/ 
 
 *
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS
 
 THE 
 DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD C. BOOTH 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THE CENTURY CO. 
 
 1910
 
 Copyright, 1910, by 
 THE CENTURY Co. 
 
 Published. May. 1910
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 ON a morning in late summer the Doctor came down to 
 breakfast. The sun, blazing through the great east 
 landing window, stained its elongated image in gold down 
 the stair-case wall, casting a lemon reflection on the Doctor's 
 cheek as he descended, to where the fenestral glory faded 
 in the dark spaciousness of stone-flagged hall. A stray 
 gleam of sunlight struck the bleak glasses on the pendant 
 lamp, swinging on its triple chain from a discolored disk on 
 the cracked ceiling, and radiated prismatic spokes of light 
 that diffused themselves over the dim marbled wall-paper, 
 and translated with a quivering eagerness the message of 
 sunshine without to the dreary squareness within. Through 
 the broad fanlight over the door, stained in its border with 
 crimson and amber and regal purple, the Doctor had he 
 lifted his eyes might have seen the message of summer 
 gladness confirmed in a sunlit glimpse of sycamore and 
 drooping green laburnum ; with blue sky filling the spaces 
 to the margin of the glass, but he scarcely so much as raised 
 his head. The great hall, chill from its stone flags, and 
 dim with the breath that comes of a soulless seclusion, as of 
 moldering air whose movement is restricted to this one place ; 
 of an indigenous atmosphere grown venerable enough for 
 the tomb, soaked up the spiritless sound of the Doctor's foot- 
 steps as he turned into the morning room, without echo of 
 
 3
 
 4 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 warmth or welcome. Anybody habituated to the language of 
 halls and the speech of empty houses might have known that 
 this was a lonely man, dragging the weary chains of a lonely 
 life; a ghost occupying a corporal tenement, and haunting 
 these premises rather than habiting them. 
 
 Of medium height, or perhaps to be exact below it, 
 the Doctor offered in his blend of characteristics an engag- 
 ing puzzle to the inquiries after age. His careless garb and 
 the stoop of his shoulders, with, perhaps, the weight of a 
 brown mustache slightly too heavy for his build, hinted at 
 maturity; but the brown eyes, the smooth brow, and the 
 noticeably fresh complexion bespoke much rather the boy. 
 His stoop, too, hinted the willful carelessness of the school- 
 boy more than any natural submission to his years, and his 
 figure, though the negligent garments lent nothing to its 
 smartness, had somewhere about its limbs a youthful buoy- 
 ancy, perversely subjugated and repressed, but not expelled. 
 As a matter of history, the Doctor was thirty-six, but he 
 was older and younger than that. He strode his age, in- 
 deed, as lads do donkeys, with a variable seat; now up 
 in the saddle, now hanging by the creature's neck; master 
 of their steed by moments, and its slave at times. The 
 brown in his eyes was warm enough to lend sympathy to 
 any glance that he might give, but the gaze itself seemed to 
 have acquired an uneasy manner as though seeking solitude 
 rather than the society of looks. Yet there was nothing 
 mean or furtive about the Doctor's reserve ; on the contrary, 
 there was a sort of troubled kindliness over the countenance 
 that protected its owner against any suspicion of meanness 
 or deception, and on such occasions as he smiled, one seemed 
 to catch a sudden vista of sunlit nature as when one sights 
 green terraces through an open gate. In Sunfleet the doctor 
 was always reckoned among the " bonny " men which is 
 no synonym for the term " beauty," although it may contain
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 5 
 
 it by inference, like the sugar in Medling's toddy and cer- 
 tainly the integrity of his heart was never questioned. " He'd 
 do aught for onnybody," was the general opinion. 
 
 The large morning room, where often his predecessor the 
 great Dendy had extended his ample chest to the warmth of 
 the young sun, or where, on chill winter mornings, he must 
 have spread coat-tails to the more genial ministration of a red 
 fire, stirred no deeper acknowledgment in the Doctor's eye 
 than the hall had done. Before the white breakfast cloth, 
 spread over the spacious area of the late physician's table, 
 his lonely chair confronted the distant knife and fork and 
 meager accouterments of a solitary meal. The room itself, 
 that sympathetic hands might have molded into a unity of 
 cheerful comfort as doubtless we should have found it in 
 the defunct Dendy's days showed no more than an indis- 
 criminate collection of uncommunicative furniture, like an 
 omnibus of strange people, all looking their several ways, 
 with divergent heads, and mantled with a stilted silence. 
 Before the great bay window, catching already the first glint 
 of the creeping sun, stood Dendy's red mahogany secretaire, 
 ponderous, full of inkhorn wisdom and deep knowledge, that 
 the present Doctor's mother had bid for at the sale with 
 trembling hope that Medling's wife was done at four pounds 
 ten, and a tear for the dead owner. And there, in gilded 
 protection of the marble fireplace, gleamed Dendy's brass 
 fender, that for a shilling's worth of hesitation nearly went, 
 along with some bedroom crockery, to Peterwick. The 
 chairs and sofa, ministers of necessity rather than of com- 
 fort, all upholstered in funereal horsehair, and dispersed 
 moodily about the room like bearers and undertakers' men, 
 thirsty of light as the latter are of liquid, and drinking 
 up on an evening the last drains of mellow twilight like 
 sherry these had formed part of the Doctor's early home. 
 So, too, had the unvaluable pictures on the walls ; the vases
 
 6 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 on the chimney-piece ; the Victorian fire-screens holding 
 the flame at bay with faded panels of worked silk and the 
 polished coal-scuttle with the Newfoundland dog's head in 
 living colors; the cadaverous bookcase and the heavy Chip- 
 pendale oak sideboard. A woman's hand, perhaps, would 
 have subdued all these irrelevant articles to a standard of 
 sympathy and agreement ; reconciled them to a Christian for- 
 bearance and toleration. But it was not to be. Death had 
 drawn those fragile fingers in his and stilled them, and 
 death's own chill had fallen over the uncompleted work. 
 The plans for the house's transformation that the mother 
 had confided to her son in the first warm moments of their 
 zeal were mere dust in the dark corners of his memory. 
 From the day of his mother's death the Doctor had turned 
 his eyes away, almost deliberately it seemed, from the 
 household pages that held the last brief chronicles of her 
 life. 
 
 His first act, on entering the room this morning, was to 
 throw open the broad window sashes, one after the other, 
 and to admit the morning air. It sprawled in with alacrity, 
 half warm, half chill, like the raw and ripe of mellowing ap- 
 ples ; grass scented and dew cooled, and played silently about 
 the fabric of the austere lace curtains, but the Doctor spent 
 no time on its appreciation. He turned at once away to the 
 mottled brass bell-handle on the side of the fireplace, and 
 sent a summoning message along the rusty bell-cranks to 
 the kitchen, where it ended in a dead and joyless peal, 
 muffled through intervening doors. After awhile there rose 
 a distant stir as of wind in motion; the curtains bellied in- 
 ward; the room door, left open by the Doctor's hand, was 
 sucked back silently on its sneck; there was a muffled thud 
 betokening knees in conflict with panels, and the house- 
 keeper pushed her way into the room behind the breakfast 
 tray. With, a quick lifting of the eyes, in a greeting more
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 7 
 
 injured than respectful, she bent her withered face to the 
 table and laid there the accessories of the Doctor's meal. All 
 these were disposed with a rigid precision of hand, accom- 
 panied by a tightness of mouth as though she were ruling 
 lines of conduct and behavior in the Doctor's moral copy- 
 book, for his discipline and guidance. The porridge plate, 
 wreathing steam, was stamped like a hot seal on the table 
 charter. She adjusted the spoon, drew with something like 
 petulance the handle of the sugar sifter more conveniently to 
 the Doctor's reach, as though, at the same time, weary of 
 doing so many exact offices for one incapable of following 
 them for his own advantage, and concluded with a brief 
 intimation that the Doctor's meal was ready. He drew to 
 the table with a slight flush over his fresh cheeks, and on his 
 lips a kind of guilty school-boy smile a faint smile far less 
 of humor than of a conscious shame that seeks to dilute itself 
 in any expression rather than candor or remorse. 
 
 " I suppose you're not going to speak to me this morning, 
 Anne," he said. 
 
 " What's use ? " answered the housekeeper with brief re- 
 buke. " You're your own master noo, I expect, and can 
 please yoursen what time ye gan to bed and what company 
 ye keep. It's not for me to interfere. All I can do is to 
 strike a light and draw watch frev under my pillow when I 
 hear ye shut door o' yon fellow's back, and hope ti goodness 
 ye've blown lamp out. If it's God will we'm to be burned 
 i' oor beds one o' these nights, it's not for me to contradict 
 it. Half-past two, it was and smoke i' yon room fit to 
 fell a body when I opened door this morning. As for 
 matches, if there was yan i' fireplace there was a boxful. 
 No wonder he dizn't prosper. If he had 'em to pick up. 
 he'd begin to know vally on 'em." 
 
 The Doctor sighed under the indictment, a sigh with a pale 
 smile swimming in it like a slice of lemon in soda, just to
 
 8 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 disguise the flatness of the beverage, as it were, for his own 
 palate. 
 
 " Pridgeon's a careless fellow, I know," he admitted indul- 
 gently. 
 
 " Careless ! " the housekeeper repeated, with threads of 
 veined indignation streaking her withered cheeks. " Is that 
 all name yon can gie him? I could bide to pick up onny- 
 body's matches but his. He never throws two i' same spot, 
 and main part on 'em hasn't been struck at all. It caps me 
 you can bide to have syke a nowter aboot place." 
 
 " I suppose it's easier than stopping him," the Doctor 
 reflected. 
 
 " You'd stop him soon enough," the housekeeper said. 
 " nobbut you'd just lock up yon whisky yance or twice. It's 
 that he comes for, not you. Onnybody'll tell you same, that 
 tells truth. Syke a chap is a friend to nobody but hissen, 
 and a bad 'un there. Wi' his fond talk and laughing ways 
 there's never any goodness in it. When you hear yon 
 fellow laugh, you may know very well what sort o' talk's 
 behind it." 
 
 " You shouldn't listen to him, Anne," the doctor said. " I 
 scarcely do." 
 
 " Who can help listening tiv him ? " the housekeeper cried. 
 "If he didn't mean onnybody to listen tiv him, he shouldn't 
 drop his voice, nor you shouldn't encourage him by saying 
 hush. I know very well whose ears you're hintin' at when 
 you do. 
 
 " Aye," she reflected with a sigh. " Things has altered sin' 
 your poor mother died. We had some respect for oursens 
 when she was alive, and you never swore yance but she 
 would come to me and hope you wasn't falling inti your 
 father's ways. Not that you ever could, for you've neither 
 his heighth nor his breadth, and bad language doesn't become 
 your lips as it did his. It's the big men that swears best,
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 9 
 
 and I won't deny it suits 'em at times, so long as it isn't a 
 habit. It did my husband. But it isn't for syke folk as you 
 and yon Pridgeon, for you only make it sound like badness. 
 But it's no use speaking. One mud as well tell butcher 
 to cut meat wi' less bone. It diz no good. Shall ye be back 
 to dinner to-day ? " 
 
 The Doctor said he did not know. 
 
 " There's not much wonder at me not knowing, then," said 
 the housekeeper. " But if there's any doubt aboot it, it 
 sounds as if ye would. Ye mostlins stop away when you've 
 told me to expect ye." 
 
 The Doctor promised to let her know before leaving home, 
 and with the remark that she knew his promises of old, she 
 left him to his solitude. Scarcely a moment later, however, 
 the door rattled warningly to a fresh current of air, and the 
 housekeeper drew again into the room, this time bearing a 
 letter. 
 
 " It's not fro' your cousin George," she said, " although it's 
 gotten London postmark. But you needn't fear he'll ever 
 trouble you again, now he's wed a rich wife. Nor yet fro' 
 your Aunt Stembridge. But I seem to know writing, how- 
 ever." 
 
 She retired to the door slowly, so that the Doctor might 
 have an opportunity to open the letter before the panels 
 closed on her. The Doctor, holding the envelope momen- 
 tarily before contracted brows, with the look of one in whom 
 perplexed memory had been similarly stirred, tore open the 
 covering and drew forth the sheets contained within. Even 
 as he did so, some swift understanding ripped the veil from 
 perplexity; a quick gray whiteness absorbed the tawny 
 weathering out of his cheeks and brow, and the lips quiv- 
 ered momentarily asunder. Almost immediately he thrust 
 the contents back into the envelope with an assumption of 
 indifference, but he could not resist a rapid glance towards
 
 io THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 the door as though to note how far his discomposure had 
 betrayed him to the housekeeper's steely eye. She met the 
 look, and read its shielded secret with incredulous surprise. 
 " She's never wrote to you!" she cried.
 
 II 
 
 CHEAP paper scribbled over with the weakest of char- 
 acters, as though tears rather than ink had been the 
 fluid for their inscription ; tears stained with the iron of a 
 life's sorrow, tracing their way through tremulous words 
 in labored tracks across the crumpled sheet. The very 
 synonym, this letter, of wasted cheeks and withered lives. 
 There were finger-marks nipped into its worn tissue like 
 earthly bruises, and the page, languid as a sick woman, 
 drooped in the Doctor's fingers. So feeble was its message 
 that, even in this spacious room, with the sun gilding all 
 the bay of the big window, the Doctor had to turn on his 
 chair and hold the crumpled sheet to the light whose 
 oblique flood raised the creases to the importance of low 
 relief, and gave them a legible value greater than the 
 written words. The letter began with his own name, 
 " Humphrey," and he laid it down as though it had been 
 a blow. 
 
 Thirteen years of suffering rolled away as though they 
 had been one tear, and fell upon the corpse of his sorrow, 
 wet and warm. He saw himself as indeed he had often 
 seen himself during this slow tide of years, though never 
 since the first dark hours with such a keen perception 
 he saw himself again the newcomer in this big house, stranger 
 to him now in its divorced familiarity than then, when 
 the lungs of boyish hope had inflated it from base to attic, 
 and his youthful confidence had coursed hot through its 
 passages like blood. It came back to him as he sat there
 
 12 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 how they had entered upon the glorious new life in this 
 house, he and the dead mother, and the faithful servant, with 
 the zest of explorers on the golden coast of a new continent ; 
 how they had tasted in comradeship all the good fruits of 
 the fresh world; had mapped out their unfamiliar territory 
 and apportioned its possession; had drawn up laws and sub- 
 scribed to new constitutions with the zeal of pilgrim fathers. 
 
 This morning he flinched afresh before the memory of that 
 other day which had dawned with its false smile of beauty 
 and taught him, at times, to hate the sunlight and blue sky, 
 and all bright things that bear messages of hope and joy. 
 He saw renewed the dancing characters of that other soul- 
 mocking letter; the figure of his mother, white with care, 
 and wet with tears that shook on pitying lashes; felt again 
 the hot tense hands upon his neck ; the cry of pity, struggling 
 in its own throes to tend the cup of comfort. 
 
 " O, Humphrey. My boy, my boy." 
 
 Pride, love, ambition and hopes all struck into the dust 
 by a faithless woman's hand ; the gleaming tower dismantled 
 like a dream ; the house itself that had been a veritable 
 palace of sunlight smitten into a gray bastile ; sullen, 
 remorseless, frowning round its prison of clay. And then, 
 with the velocity of Fate, that second blow succeeding the 
 first, robbing him of the one prop on which his sorrow rested. 
 He saw again the white calm face of his dead mother flush 
 up to him on his own tears, as though floating on a celestial 
 stream ; and he dropped his hand to dash away with a gesture 
 of pain and bitterness the wet sign of his weakness. 
 
 There are some whom grief attenuates and spiritualizes ; 
 whom affliction fines away to the pure metal of their best 
 nature. With him, he knew it, it had been otherwise. He 
 had coarsened his fibers deliberately during the first assault 
 of grief, that they might take the strain of their heavy bur- 
 den. All that had been best in him he had expressed and ex-
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 13 
 
 cised. He had conquered the siege by stern measures ; and, 
 as in the history of many such conquests, the rough measures 
 had survived the hour of their necessity. His own deliverers 
 became his victors in turn, and with a heart hardened now 
 against the sight of his nature's despoliation, he had aban- 
 doned himself to the weak avoidance of his sorrow. Only 
 one thing, perhaps, had saved him from supreme decay, and 
 that was his joyless obedience to the dictates of his profes- 
 sion. Careless of himself, he had never admitted the cor- 
 ruption of carelessness in his dealings with others. When 
 the call came, he rang prompt and true with the dulled 
 voice of rusted metal, perhaps, it might be; but he fulfilled 
 his mission without grudge, and too frequently without re- 
 ward. 
 
 Thus carried along on the unchecked tide of memory he 
 came again but reluctantly, as it seemed to view the 
 crumpled instigator of his thoughts, and took up the letter 
 and composed himself to read. 
 
 " One who wronged you very deeply, implores you now 
 to read these words with all the charity in your heart, for by 
 the time they come into your hands she will be beyond the 
 reach of mortal love or hate." 
 
 So, with the brief preliminary of his name, the letter 
 opened. She was dead, then, the authoress of all his harm ; 
 the one-time laughing spring that had bubbled into his life 
 through a girl's lips and darkened and deepened and broad- 
 ened, fretting its bed to the iron deeps of his being. He 
 winced as he read the tidings, for her death drew the revenge 
 out of his bosom like a sting. Even now the source of his 
 unhappiness was merged in the infinite floods of destiny, and 
 he, a lonely mortal, left without a sentient object for his 
 hate. What her course in life had been through all these 
 years he had not known, nor sought to inquire. Dimly he
 
 14 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 had supposed her like most offenders in perpetual en- 
 joyment of the fruits of her evil, and had indeed sharpened 
 the weapons of his fortitude on the cruel grindstone of her 
 happiness. And now, lo! she was dead, with his name on 
 her lips. Gone down to the grave shrouded in supplication, 
 and the white linen of penitence. 
 
 Written at many times, and showing in its altering char- 
 acters the influence of many moods superimposed by slow 
 stages to the completion of its purpose, the letter led the 
 reading man through a life's lane of suffering. The faithless 
 red lips that had blown his soul into that gay prismatic 
 bubble of ambition, only to puff it forth and watch its aimless 
 wanderings with cruel indifference, were worn and wasted 
 now to the taste of bitter tears and contrite bread. Along 
 their divided destinies, all unknown the one to the other, 
 these two had stumbled in parallel tracks of suffering. 
 
 If ever he had wished her evil, she told him, God knows 
 his wish had borne abundant fruit. Time and time again 
 during all these sordid years she had eaten the meat of 
 remorse ; had yearned to tear down her sin and all its infinite 
 curtain of consequences that hung between them. Often in 
 her darker hours of trouble she had bitten the craven fingers 
 that would have written her secret to him, for while life was 
 in her she had vowed never to cast her shadow over his days 
 again. But now, with death and all death's difficulties before 
 her, when no taint of self could darken the spirit of her 
 words, she had dared to rise in front of him once more. To 
 none, said the letter, can a broken heart come in its dying 
 humility with better hope than to one whom in life it has 
 deeply injured. " To you, Humphrey, by the remembrance 
 of the ill I did you, I pray in the near sight of God 
 that you will not refuse this last act of mercy to a dead un- 
 worthy woman." 
 
