the casement, rang out on the stillness of 
 evening ; and the drunken, gay shouts of the students 
 echoed over the leafy, silent, shadowy garden places, where, 
 in his glad and gracious youth, the lips of Carlos had 
 murmured of eternal love, and with the golden drowsy 
 noons, and with the dewy summer nights, his dreams and 
 hers had in belief beheld imperishable passion and immortal 
 fame. 
 
 The other day I saw in your London & grand equipage 
 sweep by me. 
 
 Within it, shrouded in ermine, was a woman whose broad, 
 slumbering, brown eyes gazed with a hard, exultant scorn 
 at the sun, as though to say, ' Shine you on any more 
 victorious thing than I ? ' 
 
 Beside her was a boy, with her look, though not with her 
 beauty ; who, holding in his hand a jewelled whip with 
 a long white lash, curled the lash round the naked shoulders 
 of a little tattered child of his own years, and laughed as 
 his carriage rolled on, and the street-waifs shrill moan 
 struck the air. 
 
 His mother laughed also ; proud as the tigress when her 
 whelp first tastes blood. 
 
 The boy was the heir to the Marquisate of Isla. 
 
 So great races decay, more foully than by poverty ; and 
 when the Mob curses the Noble for some act of greed, of 
 tyranny, or of vileness, ten to one that it curses its own 
 kith and kin, which, by base stratagem or illicit love, has 
 foisted the cur's heart into the lion's hide. 
 
 Truly is Avice Dare amidst those of whom the Teacher 
 of Galilee said, ' Verily they have their reward.' 
 
 Her young lord, dull, spiritless, cowed before her look as 
 a slave before the scourge, drinks deep to find the death 
 that his stubborn strength keeps at bay ; and meanwhile 
 grants all she wills to one whom he has learned to fear with 
 
VALETE. 549 
 
 the keenest emotion of which his feeble nature is capable. 
 She has incalculable wealth, immeasurable luxury, possessions 
 at which even her avarice halts satisfied ; and all the power 
 of a great race against her cannot shake her or her eon frou? 
 their stronghold. 
 
 Society holds aloof from her indeed ; but with her riches 
 she can summon crowds of courtiers, flatterers, and parasites. 
 Moreover she has become devout ; has built a church, en- 
 dowed a hospital, confessed a converion. Cant, naked, is 
 honoured throughout England. Cant, clothed in gold, is a 
 king never in England resisted. 
 
 A- bishop has not dined with her yet, but one will do 
 doubtless ere long, and then it will be possible enough 
 that society will follow the apron, and consign to oblivion 
 her antecedents. 
 
 From the hour that she sold me in the little street of the 
 town in the Peak, she has been a woman with but one 
 talent ; but that one talent is worth all the powers and 
 graces of genius ; it is the talent to use the age in which 
 she lives. 
 
 Q-enius is oftentimes but a poor fool, who, clinging to a 
 thing that belongs to no age, Truth, does oftentimes live on 
 a pittance and die in a hospital : but whosoever has the gift 
 to measure aright their generation is invincible living, they 
 shall enjoy all the vices undetected; and dead, on their 
 tombstones they shall possess all the virtues. 
 
 It is thus well with her : meanwhile 
 
 At the time when the warmth of the summer just touches 
 on the ruddier, fresher weather of autumn, in the time when 
 the flowers of summer are still blooming everywhere, but 
 autumn is felt in the brimming fulness of waters and the 
 cool fragrance of winds, I found myself this year in my 
 home-country of the Peak ; in the land where the altars of 
 the Druid still stand on the moorland ; where the murex- 
 stone of the Roman still lies on the hill-side ; where the 
 pine and the fern fill the hollows and dells : where the 
 woods are ever damp with the dews of earth-born waters ; 
 and where the old tongue of Shakespeare's England still ia 
 spoken in old-world houses and in brake-hidden huts. 
 
 Fate took me for a brief sojourn at a great mansion in 
 that district ; and one day as I roamed among the lilac 
 hecthfir and the great plumed bracken. Btraying into a shady 
 
550 PUCK. 
 
 lonely dale, filled with stone-pines and fed by running 
 brooks, with a shock of memory I felt that I was once more 
 near my birth-place. 
 
 Once more I found my way through the old dim forest 
 * place, where the timid leverets fled at my coming, and the 
 pretty stockdoves were dabbling their rosy feet in the 
 freshets, and the water was bubbling, and dripping, and 
 murmuring everywhere, under ground and above ground, 
 and the great horned cattle were lying asleep hidden amongst 
 the huge stems of the burdock. It was all so still ; so 
 quiet : so strangely familiar ; the very kine, as they lifted 
 their sleepy heads from amidst the broad green leaves, 
 looked old remembered friends. 
 
 "With little trouble I found my way for dogs never for- 
 get to the little cottage, standing all alone, clothed in its 
 Tose-thorn ; with the dusky woods shelving above it, and 
 farther yet on high the slope of the wide moor flashed with 
 the delicate crimsons and the deep lilacs of the heather that 
 blent in that one soft melodious hue for which there is no 
 name a hue that glows in northern skies at sunset, as it 
 glows on northern lands what time the heather blooms. 
 
 My heart was beating fast ; memories thronged on me ; 
 old affection stirred : and yet beyond all there was a 
 curious dull depression on me, a ^nse of irrevocable loss. 
 
 I felt that Ben was gone. 
 
 The sensitive nerves of our organisations feel the coming 
 of woe as plants feel the coming of storms : when your 
 hound moans on the hill-side, be sure that the dangers of 
 the hills are near ; \vhen your mastiff, howling, prays of you 
 not to venture forth into the night, take warning that the 
 snow will drive all wanderers to their grave ; or that the 
 swollen waters will sweep down the bridge and all who 
 cross on it ; or that above the wold the thunder-clouds are 
 gathering ; or that behind the hedge the ejected peasant 
 hides with pike and musket ; or that in some shape or 
 another Death will walk abroad that night. 
 
 In the early years of your world your race, dwelling in 
 forests and on plains, alone with the earth and the sky, was 
 swift to read portents and warnings ; and to this day the 
 genius of the Savage, in the divination of signs and the 
 smell of the tempest or of the foe afar off, ever laughs to 
 thame aud to scorn the baffled brain, and the muffled ear, 
 
VALETB. 551 
 
 and the purblind eye, of the civilised man. For, mustering 
 in cities ; ceasing to watch the things of the earth and the 
 air ; keen of pursuit for gold alone ; environed in a web of 
 artificial needs ; burnishing the learning of the mind, but 
 neglecting the instincts of the emotions ; you have lost this 
 faculty of the prevision of woe, as you have lost the nomad's 
 power to trace the step that has yet left no prints upon a 
 sun-baked path, and to scent that the air is pregnant with 
 the storm though the heavens smile with sunniest light. 
 You have lost it, but we retain it greatly to our hurt. 
 
 With sickness of heart I drew near the little cottage. 
 The rose-thorn was all red and white with its summer 
 interchange of rosy berries and white star-shaped blossoms. 
 The brown brook ran underneath the grasses, glimmering 
 golden in the sun. The old gray lichen, and the green wet 
 mosses, clothed the stone wall, on whose topmost coping 
 grew tufts of harebells glistening with dew. 
 
 The wide door stood open to the light, and amongst the 
 great yew boughs above the roof the little birds were mov- 
 ing, and were murmuring, with tireless wing and ceaseless 
 song. 
 
 Kothing was changed, and yet I knew that one change 
 was there. 
 
 On the threshold stood three figures: two were girls 
 ruddy, well shapen, poorly clad, with sunburnt arm, and 
 with bare feet. The third was the old, gray, bent, tough 
 figure of the pedlar Dick o' tha Wynnats ; before him, on 
 fche stone sill of the door, was his pack thrown open : and 
 once more I heard his thin cracked wicked voice that was 
 persuasive in the ears of maidens and of women as the 
 subtlest and sweetest music, because it ever brought flattery 
 to their vanities and temptation to their senses. 
 