 Then, laboriously, the letter unfolded the story of the life
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 15 
 
 that had succeeded upon her desertion of him. Almost be- 
 fore that guilty honeymoon was on its wane, the man for 
 whom she had broken every tie, pledged every trinket of 
 scruple or honor to minister to his evil pride, entered upon 
 his campaign of cruelty and wrong. Within three years of 
 their ill-blest union he had passed out of her life through the 
 prison dock, and since that time she had struggled against 
 the adverse current of the world not for her own sake, for 
 often she had coveted and prayed for sleep, but for the sake 
 of her purer, dearer self, the girl child in whom the last 
 savings of her heart had been invested, who had made the 
 struggle harder and still more bitter sweet, and who alone 
 lent terrors to the dark gateway through which the tide was 
 hurrying her fast. Now with a mother's love that triumphed 
 over every obstacle of pride or shame, and with an eloquence 
 borrowed of death in her supreme hour, she begged this 
 injured man to receive the fragrant blossom of her dishonor. 
 Those wasted fingers guided a pen that had been dipped in 
 the corrosive fluid of experience, and it pictured, with terrible 
 fidelity, the living shadows gathering round her child as her 
 own night drew on apace. She had hoped and prayed for 
 the few more years of toil and guardianship that might have 
 left her daughter with a better dowry of wisdom for the 
 fighting of a girl's battle, but it was not to be. Out of her 
 scanty earnings, eked meagerly even now upon the harvest- 
 field of death, she had been barely able to make the last 
 provision for her erring clay, that should spare her child the 
 cruel extremity of shedding tears upon a pauper's grave. 
 But thus much, by mortgages upon her own failing flesh, she 
 had accomplished. Thereafter, when her body should be 
 committed to the soil, and all these years of suffering and 
 these latter moments of horror stroked out in sleep, God 
 alone knew whose hand would shield her child. And she 
 asked this man whose lips hardened, and on whose brow
 
 16 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 the clouds descended as he read to take the child from the 
 mirk of the town, that corrupting network of influences. 
 Take her away to the country, where at least there was 
 God's blue sky and clean air for her lungs, and honest labor 
 of the arduous sort, perhaps, for her willing hands, where, if 
 God would so move him, he might watch over her and shield 
 her for a while, at least from the burden of the storm. 
 Already she begged his forgiveness for this courage of a 
 dying woman she had committed some breath of him to 
 the child; had spoken of a dearly-loved cousin whose favor 
 had been forfeited on her part by an act of wickedness 
 and ingratitude; a remote generous-hearted man whom her 
 death might soften to forgiveness for her daughter's sake. 
 She had pledged the child to consign this letter to the post 
 with her own hand as soon as the breath had left her mother's 
 body. It was the supreme desperate effort of a stricken 
 soul, for she told him how almost her last journey through 
 the streets of life had been to the great dim library, where, 
 with a beating heart, her faltering finger had traced his 
 familiar name in the dusty directory, and learned that he 
 was still in the spot where she had sent him such a different 
 message all those years ago. Now she was dying with her 
 hopes and prayers fixed upon him. There was a folded 
 envelope enclosed, stamped and addressed with most punctil- 
 ious care. If his heart were moved, he was to place his 
 sanction within this, and dispatch it with the least delay to 
 the address given. And as she feared her child would be 
 left with scarce the wherewithal to reach him in his far 
 home, she begged with even more show of profusion in 
 penitence for this smaller petition than had seemed apparent, 
 to his eye, in the larger that he would advance a sum 
 sufficient to meet the journey. For all this if indeed he 
 yielded any part of it she looked to God to repay him, as 
 He would surely do.
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 17 
 
 Much more, indeed, the letter contained, for it treasured 
 the hopes and fears of weeks. Now assurance strengthened 
 her hand. Prayer and ascription, supplication and despair 
 marked each alternating paragraph. There were postscripts 
 for even at the hour of death a woman finds some one last 
 thing to say. Here, for instance, she confided her daughter's 
 name Jane with a little breath of remorse and disap- 
 pointment. It had been given, she explained, in the first bit- 
 terness of her trouble, when, with the taste of her own down- 
 fall in her teeth, she had striven to shield her child even from 
 the worldly influence of baptismal vanity. So in her anxiety 
 she had chosen a good, useful name, without pretensions, 
 or the covert aspiration to beauty that wrecked so many 
 daughters' lives. A plain name for hard wear and tear in a 
 struggling world, and one unlikely (she had thought at the 
 time) to sow the seeds of vanity or folly. There was a sigh 
 (it seemed) following this tender leading of the name by 
 hand, as though her consolation were mingled with regret. 
 
 " After all," she added, " there is no reason why it should 
 not be as pretty a name as any other. I suspect the feeling 
 comes through prejudice. But the name is very dear to me 
 now. God knows how I dread to lose it." In another place 
 she put pen to paper to assure him that if he could only see 
 her now he would shed all feeling of anger for the past. 
 
 " My hair is nearly gray, and terribly thin. If I lived, 
 there would be none of it left, I fear. Jane has a glorious 
 headful." 
 
 Still again she adds a line touching the cause of all her 
 courage and apprehensions. " I would die gladly, but for 
 her. She is, I think, very like what I must have been as a 
 child, before you knew me. Thank God, I find very little of 
 her father in her, though at times, in my trouble, I have 
 trembled to believe that he was slowly creeping out in little 
 ways of temper and of expression. But God bless her and 
 watch over her when I am gone. She is my very heart."
 
 Ill 
 
 WITH a strange set face that followed much perusal, 
 the Doctor put back the letter. If the dead woman 
 could have witnessed then the hard mouth and darkened 
 brow that aged him, she might have shivered in her grave 
 for what it boded to her hopes. 
 
 For Memory, like a wind, rose out of the stricken past 
 and blew commotion over the wasted places of the Doctor's 
 heart. First, betokening the coming storm, there had fallen 
 a flatness upon him ; a period of pity, a sense of melancholy 
 loneliness in life. He had pondered the strange mutability 
 of it all ; had said to himself, " Dead ; dead," turning the 
 word over and over in his mind like some strange coin with 
 unfamiliar superscription. Again and again the wind of 
 memory blew across his mind as he read, scattering the sense 
 of the woman's words, so that he had needs hark back with 
 a new resolution for understanding; the phrases slipping 
 through his slack intelligence like a cable through chill 
 ringers. And after this ensued a stir of pride; a sense of 
 exultant magnanimity to think his injured heart had been 
 made the haven of this woman's hope. 
 
 But to this pride in turn succeeded wrath. She could 
 come to him now, said he, to lay on him the brunt of her 
 offending. The letter was but another token of the con- 
 tempt which had caused her desertion of him all those years 
 ago. It was a missive of effrontery aimed at a fool's heart ; 
 an appeal to a weak nature whose only function was the 
 forgiving of offenses. The penitential words, the tearful 
 ascriptions to his goodness, the constant invocation of the 
 
 18
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 19 
 
 shadow of death, were but cunningly set teeth in the saw of 
 the woman's purpose. Here was a weapon, she had prided 
 herself, to cut through his resistance ; a tool to rend the 
 bones of his resolve. But he would be above her conciliation 
 as he had been above her treachery. He would admit no 
 supplicants with their hostages for the guilty past. The 
 gates of his heart should be shut and barred. 
 
 All that day he was at war with himself. The letter lay 
 hot in the pocket against his breast, a seat of discord and 
 divergence, as he drove about the countryside ; now making 
 the mare's shoes ring against the sunbaked road in a futile 
 essay to outpace trouble ; anon succumbing to the weight of 
 it, and letting the winded animal blow the dust off the road 
 with protesting trumpets from her outcurled nostrils as she 
 lagged to a slack rein. No letter nor money of his sending 
 should bridge over the gulf of treachery or of time. There 
 were houses built with the nation's money for the sheltering 
 of the children of wickedness or misfortune. Let the child 
 of this woman, who had injured him in the past, eat the 
 same bread and no better than the children of those who had 
 done him no wrong. And all the while, despite this bluster 
 of resistance and repudiation, the small keen voice that 
 never deceives kept crying out in his ear : " She will come. 
 She will come. You know it. She will come. It is written 
 on the scroll of fate. It is the consummation of your destiny, 
 just as was her mother's sin. You will write the letter. You 
 will send the money." 
 
 " I won't have her ! " cried the Doctor. " I won't be 
 fooled." 
 
 " There's a storm brewin' over yonder," said the Sunfleet 
 miller with a wink, as he watched the inert figure shake 
 soullessly to the oscillations of the ancient buggy. 
 
 " Aye, I'se think we shall be getting a change noo," as- 
 sented old Stebbing the roadmender, who was always willing
 
 20 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 to rest his hammer for the study or discussion of his fellow- 
 men, and who was said to wear his smoked eye-protectors 
 so that no mortal could know for certain whether he was 
 awake or asleep; the legend running that he had acquired 
 the gift of slumber while he worked, as a horse rests in 
 harness. " Doctor looked at me strangelins hard yesterday 
 mornin', as though he didn't rightly know me and him and 
 me reckons to be good friends. He nivver turned his head 
 yance to-day." 
 
 " Why, it'll be aboot his time and all," subscribed Farmer 
 Medling. " It's aboon a fortnight sin' he called out to me 
 across yon nine-acre, and he's been deaf and dumb ever sin'." 
 
 " I heard tell o' Teddy Pridgeon being wi' him last neet, 
 while a bit before three ti-morn," said the carrier. " My 
 wod! That's road to doctor folk, you may depend. Doc- 
 torin's like all other trades i' these days, I think. It looks 
 like getting warse i'stead o' better." 
 
 The Doctor did not return to dinner. Report which in 
 these visual matters is generally correct announced him at 
 Kenham Beach, where the landlord of the Mariner's Leg 
 suffered from bronchitis, a complaint whose crises synchro- 
 nized peculiarly with the Doctor's moods. There he baited 
 the mare, and sat down with the landlord in the bar kitchen, 
 though he had few words to say. Report mentioned that, 
 just before mounting the buggy again, he asked the landlord 
 for a sheet of paper and a pen, as he had a letter to write. 
 The landlord declared himself sure there must be a sheet of 
 notepaper somewhere in the house, and he remembered 
 lending the pen to the Spraith lighthouse-keeper not a month 
 before. He had, however, some apparent difficulty in pro- 
 ducing either, and the Doctor, exhibiting small patience with 
 the protracted search, said " No matter, no matter," and 
 took a hurried departure. 
 
 He put the question, later, to the landlord of the Gander
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 21 
 
 at Peterwick who was said to have a standing complaint 
 in his inside, and no wonder, in view of all the mixed quan- 
 tities he gave it to drink and the landlord of the Gander 
 fetched both out of his youngest daughter's work-box, and 
 asked the Doctor whether he would go into the parlor or 
 write where he was. The Doctor said he would write where 
 he was, and then went into the parlor, where he stayed nearly 
 half-an-hour. At the Peterwick Post Office he bought a 
 money order for four pounds, and having registered the let- 
 ter that contained it, mounted the tilting buggy and rocked 
 homeward in the sinking sunlight with a deeper chin than 
 before. Much later in the evening, when the housekeeper 
 brought the uplifted lamp to the room where the Doctor had 
 been treading the worn carpet roses underfoot through many 
 a drear perambulation, he turned suddenly upon her with a 
 faint flush surmounting his cheeks, and said 
 
 " I suppose you may as well know it now, Anne." 
 
 The housekeeper looked up with crimped eyes through the 
 interceptive lamplight, and gave vent to an inquiry. " What's 
 amiss noo? " 
 
 He restated his formula. " I've had bad news this morn- 
 ing." 
 
 " Bad news ! " exclaimed the housekeeper. " Ye mud 'a 
 knowed it wouldn't be good. Good news dizn't come tiv a 
 spot like this, and no wonder syke hours as we keep." 
 
 " I've heard," said the Doctor, without looking at her, 
 " that a married cousin of mine is just dead." He put his 
 hand to his temple. " In rather bad circumstances. They 
 are looking to me to to do something. She leaves a 
 daughter quite unprovided for. I cannot see her starve." 
 
 The eye of the housekeeper burned upon him more globu- 
 lar and illuminative than the lamp. His glance shrunk un- 
 der the look. 
 
 " Which cousin is it ? " she asked.
 
 22 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 " Not one that you know anything about, Anne." 
 
 " I know all there is. So you've n' occasion to try and put 
 me off. Is it Ada?" 
 
 The Doctor said no. 
 
 " Nay. I thought it wouldn't be Ada," the housekeeper 
 decided. " It dizn't sound like her to gan, so long as she 
 can bide i' onnybody's road, and make mischief. She was 
 always a selfish creature. I expect it'll be Mary. She was 
 as good as any. I won't say ' best,' for there wasn't a best 
 among 'em." She read the failure of her second surmise in 
 the Doctor's countenance, and substituted, " Or Agatha. She 
 coughed strangelins as a bairn though half of it was pas- 
 sion. I'se often bid her be still." 
 
 " This is only a half-cousin," the Doctor explained hur- 
 riedly. " But that's not really the point. . . . They've 
 written to me to tell me, and well! we may have to take 
 the girl in here, Anne. At least, for a short time." 
 
 " Here ? " repeated the housekeeper. " Are you i' your 
 senses ? A lass ! How old will she be ? " 
 
 " I scarcely know. Perhaps perhaps twelve or so. A 
 child, I believe." 
 
 " And you talk o' bringing her tiv a spot like this ? Wi' 
 folk gannin' to bed at three i' the morning, and yon 
 Pridgeon telling tales i' yon room that he ought to be ashamed 
 on, and you and all for listening tiv 'em. Aye! I'se blushed 
 many a time and come out to cough in yon hall as often as 
 three times of a night. It's a mercy I've been a married 
 woman, wi' a husband o' my own though it was a long time 
 before I made up my mind to take him, but I've thanked 
 providence since. And what would happen wi' a bairn listen- 
 ing about place ? It's shocking to think on." She wiped her 
 hands emphatically on her apron. " No. She'll 'a to gan 
 and live wi' your cousin George," she said, with a fine air 
 of conclusion. " Not that I think anything about his wife,
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 23 
 
 for I don't. She wears ower small boots for my fancy, 
 and shuts her eyes when she talks as though it gied her a 
 pain i' the back to speak to syke folks as us. But she can 
 afford to take lass a deal better than us. Let bairn gan tiv 
 her. She'll grudge her every bite she eats, but what by 
 that?" 
 
 The Doctor's brow contracted. 
 
 " I would not write and ask her, Anne," he said firmly. 
 
 " Nor there's no need," said the housekeeper. " Let them 
 write and ask her that wrote and asked you. Who are 
 they, do you say ? " 
 
 The flush rose again over the Doctor's cheeks. 
 
 " They are friends," he said, and plucked decision sud- 
 denly, as though it were a bud. " Besides . . . it's no 
 use, Anne. My mind is made up, and I have written the 
 letter already. The girl must come here." 
 
 The housekeeper crossed eyes with him for some seconds, 
 and something seemed to blow about her lips. Not a smile, 
 but a kind of exultation. 
 
 " Aye, I know who it was wrote to you this morning," she 
 said. 
 
 " I don't want to discuss it with you, Anne." 
 
 " Aye, but I know very well, wi'oot discussing. It was 
 fro' Hilda Brennan." 
 
 " How dare you ? I forbade you ever to use that name 
 to me." 
 
 " I dare very well. And I'll tell you another thing. It's 
 Hilda Brennan's bairn. Wi' your cousins and syke like! 
 Deny it if you can." 
 
 " You are a damned old fool, Anne."
 
 IV 
 
 PETERWICK Station, secluded in the silent hollow of 
 Peterwick town, where the trains puff six times before 
 the first white sphere of expanding vapor rises into sight 
 against the blue sky and the dark fringe of Greenston woods 
 
 why has no poet of our time distilled its peace in clarid 
 verse, or crystallized its calm in placid stanza? When the 
 great trains are gone, and the iron-bound gates clash to- 
 gether, the station lies an inclosed area of peace, like an 
 allotment of beatitude staked off by its criss-cross creasoted 
 palings from the troublesome assaults of the outer world. 
 There is a peace here in sunlit hours that even the dim 
 shade of the cloister cannot give. Those lissome bands of 
 steel, gleaming under a blue sky, encircle the calm soil like 
 a fillet, binding its brows to tranquillity and devotion. Un- 
 shaken by the thunderous surge of metal and the fevered 
 throb of the locomotive's breast, they stir the mind less to 
 thoughts of motion than to thoughts of peace. For there 
 is no peace so profound as that which falls upon areas of 
 movement and motion when they take their slumber. 
 
 Three days after the Doctor had sat at breakfast with 
 the dead woman's script, Peterwick station began to prepare 
 by all its familiar ritual for the consummation of the six 
 o'clock train, bathed in the benedictory light of a setting 
 August sun. Beyond the beatific gates of drab stood Cob- 
 ham's 'bus, that links Beachington and Sunfleet and the scat- 
 tered intervening hamlets with the civilizing forces of steam 
 
 a portable rival to the station itself drinking the golden 
 sunlight through its yards of window and thirsty door like 
 
 24
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 25 
 
 yellow wine, till its inside was saturated and gorgeous with 
 the golden vintage ; and the dim plush cushions glowed with 
 rejuvenated crimson in the engulfed light. Cobham himself 
 lay back on the box-seat in an attitude of soulful surrender, 
 his hat tilted over his brow, a pipe indicating the placidity 
 of his breathings by a rhythmic waft of blue incense that 
 curled no higher than the 'bus top before it became gold too, 
 in turn, and incorporated itself invisibly with the fine par- 
 ticles of sunlight suspended everywhere in the air like pow- 
 der. One of Cobham's legs reposed over the ample area of 
 unoccupied box-seat, with a negligent boot extending beyond 
 the rail as sole token of him to pedestrians on the footpath 
 side. Children from Peterwick, long- released from the 
 buzzing imprisonment of school, swarmed up and down the 
 swart bars of the crossing gates. There, too, was old Majent 
 on his two crabbed sticks, with his accordion-pleated legs 
 united to the soil a yard and a half in the rear, and his back 
 sloping downwards to meet them as though he were a giraffe, 
 come to see the Hunmouth train as usual, and staring at the 
 ribbed gates with his mouth open and his chin on his cord 
 waistcoat, in his unalterable stare of absorption. 
 
 The station-master had already laid down his pipe and 
 exchanged his white canvas hat of privacy and spare mo- 
 ments for the official headgear of gold braid and intertwisted 
 monogram ; the signalman had already embraced his levers 
 and blown a shrill prelude on his pea-whistle ; Jarge Stebbing 
 had rushed out from his secret lurking-place in his customary 
 hurry with the brass bell held by tongue and handle in the 
 hollow of his flabby green waistcoat, and riven the golden 
 air with ring-a-dings as though the very sunlight were brass 
 and he was basting it, when the Doctor's buggy, giving in at 
 the springs to each inequality of the road, like a lady with 
 weak ankles, crept up to the gate and came to an eventual 
 mooring in the shadow of the sun-filled 'bus. The ancient
 
 26 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 groom let himself creakily down from the buggy with la- 
 borious care. 
 
 " Noo then, Major ! " cried Cobham, raising his head 
 above the 'bus in amicable interest. " I thought you was 
 dead." 
 
 The old groom, absorbed in an intricate disposal of the 
 reins, and holding them a yard apart under dull comparison 
 as though he found difficulty in recalling the formula for 
 their arrangement, repeated the word " Dead " in a wheezy 
 voice, part contemptuous, part irritable. 
 
 " I mud very well be dead and all," he vouchsafed, " if 
 everybody had their way. There's ower many masters i' the 
 world, you may depend." 
 
 " And what brings you to Peterwick ? " inquired Cobham. 
 
 "What brings me?" retorted the groom, with a half-way 
 voice of complaining that suggested he would not need much 
 encouragement to unload a cargo of aged woes. " Nowt o' 
 my own inclination, you may depend. I never cared a deal 
 for Peterwick at onny time, but I like it no better to-day." 
 