 1 Now, my dearies,' he was crying to them in hie wheed- 
 ling, coaxing tones, spreading out before their round won- 
 dering eyes his ribbons, and his laces, and his jewelry of 
 brass. ' Look'ee here ! These arena goods to threap. * 
 Tell busk ye'sells rarely wi' 'em, my wenches. And wi' 
 wake time sae close tew 'ee, ye mun want a new bit of 
 finery to dight ye up a bit. Eh ? yer daddie'll niver say 
 naught; for sure ye re kadedfas niver lasses was. Dew 
 
 * To argue about. 
 
 + Caressed, spoiled : A pet-lamb in the Peak is called a 
 
55 PUCK. 
 
 iver he gar* ye dew whatna ye dinna like? I wouldna 
 fang a far-thin' o* yew gif I werena weel sure as yer old 
 feyther be allus sae glad to pleasure ye. Ye're pratty as 
 pratty can be leastways when ye're prankt up wi' a bit o 1 
 dress ; a' yew wimmen want dress ; a'out it ye're ony like 
 poor speckit hens that hanna a top -knot, an' are ony good 
 for nestin' and broodin' out o' sight. Look'ee, my dearies, 
 I hae bitten on tha very things to grace ye; jist these rib- 
 bons for yer bonny black hair, and this length o' lace for 
 yer bonny white brists, an' these sparklin' stones to glower 
 f yer ears ' 
 
 But I turned away, sick at heart, and sure that my old 
 lost master no more wfis there ; and the rest of the pedlar's 
 speech died away out of my hearing as I slunk back to 
 return through the wood. 
 
 I left Lim there, in the sun on the threshold, holding up 
 his glittering trash before the sight of the two country 
 wenches ; and coaxing them to buy and to wear, with all 
 the old wheedling wicked wiles wherewith he had beguiled 
 Avice Dare. 
 
 Of a surety the world that stretched outside the woods 
 and the hills of the Peak had no better caterer for the food 
 of its sins than wily Dick o' tha Wynnats, who bought the 
 frail female souls with a glass bead and a penny ribbon that 
 fee might sell them again for his own profit of a silver piece 
 and a quart of ale ! 
 
 Love ! what offence hast thou done to mankind, that 
 on thy mighty name should be charged the guilt and the 
 vice that are daughters of Avarice, of Ignorance, and of 
 Vanity ? 
 
 1 left them, not bearing well to see that once beloved 
 little lowly home in the occupance of strangers, and found 
 my road through the breadth of the pine-wood to that far- 
 ther verge of it where the forge of Ambrose the blacksmith 
 had stood. 
 
 On my way I passed the limestone quarry where Ben 
 had been wont to labour, and where I had spent so many a 
 summer-day. 
 
 I suppose they had ceased to work it ; for already down 
 its white jagged sides the grass and the bluebells were 
 growing ; already in its crevices the ferns were waving, and 
 * Compel. 
 
VALETB. 553 
 
 in its dells the sheep were grazing ; the joyous deep-toned 
 voice of Trust no more rang from hill to hill and called the 
 straying lambs to fold ; and where the blows of the pickaxe, 
 and the laughter of the men, and the roll of the heavy 
 wagon-wheels, once had roused the echoes of the woods as&l 
 rocks, all now was silent. 
 
 I left it, quiet there, with only now and then th low pa 
 thetic bleating of a mother-sheep waking the stillness aid 
 about: and wandered on through the maze of the piss 
 stems, and over the soft carpet of the mosses and mountain- 
 grasses sown with shining millions of fir-needles, and grow- 
 ing ruddy now and then with the tiny fruit of the wild 
 strawberry. 
 
 It was a long way, but I found it. The forge was stand* 
 ing there, with the red light of its fire blinking through its 
 square ivy-hung window ; and over its half-door the smith 
 Ambrose was leaning. It was high noon, and he was at 
 rest awhile. The little garden before his house was very 
 trim and green with its high walls of box, and its thickets 
 of white and red currant, and its one great walnut-tree that 
 rose in a stately pyramid of leaf. 
 
 On the wooden bench under that tree, on which the men 
 about were wont to rest whilst he within shod their horses, 
 there was a tattered dark-eyed gipsy sitting now. I knew 
 him again ; they had used to call him * Daffe o'Sough Tor/* 
 and he had been a favourite with Ben, as with the other 
 people of the moorside, for his docility, his vivacity, and his 
 droll waggish ways. He was accustomed to wauder over 
 the whole north country far and wide ; but the place where 
 be loved best to dwell was in a wattle hut made in a caver- 
 nous cliff of the Sough Tor, a large mass of rock overhang, 
 ing a deep small sheet of shadowy reedy water in this wood. 
 
 Ambrose had just supplied him with a draught of milk, 
 and ft half-loaf of rye bread, and was leaning over the door- 
 way in converse with him. I had no dread of poor Daffe, 
 for he was, unlike most of his kind, very honest, and given. 
 to harming no living thing ; and I went near, and hid my- 
 self under a burdock leaf, and hearkened to their speech. 
 
 For awhile it brought me no knowledge : it was speech 
 of oxen and of horses, of harvest and of fruit, of folk-lore 
 md of the northward wanderings of Daffe in the past year; 
 * The fool of the cliff by the pond. 
 
554 PUCK. 
 
 but I listened on seeking news of him, feeling the sure 
 presage that there would be but one kind of tidings that 
 ever would reach me of my best beloved and earliest 
 friend. 
 
 And it came at last, the story which all things had 
 Beemed to tell me, from the soundless wood, and the grass- 
 grown quarry, and the threshold on which the strangers 
 stood. 
 
 ' Ye hae niver took na wife, Ambrose P * said the wanderer 
 
 Daffe. 
 
 1 Na, na,' answered Ambrose simply. 
 
 ' Sure one 'ud ony frush ye/ asserted Daffe thoughtfully. 
 ' Te ha gotten a so tidy an weel reddup ; an* gif she were 
 ft slattern, most o' 'em mawthers is.' 
 
 ' There be tidy wenches for as wants 'em,' said the smith ; 
 1 but for mysell sister Euth, as wed wi' Isaac Cliffe o' 
 Friggat Mill, and her wee uns, be fam'ly enow for me.' 
 
 * Theer wur time as 'e thoct otherwise P ' 
 
 ' Theer be times as all o' us dew e'en yerself, Daffe, tho* 
 ye're so gi'en ta rovin' an reivin' ' 
 
 1 Ay,' assented Daffe, and he was silent a moment, when 
 he sat under the walnut-tree, with a grave dreamy light in 
 his wandering eyes. 
 
 'Ben Dare, he be dead? 'he asked suddenly. 'They 
 telled me so by Darron's side.' * 
 
 Ambrose bent his head silently. 
 
 Whenwur't?' 
 
 1 Last simmar-tinie, i' th* aftermath.' 
 
 * It were a ston' as killed him ? ' 
 
 ' Ay,' said Ambrose, softly shading his eyes with his hand 
 from the sun that streamed through the aisles of pine. 
 
 'How wur't?' 
 
 ' They was a blastin'. He'd allus thoct as he'd dee thai 
 way, ye know. They pit mair pooder i* quarry than c0n> 
 mon ; and the ston' it split, and roared, and crackit, wi* a 
 noise like tha crack o' doom. And one bit on 't, big as ox, 
 were shot i' th' air, an' fell, unlookit for liks, and dang him 
 tew the groun', and crushit him, a lyin' richt athwart his 
 brist.' 
 
 * An* they couldna stir it ? ' 
 
 ' They couldna. I heerd tha other min screech richt tew 
 *The river Derwent. 
 
VALETS. 555 
 
 here, an* I knew what it wur, tha shrill screech comin' jist 
 i' top o* tha blastin' roar ; an' I ran, an* ran na gaze- 
 hound fleeter. An' we couldna raise it me an' Tarn, an' 
 .Job, an' Gideon o' the Mere, an' Moses Legh o' Wissen 
 Edge, a* strong min and 'i our prime. "We couldna stir it, 
 till Moses o' Wissen Edge he thoct o' pittin' fir-poles 
 underneath poles as was sharp an* slim i' thur ends, an* 
 stout an' hard further down. Whin tha poles was weel 
 thrust under we heaved, an* heaved, an* heaved, and got it 
 slanted o' one side, and drawed him out ; an' thin it were 
 too late, too late ! A' tha brist was crushit in frushed 
 flesh and bone together. He jist muttered i' his throat, 
 " Tha little lass, tha little lass ! " and then he turned him 
 on his side, and hid his face upo' the sod. When we raised 
 him he wur dead.' 
 
 The voice of Ambrose sank very low ; and where he 
 leaned over his smithy door the tears fell slowly down his 
 sun-bronzed cheeks. 
 
 ' Alack a day ! ' sighed Daffe softly. ' Sure a better un 
 niver drew breath i' the varsal world ! ' 
 
 ' An' that's trew, ; Ambrose made answer, his vcice hushed 
 and very tender. 
 
 ' He was varra changed like,' murmured Daffe, his hand 
 wandering amongst the golden blossoms of the stonecrop. 
 1 He niver were the same crittur artur the lass went awa'. 
 He niver were the same niver. Ta seemed tew mak an 
 auld man o' him a' at once.' 
 
 * It did,' said Ambrose brokenly. ' He couldna bear tew 
 look na tew spik to nane o' us. He were bent i' body, an' 
 gray o' head, that awfu' night when he kem back fra' the 
 waking. It were fearfu* tew see ; an' we couldna dew 
 naught. Th' ony thing as he'd take tew were Trust.' 
 
 1 Be dog alive r ' 
 
 ' Na. Trust he'd never quit o' Ben's grave. He wouldna 
 take bit na drop. He wouldna be toucbit; not whin he 
 was clem would he be tempted awa'. And he died jist tha 
 fifth day arter his master.' 
 
 ' An' the wench ? Hev' 'ee e'er heerd on her ? ' 
 
 * Niver niver. Mappen she's dead and gone tew. She 
 broke Ben's heart for sure ; long ere tha ston' crushit life 
 out oV 
 
 ' And wheer mav he lie ! * 
 
PUCK. 
 
 Ambrose clenched his brainy batod, bis eyes darkened, 
 his swarthy face flushed duskily. 
 
 Wbeer ? What think 'ee, Daffe ? When we took o' 
 him up for the burial, ta tha church ower theer beyanf 
 iha wood, the passon he stoppit us, a' tha gate of tha bury- 
 in* field. The passon he med long words, and sed as how a 
 unb'liever sud uiver rest i' blessed groun', sin he willna ivel 
 enter into the eight o' tha Lord. He sed as how Ben were 
 black o' heart and wicked o' mind, an' niver set fute i* 
 church- door, and niver ate o' tha sacrament bread, and niver 
 not thocht o* Q-od nor o' Devil ; an' he wouldna say tha 
 rites o'er him an' 'twere iver so, an' he wouldna let him lie 
 i' tha holy earth, nor i' tha pale o* tha graveyard. Well, 
 we couldna gae agin him we poor min, an* he & squire and 
 passon tew. Sae we took him back, five weary mile ; and 
 we brocht him here, and we dug his grave under them pines, 
 and we pit a cross o' tha bark to mark the place, and we 
 laid old Trust, when he died, by his side. I were mad with 
 grief like, thin ; it were awfu, t& ha* him forbad Christian 
 Burial.' 
 
 * Dew it matter P ' asked the gently Daffe wistfully. M? 
 had never been within church-doors himself. 
 
 Ambrose gave a long troubled sigh. 
 
 ' Awee ! at first it seemed awfu' awfu' ! And to think as 
 Ben 'ud niver see the face o' his God was mair fearfu' still. 
 But as time goes on and on I can see his grave fra' here, 
 tha cross we cut is the glimmer o' white on that stem ayont, 
 it dew seem as 'tis fitter like fer him to lie i' tha fresh 
 free woods, wi' tha birds a* chirmin abuve him, an' a* tha 
 forest things as he minded a flyin', an' nestin', an* runnin', 
 an' rejoicin' arount him. 'Tis allus so still there, an' peace- 
 fu*. 'Tis blue and blue now, wi' tha hy'cinths ; and there'i 
 one bonnie mavis as dew make her home wi' each spring 
 abuve the grave-stone. 'Bout not meetin* his God, I dun- 
 no I darena say nowt anent it but, for sure, it dew 
 seem to me that we canna meet Him no better, nor 
 fairer, than wi' lips that ha ne'er lied to man nor to 
 woman, and wi' hands as niver hae harmed the poor dumb 
 beasts nor the prattlin' birds. It dew seem eo. I canna 
 tell.' 
 
 As the words died off hie lips the sun fell yet more 
 brightly through the avenues of the straight, dark, odorous 
 
V EN VO1. 557 
 
 pines; sweet silent winds swept up the dewy scents of 
 mosses, and of leaves, and of wild hyacinths ; and on the 
 stillness of that lonely place there came one tremulous, 
 tender sound. It was the sound of the mavis singing. 
 
 ' I canna' tell ; but for sure it is well with him ? ' said 
 Ambrose ; and he bared his head, and bowed it kumbly, as 
 though in the voice of the mavis he heard the answer of 
 God: 
 
 'It is well.' 
 
 Ah ! I trust that it may be so for you ; that the sweet- 
 ness of your arrogant dreams of an unshared eternity be 
 not wholly a delusion ; that for you although to us you 
 do deny it there may be found pity, atonement, compensa- 
 tion, in some great Hereafter. 
 
 1/ENVOL 
 
 ' MY dear,' says Franfreluche with supreme scorn, and 
 her nose in the air over the last of my proof sheets, * I don't 
 think much of your Memoirs j and I can't say that there is 
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 By B. M. CROKER. 
 
 Diana Barrington. 
 
 Proper Pride. 
 
 A Family Likeness. 
 
 Pretty Miss Neville. 
 
 A Bird of Passage. 
 
 Mr. Jervis. 
 
 Village Tales. 
 
 Some One Else. 1 Jason. 
 
 The Real Lady Hilda. 
 Married or Single ? 
 Two Masters. 
 In thcKingdom of Kerry 
 Interference. 
 A Third Person, 
 Beyond the Pale. 
 Miss Balmaine's Past. 
 
 Infatuation. 
 By W. CYPLES.-HeartsofGold. 
 
 By ALPHONSE DAUDET. 
 
 The Evangelist ; or, Port Salvation. 
 
 H. C. DAVIDSON. -Mr. Sadler's Daughters 
 
 By E. DAWSON. The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 By J. DE MI LLE. A Castle ia Spain. 
 
 By J. LEITH DERWENT. 
 Our Lady of Tears. | Circe's Lovers. 
 By HARRY DE W1NDT. 
 True Tales of Travel and Adventure. 
 By DICK DONOVAN. 
 
 Man from Manchester. 
 Records of Vincent Trill 
 
 Tales of Terror. 
 Chronicles of Miel a r -l 
 Danevitch. [Detective. 
 Tyler Tatlock, Private 
 
 The Mystery of 
 Jamaica Terrace. 
 
 Deacon Brcdie. 
 By RICHARD DOWLINQ. 
 Old Ccrcoran's Money. 
 
 By A. CONAN DOYLE. 
 The Firm of Girdlestone. 
 
 By S. JEANNETTE DUNCAN. 
 A Daughter of To-day. I Vemon's Aunt. 
 By A. EDWARDES. A Plaster Saint. 
 By G. S. EDWARDS. Snazelleparilla. 
 By G. MANVILLE FENN 
 
 Carsed by a Fortune. 
 The Case of Aiisa Gray 
 Commodore Jnnk. 
 The New Mistress. 
 Witness to the Deed. 
 The Tiger Lily. 
 The White Virgin. 
 
 A Fluttered Dovecote. 
 King of the Castle 
 Matter of Ceremonies. 
 Eve at the Wheel. &u. 
 The Man with a Shadow 
 One Maid's Mischief. 
 Story of Antony Grace. 
 This Man's Wife. 
 In Jeopardy. fn'ng. 
 A Woman Worth Wiu- 
 
 Black Blood. 
 
 Double Cunning. 
 
 Bag of Diamonds. &c. 
 
 By PERCY FITZGERALD. -FatalZero 
 
 By R. E. FRANC1LLON. 
 One by One. I Ropes of Sand. 
 