 " Doctor won't be coming by this train, will he ? " 
 
 " Doctor ? " The old groom had acquired a way, begotten 
 doubtless of much brooding, of taking up the salient word 
 of his interlocutor's phrase, and turning it over with a kind 
 of critical displeasure as though he were trying on caps, 
 and none would fit him. Indeed, it would have needed a 
 large-size cap to fit the head of his complaining. " Nobbut 
 it was only Doctor," he decided, " I could bide it better 
 though he'd do a deal sensibler to ride back wi' you, i' 'bus, 
 like onnybody else. But I'se telt it's a lass Fse got to meet. 
 A niece or summut o' Doctor's, I understan' though there's 
 not much understannin' owt at yon spot. It's all ' Do this,' 
 and * Do that,' wi'oot no whys nor wherefores. Aye, an' 
 yon aud woman's as bad as him."
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 27 
 
 " A niece o' Doctor's ? " interrogated Cobham. " Why, 
 what sort of a lass will she be? " 
 
 "What sort of a lass?" repeated the groom angrily. 
 " Why, what sort of a lass is onny lass? They're nowt but 
 fondness at best o' time. But Fse gotten to look out for a 
 lass wi a black hat and skirt though Doctor knows very 
 well my sight isn't what it was, and he mud 'a done a deal 
 better to come hissen." 
 
 The 'bus proprietor was about to ply the groom with 
 further interrogation when his ear caught the distant sound 
 of panting steam and clangorous mechanism. 
 
 " Here she comes ! " he cried, and woke to activity as the 
 train bore down upon the little station. 
 
 " You'll gie a look out," quavered the old groom, " if you 
 see onny lass i' black, wi' a box or two. I don't want to miss 
 her and have to come again. An' just gie a look to aud 
 mare, will you," he added, with a troubled glance backward. 
 " I think she'll stand, but it's a long while sin' I had her at 
 station." 
 
 The groom's excitement, fired by responsibility, kept him 
 perpetually animated with the blood of ire, until the little 
 knot of passengers trickled out in front of the panting green 
 engine, and traversed the far crossing to the Peterwick side 
 of the station. A girl's figure, at some distance of separa- 
 tion, completed the line of people picking their way over the 
 metals, and Jarge Stebbing brought up the rear with his 
 luggage-laden barrow. 
 
 " Yon's her," said Cobham, marking her transit with an 
 interested finger. 
 
 "Wheer?" cried the groom, whose eye, through much 
 anxiety, was no longer an organ of precision or reliability. 
 " I can't see nowt but steam. Gor bless it. Point her oot 
 again, George. Div ye want me to miss her? Aye! Noo
 
 28 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 I see. She's been there all this time, you may depend while 
 I'se been blinding mysen very near to get a look at her. 
 And she's not stirring of hersen extry, even noo." 
 
 The passengers filtered slowly through the gate to where 
 George Cobham was busying himself with baskets, and 
 instituting the preliminaries of storage and disposal for the 
 'bus's departure. Last of all, still at her distance, following 
 the human current, but holding herself diffidently from con- 
 tact with its human integers walking in whatever direc- 
 tion, it seemed, with a sort of shrinkage, as though yet 
 unsure of the elements of this new world with which she 
 must now mingle, came the girl herself. She was clad in 
 mourning of a deepness that branded it recent, but of a 
 meager simplicity that showed this bereavement had assailed 
 the pocket no less than the heart. The shoes, where Care 
 ever scribbles his signature most legibly, were used and in- 
 substantial ; and the girl's gloves were frail and cheap. 
 Clasping a black-bordered handkerchief in her left hand, 
 whose close compression seemed to intimate that it had but 
 recently been moistened with tears, the girl followed timor- 
 ously the lead of the energetic Jarge; gazing out of a pair 
 of humid and very blue shrinking eyes, fringed with deep 
 dark lashes that seemed to try and shut out what necessity 
 made them see. Her brow and cheeks the latter very 
 obviously wet with surreptitious weeping were pallid ; and 
 her lips, in whose corners lurked a spasmodic quiver, were 
 locked together, gray and dry. With the cascade of light 
 auburn hair that fell loose upon her shoulders, and gleamed 
 in the sun with golden filaments against her somber dress, 
 she might have made pretensions to girlish beauty, but the 
 face was too bleached and careworn. All the features, except 
 those blue eyes, were effaced and obliterated in a gray diffu- 
 sion of distress. 
 
 " Noo then, aud stiff-legs," cried Jarge Stebbing uncere-
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 29 
 
 moniously, letting down the barrow with a bang, and hailing 
 the irresolute figure of the old groom, " get yon cart turned 
 wi' you, and sharp! I'se gotten a lass and two boxes for 
 Dr. Bentham."
 
 WHILE the shrinking girl and the grim-visaged groom 
 drove slowly along the road in the dusty wake of 
 the Beachington 'bus, that rolled upward from its lumber- 
 ing wheels like choirs of chubby cherubim in flight to heaven, 
 and floated over the sleeping hedgerows of hawthorn and 
 bramble, the Doctor brooded, a very incarnation of the dusk, 
 in his lonely big room at Sunfleet. The sun was fast spin- 
 ning away from his day's communion with the bay window, 
 and being enmeshed in the web-work of branches that con- 
 stituted the western shelter of the house. One vivid gold 
 streak on the far wall turned to crimson while the Doctor 
 waited incorporating his substance with the surrounding 
 shadows as though the last spent forces of the day were 
 being wrung out in blood. The stain faded to a blurred pink 
 and shifted silently off the sash, leaving the room the darker. 
 It seemed, with its passage, as though the room had sighed 
 to a deeper note of solitude, and the darkness sank apace, 
 for the great trees and the close shrubs strangled all but 
 the fiercer rays of light. Filtered through a thousand leaves, 
 the gloom thickened like the syrupy illumination streaming 
 over some church chancel through sieves of tinctured glass. 
 The Doctor, sometimes merged in the far darkness of the 
 room, sometimes stealing silently to and fro and kindling his 
 profile against the dying window-glow, listened now and again 
 by the open sash, or with his face towards the door, for the 
 first signs of crunching gravel or internal movement that 
 should betide the nearing change. Ever since the receipt of 
 that faded script, the trees of ghostly memory had been f ret- 
 
 30
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 31 
 
 ting their leaves and wringing their branches round his se- 
 cluded being ; and his mind had woven many restless wander- 
 ings by day and night. He had opened, so he told himself, 
 the gates of mercy, but not the gates of forgiveness or love. 
 Like a grudging toll-keeper, awakened by the summons of 
 memory against his will, he had come out swinging the dim 
 lantern of duty to give passage to this childish wayfarer 
 along the great high road, but he would yield her no entry 
 to his own bosom or home. The bread of mercy should be 
 broken to appease the hunger of his own conscience, but they 
 should eat as strangers at the board of charity, these two, 
 and should part, after the meal, the children of conscience, 
 not of love. For he was doing this at the sepulcher of all 
 that had been best in him ; it was no sacrament to living 
 flesh and blood. 
 
 Each hour of attendance strengthened his desire to ex- 
 pedite the girl's passage through his life, and make her stay 
 under this roof as transient as might be. As soon as ever 
 he could transfer her to quarters where his heart would per- 
 mit him, with all belief that her welfare would be regarded, 
 he would do so. His plans ran, for the main part, in the 
 direction of some inexpensive school, where he could make 
 arrangements for her permanent lodgment, until such time 
 as her life's work might be decided. And meanwhile in hard 
 interviews with the housekeeper he had laid down the lines 
 which must govern the child's stay in this place. He would 
 admit no splicing of the broken threads ; no stolen approaches 
 to his heart or person. The girl was to be kept remote ; was 
 to have her meals in the distant kitchen, and to be dis- 
 couraged from any excursion into the grounds or house, 
 being brought to regard the Doctor as a man hostile to child- 
 hood and the sound of voices ; a being inaccessible to every- 
 thing but the summons of the sick. Sunfleet and the 
 Doctor's house, she must be taught, were mere stepping
 
 32 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 stones in her life's pilgrimage. When the time ripened she 
 must be ready to fare forth on the path chosen, away from 
 this place and all that pertained to it. That, stripped to its 
 bleak bones, was the Doctor's plan for her reception and 
 disposal. 
 
 As he propounded it from time to time to the old house- 
 keeper, it met with a varying measure of scorn and open 
 hostility, according to her mood. Indeed, to trace the true 
 veins of her feeling through the ebullitions of conflicting 
 anger which marked her attitude would have offered a 
 difficult task. Now she was on the side of severity, taxing 
 the Doctor for his weakness : " You was ever a fond one, 
 evens as a lad. Onnybody could be master o' you that tried 
 and you get warse i'stead of better. A nice idea it is an' all, 
 that you should 'a to pay the price of other folks' wickedness." 
 Now on the side of leniency, chiding the Doctor for his hard- 
 ness of heart : " Aye, a bonny idea to let yon bairn come i' 
 house fresh frev her mother's grave, and gie her no word o' 
 sorrow or welcome. All Sunfleet would cry shame o' ye. 
 That wasn't your mother's way, nor yet it isn't mine." Now 
 in open scorn of his project: "What! Tell bairn you're 
 ower throng wi' work to be bothered wi' childer! Aye, a 
 likely tale. You'd find any bairn particular if she was a 
 lass believin' that. You would and all. And first time 
 yon Pridgeon comes, she'd hear you kickin' stair-rods all way 
 up to bed, wi' yon chap singin' down drive at three i' 
 mornin'." Now in personal rebellion : " Div ye think I 
 want lass i' kitchen wi' me set at same table, an' watchin' 
 which side I chew my meat? Not natural. Fewer folk 
 there is scraping tiles i' yon kitchen, better I'se pleased." 
 
 At last the sounds so long simulated by his imagination, 
 broke upon the solitude. The Doctor heard the crunch of 
 gravel prolonged in a crescendo that stopped all of a sudden, 
 succeeded by the stir of doors and the commingling of voices.
 
 THE: DOCTORS LASS 33 
 
 It turned him to the statue of a listener for a brief while, 
 and then, passing swiftly to the sideboard in the far gloom, 
 he drained a draught concocted from the tantalus and the 
 soda syphon with the soulless haste of urgency. Twice dur- 
 ing the succeeding minutes he did the same until after an 
 eternity of waiting sudden beams of creeping light prized 
 a way beneath the door and through the keyhole, and the 
 housekeeper entered, bearing the lamp in her hand. She 
 set it down on the table with an ostentatious double sniff in 
 the direction of the sideboard. 
 
 " You've gotten started then," she said. 
 
 The Doctor did not retaliate on the aspersion. 
 
 " Major has come back again ? " he asked, with assumed 
 indifference. 
 
 The housekeeper regulated the burners of the lamp and 
 flashed a straight look at him in the clearer light. "If you 
 mean you want to know about lass, I'll tell you," she said 
 abruptly. " Hilda Brennan '11 never be dead so long as yon 
 bairn's wick (alive), though poor child looks very nigh pined. 
 So keep your lies about cousins and syke like for them that's 
 bigger fools than you ; not for them that slapped you when 
 you was a baby. Do you think I don't know what's been 
 amiss wi' you sin' yon letter came? " 
 
 The Doctor's face grew a shade paler, and his mouth 
 betrayed the hardening imposed on it by restraint. 
 
 " After all, Anne," he said, " I am not accountable to 
 you for what I choose to do or say." He spoke under his 
 breath, as though he recognized the lurking new element of 
 danger that threatened his happiness now beneath this roof. 
 
 " But if so much as a breath concerning Hilda Brennan or 
 this child gets abroad . . . and round to my ears ! " 
 
 A red spot blazed swiftly into the housekeeper's withered 
 cheek, and the look in her eye cut the threat upon his lips. 
 
 " Div you think I can't keep a secret as well as you ? " she 
 
 3
 
 34 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 demanded scornfully. " My wod ! There's gratitude, after 
 all the lies I've had to tell for you sin' your poor mother 
 died. Whatever truth Sunfleet folks has gotten to know 
 hasn't been fro' me, that I can say, and may the Lord forgie 
 me, for I wasn't lying for mysen. If onnybody breathes 
 Hilda Brennan's name it'll be you and yon whisky that's telt 
 'em, not me. Aye, and onnybody that knew Hilda Brennan 
 before poor lass died would know her again i' yon bairn, 
 wi'oot needing to be telt. She's gotten her mother's eyes 
 as blue as blue, though bairn looks nobbut half fed." 
 
 The Doctor made a sign, part beseeching, part imperative. 
 
 " Enough ! " he said. " Thank you, Anne. Go back to 
 her." 
 
 " Gan back tiv her?" said the housekeeper. " She dizn't 
 want to see me. She wants to see you. Bairn wean't sleep 
 while she diz." 
 
 " Me ? " The Doctor shrank from his own pronoun as 
 from an ill shadow. " No, no. I cannot. I will not, Anne. 
 You know what I said." 
 
 " Men says a deal o' things they don't mean," she com- 
 mented. " Bairn has asked for you. I telt her there was a 
 deal o' sickness stirring, and you was very throng. I says 
 it's not oft ye get to bed before daybreak. She says : ' I 
 want to see him particular. I have a letter for him. I must 
 see him.' Aye, it mud 'a been her mother speaking. Her 
 mother was a bonny lass, though I never could 'bide her 
 fancy ways but, poor woman, she's dead and gone, and I'll 
 a-warrant she's paid dear for her fancies. She little thought 
 an aud woman like me would outlive her." 
 
 The Doctor, with less assurance of his purpose, held more 
 obstinately to the present negations, as a drunkard will 
 clutch palings fearing what detachment may bring. 
 
 " No, no. I have told you, Anne. I will not ... it
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 35 
 
 can do no good. Keep her out of my sight. I want to be 
 left alone." 
 
 The housekeeper looked upon him with a strange admix- 
 ture of commiseration and scorn. 
 
 " You a doctor ! " she exclaimed, " and dursn't face a bit of 
 a lass like yon, wi' her cheeks all wet for a mother who's 
 scarcelins cold in her grave ! " 
 
 The Doctor said, " I have said my say, Anne," and turned 
 to the window. His own obstinacy cut him like a knife, and 
 yet, man that he was, he drove it in upon himself. After all 
 this course of proud self-ruination he could not brook a tame 
 submission to any wet-eyed legate, could not suffer to sop 
 the black dry bread of animosity in tears. And yet some- 
 thing within him seemed to cry out like a voice, beseeching 
 peace ; a truce with hatreds ; a rehabilitation in his own 
 grace. For he had no illusions as to his downfall. It was 
 complete enough ; it had carried him beyond the range of 
 his own sympathies. 
 
 The housekeeper turned to the door with a parting, 
 " That's your father all over again. Your dear mother 
 would 'a done very different and so would you if she'd 
 lived. But she's dead noo, and it's easy to tread on them 
 that's underground. Poor bairn, poor bairn." 
 
 By prudence he ought to have taken up his hat at this 
 juncture, he knew, and quitted the shelter of this threaten- 
 ing roof. But a scorn of flight, and a fear of chance meet- 
 ings or interrogations outside his gate held him to the room. 
 And against his own admission he hoped dimly, too, that the 
 housekeeper would return to the charge and allow him one 
 more show of purpose before surrender. In this he was not 
 disappointed. Before the lapse of half-an-hour she was 
 back at his door ; her red nose and a certain puffiness of eye 
 proving conclusively to his medical satisfaction that she had
 
 36 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 been inebriating herself at the fountain of sorrow. He 
 turned upon her with a stern look of inquiry, and she faced 
 him with the set sourness that has no favor to ask. 
 
 " I nobbut came to see if lamp needed trimming," she said. 
 " You've n' occasion to glower at me." 
 
 He indicated the globe with a defiant cast of hand. 
 
 " It needs nothing," he said. " Thank you Anne." The 
 " thank you, Anne " was in anticipation of her departure, but 
 she stood her ground. 
 
 " I can go wi'oot being thanked for it," she said. " Yon 
 wick's ower high. You've no care for lamps, nor fire, nor 
 house, nor bairns, nor ought." She stooped to the wick- 
 screw with a rancid face, and experimented with the taps 
 while the Doctor held her under a brow-battery of suspicion 
 and displeasure. " An' yon poor child " she said. 
 
 He stopped her at that. " Close the door after you, Anne, 
 please. I wish to be quiet." 
 
 " Aye," cried the housekeeper, abandoning the pretext of 
 wicks. " An' onnybody mud know why. You can't bide 
 yoursen. You're skulkin' i' your corner same as a dumb 
 animal that know's it's done amiss. You'd have ta'en your- 
 self away this long while sin', but your scared onnybody '11 
 be wanting to know things you'd for shame to tell." 
 
 " Am I to have peace ... in my house, Anne ? " 
 
 " Peace ! How div you expect peace wi' syke behavior ? 
 Ye'll get no peace so long as yon bairn's on your conscience." 
 
 He commenced to pace up and down the room once more, 
 perambulating his trouble in its swaddling clothes of irreso- 
 lution and doubt, silent and unresponsive to the persuasive 
 chidings of the woman. 
 
 " Why should I see her?" he blurted out after a time. 
 
 " Because you'll never rest while you do," retorted the 
 housekeeper. " Div you think Fse nursed you as a bairn for 
 nowt? I know ye a deal better than you know yoursen
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 37 
 
 and though you gan your own road, you'll stop o' my way o' 
 thinking." 
 
 " You speak ' he said. " Have I not done enough, 
 after all that has happened? What other man would do 
 more ? " 
 
 "What other man would do as much?" threw in the 
 housekeeper with a blurt of pride. " But do you reckon 
 yoursen in wi' other men? You, wi' syke a mother as 
 you had." 
 
 " Have it as you like," said the Doctor, with weary sur- 
 render. " There's no arguing with you ; you're as obstinate 
 as a mule." 
 
 " You'll see bairn, then ? " the housekeeper caught up, 
 resuming the sourness of visage with the victory half in 
 sight. 
 
 " Not now." He showed alarm. " I want to be left alone, 
 Anne." 
 
 "When then?" 
 
 " Some other time." 
 
 " What other time ? " 
 
 " To-morrow possibly.". He commenced to re-measure 
 his paces once more. 
 
 " To-morrow's no good," said the housekeeper darkly. 
 " She's set i' kitchen yonder, waitin o' me coming back wi' 
 message. You'll find job a deal easier by lamplight. Get 
 set i' chair wi' you, and I'll send her in noo." 
 
 " No, no." The Doctor stopped authoritatively in his 
 walk. The housekeeper, without responding, moved to the 
 door. 
 
 " Do you hear me, Anne ? " 
 
 " Aye, I hear you." 
 
 " Not to-night. Do you understand ? I won't see her to- 
 night." 
 
 The housekeeper's silence awoke his terrors.
 
 38 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 " Anne I forbid you." 
 
 No words of controversy or submission accompanied her 
 departure. The Doctor listened for a moment to the enigma 
 of her retreating footsteps, and then with his worst apprehen- 
 sions roused, hurriedly lowered the lamp.
 
 VI 
 
 HE heard the sound of mingled steps across the 
 whispering hall; sensed the consolatory winding of 
 arms ; heard the housekeeper's voice a spiritualized ver- 
 sion of itself, winged with tenderness bid the child be of 
 good courage and hold him in no fear. " It's his way, that's 
 all," he caught the whisper. Then, with a final " Walk 
 your ways in, honey," the door opened, and drew slowly 
 back on its hinges. 
 
 " Cousin Humphrey." 
 
 The small figure moved with the brief uncertain steps of 
 the self-feared intruder, measuring the paces with timid 
 judgment as though they were the drops of a deadly tincture 
 that must be apportioned with care. At three-yards distance 
 she adjudged the potion deep enough, and stopped there 
 with her blue eyes held up to him, full of childish curiosity 
 and unsifted fear. A distrust of himself and a fear of this 
 child, tempered with more than a suspicion of the keyhole, 
 constrained his greeting. He bowed his head towards her with 
 grave acknowledgment, and uttered a husky " Well . . ." 
 More than that not for the life of him could he have articu- 
 lated then, for at the sight of those blue eyes and fair smooth 
 brow, emotion took him by the throat. As he looked at her 
 he felt as though she must be some visual emanation of his 
 own thoughts; a spiritual projection that, at will, he could 
 re-absorb into his consciousness. For a few brief moments 
 to him an infinity they faced each other, slaking their 
 thirst of curiosity on each other's semblance. Then the girl 
 slowly extended her hand, and he perceived there was a letter 
 
 39
 
 40 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 in it, a crumpled counterpart of that which he had already 
 received. 
 