 A Dog and his Shadow. Jack Doyle 'a Daughter. 
 A Real Queen. 
 
 By HAROLD FREDERIC. 
 Beth's Brother's Wife. | The Lawten Girl. 
 
 By GILBERT GAUL. 
 
 AStrange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder 
 By PAUL GAULOT.-The Red Shirts 
 
 By CHARLES GIBBON. 
 Robin Gray. I The Golden Shaft. 
 
 Of &Vi>e r re?' ^ ***** f Yarrow< 
 
23 CHATTO & WINDUS, Publishers, in St. Martin's Lane, London, W.C. 
 
 THE PICCADILLY (3/6) NOVELS continued. 
 By E. GLANVILLE. 
 
 The Lost Heiress. 
 
 Fair Colonist | Fosslcker 
 
 The Golden Hock. 
 Tales from the Veld. 
 
 By E. 
 
 The Fate cf Herbert Wayne. 
 
 By Rev. S. BARING GOULD. 
 Red Spider. | Eve. 
 
 CECIL GRIFFITH. -Corinthia Marazion. 
 
 By A. CLAVERING GUNTER. 
 A Florida Enchantment. 
 
 By OWEN HALL. 
 The Track of a" Storm, i Jetsam. 
 
 By COSMO HAMILTON. 
 Glamour of Impossible. | Through a Keyhole. 
 
 By THOMAS HARDY. 
 Under the Greenwood Tree. 
 
 By BRET HARTE. 
 
 A Waif of the Plains. 
 A Ward of the Golden 
 Gate. [Springs. 
 
 A Sappho of Green 
 Col. Starbcttle's Client. 
 Susy. | Sally Dows. 
 Bell-Ringer of Anjel's. 
 Tales of Trail and Town 
 
 A Prot.'geo of Jack 
 
 Hamlins. 
 Clarence. 
 Barker's Luck. 
 Devil's Ferd. [celsior. 1 
 The Crusasls of the ' Ex- 
 Three Partners. 
 Gabriel Conroy. 
 
 By JULIAN HAWTHORNE. 
 
 Garth. | Dust. 
 Ellice Quentin. 
 Sebastian Strome. 
 Fortune s Fool. 
 
 Beatrix Randolph. 
 David Poindexter's Dis- 
 appearance. 
 Spectre of Camera. 
 
 By Sir A. HELPS. Ivan de Biron. 
 
 By I. HENDERSON. Agatha Page. 
 
 By G. A. HENTY. 
 
 Dorothy's Double. ! The Queen's Cup. 
 
 By HEADON HILL. 
 Zambra the Detective. 
 By JOHN HILL. The Common Ancestor. 
 
 By TIGHE HOPKINS. 
 'Twixt Love and Duty. | Nugents of Carriconna. 
 
 The Incomplete Adventurer. 
 VICTOR HUGO. The Outlaw of Iceland. 
 FERGUS HUME. Lady from Nowhere. 
 
 By Mrs. HUNGERFORD. 
 A Mental Strugele. , A Maiden all Forlorn. 
 
 Lady Verner's Flight. 
 The Red-House Mystery 
 The Three Graces. 
 Professor's Experiment. 
 
 The Gaming of Chloe. 
 
 Nora Creina. 
 
 An Anxious Moment 
 
 April's Lady. 
 
 Peter s Wife. | Lovice. 
 
 A Point of Conscience. Peter s Wife. | Lo 
 By Mrs. ALFRED HUNT. 
 The Leaden Casket. I Self- Condemned. 
 That Other Person. | Mrs. Juliet. 
 
 By C. J. CUTCLIFFE HYNE. 
 
 Honour cf Thieves. 
 By R. ASHE KING. -A Prawn Came. 
 
 By GEORGE LAMBERT. 
 The President of Boravia. 
 
 By EDMOND LEPELLETIER. 
 Madame Sans Gene. 
 By ADAM LI LB URN. A Tragedy in Marble 
 
 By HARRY LINDSAY. 
 Rhoda Roberts. | The Jacobite. 
 
 By HENRY W. LUCY. -Gideon Flevce. 
 
 By E. LYNN LINTON. 
 Patricia Keinball. i The Atonement of Learn 
 
 Under which Lord? Dundas. 
 
 1 My Love ! ' | lone. The One Too Many. 
 
 Dulcie Everton 
 Rebel of the Family. 
 An Octave of Friends. 
 
 Pas'ton Carew. 
 Sowing the Wind. 
 With a Silk en Thread. 
 The World Well Lost. 
 
 By JUSTIN MCCARTHY. 
 
 A Fair Saxon. \ Donna Quirote. 
 Linley Kochford. Maid of Athens. 
 
 Dear Lady Disdain. | The Comet of a Season. 
 Camiola. The Dictator. 
 
 Waterdale Neighbours. Red Diamonds. 
 
 My Enemv'i Daughter. I The Riddle Ring. 
 
 Uiu Mi*anthrope. I The Three Disgraces. 
 
 By JUSTIN H. McCARTHY. 
 
 A London Legend. | The Royal Christopher 
 
 By GEORGE MACDONALD. 
 Heather and Snow. I Phantastes. 
 W. H. MALLOCK __ The New Republic. 
 P. & V. MARGUERITTE.-The Disaster. 
 
 By L. T. MEADE. 
 A Soldier of Fortune 
 la an Iron Grip. 
 Dr. Ruinsey's Patient. 
 The Voice oftheCharmer 
 
 An Adventuress. 
 By LEONARD MERRICJi. 
 This Stage of Fools. ] Cynthia. 
 
 By BERTRAM MITFQRb. 
 The Gun Kunner. The King s Assegai. 
 
 LuckofGerardRidgeley. Rensh. Fanning'&Quest. 
 
 By J. E. MUDDOCK. 
 Maid Marian and Robin Hood. | Golden Idol. 
 Basile the Jester. | Young Lochinvar. 
 
 By D. CHRISTIE MURRAY. 
 
 I On Brink of a Chasm. 
 The Siren. 
 
 The Way of a Woman. 
 A Son of iBhrna** 1 . 
 
 A Life's Atonement. 
 Joseph's Coat. 
 Coals of Fire. 
 Old Blazer's Hero. 
 Val Strange. | Hearts. 
 A Model Father. 
 
 The Way of the World. 
 BobMartin's Little Girl 
 Time's Revenges. 
 A Wasted Crime. 
 In Direst Peril. 
 Mount Despair. 
 
 By the Gate of the Sea. I A Capful o' Nails. 
 A Bit of Human Nature. ! Tales in Prose & Verse 
 First Person Singular. A Race for Millions. 
 Cynic Fortune. This Little World. 
 
 By A1URRAY and HERMAN. 
 The Bishops' Bible. I Paul Jones s Alias. 
 One Traveller Returns. | 
 
 By HUME NISBET.-' Bail Up I 1 
 
 By W. E. NORRIS. 
 Saint Ann's. I Billy Bellew. 
 
 Miss Wcntworth s Idea, 
 
 By G. OHNET. 
 A Weird Gift. ' | Love's Depths, 
 
 By Mrs. OLIPHANT.-The Sorceress. 
 
 By OUIDA. 
 
 Held in Bondage. In a Winter City. 
 
 Strathmore. i Chandos. Friendship 
 Under Two Flags. 
 Ida.Ua. [Gage. 
 
 Cecil Castlemame s 
 Tricotrin. | Puck. 
 Folle Farine. 
 A Dog of Flanders. 
 Pascarel. | Signa. 
 Princess Napraxine. 
 
 Tw 
 
 Moths. | Ruffino. 
 Pipistrello. | Ariadne. 
 A Village Commune. 
 Bimbi. | Wanda. 
 Frescoes. | Othmar. 
 In Maremma. 
 Syrlin. | Guilderoy. 
 Santa Barbara. 
 Two Offenders. 
 
 Wooden Shoes 
 
 The Waters of Edera. 
 By MARGARET A. PAUL. 
 
 Gentle and Simple. 
 
 By JAMES PAYN. 
 
 Lost Sir Massingberd. ; The Talk of the Town, 
 A County Family. 
 Less Black than We're 
 
 Painted. 
 
 A Confidential Agent. 
 A Grape from a Thorn. 
 In Peril and Privation. 
 
 Mystsry of Mir bridge. 
 
 Walter's Word. 
 
 High Spirits. i3y Proxy. 
 
 Holiday Tasks. 
 For Cash Orly. 
 The Burnt Million. 
 Ths Word and the Will 
 Sanny Stories. 
 A Trving Patinnt. 
 A Modern Dick Whit 
 tington. 
 
 gh Spirits. |3y Proxy. 
 
 By WILL PAYNE Jerry the Dreamer. 
 By Mrs. CAMPBELL PRAED. 
 
 Outlaw and Lawmaker. 
 Christina Char 
 
 Mrs. Tregaski^. 
 Nu'iina. I Madame Izan 
 
 By E. C. PRICE. 
 
 Valentina. 1 Foreigners. | Mrs. Lancaster's Rival 
 
 By RICHARD PRYCE. 
 Miss Maxwell's Affections. ?> 
 
 By Mrs. J. H. RIDDELL. 
 Weird Stories. | A RicH Kan's Daugatoi 
 
 By AMELIE RiVES. 
 Barbara Denng. | Meriel. 
 
 By F. W. ROBINSON. 
 The Hands of Justice. | Woman in the Dark. 
 
CHATTO & WINDUS, Publishers, m St. Martin's Lane, London, VV.C. 29 
 
 THE PICCADILLY (3/6) NOVELS continued. 
 
 By ALBERT ROSS. -A Sugar Princess. 
 
 By HERBERT RUSSELL. True Blue 
 
 By CHARLES READE. 
 
 Peg Wofflngton ; and Griffith Gaunt. 
 
 Love Little, Love Long. 
 The Double Marriage. 
 Foul Play. 
 
 Put Y'rself in His Place 
 A Terrible Temptation. 
 A Simpleton. 
 A Woman-Hater. 
 The Jilt, & othcrStories ; 
 & Good Stories of Man. 
 
 and 
 Christie Johnston? . 
 
 Hard Cash. 
 
 Cloister & the Hearth. 
 
 Never Too Late to Mend 
 
 The Course of True 
 Love ; and Single- 
 heart & Doubleface. 
 
 Autobiography of a 
 Thief; Jack of all 
 Trades ; A Hero and 
 a Martyr; and The 
 Wandering Heir. 
 
 A Perilous Secret. 
 Readiana ; and Bible 
 
 Characters. 
 
 J. RUNCIMAN. Skippers and Shellbacks. 
 By W. CLARK RUSSELL. 
 
 Round the Galley-Fire. 
 In the Middle Watch. 
 On the Fo'k'sle Head 
 A Voyage to the Cape. 
 Book for the Hammock. 
 Mysteryof 'Ocean Star' 
 Jenny Harlowe. 
 An Ocean Tragedy. 
 A Tale of Two Tunnels. 
 
 My Shipmate Louise. 
 Alone onWideWide Sea. 
 The Phantom Death. 
 Is He the Man ? 
 Good Ship 'Mohock. 1 
 The Convict Ship. 
 Heart of Oak. 
 The Tale of the Ten. 
 The Last Entry. 
 
 The Death Ship. 
 
 By DORA RUSSELL. -Drift of Fate. 
 
 BAVLE 5T. JOHN.-A Levantine Family. 
 
 By ADELINE SERGEANT. 
 
 Dr. Endicott s Experiment. 
 Under False Pretences. 
 
 By GEORGE R. SIMS. 
 
 Dagonet Abroad. 
 
 One a Upon a Christmas 
 
 Time. 
 Without the Limelight. 
 
 Rogue.? and Vagabonds. 
 In London's Heart. 
 Mary Jane Married. 
 The Small-part Lady. 
 
 By HAWLEY SMART. 
 
 Without Love or Licence. 
 The Master of Rathkelly. 
 Long Odds. 
 
 The Outsider. 
 Beatrice & Benedick. 
 A Racing Rubber. 
 
 By T. W. SPEIGHT. 
 
 A Secret of the Sea. 
 
 The Grey Monk. 
 
 The Master of Trenance 
 
 I A Minion of the Moon. 
 Secret Wyvern Towers. 
 The Doom of Siva. 
 The Web of Fate. 
 
 The Strange Experiences of Mr. Verschoyle. 
 By ALAN ST. AUBYN. 
 7 of Trinity. 
 
 The Tremlett Diamonds. 
 The Wooing of May. 
 A Tragic Honeymoon. 
 A Proctor's Wooing. 
 Fortune's Gate. 
 Bonnie Maggie Lander. 
 Mary Unwin. 
 
 A Fellow 
 
 The Junior Dean. 
 
 Master of St.Beaedict's. 
 
 To his Own Master. 
 
 Gallantry Bower. 
 
 In Face of the World. 
 
 Orchard Damerel. 
 
 By JOHN STAFFORD. -Doris and I. 
 
 By R. STEPHENS. -The Cruciform Mark 
 
 R. A. STERNDALE. The Afghan Knife ' 
 
 R. L. STEVENSON. The Suicide Club. 
 
 By FRANK STOCKTON. 
 
 The Young Master of Hyson Hall. 
 
 By SUNDOWNER.-Toldby the Taffrail. 
 
 By ANNIE THOMAS. The Siren's Web. 
 BERTHA THOMAS. The Violin Player 
 
 By FRANCES E. TROLLOPE 
 
 Like Ships upon Sea. I Mabel's Progress. 
 Anne Furness. 
 
 By ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 
 The Way \ve Live Now. I Scarborough's Family. 
 Frau Frohmann. The Land-Leaguers. 
 
 Marion Fay. 
 
 By IVAN TURGENIEFF, &c. 
 Stories from Foreign Novelists. 
 
 By MARK TWAIN. 
 Choice Works. 
 Library of Humour. 
 
 The Innocents Abroad. 
 Roughing It ; and The 
 
 Innocents at Home. 
 A Tramp Abroad. 
 TheAnierican Claimant. 
 AdventuresTomSawyer 
 Tom Sawyer Abroad. 
 Torn Sawyer, Detective 
 
 Pudd'nhead Wilson. 
 The Gilded Age. 
 Prince and the Pauper. 
 Life on the Mississippi. 
 The Adventures of 
 
 Huckleberry Finn. 
 A Yankee at the Court 
 
 of King Arthur. 
 Stolen White Elephant 
 1,000,000 Bank-note. 
 C. C. F.-TYTLER. Mistress Judith. 
 
 By SARAH TYTLER. 
 
 WhatShe CameThrough , Mrs. Carrnichael's God- 
 Buried Diamonds. desses. ! Lady Bell. 
 The Blackball Ghosts. Rachel Langton. 
 The Macdonald Lass. A Honeymoon's Eclipse 
 Witch-Wife. | Sapphira ' A Young Dragon. 
 
 By ALLEN UPWARD. 
 The Queen against Owen. 
 
 By ALBERT D. VANDAM. 
 A Court Tragedy. 
 
 By E. A. VIZETELLY.-The Scorpion. 
 By F. WARDEN. Joan, the Curate. 
 
 By CY WARMAN.-Express Messenger, 
 
 By A. WERNER. 
 Chapenga's White Man. 
 
 By WILLIAM WESTALL. 
 
 For Honour and Life. 
 A Woman Tempted Him 
 
 The Old Factory. 
 Red Ryvington. 
 
 Ralph Norbreck's Trust 
 Trust-money. 
 Sons of Belial. 
 Roy of Roy's Court. 
 With the Red Eagle. 
 Strange Crimes (True 
 Stories). 
 
 Her Two Millions. 
 Two Pinches of Snuff. 
 Nigel Fortescue. 
 Birch Dene. 
 The Phantom City. 
 A Queer Bace. 
 Ben Clough. 
 
 By ATHA WESTBURY. 
 The Shadow of Hilton Fernbrook. 
 
 By C. J. WILLS. An Easy-going Fellow. 
 
 By JOHN STRANGE WINTER. 
 
 Cavalry Life ; and Regimental Legends. 
 A Soldier's Children. 
 
 By E. ZOLA. 
 The Fortune of the Rougons. 
 Abbe Mouret's Transgression. 
 The Couqiiest of Plassans. | Germinal. 
 The Honour of the Army. 
 