 " I was to give you this," she said, in a low childish voice. 
 
 Mechanically he took it from her, and as an alternative to 
 the speech he dreaded, drew forward a chair and bade her 
 be seated placing her so that the lamp should divide them. 
 She said " Thank you " with the timid apprehension for a 
 fault, even here, and seated herself in pallid submission, her 
 hands motionless in her lap ; her blue eyes alone following, 
 as though hungry for a sign ; a forlorn and fragile figure of 
 ^rief. The Doctor, reducing doggedly the area of his gaze, 
 so that it should ever fall short of those supplicating eyes, 
 drew also a chair for himself within the compass of the lamp- 
 light, but not too near for the child's scrutiny, and deciphered 
 the labored characters of the wrinkled page. 
 
 This time it was not a long letter, like the other. That 
 had been written in the throes of desperation and prayer, 
 when all the writer's forces had flowed onward like a mill 
 stream to the consummation of her purpose ; this breathed 
 the calm of exhaustion. The waters that had heaped them- 
 selves to move a man's will were fallen now to the level of 
 the peaceful weir, circulating in phase of tranquil gratitude, 
 and tinged already with the pallid gleams of death's 
 twilight. " I shall die," the letter ran on in one part, " with- 
 out the earthly knowledge of your goodness or the comfort 
 of knowing that my child is cared for in the world I am 
 about to leave. But death lends me a greater confidence 
 than any I could borrow from life, for all my trying, and each 
 day strengthens my faith in God's mercy and your own 
 goodness. . . . And do you know, it has crept into my 
 mind, not of my thinking, but as if it came from God, that 
 my child may live to make reparation for the ill I did you ; 
 and that, through her dear heart, your forgiveness may some 
 day seek me in my lonely grave. God bless you, Humphrey."
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 41 
 
 Memories of his mother ; memories of the dead woman ; 
 memories of himself as he had been once, floated the rest 
 of the letter's phrases away from him in a sting of tears. 
 He raised his hand to his brow, as though to keep out the 
 lamp's rays, that the girl might not surprise his weakness, 
 and minute after minute he maintained an attitude of perusal, 
 long after the phrases were bitten into his mind, and had 
 become meaningless with much re-reading. At last the ten- 
 sion of silence drew him from his refuge like a call, and 
 blank as to what should follow, he folded up the letter with 
 decorous care for a missive from the dead, and offered him- 
 self once more to the scrutiny of the blue eyes. This time 
 they were blind with tears ; overwelling, as it seemed, with a 
 liquid blue that stained itself clarid through the girl's glisten- 
 ing thick lashes, and streamed unchecked down the flat 
 courses of her dabbled cheeks. She made no movement to 
 assuage her own sorrow, but sat, her meek hands still folded 
 in her lap, submissive to the grief that shook her ; still fixing 
 her blue eyes, in their weeping blindness, on the man who 
 was, to her, the rock of succor in her ocean of loneliness 
 and trouble. He, on his part, watched her awkwardly 
 enough ; drawing the letter through his fingers again and 
 again ; distrustful of his tongue ; suspicious, too, of the door 
 that seemed (to him) more strangely silent than of wont, 
 as though endowed with almost human qualities of attentive- 
 ness and hearing. 
 
 "Poor child . . ."he suffered himself at last to murmur ; 
 but the words were but empty chalices of comfort, lacking 
 the wine and warmth that are poured from the flagon of a 
 full heart. Something in his new nature those stubborn 
 fingers of the morbid principle that had grown up within 
 him during all these years of virtual seclusion suffocated 
 the instinct of pity towards this one lone child. All the 
 weight of her mother's sin and his life's suffering was upon
 
 42 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 her small bowed shoulders, and for him, she must be weaned 
 from love and the milk of pity. In silence he watched the 
 blue eyes welling up under their big \vatery lenses to gro- 
 tesque dimensions. And as he watched he felt the sense 
 of self-scorn that consumes all men who view distress with 
 the implements of comfort lying idly at hand and will not, 
 or cannot, use them. When he saw her trying to subdue 
 her own trouble unassisted, with fortitude and the damp 
 handkerchief, a pang went through him as if he had watched 
 her drown without sign or comfort. 
 
 " There, there . . ." he said, with the empty formula 
 for solace. " It is indeed a heavy trouble, and you have had 
 a long tiring journey. Go back to Anne. Anne understands 
 tears. She will look after you and try to make you forget 
 your sorrow." 
 
 This time the sound of his voice undid the work of the 
 girl's fortitude. Her tears ran out to the chill semblance 
 of pity as to a friend, and the sniff, released from discipline, 
 became a sob that shook her small bosom to its depths. 
 
 " I do not want Anne," she pressed out through a bitterness 
 of tears, and the voice, strangled at that, foundered suddenly 
 under a surging billow of " Mother . . . O, mother ! " 
 That cry had been in the Doctor's heart many and many a 
 time, and invested now with the living anguish of those 
 childish lips, that tore with a passion at the words as though 
 to disinter from their stony keeping the mother who lay now 
 in her pallid shroud it reawakened his own dormant loss 
 like the ringing of a bell, and stirred a hundred creeping 
 echoes through his loneliness. Before he had shaken off the 
 clasping memories of the cry, the girl rose swiftly from her 
 seat with a movement he could not anticipate or divine, and 
 the next moment, all wet and weeping as she was, she had 
 thrown herself impulsively upon his neck. 
 
 " I want you" she said, sobbing the words into his ear.
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 43 
 
 " Mother told me you would love me and care for me. And 
 I have no one else in the world. I am so sick and lonely." 
 
 A thrill, almost of revulsion, ran through him as the two 
 arms clasped about his neck and he felt the suspension of 
 the child's inert body buoyed to him in the desperate need 
 for comfort. He looked at first compulsively, and without 
 pity, at the wet face hanging just below his own, one cheek 
 against his shoulder. And as he looked, a wondering grew 
 up in him that absorbed resentment and diffused his per- 
 sonal feeling through a vast and tranquil space of specula- 
 tion. After all these misspent years, he told himself, the 
 features that neither deception nor the grave could obliterate 
 were stamped upon his life's parchment once more. The 
 housekeeper had spoken truly. While this child's face was 
 the playground for laughter or tears, Hilda Brennan would 
 never die. 
 
 For some minutes they remained thus ; the Doctor im- 
 mobile, stony, filled with emotions that flickered within him 
 and diffused no tokens to his outer being; the girl languid 
 with grief and the new-found sense of a rock to lean on, even 
 though the rock offered no better virtue than security. Then 
 she withdrew her head from his shoulder to the limit of her 
 clasped arms, and her sobs ceased whilst she read his face 
 intently, line by line, like the pages of an open book. 
 
 " Are you sorry for me ? " she asked at length, with the 
 sudden directness that makes youthful interrogation ever a 
 menace to maturity. 
 
 " Who would not be sorry for you ? " he answered. " I am 
 very sorry for you." He spoke in the low dry voice of 
 impersonal gravity, anxious to divorce this grief from its 
 dangerous human attachments, and to place it beyond mis- 
 take in the realm of universals. 
 
 Her lips were under his, and a great suffocating lump was 
 in his throat ; half from a turbulent revolt in his nature,
 
 44 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 half pity compounded in a new element of God knows what. 
 He put forth his mouth and touched her cheek with the ends 
 of his mustache. She would have clung to him the closer, 
 but at that he disengaged her hands and rose away from 
 her, touching her shoulder in a kind of indulgent transition 
 that should modulate from the abruptness of the act. The 
 interview had taxed him more than he could believe, for now 
 he seemed to have no proper standpoint of his own. All 
 his nature seemed disintegrated and at variance: by times 
 he was suffused with pity, by times with a passionate re- 
 sistance that beat its arms in the flat air of futility. 
 
 " Go back to Anne now," he said. " She will be good to 
 you, and give you some supper. I have much to do." 
 
 The sudden creaking of a door released from pressure 
 confirmed his worst fears of the keyhole, but even while he 
 stood between the two extremities, in an atmosphere rendered 
 all at once hateful and unendurable, the hall echoed to a new 
 and noisy element, and next moment, with an affable cry of 
 " Hello, Anne. Now I've caught you ! " the redoubtable 
 Teddy Pridgeon burst into the room. 
 
 Taller than the Doctor, of a more tenacious and wiry 
 figure, emphasized by his riding-breeches and cloth leggings, 
 this terror to solicitous maternity throughout the district 
 was chiefly characterized by a wide and engaging smile, 
 full of sagacious candor, that extended between clean- 
 shaven lips (somewhat blue in their rebellion to the blade) 
 and irradiated his sun-browned countenance to the very 
 eyes with a kindling of luminous pleasantry. It was a smile 
 that knew everything and withheld nothing ; a smile rich with 
 the wisdom of all the weaknesses inherent in the spirit and 
 the flesh though chiefly the latter; a smile alike ingratia- 
 tory and independent, careless and observant, all-saying and 
 unsayable. The man's whole being seemed bound up in it, 
 growing to smile, indeed, as it is the function of wheat to
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 45 
 
 grow ear, or a vvurzel to develop root. When the smile left 
 him but that was rarely, and at few moments of publicity 
 there crept a darkness over his face like the passage of a 
 thunder cloud across the sun that eats up the sky on a July 
 day. Then the shaven blueness engulfed the sunny brown 
 of cheeks and chin, and lent a spurious hollow to the former ; 
 the dark broad eyebrows sat lower, with a seat of joylessness 
 and discontent, and the brown eyes lost their twinkle like a 
 purse depleted of coin. There were few, however, who had 
 at any time the chance to study Pridgeon's face in its passive 
 calm, for at the first sign of observation, like a lark to the 
 tread of human foot, immediately the smile took wing and 
 spread itself over his face, a jubilant silent song. As he burst 
 through the doorway to-night, his face with the smile on it 
 shone like a second lamp. 
 
 " Hello, Doctor ! " he cried, in a voice typically soil-rough- 
 ened, and ingrained with the lurking dialect that could, at his 
 will, burst out in characteristic veins of richest ore : " Lord 
 bless us, let's have a drink. I'm as dry as a clots field." 
 
 The greeting and the smile had almost preceded him in 
 his impulsive burst, but as he tumbled into the room and his 
 eyes fell upon the small hushed figure, standing still by the 
 table where the Doctor had deserted her, the smile jumped 
 quickly to a flare of surprise, as though some one had turned 
 all the lights on in a half-lit room. " Hello ! " he said, in- 
 fusing more intense apostrophe into the word this second 
 time, " what the devil ! Why, what's up with you all to- 
 night? I've just tumbled over Anne with her nose in the 
 keyhole, and now . . ." He came round into the center 
 of the room for a clear view of the situation, and the smile 
 widened with sudden intelligence over the girl. 
 
 "A lass!" said he, in wonder. "Why! What! Nay, 
 I'll be blest. And she's been crying and all." He turned to 
 the Doctor, still smiling his delectable smile, shameless and
 
 46 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 unembarrassed. " Damn it ! So have you," he exclaimed. 
 
 " You're a liar, Pridgeon," said the Doctor hotly. 
 
 The rebuff only added a fresh luster to Pridgeon's genial- 
 ity, and the smile shone with replenished wisdom and in- 
 sight. 
 
 " Well, you needn't bite me," he said, with engaging affa- 
 bility. " Your eyes look strange and red. Maybe it's whisky. 
 Whose lass is she ? " The Doctor, smoldering with resent- 
 ment, and caught on the horns of an awkward interrogation, 
 paused in his reply. 
 
 The girl, looking from one to the other with a sort of 
 divided fear, breathed, so softly as to be almost inaudible, 
 " He is my cousin." 
 
 " Cousin ! " cried Pridgeon, and laying out a great bronzed 
 hand that had chucked dozens of feminine Sunfleet chins in 
 its time, turned up the girl's wet face like wall fruit after 
 rain; carelessly, and yet, too, with a sort of rough kindness 
 that robbed the act of any terror. " Let's have a look at 
 you," said he. The girl turned her damp cheeks and her 
 blue eyes upward, obedient to the call, and gazed without 
 shrinking while the genial farmer scrutinized the small face 
 held to inspection in the hollow of his horny palm. " Why, 
 she's a bonny lass and all," he said. " Now, if she'd only 
 been a bit bigger " 
 
 " That'll do, Pridgeon," the Doctor cut in curtly. " Don't 
 you see the child's in trouble ? " He uttered the last sentence 
 in a subdued under-voice, but the farmer, unhabited to deli- 
 cate subterfuge, turned the full flare of his smile upon the 
 words at once. 
 
 " In trouble ? " cried he to whom the word " trouble " 
 ever had a particular significance. And then he noted the 
 signs of mourning. 
 
 " What has she lost anybody ? " he inquired, still with 
 the same genial interrogation, as though even death had no
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 47 
 
 reservation for his smile. " Aye, she's in black, I see. What 
 are you frowning at? Who is it? " 
 
 The girl, with the source of her sorrow re-opened "by the 
 question, sniffed to a fresh spurt of tears, and uttered in a 
 broken voice, " My mother." 
 
 " There. Look what you're doing, Pridgeon," the Doctor 
 said. "Why couldn't you drop the subject? I gave you a 
 hint." 
 
 " Hint ? " exclaimed the farmer, holding up the word aloud 
 to genial derision. " What's the good of hints to me ? " He 
 let fall the girl's chin and laid his hand, inverted now, like a 
 great cap over her brown hair. " We've all got to die some 
 time or other. There's no use making a secret of it. Come, 
 lass, don't spoil your eyes." 
 
 He patted her on the head once or twice, and withdrew 
 his hand to balance its fellow in his breeches pocket. 
 Strangely enough, his careless handling of this fragile grief 
 had no disquieting consequences on the girl. Obedient to 
 his genial dictate, with a few residuary sobs the wringings 
 out of her momentary trouble she ceased her weeping and 
 stood, a passive instrument of sorrow, with its vibrating 
 strings at rest. The Doctor seized the moment that he had 
 been fretfully awaiting since Pridgeon's entrance, and com- 
 mended her anew, more forcefully, to Anne's good care and 
 bed. She squeezed the handkerchief to still smaller dimen- 
 sions, and padding the last traces of her tears from eyes and 
 cheeks, paused, a small irresolute figure, before these two 
 strange men. 
 
 " Good-night," she said, in a low, uncertain voice, and 
 looked from the Doctor to Pridgeon, and from Pridgeon to 
 the Doctor, with a quick glance through her still-glistening 
 lashes. The Doctor returned a constrained " Good-night " ; 
 the smiling farmer drew his left hand out of his pocket, and 
 with the right still carelessly embedded in its place among
 
 48 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 loose coppers, keys, and ears of last summer's wheat, stooped 
 to the girl in the semicircle of his arm and gave her a hearty 
 kiss. 
 
 " Good-night, lass," said he. " Don't think ower much 
 about your mother." 
 
 The girl returned his kiss along with a gravely repeated 
 " Good-night," and looked towards the Doctor with a tilted 
 chin, as though to see whether this open ceremony had 
 effected any change in his own intentions. He saw the 
 action, and stooping beneath the watchful, unresting smile, 
 laid cold lips on the girl's cheek.
 
 VII 
 
 THE 'Doctor sought his bedroom late that night, for the 
 genial Pridgeon had been, in his own phraseology, " a 
 good boy for three days," and was " jolly well sick of it.'' 
 To all the Doctor's hints of departure he turned a deaf ear. 
 
 " Lord bless us ! " he cried. " You needn't sit up for me 
 if you're tired. I know my way out." 
 
 Midnight found the farmer songful, though perspiring 
 and complaining of the heat. At half-past two, having 
 stemmed a whole tide of invitations to take his leave, he rose 
 suddenly with a farewell glass still smiling though the 
 smile was now lower on the left side than the right, and 
 seemed in some danger of slipping headlong down his neck. 
 By the table he stood some while with an oscillating move- 
 ment, having the air of one striving to recall the name of 
 a mountain-peak in the Andes, displaying the great smile 
 smeared diagonally across his countenance like a streak of 
 color-wash, lusterless through a week's exposure to the rain, 
 and disengaging the awkward words from his mouth as 
 though he were ejecting plum-stones. The Doctor, scarcely 
 more master of his articulation, but invested with a greater 
 gravity, helped to quadruple the sound of echoing footsteps 
 across the hall, where, after much unnecessary pulling of 
 bolts and jangling of door-chains, intermingled with sibilant 
 laughter and amiable profanity on the part of Pridgeon, he 
 bade the farmer good-by. 
 
 The Doctor awoke heavily next morning, fighting his way 
 to consciousness out of uncomfortable slumber as if he had 
 4 49
 
 50 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 been sleeping all night head downward in a water-butt, and 
 after a soulless tub, with much cold fluid to the region of the 
 head, garbed himself in the very garments of discontent. 
 His mind harmonized badly with the sunlight, parting with 
 long gold fingers the foliage of Indian oak and sycamore that 
 sought to screen it from his window ; harmonized badly, too, 
 with the songful tide of bees, greeting the warmth with 
 clarion blasts from their shrill trumpets, trickling out through 
 the wax-blackened crevice in the wall, from the hive in the 
 fastnesses of brick and mortar below his window, a brown 
 viscid stream ; launching their velvet bodies one after the 
 other into the fragrant warm air, and sweeping away to their 
 vanishing point in the milk-blue ether. But this morning 
 he lent no heed to sun or surging bees ; or to pink rose push- 
 ing up its girl's face to his open window through a profusion 
 of jasmine and wall ivy ; or to the great trees inflating slowly 
 with sunlight ; or to the disorderly tangle of garden below, 
 with the half-obliterated quincunx of diamond box-edged 
 flower plots that had been a triumph of floriculture in 
 Dendy's days over whose weed-choked borders now the 
 giant marguerites ran in invading hordes. Month by month 
 he had seen the ill things grow up, and take the flower-beds 
 by the throat and choke them, and strangle the walks, and 
 slowly thrust out his mother's memory and spirit. Now she 
 had no place in the garden ; the pathways offered no passage 
 to a woman's foot. Only at long lapses did she stand, a dim, 
 far-off figure, mourning this herbage picture of her son's 
 heart. 
 
 And this morning there was less place for her memory 
 than ever, within him. He recalled the episodes of the even- 
 ing before, and an anger begotten of shame rose up within 
 him. 
 
 With the last- touches of his retarded toilet he strode to 
 where the dingy bell-pull hung down the faded wall-paper
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 51 
 
 by his bed head, and tugged upon it once or twice. Far away 
 a rusty bell lifted its dry mouth and shook off two harsh 
 treble notes, abrupt and stagnant, like a spinster's cough. 
 They were succeeded by a stirring of interceptive doors, and 
 the hall was stimulated by the sliding movement of the house- 
 keeper's slippers. The Doctor called her name with quiet 
 emphasis. 
 
 " Anne." 
 
 " Noo," she said, as she presented herself before him, 
 dropping her laboring skirts to take up an apron corner and 
 wipe the moist displeasure from her brow. l< Am I oot o' 
 breath enough to please you? What wi' bairns and what wi' 
 grown-up people, place seems fair filled wi' masters." 
 
 The Doctor disregarded the imputation, but seemed to of- 
 fer a listening ear in the direction of the hall below. 
 
 "Where is she, Anne?" 
 
 " Little you care where she is, or how she fares," the 
 housekeeper rebuked him, " nobbut she's out o' your road. 
 Much sympathy diz dead folk' bairns get fro' you." 
 