 The Downfall. 
 The Dream. I Money. 
 Dr. Pascal. | Lourdes. 
 The Fat and the Thin 
 
 His Excellency. 
 The Dram-Shop. 
 Rome. | Paris. 
 Fruitfulness. | Work 
 
 By 'ZZ. 'A Nineteenth Century Miracle. 
 
 CHEAP EDITIONS OF POPULAR NOVELS. 
 
 Pcst-Svo, illustrated boards, as. each. 
 By ARTEMUS WARD. 
 Artemus Ward Complete. 
 
 By Mrs. ALEXANDER. 
 
 Maid, Wife, or Widow? I A Life Interest. 
 Blind Fate. Mona's Choice. 
 
 Valerie's Fate. | By Woman's Wit. 
 
 By E. LESTER ARNOLD. 
 
 rhra the Phoenician. 
 
 *-*j VJIV/A11 
 
 Philistia. | Babylon. 
 Strange Stories. 
 For Maimie's Sake. 
 In all Shades. 
 The Beckoning Hand. 
 The Devil's Die. 
 The Teats of Shem. 
 The Great Taboo. 
 
 i m**tfd^ 
 Dumaresq's Daughter. 
 Duchess of Powysland. 
 Blood Royal. [piece. 
 Ivan Greet's Master- 
 Tha ScaJlvwa?. 
 This Mortal Coil. 
 At Market Va'ua. 
 Under Sealed Orderg. 
 
Jo CHATTO & WINDUS, Publishers, in St. Martin's Lane, London, W.C. 
 
 A Recoiling Vengeance. 
 For Love and Honour. 
 John Ford. &-c. 
 Woman of Iron Brace'ts 
 The Har diner Scandal. 
 A Missing Witness. 
 
 TWO-SHILLING NOVELS continued. 
 BY FRANK BARRETT. 
 
 Fettered for Ufa. \ Found Guilty. 
 
 Little Lady Linton. 
 
 Between Life 4 Death. 
 
 Sin of Olga Zasaoulich. 
 
 Folly Morrison. 
 
 Lieut. Barnabas. 
 
 Honest Da vie. 
 
 A Prodigal a Progress. | 
 
 By FREDERICK BOYLE. 
 
 Camp Notes. I Chrooiclea of No man's 
 
 Savage Life. | Land. 
 
 By Sir W. BESANT and J. RICE. 
 
 Ready- Money Mortiboy By Celia's Arbour. 
 My Little Girl. Chaplain of the Fleet 
 
 With Harp and Crown. The Seamy Side. 
 This Son of Vulcan. Tbe Case of Mr.Lucraft. 
 The Golden Butterfly. | In Trafalgar's Bay. 
 The Monks f Thelema. > The Ten Yaars Tenant. 
 
 By Sir WALTER BESANT. 
 
 All Sorts and Condi- The Bell of St. Paul's. 
 Th 
 
 tiona of Men. 
 The Captains Room. 
 All in a Garden Fair. 
 Dorothy Forster. 
 Uncle Jack. 
 Tco World Went Very 
 
 Well Then. 
 Children of Gibeon. 
 Kerr Paului. 
 For Faith and Freedom. 
 T 0*11 Her Mine. 
 The Master Ciattsrnan. 
 
 Holy Rose. 
 Aranorel of Lyonesse. 
 S.Katherine sbv Tower 
 Veibena Camellia Ste- 
 
 phanotic. 
 The Ivory Gate. 
 The Rebel Queen. 
 Beyond the Dreams of 
 
 Avarice. 
 
 The Revolt of Man. 
 In Deacon's Orders. 
 The City of Refuge. 
 
 By AMBROSE BIERCE. 
 
 In the Midst of Life. 
 
 BY BRET HARTE. 
 
 Californtan Stories. 
 Gabriel Conroy. 
 Luck of Ros-ring Camp. 
 An Heiress of Red Dog. 
 
 Flip. | Karuja. 
 
 A Phyllis of the Sierras. 
 A Waif of the Plaina. 
 Ward of Golden Gate. 
 
 By ROBERT BUCHANAN. 
 
 The Martyrdom of Mv 
 
 deiine. 
 
 The New Abelard. 
 T!:e Heir of Liune. 
 Woman and the Man. 
 Rachel Dene. I Matt. 
 Lady Kilpatrick. 
 
 Shadow of the Sword, 
 A Child of Nature. 
 God and the Man. 
 Love Me for Ever. 
 Foxglove Manor. 
 The Master of the Mine, 
 innan Water. 
 
 By BUCHANAN and MURRAY. 
 
 TLe Charlatan. 
 
 By HALL CAINE. 
 
 The Shadow of a Crime. I The Deemster. 
 A Son of Kasar. | 
 
 By Commander CAMERON. 
 
 The Cruise of the 'Black Prince.' 
 
 By HAYDEN CARRUTH. 
 
 The Adventures of Jones. 
 
 By AUSTIN CLARE. 
 
 For the Love of a Lass. 
 
 By Mrs. ARCHER CLIVE. 
 
 Paul Ferroll. 
 
 Why Paul FerroU Killed his Wife. 
 
 By MACLARON COBBAN. 
 The Cure of Souls. | The Red Sultan. 
 
 By C. ALLSTON COLLINS. 
 The Bar Sinister. 
 
 By MORT. & FRANCES COLLINS. 
 
 Sweet Anne Page. I Eweet and Twenty. 
 Transmigration. The Village Comedy. 
 
 -- ' You Play me False. 
 
 Blacksmith and Bchol&r 
 
 Frances. 
 
 From Midnight to Uid- 
 zht with Fortune. 
 
 By WILKIE COLLINS. 
 
 Annadale. | AfterDark. 
 
 No Name. 
 
 Antonina. 
 
 Basil. 
 
 Hide and Seek. 
 
 The Dead Secret. 
 
 Queen of Hearta. 
 
 Kiss or Mrs.? 
 
 The New Magdalen. 
 
 The Frozen Deep. 
 
 The Law and the Lady 
 
 The Two Destinies. 
 
 The Haunted Hotel, 
 
 A Rogue's Life. 
 
 By M. J. COLQUHOUN. 
 Every Inch a Soldier. 
 
 By C. EGBERT CRADDOCK. 
 The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains. 
 
 By MATT CRIM. 
 The Adventures of a Fair Rebel. 
 
 By B. M. CROKER. 
 Pretty Miss Neville. 
 
 My Miscellanies. 
 Tho Woman in White. 
 The Moonstone. 
 Man and Wife. 
 Poor Miss Finch. 
 The Fallen Leaves. 
 Jezebel's Daughter. 
 The Black Robe. 
 Heart and Science. 
 I Say No ! ' 
 The Evil Genius. 
 Little Novels. 
 Legacy of Cain. 
 Blind Love. 
 
 Diana Harrington. 
 
 'To Let.' 
 
 A Bird of Passage. 
 
 Proper Pride. 
 
 A Family Likeness, 
 
 A Third Pemon. 
 
 Village Tales and Jungl* 
 
 Tragedies. 
 Two Masters. 
 Mr. Jervis. 
 The Real Lady Hilda. 
 Married or Single T 
 Interference. 
 
 By ALPHONSE DAUDET. 
 
 The Evangelist : or. Port Salvation. 
 
 By DICK DONOVAN. 
 
 The Man-Hunter. 
 
 Tracked and Taken. 
 
 Caught at Last 1 
 
 Wanted! 
 
 Who Poisoned Hetty 
 
 Duncan ? 
 
 Man from Manchester. 
 A Detective's Triumphs 
 The Mystery of Jamaica Terrace. 
 The Chronicles of Michael Danevitcb. 
 
 By Mrs. ANNIE EDWARDES. 
 A Point of Honour. | Archie Lovell. 
 
 In the Grip of the Law. 
 From Information Re* 
 
 ceived. 
 
 Tracked to Doom. 
 Link by Link 
 Suspicion Aroused. 
 Dark Deeds. 
 Uiddies Read. 
 
 Roxy. 
 
 By EDWARD EQGLESTON. 
 
 Bv G. MANVILLE FENN. 
 