 He said, " Keep her away from me, Anne, please. I don't 
 wish any repetition of last night. You understand. As soon 
 as I can make suitable arrangements to get rid of her 
 . . . she shall go elsewhere." He paused, and stroked his 
 forehead as though to smooth a wandering and troubled 
 mind. " Until then, please, see that I am left absolutely 
 undisturbed. I lay the charge upon you, Anne. Now I am 
 coming down to breakfast. Tell Major to bring the trap 
 round in ten minutes. I have a long day's work." 
 
 " Aye, that's it," said the housekeeper. " Drive away f rev 
 her. Be a coward." 
 
 " And the next time," added the Doctor, seeking to defend 
 himself by a counter stroke of reproof, ". . . that I 
 have to interview anybody, I should like it to be private, 
 please. You were listening at the keyhole last night."
 
 52 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 "Well, what if I was?" retorted the housekeeper, with 
 defiance. " I won't gie you pleasure o' denying it. There's 
 nought to be ashamed of. I'se sure a real cry at times diz 
 onnybody a deal more good than doctor's physic and it's 
 precious few cries I gets chance on in this dowly spot. I'd 
 very nigh forgotten what Almighty gied me my eyes for while 
 last night." The remembrance of their liquid indulgence in- 
 spired her to a brief re-usage of the apron. " And you 
 . . ." she said with denunciation, " wi' scarce a word o' 
 comfort on your lips while poor bairn bled her heart out 
 very nigh. Never a question as to what her mother died on, 
 or whether she had onny pain at last, or what sort of a coffin 
 they put poor soul into, and how many folks there was 
 stood i' street to watch her ta'en away. You leave all that to 
 me. And yet you reckon to call yoursen a doctor ! " 
 
 She swept down the stairs, mumbling her indignation, and 
 as soon as her sliding slippers and whispering stiff skirts had 
 crossed the echoing hall, the Doctor came down the sun- 
 lighted staircase into the big room, whose morning freshness 
 still bore tribute to the all-sovereign weed. Here he paced 
 with moody resolution, humming a kind of joyless Doric 
 dirge through his set lips as though holding the silence and 
 the whole world of living beings at bay. As a defence 
 against either, however, the humming failed. Scarcely had 
 he reached the window before the ominous silence of the 
 house was rudely disturbed. Doors seemed everywhere to 
 be violently thrown open; agitated skirts to blow, and arms 
 to be flung back. Next moment the hall went off into a 
 hiss of echoes like a rocket, and the girl burst impulsively 
 into the room. 
 
 " Cousin Humphrey ! " she panted. 
 
 Behind her, with the spots blazing in her withered cheeks, 
 and the restlessness of chin and lip betraying agitation be- 
 yond the control of speech, followed the housekeeper, breath-
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 53 
 
 less through haste and indignation. " Don't blame me," she 
 cried threateningly. " Fse nought to do wi' it. I nobbut did 
 as I was bid." 
 
 " She said," panted the girl very hotly and passionately, 
 " she said you did not want me. She said I was to stop in 
 the kitchen and keep out of your way. Tell her it is untrue. 
 You wrote for me yourself, Cousin Humphrey, and sent me 
 the money for my railway fare. It is wicked of her to tell 
 such untruths." 
 
 " You called 'em ' lies ' before," threw in the housekeeper 
 breathlessly. " Speak truth wi' ye, and don't try and shove 
 blame on me." 
 
 " Tell her they are lies, then," the girl repeated passion- 
 ately. " Tell her so while she is there." 
 
 She came forward possessively close to him, panting with 
 indignation, so that each breath fanned his cheek, and seiz- 
 ing him in a kind of fierce appropriation, as a cat might do a 
 bone, she seemed to defend him from the housekeeper's reach 
 in argument. 
 
 " Aye, that's it," reiterated the housekeeper with malign 
 joy. " Tell her what you telt me atop o' yon stairs, not five 
 minutes sin'. I'll listen to ye." 
 
 The girl slipped her two arms about him, and held him as 
 a sign visible to the housekeeper of her right and unques- 
 tionable place, pressing her hot cheek against his arm in a 
 demonstration of love and triumph. The Doctor's pulse 
 quickened its beat, and the blood stained his temples to a 
 deeper hue as he assumed an air of authority. 
 
 " Come," he said, after a moment, " let us have no quar- 
 reling in this house." He tried to withdraw his arm un- 
 noticed from the girl's clasp, but at the first sign of with- 
 drawal her fingers tightened their hold on it, and her hot 
 cheek lent its aid for restraint. " I hope you have been 
 exercising your authority wisely, Anne," he said with em-
 
 54 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 phasis, " and not turning my remarks to to mischief. I 
 repose great confidence in you." 
 
 " Mischief ! " exclaimed the housekeeper protestingly. 
 " That's a nice word to get for doing as you're bid. Speak 
 tiv her, not me. I never said onnything tiv her while she 
 started it." 
 
 " I didn't start it," the girl objected hotly. " I never did 
 anything. I only wanted to bring your breakfast in for you, 
 Cousin Humphrey, and she turned horrid all at once, and 
 said bairns like me were best out of the road when doctors 
 were getting their breakfasts." 
 
 " Aye, and she wouldn't be said neither," confirmed the 
 housekeeper. " She defied me to my face." 
 
 " I said I only wanted to bring your coffee into the room 
 and wish you good-morning," the girl continued. " And she 
 said the further I kept away from the room at any time, the 
 better you would thank me for it. She said the room was 
 no place for such as me. The room was hers and yours. 
 The kitchen was my place, and I was to be grateful, and 
 keep it. She said she had always brought your meals in, 
 and you couldn't fancy them from anybody else, and she 
 wasn't going to let her place be taken by a bit of a bairn 
 like me. Not natural. And she said if I'd any proper feel- 
 ing I ought to be thinking about my mother, and crying 
 quiet on my chair, instead of bothering my head with such 
 things as breakfasts. And I do think about my mother. I 
 was crying about her all last night." 
 
 The girl's voice rattled on in its level artillery of wrath, like 
 rain against the window-pane ; cool of itself, yet betokening 
 the fire of those inward forces that drove it, by its breath- 
 less haste. There was scarcely the width of a thread to 
 divide her phrases ; the sentences fitted together, groove by 
 groove, like wainscot, in a solid treble paneling against any 
 interruption real or apprehended.
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 55 
 
 " And I told her," she pattered on, " that you had promised 
 to love me and care for me. And I said : ' He is my cousin, 
 after all. ' " 
 
 " Aye," cut in the housekeeper, " and what's more, she 
 said I was a liar. We'll have that proved. I'se not used to 
 being called syke names by childer. We'll see who's liar 
 and all. You can soon settle that. Tell her while I'se stood 
 here listening to ye." 
 
 " Hush, hush . . ." said the Doctor, with chastening 
 severity. " Let us have no words here. Anne, try and con- 
 trol yourself. You are old enough to know better than to 
 quarrel with a child. Besides ... in the room, too. 
 Let us have no quarreling or anger. Let us go back quietly to 
 the kitchen again and dismiss this unpleasantness. I must 
 get my breakfast at once and drive away." 
 
 " Tell her, then," insisted the girl, " that she is not to try 
 and stop me from coming to see you." 
 
 " Aye, and tell her what you telt me," added the house- 
 keeper, seasoning the meat of his difficulty with a malific 
 zest. " About somebody being kept oot o' road. Tell her 
 that and all." 
 
 " I will not tell anybody anything," exclaimed the Doctor. 
 " I won't enter into it. If you wish to quarrel, you must 
 quarrel away from me, and out of my hearing. I cannot 
 allow quarreling in this room. There, there," he added, 
 drawing his arm resolutely out of the girl's possession, with 
 an effort to simulate indulgence. " Go back with Anne, and 
 do as Anne tells you. I can trust Anne. She will be very 
 kind and good to you, I know. Anne . . . take her, 
 please." 
 
 " I won't go back with Anne," the girl protested rebel- 
 liously. " Not till you tell her the truth. If you say I am 
 to live in the kitchen and wash the pots, and keep out of 
 your sight . . . because you don't want me . . .
 
 56 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 and don't love me . . ." Her pride, which had sustained 
 her on the pillars of wrath all this time, subsided at this, and 
 the tears commenced to well, slow and large, through her 
 lashes, to the accompaniment of a faltering voice. " If you 
 say this . . . I'll go back, and never come near you or 
 trouble you any more. But I wish I was dead and with my 
 mother," she added passionately, and buried her grief in a 
 convulsive handkerchief. 
 
 " Noo then," threw in the housekeeper triumphantly, 
 " what plainer speaking do you want ? Hilda Brennan her- 
 sen couldn't have spoke it straighter. Tell bairn what you 
 do mean for Lord i' heaven knows. I don't. You see 
 for yoursen I'se not good enough for her. She dizn't want 
 to be bothered wi' an aud woman like me, that has to sop 
 all her crusts never mind what care I've ta'en on her. She 
 knows who's her friends, and who loves her, and who wants 
 to see her and speak tiv her just like her mother did. 
 What more can you want? Onnybody mud know whose 
 bairn she was." 
 
 The Doctor turned from the housekeeper's sour face of 
 mockery to the tear-stained countenance of the child. Aye ! 
 There was Hilda Brennan sure enough; the Hilda Brennan 
 of impulse and passion, of love and hate, of purpose melted 
 in tears, and good intentions merged in wrath. There was 
 the miniature of his heart's one happiness and his life's 
 deep sorrow gazing dumbly now at his lips for their ver- 
 dict, through the arrested wetness of weeping. And his 
 own faltering purpose stumbled and foundered in those tears 
 as it had stumbled last night as it had ever stumbled, years 
 ago, before the Hilda Brennan of older days. 
 
 " If she wishes to bring my coffee in, Anne," he hazarded, 
 ". . . and to make herself useful . . ." 
 
 " Aye. Go on," said the housekeeper unhelpfully. " I'se 
 listening."
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 57 
 
 The Doctor winced and faltered. " Well . . ." said 
 he, and the housekeeper echoed his " Well " with a malicious 
 intensity. 
 
 The Doctor made one courageous mouthful of his un- 
 palatable meal, and bolted it. " It's a matter of really no im- 
 portance," he said, " after all. I see no reason why we should 
 stop her, Anne." 
 
 " Who did want to stop her? " asked the housekeeper, with 
 a condemnatory eye upon him. 
 
 " You did ! " struck in the girl, wiping away her tears with 
 hands knuckled up for the fray again. " And you would 
 have stopped me if I hadn't pushed you against the wall." 
 
 " Aye, there you are ! " said the housekeeper, with grim 
 gratification. " There's Me for you. And there's Hilda 
 Brennan as fair as fair. And there's You as you always 
 was, and as you will be to your dying day. Do your own 
 work i' future," she added, with a spasm of wrath and mor- 
 tified pride, " and give your own orders. I don't want to be 
 made into a liar by a chit of a thing like that." 
 
 " Tell her I may bring your coffee in now," said the girl, 
 clutching greedily at her triumph, and displaying it with 
 the unholy pride of the conqueror. " Tell her, Cousin 
 Humphrey. And tell her not to stop me or interfere with 
 me again. She did not write for me. It was you." 
 
 He tendered a glance of shamed apology to the house- 
 keeper, armed now with a steely and inaccessible smile. 
 
 " By all means ... let her bring the coffee in," he 
 said magnanimously. And added : " It will save your feet. 
 Anne." 
 
 " My feet ! " cried the housekeeper. " Much you care 
 about my feet. It mud have come better fro' you before 
 ringing yon bedroom bell this morning." 
 
 " There," said the girl. " You hear what Cousin Hum- 
 phrey says. I am to bring his coffee in."
 
 58 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 " Aye," exclaimed the housekeeper, as the child sped out 
 to the task. " You think a deal more o' yon coffee than 
 you do o' your poor dead mother. Nobody thinks o' their 
 mothers nowadays except aud women that's lived wi' them 
 and worked for them." She turned upon the Doctor with a 
 final explosion. 
 
 " Are you content noo ? " she asked with a gust of passion 
 blowing her withered cheeks like faded autumn leaves. 
 ". . . Noo that you've had your own way and gotten yon 
 little selfish thing to bring your breakfast in that nobody's 
 laid on table but me these last fourteen years. She'll be 
 sittin' at table wi' you next, as bold as brass, and ruling 
 ower place ; for bairn is spit of her mother, and onny lass 
 can twist you round her finger that tries. But mark my 
 words, she'll pay your fondness some day, and in her moth- 
 er's coin. Then, mayhap, you'll be glad for Anne to bring 
 your breakfast in again feet or no feet."
 
 VIII 
 
 SITTING moodily at his table, the Doctor consummated a 
 zestless meal. The memory of that strange impulsive 
 scene floated persistently over the breakfast table, and 
 troubled him with problems of the future ; fibers of fear and 
 apprehension wove their way through his gray thinking. To 
 himself he seemed already like a fly, with no defence but an 
 unterrifying buzz, involved in the web of destiny, along whose 
 subtle, sinister threads this child of Providence ran surefooted 
 with the speed and dread dexterity of a spider. Do what he 
 would now, this blue-eyed entity was written on the tablets 
 of his being. To think of the dead woman henceforth was 
 to conjure visions of the child, like two phases of one nature. 
 And the child had given a living significance to those once 
 familiar lineaments ; had translated the dead language of the 
 past into the tongue of the living present. Hilda Brennan 
 was not dead in spirit, only changed in substance ; replaced 
 among the tender years of youth, it almost seemed, to run 
 again her misdirected course along the green sward of life, 
 and make fresh contest for the cup of mortal happiness and 
 joy. 
 
 And he? 
 
 Ah ! The thought of his own lost years embittered him ; 
 stirred up the brooding gray ness of his mind with a new 
 implement, to a deeper consistency of trouble. He, it seemed, 
 must ever be a fugitive from self ; ever among those whose 
 memory burns behind them like a prairie fire, cutting them 
 off from all past happiness, and obscuring all their future 
 with clouds of wreathing darkness and despair. The reflec- 
 
 59
 
 60 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 tion, with a train of others, put a termination to his tasteless 
 meal, and sent him to the chinking Tantalus once more. 
 
 " Let's have her sent away," he said with bitterness to his 
 heart, " and make an end of it." 
 
 In his own good time the aged groom led round the anti- 
 quated mare to the Doctor's door, and the Doctor vacated his 
 room, fearing the hall as the converging square for many 
 dangers, and preparing resolution with a soundless whistle 
 that hovered upon his puckered lips like the ghost of a dead 
 tune piped years ago. Nor was the fear without foundation, 
 for no sooner had his foot stirred the first echo on the gritty 
 flagstones than he heard all the commotion of internal doors 
 again, and the green baize panels yawned suddenly to the 
 apparition of the girl. The whistle slid off his lips and his 
 heart beat, as with a hardened mouth he scrutinized the hall- 
 stand for his hat. 
 
 " Cousin Humphrey . . ." said the girl. There was 
 the slight catch in the voice of supplication, as though a tear 
 had slipped into the two words. In her black frock, with 
 her hands clasped dubiously and her blue eyes swimming in 
 timid wonder, she looked very frail, very troubled, very 
 lonely. " Are you going away ? " she asked. In a grave 
 voice, smoothing his dingy hat with his coat-sleeve, he told 
 her he was going out on his rounds. 
 
 "Shall you be very very long?" she inquired wist- 
 fully. 
 
 He told her he could not say. There was much sickness 
 about. Very much sickness about. What kind ? Every 
 kind. But she must stay with Anne. And all at once, when 
 he was preparing to put on his hat and leave her, she had 
 sprung at him again with her two hands clasped about his 
 arm, and begged him in a rapid, urgent voice 
 
 " Take me with you Cousin Humphrey. I don't want to 
 stay with Anne. Anne hates me, and says I have made
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 61 
 
 more mischief in one morning than I can hope to undo if I 
 pray every night for a month. Now when I speak to her 
 she only says ' Eh ' ? and when I say it again she says noth- 
 ing at all. She told me you were so angry with me that you 
 could not eat your breakfast but you're not angry with me, 
 are you? Say you're not angry with me, Cousin Humphrey, 
 and take me with you. I am so lonely and miserable." 
 
 Her hands, binding him in an impulsive embrace, restrained 
 him from putting on his hat. He held it, still extended, 
 while his eyes sank helplessly on the face suspended beneath 
 his own Hilda Brennan's eyes, and Hilda Brennan's 
 brow. 
 
 " No, no," he said, contending through the rapid negatives 
 for re-conquest of himself against the thraldom of that child- 
 ish face. " I cannot take you. I am going on business. 
 Stay here with Anne, and try and be friends with her." The 
 girl, though shaken from his arm, retained her appeal by a 
 timid corner of his sleeve. " I will be good, Cousin Hum- 
 phrey," she urged, though with a sinking scale of confidence, 
 as though pleading a lost cause, in her lips and eyes. " I 
 will not talk. I will not trouble you." 
 
 He said No, again ; that it was impossible. He was going 
 on business serious business and shook her off at last. 
 The small face, larger while the rays of eagerness sustained 
 and irradiated it, dwindled through the shades of disappoint- 
 ment to crestfallen despair. Almost in a moment the dark 
 clouds rolled up over her white brow, and the tears started 
 hotly to her lashes tears of grief in rebellion, more bellig- 
 erent than sorrowful. 
 
 " You hate me," she cried. " Anne said so, and she knows. 
 You do not want to love me or care for me. You only want 
 to get rid of me. I wish I had never come." 
 
 They were still modeled in their respective attitude of 
 despair and astonishment when the part-open door all
 
 62 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 framed round its three sides with a resplendent glow of 
 sunlight creaked on its hinges to the impact of some heavy 
 body, and the figure of Pridgeon lunged into the hall. Two 
 shades darker about his blue cheeks and chin than on the 
 previous evening, the smile, on the contrary, was infinitely 
 wider (though more oblique), and his articulation seemed to 
 be transferred from the region of the lips to some internal 
 locality nearer the root of the nose by the sound of it. In- 
 deed, he scarcely appeared to utter his words at all, but to 
 let them slide through the wide-apertured smile as though 
 he were shooting coals down a grating with a glib ease of 
 production that lent an engaging quality of friendliness and 
 candor to all he said. 
 
 " Hello ! " he cried genially at sight of the two figures, 
 and, on a swift second scrutiny of the girl's wet eyes, " What ! 
 Tears again. Lord bless us! You've some queer ways of 
 passing your time." 
 
 The Doctor veered round to Pridgeon, with the sudden 
 movement of one who finds a welcome target for his wrath. 
 
 " There's a bell-pull outside, Pridgeon," he snapped. 
 
 " Aye," said Pridgeon. " She's there still for anything 
 I've done at her." 
 
 " In future," said the Doctor hotly, " it would be better if 
 you'd make use of it." 
 
 " What the devil ! " retorted Pridgeon. " If that's all you 
 mean, I'll give her a ring as I go out." He clapped a 
 familiar hand on the girl's golden-brown head, and turned 
 her down-dropped eyes up to his, with a back pressure of 
 her brow. " Well, lass," he said, in fluent affability, pouring 
 the smile over her like rich cream from a tilted ewer. 
 " Thoo's gotten some bonny blue eyes o' thy own. What's 
 amiss wi' thee ti-morn, eh ? " 
 
 The girl's lids quivered, and she shot a querying glance at
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 63 
 
 the Doctor, as though seeking whether the answer lay with 
 him or with her. 
 
 " I wanted Cousin Humphrey to take me with him," she 
 said, after a pause. 
 
 " And why not ? " concurred the farmer heartily. " Of 
 course he will." 
 
 " What do you mean, man ? " said the Doctor. " Is this 
 any business of yours ? " 
 
 " Not a bit," said the farmer without vexation or concern. 
 " But any business is better than farming on syke a day as 
 this. Let's all be doctors for yance. Doctoring's the trade ! 
 We'll all gan together to Kenham Beach and make an outing 
 of it." 
 
 " Look here, Pridgeon," he said, with reproving anger, " it's 
 out of the question. Have a little decency. Remember the 
 child has only just buried her mother." 
 
 " Why, to be sure," said Pridgeon. " All the more reason 
 why the drive will do her good, and help her to forget it. 
 You don't mean to say you'd leave her alone in the house 
 with Anne ? " 
 
 " Anne is an excellent woman," said the Doctor sternly. 
 
 " You called her a damned old fool last night," Pridgeon 
 taxed him. " And I'm not saying you're wrong." He turned 
 to the girl. " There, there," he said in consolatory tones, 
 " it's all right. Get your hat on, lass, and let's be moving." 
 
 She showed an irresolute countenance between the Doc- 
 tor's gray face and the bronze expanse of smile, seeking con- 
 firmation of the order; keen with new-kindled hope. 
 
 " May I Cousin Humphrey ? " she asked, in a small voice, 
 and laying a persuasive hand upon his arm once more. 
 "May I?" 
 
 It was upon the Doctor's lips to forbid her with a last 
 direct word, and to turn upon the farmer in wrathful rebuke
 
 64 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 as soon as she should be gone, but constrained between the 
 unyielding smile and the girl's eager lips, he checked the 
 impulse, and swallowed resolve with a gulp. 
 
 Sunfleet saw them returning home some hours later two 
 boisterously drunken men squeezing a girl's white face be- 
 tween converging shoulders in a swaying buggy.
 
 IX 
 
 IF the Doctor has had a difficult problem to solve in his 
 enforced reception of the girl, he has done little towards 
 its solution by this injudicious drive. On the following morn- 
 ing he rises out of chaos like a cheap new world ; created on 
 a pitiable plan of economies ; ill assembled, and creaking very 
 badly at the joints. Memory discovers him by daybreak 
 very naked and ashamed. Too ashamed, almost, for shame ; 
 at that basic level of reality where, far below the clouds of 
 illusion, man has no pride wherewith to mortify abasement. 
 
 Consequently he rings no bells, affects no attitude of dogma 
 or dignity, but sneaks down-stairs unshaven and, feeling the 
 weight of his guilt upon him, makes his way into the one- 
 time inviolable surgery so seldom used; where now cigar 
 boxes and a litter of old medical journals, unopened, in their 
 postal wrappings of ages back; and surgical samples; and 
 wine lists, and a general miscellany of accumulated rubbish, 
 submerging the secretaire, furnish a memorial of profes- 
 sional decay. The sacred custom of the room is written over 
 with a hundred extemporaneous usages ; its sanctity violated ; 
 its dignity crumpled like a crushed hat. No one with the least 
 experience of active consulting rooms could stimulate the 
 ghost of a shiver in this deglorified spot. Farm lasses, per- 
 haps, with great red hands laid over a swollen cheek, might 
 sit on an edge of chair and face the door-handle with pangs 
 of mortal apprehension ; or wide-mouthed boys, with rolling 
 eyes and faces all awry, burst into snivels and shake unre- 
 strainedly at the tether-end of maternal arm, on hearing 
 through the sighing keyhole the dull closing of some porten- 
 s 65
 
 66 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 tous inner door. But sufferers of discernment, educated 
 to the soul-crushing gravity of town consulting rooms, where 
 liveried men or rustling maids take away one's name like the 
 last spark of mortal hope, and sepulcher human anxiety in a 
 sun-exhausted chamber such as these would triumph over 
 the poor array of professional terrors in this Sunfleet apart- 
 ment. There is no life about it. It is a dead room ; a mu- 
 seum specimen of an extinct species, with the dust in its dry 
 fur ; barkless and biteless. 
 
 But if the Doctor has shuffled into his lair this morning 
 with a minimum of noise, sharp ears have been pricking the 
 silence like needles for his location, and find him at last in 
 his refuge. He has only time to clutch a handful of journals, 
 and commence the belated task of stripping their wrappers, 
 when the housekeeper, after one brief pause at the door, 
 thrusts it open with an experimental arm, and obtains visual 
 confirmation of her suspicions with a subsiding " Aye." She 
 stands to the discovery for some moments in silence, running 
 her eyes over the Doctor's every curve and dimension ; ab- 
 sorbing him into a gaze of scorn. 
 
 " Don't say nowt ! " she bids him at length, making with 
 her voice as if she would hold him afar metaphorically in 
 the tongs away from contact with reputable life. "Don't 
 gie me a word. Your face says plenty." He hears the 
 ghost of a voice beyond the door, like a whisper in the corn 
 stubble, breathe : " Anne, is he there ? " 
 
 " Gan your ways," says the housekeeper, turning swiftly at 
 the sound. " Doctor's busy." 
 
 The voice, fallen under some strange spell of awed sub- 
 mission since yesterday, makes no demur. From her place 
 by the door the housekeeper resumes her attitude of in- 
 vestigation, holding the firebrand of a blazing look over the 
 object of her scrutiny. 
 
 " No wonder you take yourself to this spot," she continues.
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 67 
 
 " In hopes nobody will hear ye. But I'se not deaf yet. Do 
 you call this a time for breakfast ? " 
 
 " I want no breakfast," says the Doctor, not angrily or 
 dictatorially, but in a voice too listless to contend or argue. 
 " I only want to be left alone, Anne, please." 
 
 If he had striven with her by a look or an inflection, she 
 would have thrown all the vitriol of her wrath upon him 
 then, for she had it phialed. But something in his attitude 
 of surrender undid her woman's heart ; and the silent doors 
 of sympathy opened within her like wings. She saw his 
 mother through that tired face as through a dim window ; 
 saw the boy, too, as he had been in many a by-gone day, and 
 all at once keyed by the events of the past night and her 
 accumulated emotion of these recent days she burst forth 
 into tears. 
 
 " How long do you expect to live," she sniveled, " at this 
 rate? I seed the self and same look on ye, just this moment, 
 that your poor mother took to grave wi' her." 
 
 The Doctor threw down the last stripped journal. " The 
 sooner I'm gone the better, I think, Anne," he endorsed, 
 with tired sincerity. " Life has meant little enough to me 
 these twelve years past, and you know it. If I've wished my 
 self out of it once, I've wished it a hundred times." 
 
 " Aye, and a nice selfish wish and all," the housekeeper 
 sniffed, aproning" the tears from her withered eyes. " I'd be 
 ashamed o' syke a wish. You, a young man, to say you'd 
 liever be i' your coffin than mend your ways, and think o' 
 leaving an aud woman like me to face world alone, wi' nobody 
 to grumble at nor look after. I'se loved you and looked after 
 you all time sin' your mother died. Aye, and my heart's bled 
 for you many a time when I looked at ye and wished you 
 mud cry like a woman. For I tells myself, when Almighty 
 won't gie men the comfort o' tears, who's to blame 'em when 
 they gie way to bad language and drink ? I won't deny that's
 
 68 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 been my thought when I seed change coming ower ye, and 
 God i' heaven knows you've been tried hard but what's to 
 become o' me when aught happens ye ? " 
 
 In the zeal with which she was applying her apron now to 
 her eyes and nose, in a sort of indiscriminate attempt to 
 check the flow of liquid sentiment at all its channels, she 
 did not perceive the gray face peering round the door frame 
 by her side, or the round blue eyes that drank in the spectacle 
 of the seated man. And the man, merged in the chair before 
 his littered writing table, with his face dropped in the set 
 fortitude of despair, as though gazing into the deeps of his 
 own nature, without other emotion than the dogged acceptance 
 of a past beyond recall the man did not see the small dark- 
 clad figure until it had stolen past the grim guardian of the 
 door and flung itself suddenly upon him with the impulsive 
 affection which neither his own conduct nor outward circum- 
 stance, by what it seemed, could ever quell. 
 
 " Cousin Humphrey," she breathed hotly into his ear, ex- 
 hibiting the tears of a resurrected terror about her wide 
 blue eyes. " Oh, Cousin Humphrey. Promise me you'll 
 never do it again. Promise you'll never, never do it again. 
 You don't know how you frightened us last night. We were 
 terrified. Anne said she had never seen you half so drunk 
 in all her life before." 
 
 " / said so ! " cried the housekeeper, casting her tears like 
 a shawl. " How dare you ! Come your ways out o' surgery 
 this minute before you catch a fever. I said nought about 
 his being drunk, and if you'd been properly brought up you 
 wouldn't 'a known what was amiss wi' him. Drunk or sober, 
 it's no business o' yours. Grown up folks can please their- 
 sens, surely to goodness, without being answerable to childer. 
 Is Doctor to be ta'en to task by syke as you, wi' frock end no 
 lower than your knees ? " 
 
 While the housekeeper launched her indignation, the girl,
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 69 
 
 unmoved, studied the careworn face she held ; smoothed with 
 a flat hand stray wisps of the tumbled hair ; passed the test 
 of two tentative fingers up the Doctor's unshorn cheek ; 
 tucked the loop of protruding tie into its place against the 
 shirt front all in a kind of feminine parenthesis, as if she 
 had been ministering to a child. And the timidity that 
 had covered her approach to him was shed in the ministra- 
 tion, like a garment. She was all-practical in a moment ; 
 appropriative, possessive, willful; a blue-eyed girl without 
 the weakness of tears, holding the man with the stub- 
 bornness of an opinion that nothing external could shake or 
 loosen. 
 
 " I don't care," she retorted over her shoulder, keeping 
 her eyes still in attention on the Doctor's face. " He was 
 drunk, and he knows it. He was drunk at Kenham what- 
 you-call-it, and coming home he drove the wheel over that 
 big black stone where those roads cross. If I hadn't screamed 
 and thrown my arms round him we should have both been 
 flung out and killed. And you screamed too, last night, 
 Anne, when you thought he was falling over the banisters." 
 She tightened the ring of warm flesh and blood about his 
 neck, and drew her lips nearer to his. " But you'll promise 
 me," she said in a more urgent, personal tone, pouting her 
 lips to supplication, and constraining him with every pressure 
 of blue eye " you'll promise me, Cousin Humphrey, never, 
 never, never to do it again, but to love me, and be kind to 
 me, and take care of me, as you promised you would." She 
 lengthened the chain of arm and looked at him with a silent 
 intentness, as though his response would be a visible mani- 
 festation suffusing all his countenance. 
 
 "Love you, and be kind to you, and take care of you!" 
 echoed the housekeeper with jealous scorn. " Can you think 
 of nobody in the world but yoursen? Is Doctor to regulate 
 his ways just to please a bit of a bairn that he never clapped
 
 70 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 eyes on while yesterday ? My wod ! He's gotten other folk 
 to think about." 
 
 " Yes, for me," reiterated the girl stoutly, without retract- 
 tion. " Because he wrote for me, and brought me here on 
 purpose. He'll be good to you too, Anne," she vouchsafed 
 in a side-voice, scenting the blood of rivalry and resentment 
 that beat in the housekeeper's veins. " But that's different. 
 You're not his cousin, like me." 
 
 " Cousin ! " cried the housekeeper. The sight of that un- 
 disputed embrace stung her in the vulnerable quarters of her 
 jealousy. "If you'd any spirit of your own," she charged 
 the Doctor, " you'd bid lass take her arms away from your 
 neck. What's use me standing up for you and ordering her 
 out o' surgery when you tek no notice? Have you onny 
 pride left?" 
 
 In a strange dispassionate state the Doctor had heard, 
 somewhere in the kenning of his consciousness, the ebb and 
 flow of words. The tides of rival cherishment had rocked 
 him gently to and fro, like a half-drowned man ; beyond 
 interest, without volition to stir hand or foot in his own 
 behalf ; a gray dream wrapped up in the murmurous surge of 
 the sea. The girl by his side, ever smoothing his hair or 
 tracing the arch of his eyebrows, or pressing out with finger- 
 tips the lines graven recently upon his forehead, was no 
 longer a raw sore, opening the burning edges of the past. 
 In his present mood her nearness was even consolatory ; her 
 physical touches soothing to a brow racked with the penalties 
 of memory and excess. He was not occupying the craven 
 stool of repentance that is the refuge of grosser sinners, who 
 surrender themselves to a tortured humility so long as their 
 fleshly punishment is maintained. But he had arrived, since 
 this last night after twelve years of deviation at a sort 
 of nether end of himself, whose blank walls seemed to defy 
 all further passage in this direction. And while the woman
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 71 
 
 and the child commingled their speeches, he asked himself 
 a dim "What now?" With whom was he waging war? 
 Since the source of his life's error lay under the sod, with lips 
 plaited in peace, and a heart molded to penitence and grati- 
 tude, was he forever to drink those stagnant bitter waters 
 that had once welled up from the dark soil of a living injury? 
 Was his mind's war with the woman to press its operations 
 beyond the frontiers of the grave, losing its first cause in 
 an endless civil strife of selves? Or was there to be a 
 truce ; a sounding of the silver trumpet ; an armistice with the 
 soul? 
 
 He heard the girl's voice far off on the distant boundaries 
 of his thinking 
 
 " Cousin Humphrey," repeated beseechingly, nearer and 
 nearer still, till it grew, urgent and vital, under his lips again. 
 "Cousin Humphrey, you promise me?" 
 
 He took one new look into the clear pools of blue eye, and 
 rose, with a thin relaxation of lips that was this morning 
 his nearest emblem of a smile. 
 
 " Yesterday," he said slowly, " I was well, I was horribly 
 drunk. There's no use blinking it. Anne was right. But 
 I didn't mean to frighten you and I'm sorry. I'll do my 
 best never to frighten you in that way again." 
 
 " You promise, Cousin Humphrey ? " she taxed him 
 eagerly. " It's a promise ? " and squeezed his arm as though 
 to coerce assent. 
 
 " So far as promises are worth anything," he said bitterly 
 (and when he said that his mind reverted to another promise 
 which had availed little). " Yes, it's a promise." 
 
 The girl turned to the doorway, full of jubilation and con- 
 quest. 
 
 " It's a promise," she cried out to the housekeeper. 
 " Cousin Humphrey has promised me, Anne." 
 
 The face of the housekeeper absorbed the message as
 
 72 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 though it were ink and her cheeks blotting-paper that grew 
 dark with absorption. 
 
 " Aye ! " she exclaimed, " it's a promise. And Lord help 
 him keep it. But he won't look me fair between eyes of a 
 long while if he's any shame left in him," she muttered to 
 herself.
 
 X 
 
 THE summer sun burns his passage through a succession 
 of August days, weaving a golden track into the milk- 
 blue skies of October, and still the girl does not go to school. 
 Instead, she takes root in the Doctor's household like a 
 weed of dissension, stirs the housekeeper to wrath and the 
 Doctor to concern; and yet the wayward fragrance of the 
 blossom wins their oversight of its ranker qualities. With 
 the property of the weed she thrives and multiplies in her 
 privileges exceedingly ; cropping up in every department 
 with insidious leaves and pushful stubborn stalks that contest 
 all efforts at dislodgment or repression. She sprawls over 
 discipline like a wild briar ; strides over rules with a certain 
 rebellious grace as though they were five-barred gates. Her 
 impulsive nature pursues a pathway of its own, following its 
 track by scents of logic unperceivable to those who watch 
 her. The love-quest of her so-called cousin Humphrey, 
 fiercely and sedulously prosecuted, gives the ostensible im- 
 pulse to her coursing, but that wayward heart runs aside to 
 many baffling pathlets of emotion. Now she forsakes the 
 housekeeper's table in petted wrath and flings herself upon 
 the Doctor's care with all her bag-o'-tricks of sentiment and 
 passion. Anne is an old fool. Just because of this, or just 
 because of that, Anne has said so and so, or done the other, 
 and she won't ever have her meals with Anne again. She 
 will come and have them all with her cousin Humphrey. 
 Then she can sit by her cousin Humphrey's side, and pass 
 him things, and talk to him. Her cousin Humphrey will 
 
 73
 
 74 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 like that. Eh? Won't he, cousin Humphrey? And it will 
 make Anne mad. 
 
 And next day, perhaps, cousin Humphrey, in the interest 
 of order and the sense of justice, has trodden on the tail of 
 that asp-like affection, and it has stung him in the heel and 
 curled off to the kitchen unashamed. " I'm coming to have 
 my tea with you, Anne." " Then you hadn't need," cries 
 back the irate woman. " I want nobody's leavings. Gan 
 back to Doctor, and tell him it was you that made his toast, 
 and couldn't he tell it was a deal different from when aud 
 Anne diz it ? And get him to tell you ' Yes/ like you did be- 
 fore. I know your deceiving ways, for all I'm a fond old 
 fool." Despite of which, the fond old fool is melted into 
 complacency after five minutes' pleading, and sits down to the 
 teapot with her wrath not altogether discarded, but kept care- 
 fully by her side, like a portentous reticule, for usage in 
 emergency should the girl suddenly decide to forsake the 
 kitchen and go on a peace-begging mission to the Doctor's 
 table : " Cousin Humphrey . . . Cousin Humphrey ! 
 I've come back again . . ." looking at the grave seated 
 figure through those small heavens of beseeching blue, and 
 drawing nearer in humble supplication " And I'm very 
 sorry I lost my temper and was angry with you. But you 
 . . . but you don't know how I love you." Here a hint 
 of tears and a quickening of the voice, as though hastening 
 to win the bridge of purpose before it should be swept away 
 by the rising flood. " Oh, say you love me ! " With this, a 
 tumultuous recourse to arms. " And forgive me ... 
 and I'll fetch my cup and saucer." 
 
 From the tangled garden where once the Doctor's mother 
 had wandered in so many conscientious hours, diffusing 
 fragrant harmony with soft hands, and bending stubborn 
 herbage to her gentle will, the girl culls blossoms from the 
 pouting wilderness: marguerites and pendent fuschia; roses
 
 75 
 
 and blue borage; snap-dragon and the aerial sweet peas, 
 hovering in great scented clusters like tinted butterflies ; so 
 numerous that the morning dew lies glittering on their wings 
 till noonday ; pinks and carnations and scented southern- 
 wood ; and sets all these in pot and vase about the house till 
 the Doctor's room is impassioned with breath of fragrant 
 oratory, and the dead mother enters its doors again with 
 many a familiar long-neglected bloom. Only, in place of the 
 graver woman, with the gentle reverence for beauty that age 
 and a sense of life's passage can alone confer in place of 
 this, his own mother, to caress the blossom cheeks with soft 
 touches of finger-tip and call her son's attention to their 
 grace and fragrance, was the eager finger of the girl, dabbing 
 the chubby blooms with the careless fingers of affinitive youth 
 (heedless of fragility and decay) ; more concerned to draw 
 her cousin Humphrey's notice to her skill than to the beauty 
 of the blossoms; calling upon him in persistent treble to 
 notice this, and smell that; to admire and to praise. 
 
 And then, we may suppose, in such a room these two sit 
 down to the breakfast-table together, and the girl asks him 
 why he is so quiet. He tells her he is thinking. She asks : 
 What about? He says, many things. Does he ever think 
 about her? There is a pause. Does he? Another pause, 
 and then, perhaps, a protracted, Sometimes. Does he ? Tell 
 her what he thinks when he thinks about her. He thinks 
 and fastens an eye of some indecision upon her, wrapped 
 in robes of authority concerning whose fit and appropriateness 
 it appears to have misgivings he thinks and wonders 
 . . . whether she is always kind and respectful to Anne. 
 The role of moral preceptor harassed with memories of 
 many recent lapses, to which the girl has been a witness 
 sits uneasily on his shoulders. The girl, with the acute 
 penetration of her sex, is not deceived by this lukewarm 
 improvement of the shining hour. She draws her brows
 
 76 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 together, and shakes her hair with a pettish half-closing 
 of resentful lids, and tells him to " Bother Anne ! " He 
 says : " That is not the way ... I care to hear you 
 speak of One," and blinks " of One for whom . . ." 
 and blinks again, with the remembrance of the girl's previous 
 challenge " for whom my mother had a very high re- 
 gard." He falls back upon an assumption of gravity and 
 decorum rather than the difficult verbal expression of it; 
 using his spoon, at such moments, with great reserve, 
 and his knife and fork with deep deliberation; and in- 
 ferring much dumb loftiness of brow, and stern rectitude, 
 while professing ignorance of the girl's scrutiny. And after 
 this, it may be, the girl will touch upon the outlines of the 
 day ; as to where he is going ; what patients he must see ; what 
 illnesses consider. Without the wish, he is drawn insensibly 
 into speech. Monosyllables become dissyllables, and dissylla- 
 bles link together in chains of quiet colloquy. With each suc- 
 cessive meal the formal gravity, introduced into his speech 
 like a training rod for self-possession to grow against, be- 
 comes less necessary to his usage. By degrees he can speak 
 to her and look upon her without constraint. 
 