 Mia 
 
 The New Miatress. 
 Witness to the Deed, 
 
 I The Tiger Lily. 
 I The White Virgin. 
 
 By PERCY FITZGERALD. 
 
 Bella Donna. 
 Never Forgotten. 
 Polly. 
 Fatal Zero. 
 
 Second Mrs. Tillotson. 
 Seventy - five Brook* 
 
 Street. 
 The Lady of Brantome. 
 
 By P. FITZGERALD and others. 
 
 Strange Secrets. 
 
 By R. E. FRANCILLON. 
 
 Olympia. 
 One by One. 
 A Real Queen. 
 Queen Cophetua. 
 
 King or Knave? 
 Romances of the Law. 
 Ropes of Sand. 
 A Bos and his Shadow 
 
 By HAROLD FREDERIC. 
 
 Seth's Brother's Wife. | The Lawton Girl. 
 
 Prefaced by Sir BARTLE FRERE. 
 
 Pandurang Hari. 
 
 By GILBERT GAUL. 
 A Strange Manuscript. 
 
 By CHARLES GIBBON. 
 
 Robin Gray. In Honour Bound. 
 
 Fancy Free. 
 
 Flower of the Forest, 
 The Braes of Yarrow. 
 
 ncy 
 
 For Lack of Gold. 
 
 What will World Say 1 The Golden Shaft. 
 
 In Love an.i War. Of High Degree. 
 
 For the King. By Mead and Stream. 
 
 In Pastures Green. , Loving a Dream. 
 
 Quean of the Meadow. A Hard Knot. 
 
 A Heart's Problem. Heart's Deiight. 
 
 The Dead Heart. Blood-Konej. 
 
CHATTO & W1NDUS, Publishers, in St. Martin's Lane, London, W.C. 31 
 
 Beatrix Randolph. 
 
 Love or a Name. 
 
 DavidPoindexter's Dis- 
 appearance. 
 
 The Spectre of the 
 Camera. 
 
 TWO-SHILLING NOVELS continued. 
 
 By WILLIAM GILBERT. 
 
 James Dulis. 
 
 By ERNEST GLANVILLE. 
 The Lost Heiress. I Tte Fossicker 
 
 A Fair Colonist. | 
 
 By Rev. 5. BARING GOULD. 
 Red Spider. I Eve. 
 
 By ANDREW HALLIDAY. 
 Every-day Papers. 
 
 By THOMAS HARDY. 
 Under the Greenwood Tree. 
 
 By JULIAN HAWTHORNE. 
 Garth. 
 
 Ellice Quentin. 
 Fortune's Fool. 
 Miss Cadogua. 
 Sebastian Strome. 
 Dust. 
 
 By Sir ARTHUR HELPS. 
 Ivan de Elron. 
 
 By G. A. HENTY. 
 Rcjub the Juggler. 
 
 By HEADON HILL. 
 
 Zambra the Detective. 
 
 By JOHN HILL. 
 
 Treason Felony. 
 
 By Mrs. CASH EL HOEY. 
 
 The Lover's Creed. 
 
 By Mrs. GEORGE HOOPER. 
 
 The House of Raby. 
 
 By Mrs. HUNGERFORD. 
 
 A Maiden all Forlorn. Lady Verner's Flight. 
 In Durance Vile. The .Red-House Mystery 
 
 Marvel. The Three Graces. 
 
 A Mental Struggle. Unsatisfactory Lover. 
 
 A Modern Circe. Lady Patty. 
 
 April's Lady. Nora Creina. 
 
 Peter's Wife. Professor's Experiment. 
 
 By Mrs. ALFRED HUNT. 
 That Other Person. I The Leaden Casket. 
 Self-Condemned. | 
 
 By MARK KERSHAW. 
 
 Colonial Facts and Fictions. 
 
 By R. A5HE KING. 
 
 A Drawn Game. I Passion's Slave. 
 
 The Wearing of the Bell Barry. 
 Green.' | 
 
 By EDMOND LEPELLETIER 
 
 Madame Sans-Gene. 
 
 By JOHN LEYS. 
 
 The Lindsays. 
 
 By E. LYNN LINTON. 
 Patricia Kemball. 
 The World Well Lost. 
 Under which Lord ? 
 Paston Carew. 
 ' My Love I ' 
 lone. 
 With a Silken Thread. 
 
 By HENRY W. LUCY. 
 Gideon Fleyce. 
 
 The Atonement of Learn 
 
 Dundas. 
 
 Rebel of the Family. 
 Sowing the Wind. 
 The pne Too Many. 
 Dulcie Everton. 
 
 By JUSTIN MCCARTHY. 
 
 Donna Quixote. 
 
 Dear Lady Disdain. 
 Waterdale Neighbours. 
 My Enemy's Daughter 
 A Fair Saxon. 
 Linlev Rochford. 
 Miss Misanthrope. 
 Camiola 
 
 Maid of Athens. 
 The Comet of a Season 
 The Dictator. 
 Rsd Diamonds. 
 | The Riddle Ring. 
 
 By HUGH MACCOLL. 
 
 Mr. Stranger's Sealed Packet. 
 
 By GEORGE MACDONALD. 
 
 Heather and Snow 
 
 By AGNJS MACUONELL. 
 
 Quaker Cousins. 
 
 By W. H. MALLOCK. 
 
 The New Republic. 
 
 By BRANDER MATTHEWS. 
 
 A Secret of tho Sea. 
 
 By L. T. MEADE. 
 A Soldier of Fortune. 
 
 By LEONARD MERRICK. 
 
 The Man who was Good. 
 
 By JEAN MIDDLEMASS. 
 
 Touch and Go. | Mr. Dorillion. 
 
 By Mrs. MOLESWORTH. 
 
 Hathercourt Rectory. 
 
 By J. E. MUDDOCK. 
 
 StoriesWeird and Won- 
 derful. 
 The Dead Man's Secret. 
 
 From the Bosom of tbe 
 Deep. 
 
 By D. CHRISTIE MURRAY. 
 
 A Model Father. 
 Joseph's Coat. 
 Coais of Fire. 
 Val Strange. | Hearts. 
 Old Blazer's Hero. 
 
 . 
 
 Ths Way of the World 
 Cynic Fortune. 
 A Life's Atonement. 
 By ;hs Gate of the Sea. 
 
 A Bit of Human Nature. 
 First Person Singular. 
 Bob Martin's LittleGirL 
 Time's Revenges. 
 A Wasted Crime. 
 
 In Direst Peril. 
 Mount Despair. 
 A Capful o Nails 
 
 By MURRAY and HERMAN. 
 
 One Traveller Returns. I The Bishops' Bible. 
 Paul Jones's Alias. | 
 
 By HUME NISBET. 
 
 ' Bail Up 1 ' | Dr.Bernard St. Vincent 
 
 By W. E. NORRIS. 
 Saint Ann's. | Billy Ballew. 
 
 By GEORGES OHNET. 
 
 Dr. Rameau. I A Weird Gift. 
 
 A Last Love. | 
 
 By Mrs. OLIPHANT. 
 
 Whiteladies. I The Greatest Heiress la 
 
 The Primrose Path. | England. 
 
 By OUIDA. 
 
 Held in Bondage. 
 
 Strathniore. 
 
 Chandos. 
 
 Idalia. 
 
 Under Two Flags. 
 
 Cecil Castlemaine sGage 
 
 Tricotrin. 
 
 Puck. 
 
 Folia Farine. 
 
 A Dog of Flanders. 
 
 Pascarel. 
 
 Signa. 
 
 Princess Napraxine. 
 
 In a Winter City. 
 
 Ariadne. 
 
 Friendship. 
 
 Two Lit. Wooden Shoe*. 
 Moths. 
 Bimbi. 
 Pipistrello. 
 A Village Commune. 
 Wanda. 
 Othmar 
 Frescoes. 
 In Maremma. 
 Guilderoy. 
 Ruffino. 
 Syrlin. 
 
 Santa Barbara. 
 Two Offenders. 
 Ouida's Wisdom, Wit, 
 and Pathos. 
 
 By MARGARET AGNES PAUL. 
 
 Gentle and Simple. 
 