 And the process of assimilation, begun in the shelter of the 
 big house, is continued day after day through the hedgerows 
 of the district. Sunfleet and Homerise, Beachington and 
 Peterwick, and all the straggling parishes, grow habited to 
 the sight of the Doctor and the girl. " Doctor' Lass " she 
 comes eventually to be called, for the uses of the particle and 
 the possessive s are foreign to our speech and idiom. We 
 " gan ti garden ", and " stop i' house ", and " lig on grass ", 
 and " walk to cliff ", and do most of our daily business with- 
 out any obligation to the definite article. While on the other 
 grammatical high road we can drive a team of four posses- 
 sives without harness, so to speak, and say : " Dog bit Steb- 
 bing' brother' sister-i'-law' bairn i' leg " without so much as a
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 77 
 
 blink, reserving the ss for seasoning our plurals, till even 
 proper names seethe over the tongue like hissing soup, and 
 we speak sibilantly of " Johnsonses " and " Stebbinges," and 
 " Medlingses " in our effort to do justice to these families in 
 their collective capacity. 
 
 After all, the Doctor finds the girl's near presence less try- 
 ing in the open, dissolved in green fields and spacious blue 
 skies. In the jogging horse and flapping reins there is always 
 a refuge for his eyes against her scrutiny. Here she cannot 
 hold him captive under the concentration of that full-eyed 
 gaze. At the first suspicion that she is about to entangle 
 him in some outspoken question, he can ward off the evil 
 with an encouraging " Gee, Polly " to the plodding mare ; or 
 draw her up against an imaginary stumble ; or study the slow 
 unrolling of fallow and stubble as the grinding wheels revolve. 
 Thus in this companionship they cover many a mile ; share 
 the shelter of the slashed hood in showers, and give their 
 legs, in colder weather, the comfort of one common rug. 
 Now the girl sits solitary in the dusty vehicle while the Doctor 
 is absorbed into some white-washed cottage or red-brick farm. 
 Now she is called from her lonely place by some resolutely 
 hospitable farmer's wife who declines to take the Doctor's 
 assurance that the girl could not drink a glass of warm milk 
 or eat a slice of curd if invited, but comes out in person to 
 see, crying, " Not hungry ? Why noo, I know very well 
 bairns is allus hungry." And the girl who has no shyness 
 for strangers not dictated by a sense of politeness (when her 
 tongue grows very soft, and her blue eyes very tender) 
 drops down from the trap in a jiffy as soon as the kindness 
 is proffered (saying " Thank you " on the way) and admitting 
 freely that she could do with the milk and some curd, and 
 would love to look inside a real farm kitchen. 
 
 In such circumstances, when the girl is dipping her lips to 
 the creamy fluid, and suffering her blue eyes to wander in
 
 78 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 contented scrutiny about the kitchen as she drinks, the Doctor 
 is never so silent ; she is always a menace to his peace of 
 mind. He is frightened of what her lips may let fall ; shirk- 
 ing the public proclamation of this spurious kinship, and 
 fearing some childish indiscretion of lip that may illu- 
 minate this chapter of the past. When the farmer's wife 
 tells him from the bounty of her heart, " Why, you'll be- 
 gin to feel quite set up, Doctor, noo you've gotten a young 
 lady to keep house for you," he winces as if she had 
 rapped his knuckles with the rolling pin. And when she 
 proceeds to open the dread skeleton cupboard of relationships 
 and asks, " Let's see. What is she akin to ye ? Niece, div 
 ye say ? " anger rises under his tongue to think the fools 
 cannot keep a seemly bridle on their curiosity. " A sort of 
 half-cousin," he answers discouragingly. Adding, " By 
 marriage only." 'And turns thereat to the girl, of whose 
 Christian name he makes small use. " Well . . . we 
 must be pushing on. I have many calls to-day. You'll 
 send for that medicine, Mrs. Hammerton ? " 
 
 In the trap, on one occasion, after fuming over such an 
 incident in silence, he said all at once, with a careless flick at 
 the mare. 
 
 " By the way. The people here are very inquisitive. 
 Don't encourage them to talk." 
 
 The girl said, "What about?" 
 
 " About things that don't concern them," he answered. 
 " About yourself, for instance." 
 
 " Don't you want them to know who I am ? " 
 
 He shirked the issue. 
 
 " I do not mean that. Still . . . they ask many 
 questions that there is no need to gratify. What we are to 
 one another has really nothing to do with them." 
 
 She drank his face, drained his countenance of its tokens
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 79 
 
 from brow to chin, as she had drained the tumblers of milk. 
 
 " Do you wish I wasn't your cousin ? " she asked, after a 
 moment. 
 
 " Such an idea never entered my head. But if you were 
 my own sister ... or not even related to me in any way, 
 the point would be the same. They would still try and 
 make some sort of gossip out of it." 
 
 " And you are angry with me for drinking the milk ? " the 
 girl asked him. " And for going into the kitchen? You are, 
 aren't you ? " 
 
 " That is ridiculous," the Doctor retorted, wincing under 
 the truth of the accusation. But the sort of dogged con- 
 scientiousness inherited from his mother caused him to add, 
 " All the same ... it would be wiser not to make a 
 practice of it. I would much rather buy you the milk if 
 you are thirsty. It is well not to encourage them to ask ques- 
 tions. They are very curious to know many things about 
 you that they ought not to be told. One cannot be too par- 
 ticular as to what one says ... in a small place like 
 this." 
 
 The girl's eyes had been darkening during the latter part 
 of his speech, and a quiver had stirred the corners of her 
 mouth. " I know what you mean," she said, in a small com- 
 pressed voice. " Only you are frightened to say it. You 
 don't want them to know who I am, or that I'm your cousin. 
 You're ashamed of me because my mother died so poor and 
 I had not the money to pay my own railway fare to Sunfleet. 
 You're afraid all the time that I shall tell people how 
 dreadfully poor we were, and that my mother had to write 
 and beg you to take care of me, though often she could not 
 write for crying." Tears wrestled with anger in her eyes. 
 " You're ashamed of me . . . and hate me, and wish I 
 had never come. Why did you send for me at all? You
 
 8o THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 won't let me love you, and you won't love me. You never 
 smile at me, or look kind, and you're always turning away 
 your head as though you didn't want to see me. I wish I 
 was dead . . . and with my mother." 
 
 And the next morning there was no impetuous girl to set 
 the fragrance of his room in motion, or to stir the blossom 
 scents with impulsive caress. He had surmised as much and 
 apprehended it overnight, and one look at the lonely table, 
 with its lonely chair, and its lonely cup and saucer, and its 
 lonely setting, confirmed the apprehension. In penitence he 
 swallowed a tasteless meal. 
 
 Nor did the crunching of the buggy wheels, nor the 
 labored grunting of the groom bring back the injured spirit 
 of the girl. A silence that dead and stagnant silence as of 
 the days before her coming lay like some slothful monster 
 in the hall. He told himself her absence was as well. It 
 broke the irksome precedent of recent times, and left him 
 free to turn her own child's pride upon her foolish shoulders. 
 He would not patch this quarrel. Through the rent in their 
 relations he would find escape to reach those contemplated 
 things from which her daily contact had restrained him. 
 Henceforth he would mark their two respective stations. 
 Now she should go to school. 
 
 And for all that he hung about his room while the old 
 mare shook her jangling bit outside and pawed the gravel, 
 and awoke the aged groom to audible invective with a sour 
 eye on the signless porch. 
 
 " What i' heaven's name is keeping man when he knows 
 weel enough I'se stood ootside? Diz he think I'se nought i' 
 world to do but wait of him ? " 
 
 But there is no girl. 
 
 He goes, the Doctor, into the hall and makes much noisy 
 profession of departure. Passes into the deserted surgery 
 and clinks with bottles. Proceeds up-stairs and down again.
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 81 
 
 The mare has scraped more furrows in the gravel by the 
 time of his return than the old groom would dig in an hour's 
 work. 
 
 And still no girl. 
 
 And he goes, with a feeling of solitude and sickness at 
 heart, for he begins to realize that the girl occupies a bigger 
 share of his existence than he had ever been prepared to 
 grant. There is a great void in the buggy, a dreariness along 
 the roads. He misses the pressure of her disconcerting eyes, 
 and apprehends Pridgeon at familiar corners as if he were 
 a specter and the daylight night, for he feels that, in his 
 present purposeless mood, he is an easy prey to those devour- 
 ing cacodemons of the past. And the dull aimlessness of the 
 drive is intensified with a dozen thoughtless queries 
 
 "What! You're alone to-day, then?" 
 
 " What's gotten your young lady, Doctor ? Is she stopping 
 wi' ye still?" 
 
 He is angry with the girl, and angry with himself. He 
 feels he has surrendered too much of himself in his desire to 
 be just, has given her the warm kindness of his heart instead 
 of the colder fragments of charity. The housekeeper had 
 warned him truly when she told him that this was Hilda 
 Brennan's bairn. No steadfast breeze could blow from such 
 a quarter. Her heart is a shallow mockery, like her mother's 
 a mere saucer for tears and cajoleries, without depth for 
 gratitude or loyalty or love. Well, he has this to be thankful 
 for, that he has awakened to the danger of her disposition 
 in time. Now he can deal with her. 
 
 And that he may begin to deal with her at once, and lay 
 the first stones of his new purpose, he chops his circuit 
 moodily in half, and drives home in the early afternoon. 
 " She shall go to school," he tells himself as he flicks the 
 mare. " I won't be played the fool with in my own house. 
 There can be no rest or happiness for me while she stays." 
 
 6
 
 82 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 And lo! Along the last mile of highway home from 
 Beachington there is the object of all his haste and bitter 
 meditation drawn up in the grassy border of the road, her 
 fingers purple with the juice of many a gathered berry, her 
 lips stained red, and her blue eyes beaming recognition and 
 welcome. He hears the radiant " Cousin Humphrey " thrown 
 out through the amicable flash of white teeth, as though no 
 quarrel stood between them, and pulls sullenly upon the 
 reins so that the mare interprets his displeasure through a 
 long protracted stoppage. The girl, out of breath with her 
 enforced pursuit and the occasional calls upon his name, 
 comes up to the buggy at length. He does not turn to show 
 welcome or attendance, but awaits her with a rigid back, 
 switching the whip as though impatient, and directing a 
 smileless face as her own beams up at him. 
 
 " What are you doing here ? " he asks gravely. 
 
 She tells him she has come to meet him. She knew he 
 would be driving back that way. 
 
 " As a rule, yes. But if I had driven round by Homerise 
 as I intended, you must have missed me altogether. It 
 would have been wiser to stay with Anne." 
 
 " Why didn't you drive round by Homerise ? " 
 
 " Because . . . because to-day there was no occasion." 
 
 She hears the quarrel in his voice and sees it in his brow, 
 a dagger buried to the hilt where her temper plunged it, 
 and without a pause for consideration, clasps his arm and 
 pulls it to her bosom. 
 
 " Cousin Humphrey, you're not angry with me still, are 
 you? I'm not angry with you any longer. You don't 
 know " (gulp) " how I've missed you all this while. It has 
 been wretched without you." 
 
 He bends with silent dignity to the petition, makes no 
 pardoning sign, but lets her clasp his arm the tighter and 
 heap her phrases of contrition on his silence. She deems
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 83 
 
 his anger buried, after awhile, beneath her protestations of 
 repentance. The crease of anxious concentration relaxes 
 between her brows, her gaze grows in assurance, she looks 
 into his eyes with the radiant confidence for rehabilitation 
 and favor. 
 
 " You're not angry with me now, Cousin Humphrey," she 
 beseeches him, " when you see how sorry I've been. Oh, 
 make haste and say you forgive me before Anne sees us. 
 Anne said you never would. Not likely. But I told her I 
 knew very well you would if only I asked you." 
 
 Yes, yes. If only she asked him. 
 
 If only she played the Hilda Brennan game with Hilda 
 Brennan's skill. If only she begged and held those mendicant 
 blue eyes before his anger, and offered him her heart for his 
 wrath to walk on. If only she did these things he would 
 forgive her as she asked, now and always, and be the God's 
 own fool that he had ever been.
 
 XI 
 
 OCTOBER is a great month in Sunfleet, for it brings 
 the Hunmouth Fair, and Hunmouth Fair has a trans- 
 cendent place in our calendar. We synchronize a host of 
 agrestic obligations with this mighty festival, and all points 
 of time between harvest and the November Mass are cal- 
 culated by their relation to it. It gives us warning to be on 
 with our winter wheat, and to bestow an extra and tender 
 care on the Martinmas pig. 
 
 To dwellers in towns who are grown blase to the thrill of 
 tram-rides, and who through intimate acquaintance with 
 every variety of theatrical poster may be said to have 
 exhausted the emotions of the drama, there may be little 
 in the sound of Hunmouth Fair to stir the pulses ; but it 
 is different with the scattered Northumbrian parishes that 
 lie lonely under God's sky between Hunmouth and the sea. 
 There, many a man leaning on the ash stick that is crooked 
 beneath the weight of rheumatism and the reminiscences of 
 years, has hoped, against the plain discouragement of his 
 limbs, that he might see one more Hunmouth Fair before 
 he died. There is a magic in the very words, like the 
 " Open Sesame," to unlock the heart of youth in hope, and 
 throw back even the creaking portals of old age in a smile 
 of distant memory. Ancient mortals, carved in stone, are 
 set out by kitchen fires like arm-chairs, and moved up and 
 down stairs at other people's convenience, like furniture : 
 " Set father oot i' porch while we get floor scrubbed." " Run 
 Lizzie, an' fetch your grandfather in quick. It's coming on 
 rain." " Tek father i' parlor a bit. I can't get ti oven door 
 
 84
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 85 
 
 . . ." Ancient mortals such as these, who seem to have 
 lost all interest in themselves or their belongings, and have 
 to be told that they are hungry before they can believe it, 
 or have the cup forced to their rebellious lips before they 
 will drink resuscitate a fragment of antiquated pride from 
 some dusky cupboard of memory (much as old women will 
 treasure the solitary saucer which bears tribute to the one- 
 time Worcester tea-service, of common use in their grand- 
 mother's days), and at mention of Hunmouth Fair be heard 
 to say : " Aye, I've had my share o' Hunmouth Fair i' my 
 time, you may depend. I've seed fotty, and nobbut missed 
 yan year my mother died. There's not a deal o' folk can 
 say as much." Farm lads and lasses begin to count their 
 money in the secreted purses at the bottom of the corded 
 box or cadaverous-lidded trunk, with a new look of uneasy 
 wonder in their eyes, and make weird calculations over the 
 fingers of both hands in an effort to decide how many more 
 days there are before the Fair, and how much money is still 
 necessary to their desires. Children grow importunate and 
 clutch their mothers' skirts and cry : " Can I gan ti' 
 Oommuth Fair an' all, mother ? I'se as big as Janey Dowes, 
 and gotten threepence-'apenny in my box. Ye promised 
 last year ye'd take me nobbut I held my noise. An' I did." 
 
 It is the biggest Fair in England, the elysium for all 
 who love noise and dust and movement, and the special 
 trains panting between Hunmouth and all the district round 
 pump the soil dry of its workers during the magic week. 
 Sunfleet, at such a time, is a place of the dead. 
 
 For the Fair, throbbing in the hot bosom of Hunmouth 
 like a fevered heart, draws all the district irresistibly through 
 its valves as if humanity were blood. Men go to Hunmouth 
 with jests on their lips who have not smiled since last Fair; 
 and careful housewives, who would not waste a currant in 
 one of their own teacakes, will tuck up their skirts and sit
 
 86 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 bolt upright with their petticoats about them, in a carriage 
 of eighteen passengers, just to see the Fair they have never 
 missed since they were girls in service and bring back the 
 same invariable Hunmouth headache and the same brandy- 
 snap and short temper, as a memento of the ordeal. Before 
 the end of the Fair's first day, the corpuscles of district blood 
 are visibly enriched with its influence. Mouth-organs and 
 new accordions, the latter smelling of glue and varnish, 
 and the former tasting horrible when blown, commence to 
 crop up everywhere a veritable harvest of discordancies. 
 Small girls wear bead necklaces, and their elder sisters 
 cheap jewelry and brooches at their bosom with their 
 Christian names stamped in silver, and rings inscribed with 
 Mizpah. Children make themselves sick with mint- rock and 
 unripe apples or watery pears, and babies choke over brandy- 
 snap of a peculiarly inflexible and destructive character, 
 which has to be forked out in haste by the maternal finger 
 from a bubbling mouth ; and farm men smoke Aunt Sallie 
 cigars that smell like the Great Plague and the Fire of 
 London combined all evidences of the festival that consum- 
 mates itself daily in sweat and dust, and sets fierce fire to 
 the Hunmouth sky by night. Even at Kenham Beach there 
 are Hunmouth drums beaten by indefatigable fingers, and 
 Hunmouth trumpets blown by the lips of infancy below the 
 lonely light at Spraith. 
 
 Of Pridgeon little has been seen in these latter days since 
 a memorable occasion when he dropped from the Doctor's 
 gig at Homerise, though he has not been by any means in- 
 active, and the Recording Angel has had to inscribe many 
 items under his name. Once or twice, indeed, he has called 
 at the tree-girt house in the Doctor's absence, and left a mes- 
 sage that he would look round again later in the evening. 
 Whereupon the Doctor has slipped the latch in the front 
 door to put this lawless smiler on the ceremony of ringing
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 87 
 
 his arrival, and awaited the proclamation with lips of set 
 purpose. But no visit has ensued, and Pridgeon has been 
 reported elsewhere ; perhaps at the Rising Sun with 
 Farmer Medling and a retinue of subsidiaries, or further 
 afield in the pursuit of some other nocturnal pleasure. 
 Hand-waves, too, have been exchanged between the two 
 men at a distance ; brief on the Doctor's part in mere token 
 of acknowledgment, and dropped thereat, like the signal 
 arm at Peterwick when the Hunmouth train is due; more 
 prolonged on the farmer's side : a salutation and summons 
 in one, suggesting stoppage of the gig and much to talk 
 about. On this point, however, the Doctor has been in- 
 exorable; has re-addressed himself to his driving as to a 
 serious pursuit, and waved the whiplash with the studious 
 care for errands of gravity. He has not shunned Pridgeon 
 in any spirit of moodiness or fear, but he has wished to avoid 
 all renewal of their intimacy until he could meet him breast 
 to breast in a talk uncumbered by the girl. 
 
 The Hunmouth Fair, counting Pridgeon among its most- 
 ardent supporters, does the Doctor's mission in this respect. 
 On the eve of the great Saturday, with as much liquor in 
 his constitution as shows his smile to best advantage, and 
 lends a characteristic geniality to all his bearing (the night 
 being yet young), Pridgeon presents himself at the Doctor's 
 door in quest of company for the morrow. 
 