 By Mrs. CAMPBELL PRAED. 
 
 The Romance of a Station. 
 
 The Soul of Countess Adrian. 
 
 Outlaw and Lawmaker. | Mrs. Tregaskisa 
 
 Christina Chard. 
 
33 CHATTO & WINDUS. Publishers, in St. Martin's Lane, London, W.C. 
 
 TWO-SHILLING NOVELS continued. 
 By RICHARD PRYCE. 
 
 Miss Harwell's Affections. 
 
 By JAMES PAYN. 
 
 Eentinck'a Tutor. 
 
 Murphy a Master. 
 
 A County Family. 
 
 At Her Mercy. 
 
 Cecil s Tryst. 
 
 The CJyifarcls of Clyffe. 
 
 The Foster Brothers. 
 
 Foantl Dead. 
 
 The Best of Husbands. 
 
 Walter s Word. 
 
 Ka.lve. 
 
 Fallen Fortunes. 
 
 Humorous Stories. 
 
 200 Reward. 
 
 A Marine Residence. 
 
 Mirk Abbey 
 
 By Proxy. 
 
 Under One Roof. 
 
 High Spirits. 
 
 Cariyon g Year. 
 
 From Exile. 
 
 For Cash Only. 
 
 Kit. 
 
 The Canon s Ward. 
 
 Tho Talk of the Town. 
 Holiday Tasks. 
 A Perfect Treasure. 
 What He Cost Her. 
 A Confidential Agent. 
 Glow-worm Tales. 
 The Burnt Million. 
 Sunny Stories. 
 Lost Sir Massingberd. 
 A Woman's Vengeance. 
 The Family Scapegrace. 
 Gwendoline s Harvest. 
 Like Father, Like Son. 
 Married Beneath Him. 
 Not Wooed, but Won. 
 Lees Black than We're 
 
 Painted. 
 
 Some Private Views. 
 A Grape from a Thorn. 
 The Mystery of Mir- 
 
 bridge. 
 
 The Word and the Will. 
 A Prince of the Blood. 
 A Trying Patient. 
 
 By CHARLES READE. 
 
 A Terrible Temptation. 
 
 Foal Play. 
 
 The Wandering Heir. 
 
 Hard Cash. 
 
 Singleheart and Double- 
 face. 
 
 Good Stories of Man and 
 other Animals. 
 
 Peg Woffington. 
 
 Gri.th Gaunt. 
 
 A Perilous Secret. 
 
 A Simpleton. 
 
 Readiana. 
 
 A Woman-Hater. 
 
 It is Never Too Late to 
 
 Mend. 
 
 Christie Johnstoae. 
 The Double Marriage. 
 Fut Yourself in His 
 
 Place 
 Love Me Little, Love 
 
 Me Long. 
 The Cloister and the 
 
 Hearth. 
 
 Course of True Love. 
 The Jilt. 
 The Autobiography of 
 
 a Thief. 
 
 By Mrs. J. H. RIDDELL. 
 
 Weird Stories. The Uninhabited House. 
 
 Fairy Water. The Mystery in Palace 
 
 Her Mother's Darling, i Gardens. 
 The Prince of Wales s The Nun s Curse. 
 Garden Party. Idle Tales. 
 
 By F. W. ROBINSON. 
 
 Women are Strange. I The Woman in the Dark 
 The Hands of Justice. | 
 
 By W. CLARK RUSSELL. 
 
 Round the Galley Fire. ' An Ocean Tragedy. 
 On the Fo'k'sle Head. | My Shipmate Louise. 
 In the Middle Watch. | Alone onWideWide Sea. 
 A Voyage to the Cape. > Good Ship ' Mohock.' 
 A Book for the Ham- i The Phantom Death. 
 
 mock. ! Is He the Mas? 
 
 The Mystery of the Heart of Oa.s. 
 
 Ocean Star. 1 i The Convict Ship. 
 
 The Romance of Jenny i The Tale of the Ten. 
 
 Harlowe. I The Last Entry. 
 
 By DORA RUSSELL. 
 A Country Sweetheart. 
 By GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. 
 
 Gaslight and Daylight. 
 
 By GEORGE R. SIMS. 
 
 The Ring o' Bells. 
 Mary Jane's Memoirs. 
 Mary Jane Married. 
 Tales of To-day. 
 Dramas of Life. 
 
 Tinkletcp s Crime. 
 My Two Wives. 
 
 Zeph. 
 
 Memoirs of a Landlady. 
 Scenes from the Show. 
 The 10 Commandments. 
 Dagcnet Abroad. 
 Rogues and Vagabonds. 
 
 By ARTHUR SKETCHLEY. 
 
 A Match in the Dark. 
 
 By HAWLEY SMART. 
 
 Without Love or Licence. 
 Beatrice and Benedick. 
 The Master of Rathkelly. 
 
 By T. VV. SPEIGHT. 
 
 The Mysteries of Heron Back to Life. 
 Dyke. The LoudwaterTragedy. 
 
 Burgo s Romance. 
 
 The Plunger. 
 Long Odds- 
 
 The Golden Hoop. 
 
 Hoodwinked. 
 
 By Devious Ways. 
 
 By ALAN ST. AUBYN. 
 
 A Fellow of Trinity. 
 Ths Junior Dean. 
 Master ef St.Benedict . , 
 To His Own Master. i 
 
 Quittance in Full. 
 
 A Husband frcrn the Sea 
 
 Orchard Damerel. 
 
 In the Face of the World. 
 
 The Tremlett Diamond*. 
 
 By R. A. STERNDALE. 
 
 The Afghan Knife. 
 
 By R. LOUIS STEVENSON. 
 
 New Arabian Nights. 
 
 By ROBERT SURTEES. 
 
 Handley Cross. 
 
 Bi 
 
 The Violin-] 
 
 BERTHA THOMAS. 
 
 layer. 
 
 By WALTER THORNBURY. 
 
 Tales for the Marines. 
 
 By T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE. 
 
 Diamond Cut Diamond. 
 
 By F. ELEANOR TROLLOPE. 
 
 Like Snips upon the 1 Anne Fnrness. 
 Sea. I Mabel's Progress. 
 
 By ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 
 
 Frau Frohmann. 
 Marion Fay. 
 Kept in the Dark. 
 The Way We Live Now. 
 The Land-Leaguers. 
 
 The American Senator. 
 Mr. Scarborough^ 
 
 Family. 
 GoldenLion of Qranpere 
 
 By MARK TWAIN. 
 
 Stolen White Elephant. 
 Life on the Mississippi. 
 The Prince and the 
 
 Pauper. 
 A Yankee at the Court 
 
 of King Arthur. 
 1,000,000 Bank- Note. 
 
 A Pleasure Trip on the 
 
 Continent. 
 The Gilded Age. 
 Huckleberry Finn. 
 MarkTwain s Sketches. 
 Tom Sawyer. 
 A Tramp Abroad. 
 
 By C. C. FRASER-TYTLER. 
 
 Mistress Judith. 
 
 By SARAH TYTLER. 
 
 Bride's Pass ! Lady Bell The Huguenot Family 
 Buried Diamonds. The Blackball Ghosts 
 
 St. Mungo s City. ; WhatSheCameThrough 
 
 Noblesse Oblige. Beauty and the Beast. 
 
 Disappeared. Citoyenne Jaqueline. 
 
 By ALLEN UPWARD. 
 
 The Queen against Owen, j Prince of Balkistao, 
 
 By WILLIAM WESTALL. 
 
 Trust- Money. 
 
 By Mrs. F. H. WILLIAMSON. 
 
 A Child Widow. 
 
 By J. S. WINTER. 
 
 Cavalry Life. | Regimental Legend*. 
 
 By H. F. WOOD. 
 
 The Passenger from Scotland Yard. 
 The Englishman of the Rue Cain. 
 
 UNWIN BROTHERS, Printers, 27, Pilgrim Street, London, E.C, 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 BERKELEY 
 
 Return to desk from which borrowed. 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 49HJ 
 
 06 1987 
 
 OCT 1 2 1987 
 
 LD 21-100m-9 1 '48(B399sl6)476 
 
YB734-52 
 
 755 
 O33?