 The latch for many years grown rusty in disservice is 
 now a perpetual feature of the door's armament, well oiled 
 and in good working order. Consequently, after swearing 
 for some time at an unresponsive knob, the farmer gives up 
 further attention on it, like friendship wasted on teetotalers, 
 and rings a great peal of profanity on the bell. The girl, 
 playing beggar-my-neighbor with the Doctor in the big 
 room, where the two of them are drawn under the lamp, 
 tangled in fragrant smoke like floating skeins of worsted,
 
 88 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 stops in her appropriation of the Doctor's knave to say, " My 
 goodness ! Whoever is that ? " There is no note of interro- 
 gation in the Doctor's mind, for he knows that never call of 
 urgency presented itself in such a guise. This was a 
 whisky summons, that only inebriation could produce or 
 hear with equanimity. The Doctor laid his hand upon the 
 girl's wrist and said, " Hush ! Pick up the cards and go and 
 sit with Anne for a while. That's a good girl." The good 
 girl is inclined to ask questions, perhaps, but she gathers the 
 greasy cards in her hand, and with the sole stipulation that 
 she is not merely being got rid of, and that the Doctor will 
 finish the game with her before she goes to bed, takes her 
 departure for the kitchen. The housekeeper, coming through 
 the hall to the door, had not misread the summons any 
 more than the Doctor. She puts her head into his room 
 to say: 
 
 " You know who yon is." 
 
 " No mistaking it, Anne." 
 
 " Well ? Where had you better be ? Peterwick or up at 
 Spraith?" 
 
 " Here, to-night," says the Doctor. " Let him in, Anne. 
 I want to speak to him." 
 
 She is disposed to contest the decision. 
 
 " What good will speaking tiv him do ? " she asks. " I've 
 spoken tiv him my sen, as plain as onnybody can speak. But 
 it diz no good. He's past shame." 
 
 The Doctor smiled indulgently. " All right, Anne. Show 
 him in; I'll tackle him." 
 
 " You know what you've promised," the housekeeper 
 reminds him. " Not a glass nor drop." Again the bell 
 rings, and she disappears into the hall. The opening of the 
 doors lets in the farmer's voice with the sullen gustiness of 
 a March wind, long pent up in crevice and keyhole, and 
 exuberantly happy. The voice curls round the housekeeper,
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 89 
 
 " Hello, Anne, you old darling ! God bless us, you seem to 
 grow better for keeping, like a russet apple." There is a 
 brief sound of scraping in the hall, as if the housekeeper were 
 commencing to scour the flags, succeeded by a sudden clap 
 like the falling of a Bible, and a moment later Pridgeon 
 laughs his way into the room.
 
 XII 
 
 HE comes in with his usual impetuous salutation, but his 
 eye quick to observance takes up the tokens of 
 alteration in the familiar room. He notes the emblems of re- 
 generation in the Doctor's person, the look of new life's in- 
 terest on his countenance that marks it as clearly from the 
 face the farmer had previously known as wakefulness from 
 sleep. 
 
 " Hello ! What the deuce ! " he says. " You look strange 
 and smart. You've got a new tie on, and had your hair cut. 
 Old Stebbing told me you were driving out to-day with a 
 new hat on and all, but I said he was a liar. What's come 
 over you ? You never stop when I wave to you now-a-days. 
 You don't think I've got the hump over yon business at 
 Homerise, do you? God bless us, I'm not one of that sort. 
 I believe in forgiving and forgetting." He drew out his 
 pipe, and commenced to replete its charred briar bowl with 
 thick shag out of the worn moleskin pouch. " I've been 
 wanting to see you this week past, but I've been so throng. 
 Now, what about to-morrow ? " 
 
 "What about it?" 
 
 "What about it?" exclaimed Pridgeon. "Lord, bless 
 us. You haven't forgotten what day it is ? " 
 
 "What day is it?" 
 
 " Do you try and make me believe you've forgotten Hun- 
 mouth Fair?" cried Pridgeon. "Lord! Anne would know 
 better. All the lasses are trimming up their hats, and you 
 couldn't beat the weather. Now, come on. You and I'll go 
 and have a nice quiet day in the thick of it, all to ourselves. 
 
 90
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 91 
 
 There'll be thousands there." He saw the smile and nega- 
 tion on the Doctor's face, and pressed his request upon him 
 with a keener emphasis. " Lord beggar it. Don't say ' No.' 
 I've been counting on you. Old Medling wants me to drive 
 in with him in the morning, but he's such a drunken old 
 buck, and so damned heavy to lift. You can't go all round 
 the Fair with that hanging on your arm. Besides . . . 
 who's to drive coming home? And then there's the old 
 girl to face at the end of it all, after you've done your 
 best to keep him straight up on his legs. She comes down 
 with a candle to tell you you ought to be ashamed of yourself 
 bringing him home in that state. You're a perfect curse to 
 the district. Never a word of gratitude to you. But you 
 know what women are. Anne's bad enough, God bless 
 her." 
 
 The Doctor shook his head. 
 
 " No, no," he said. " No more Hunmouth Fair for me, 
 Pridgeon. I've had my helping of that." 
 
 " Aye," acquiesced Pridgeon. " But we overdid it a bit 
 that time, I know. For one thing, you weren't used to it 
 and that was in my wild-oat days. Come on with you, man, 
 I'll look after you all right. Damn it, if you don't come, I 
 shall have to go with old Medling, and chance it. But you 
 and I take about the same draught. We just want a little 
 cream on, of course but not any more than we had at 
 Kenham Beach last time, with yon lass o' yours. Lord, 
 that was a grand drive ! " 
 
 He had kept casting occasional glances of inquiry about 
 him in speech as though conscious of a dim lack in the 
 constitution of familiar things. At last he alighted with 
 emphasis on a perception of the void that so troubled him. 
 " The devil take her by the leg. What's Anne done with 
 the whisky? I thought there was something amiss." 
 
 " The whisky's gone," said the Doctor.
 
 92 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 "Gone? Who's drunk it? You?" 
 
 " I ? " The Doctor smiled. " I drank my last drop at 
 Kenham Beach. Since then I've lived capitally on water." 
 
 "What?" cried Pridgeon after a pause, with his smile 
 twisted up in consternation and amusement. " You don't 
 mean . . ." 
 
 " Just what I do mean," the Doctor told him. 
 
 " For a while, or for for . . ." 
 
 " For good." 
 
 Pridgeon wiped his brow with the back of his hand, as 
 though the sudden intelligence had thrown him into a sweat 
 and gazed at the Doctor through a distorting smile that gave 
 his face the semblance of staring through a warped window- 
 pane. 
 
 " Well . . . What ! Nay, damn it all," he declared, 
 after various ineffective openings for blank astonishment. 
 " What fools there are in the world. Good whisky never 
 hurt any man if he took it sensibly. If nobody ever took 
 more than you or me there'd be less talk about temperance 
 and all syke nonsense. Why, I've never known you in all 
 my days when you couldn't stand on your feet and keep go- 
 ing, once you'd got a shove." He paused and scrutinized the 
 Doctor's face. " Are you joking? " 
 
 " Never more serious in my life," the Doctor answered. 
 " I've been rather wanting to see you, and have a little 
 squaring up, Pridgeon, for some time." 
 
 " Well, this is a rum way of seeing anybody," commented 
 Pridgeon, with an incredulous look at the side-board. " Hang 
 it, man, just tell yon old girl to bring a sup of whisky in and 
 one glass. There's no need for you to drink unless you like. 
 You please yourself, of course, but don't try and make 
 teetotalers of your friends. Shall I give yon bell a pull ? " 
 
 " No," said the Doctor, " don't do that. What I have to 
 say needn't keep you long."
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 93 
 
 "Long?" cried Pridgeon. "Why, half-a-minute's long 
 enough for my job. By the seraphim," he said, seeing the 
 negative implanted like a flagpole in the Doctor's look, 
 " bring out a sup of ale at least. Ale's teetotal enough. 
 Never mind the jug just a glassful to put a bit of heart 
 into me. No ? Not a sup of ale even ? " He subsided into 
 his smile again helplessly, like a bather who slips back into 
 the bath after a futile quest after the soap. " Well, I'm 
 executed. I always thought you a rum sort of chap when 
 you were sober, but this caps all. Why, man, all Sunfleet 
 knows you were never like yourself until you had a glass or 
 two. It's been the making of you. And now you talk of 
 deserting it. It'll be your ruin, once you start taking that 
 face round with you for good ; and those patients that don't 
 die will change their doctor. Well ! I've stuck by you 
 through thick and thin. Everybody knows it. What! Do 
 you think folks want a chap ganning i' door like an under- 
 taker, scaring 'em wi' looking at tongues and feeling pulses 
 as if they'd aught amiss with them. Not they. They want 
 a chap to gan wi' a light foot and cheerful heart same as I 
 should do, and talk a pack of nonsense to liven them up. 
 Sing 'em a song and syke like, and beg a glass of ale before 
 you gan. Lord bless me and to-morrow's Hunmouth Fair 
 and all! If there's ever a time for a little friendliness 
 anywhere, it's now." 
 
 The Doctor listened to Pridgeon's animated harangue with 
 a face on which purpose was faintly illuminated with a 
 flickering smile. It showed the tranquil stubbornness of 
 the man to Pridgeon, and he saw the futility of argument 
 even though the smile (so rare at other moments) encouraged 
 him to heap up words. 
 
 " Is it the lass ? " he asked abruptly, at the end of his 
 resources, but awaiting the reply with a sort of incredulous
 
 94 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 humor as though scarce venturing to think the Doctor 
 would subscribe in full to such a question. 
 
 " It's the lass," said the Doctor quietly. 
 
 "Aye, they play the devil with a man," said Pridgeon. 
 " But I never thought you were one of that sort. Anne 
 could make naught o' you. Folks i' Sunfleet say you never 
 squeezed a lass i' all your life." His lips, warming to a 
 congenial topic, expanded to a smile of invitation. " Did 
 you?" 
 
 " It might be better if they could say as much about you, 
 Pridgeon," the Doctor responded. " But that's not a matter 
 I care to discuss. There are plenty of other things for me 
 to be ashamed of, I know." The confession seemed to per- 
 plex the farmer's smile. 
 
 " Why, what are they ? " he asked blankly, and then, 
 catching dimly at illumination, added, " You don't call a 
 sup of whisky anything for a chap to be ashamed of? 
 You've recommended it, yourself, for people lots of 
 times." 
 
 " Possibly so," said the Doctor. " Whisky is all right in 
 its place, but its place is no longer here. Things have 
 altered with me, Pridgeon, and you ought to see it." 
 
 " Aye, I do," said Pridgeon, with an approach to darkness. 
 " I see it fair enough, and a dowly sight it is. They've 
 altered for the worse. It's a rum 'un when Doctor of a place 
 can't keep a sup of something handy on his sideboard. That 
 was never old Dendy's way." 
 
 " Dendy's way," said the Doctor, " is not my way. My 
 mind's made up. Nothing more of the kind for me. You 
 know I never liked it." 
 
 " Oh, come ! " cried Pridgeon, with an expostulation which 
 first shrank and then expanded his smile. " You don't ask 
 me to believe that. If you didn't drink for pleasure you've 
 got a damned sight by accident. Aye! It's same as folks
 
 95 
 
 that don't farm for profit, I think. Syke people generally 
 drive the best bargain and get best prices for their stuff, all 
 the same." 
 
 " I drank," said the Doctor firmly, " for other reasons. 
 Believe it or not." 
 
 " Why, as for that," said Pridgeon, " there's not a reason 
 under the sun that a chap won't drink for. Some chaps 
 drink because their wives die, and some because they don't. 
 Some old cuddies tell you they drink because they've no 
 teeth to masticate their meat, and ale slips down easier than 
 crust. One chap drinks to make him warm, and another to 
 make him cool. Some take it for company's sake, and some 
 to keep company out. But, Lord bless us, it's all same i' end. 
 It gans down slippy and makes 'em better men. I've oft 
 thought myself, after a glass or two, that I should like to 
 gan to church some day and hear a hymn, and slive out 
 before the sermon. But that's never a thought of mine 
 when I'm sober. I've over much sense. Why, you know 
 yourself it loosens a man's heart, if he's got one, and gives 
 him syke feelings as women read out o' Bible. A glass o' 
 good stuff is as good as a prayer at times, and helps trade. 
 If I could have kept drunk all my life I think I should be 
 sure of going to heaven, for I've made all my best resolu- 
 tions then and only getting sober stopped me fro' keeping 
 them." 
 
 " You have your own views, Pridgeon," said the Doctor. 
 
 " Aye, but the whisky's on my side too," Pridgeon retorted. 
 " Don't forget that." 
 
 " I don't forget it," the Doctor answered, " to my sorrow. 
 But there's a duty facing me now. I've put my hand to the 
 plow, and if I'm only strong enough . . . there shall 
 be no turning back. It makes me sick to think of these years 
 wasted ! " 
 
 " Wasted ! " cried Pridgeon. " And all the times we've
 
 96 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 had together! That there weren't more of 'em is only your 
 own fault. You threw away your opportunities, and some 
 day you'll live to regret them. What more do you ask of 
 life?" 
 
 " Many things," said the Doctor. " All the things I have 
 deliberately cast aside." 
 
 " Well, let those be a warning to you," said the farmer, 
 " before you cast aside any more. It's easier to cast aside 
 than to pick up. No year comes twice over." 
 
 " Would to God it did," the Doctor exclaimed, " and I 
 could have them all back. But if one can't mend the old, 
 one can try at least and better the new. I'm going to 
 attempt it, anyhow. Don't think I mean to preach, but 
 there are one or two things I must put plainly to you before 
 you go to-night. The first is ... well, you've seen for 
 yourself ; this place is no longer a public-house. The second 
 is and I'm sorry to say it, Pridgeon that until you are 
 prepared to pay a little more attention to your own character 
 and ways of life, I can't invite you to make such liberal use 
 of my front door. You'll know what I mean. We have both 
 of us to face the position." 
 
 As the Doctor had spoken Pridgeon's familiar smile kept 
 closing and opening irresolutely, like a door loose on its 
 hinges. At the last words it blew suddenly wide with a 
 great gust of breath that was scarcely laughter, although 
 it had some of the superficial features of it. 
 
 " By Shot ! " said the farmer. " That's straight enough 
 in face of Hunmouth Fair and all. You mean, now you've 
 got yon lass, I'm not good enough to come and sit with you 
 any longer. Is that why you'd gotten door snecked ? " 
 
 " There's no question," the Doctor said, " of being good 
 enough, Pridgeon, and no man should know that better than 
 you. But . . . well ! what's the use of mincing mat- 
 ters. Things can't go on here as they have done, it stands to
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 97 
 
 sense. The girl comes to me I'm the only guardian she 
 has and I can't do less than my duty. I'm going to take 
 up my responsibilities in earnest." 
 
 " Then," said Pridgeon, his smile like a compass needle, 
 still oscillating betwixt the quarters of amusement and in- 
 credulity, " you mean you're giving me the sack ? Is that 
 it?" , 
 
 " No," said the Doctor, " that's not it, Pridgeon. I'm 
 giving myself the sack or, rather the self you've seen so 
 much of. You know very well that you and I apart from 
 the whisky have not much in common. Only the harness 
 of drink has kept us together. I know little about farm- 
 ing. You care less about doctoring." 
 
 " Why, it's a dowly trade," Pridgeon admitted. " I don't 
 see how a man can keep going at it fairly, without some- 
 thing to hold his head up." 
 
 The Doctor continued : " I've not touched a drop since 
 you saw me last and I feel another man. Besides, I 
 have a hundred interests now to keep me busy. There's the 
 girl to consider. And I want to have the garden put in 
 order. When I look at it now and think of all the hours my 
 dear mother bestowed on it when she was living, I can't 
 find thoughts for myself. And the house, too, needs set- 
 ting to rights bit by bit. I'm going to make a clean breast 
 of everything, and begin all over again. When you saw I 
 was in earnest about being sober in the old days you used to 
 clear off and stop away until you had given me time to see 
 my folly. Well, now I'm going to be sober for good. No 
 whisky. No sitting up till daybreak. No strong language 
 
 except just now and again. No sleeping on my sofa, 
 while I'm away." 
 
 " By heaven ! " cried the farmer. " Old Dendy himself 
 will be having a livelier time of it, wherever he is. Well," 
 
 he knocked the ashes out of his pipe against the marble 
 
 7
 
 98 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 fireplace and gave a laugh " troubles never come singly," 
 he said. " But, the Lord be praised, I've the heart of a 
 cork." He laughed again. " You'll have heard, I suppose ? " 
 
 The Doctor's face took on a sterner mold. 
 
 " I was there last night. They called me about eleven." 
 
 " Boy or lass ? " asked Pridgeon. 
 
 " Boy," said the Doctor. 
 
 " Aye. I heard tell it was a boy. What sort of a young- 
 ster is he ? " 
 
 " A fine, healthy chap God help him." 
 
 " He is ? " cried the farmer with enthusiasm. " That's 
 good. And how did she take it? I asked her brother this 
 morning as he was riding by, but he told me to go to hell. 
 I said I'd follow him on." 
 
 " She took it badly," said the Doctor. " I had to chloro- 
 form." 
 
 "You had? Well, that's a rum 'un and syke a fine, 
 strong lass and all. But women differ a deal. Yon other 
 was up at week end. How's she coming on now ? " 
 
 "Better. She'll pull through all right." There was a 
 pause. " I suppose it's you, Pridgeon ? " 
 
 "Why, so they say." 
 
 " You don't deny it." 
 
 " Nay, what's the good ? I don't deny I used to see a 
 fairish bit of the lass at one time. Aye, and a nice lass she 
 was too. I will say that for her, whatever her faults now. 
 There's none of her friends sorrier for what's happened her 
 than me. And yet some folks are ready to blame a man for 
 badness, as though he'd meant it from the first. Why, what 
 after all " he took up with a return to his old brightness 
 " she'll get over it like I've had to do in the past. There's 
 tricks in all trades. A man can get over everything when 
 he once knows how, and so can a woman. And yon lass will 
 weep over bairn, spill tears on his head, and yet hold out
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 99 
 
 her arms for him minute he's ta'en away from her. What's 
 use o' looking on the darker side of things? A bairn's a 
 bairn, and a mother's a mother. I don't think any the worse 
 o' the poor wench for what's happened. And let those that 
 throw the first stone look to themselves." 
 
 The Doctor gazed at the radiant face intently. 
 
 " Are you going to marry her, Pridgeon?" 
 
 "Marry her!" cried Pridgeon. "What? With yon old 
 mother of mine at home, and a big farm to look after. That 
 would be making a bad job worse. Lord knows I don't 
 bear the lass any ill-will, for all she's pulled my name intiv 
 it, and I'll do anything reasonable to help her out of the 
 mess she's got into, but I don't see why I should be called 
 on to marry her. It might have happened to anybody just 
 as soon as me. It's a natural sort of thing in a way. Damn 
 it all, Doctor, if you'd been half a man and kept your eyes 
 open the tale might have applied to you." He took up his 
 hat. 
 
 " Well, then," he said, with the expansive smile for de- 
 parture, " I'm jealous I can't do a deal of good by stopping. 
 And I won't deny it's dry work smoking without anything 
 to moisten your pipe. I'm sorry you won't gan with me to 
 Hunmouth. It'll be a hard job holding old Medling up, and 
 I know I shall have to drink a lot more than I care for. 
 . . . How's lass?" he asked. 
 
 The Doctor assumed a casual tone in saying she was quite 
 well. 
 
 " Am I to see her before I gan? " 
 
 " Why, she's with Anne now. We won't disturb them." 
 
 Pridgeon laughed sagaciously. 
 
 " Good-by," he said, and looked round the room. " Aye, 
 I've had many a good drink in the past. And it's a grand 
 room for the job. But I'm hoping things aren't as black as 
 you think they are. You and I'll be sitting together under
 
 ioo THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 yon lamp again many a night when you've thrown off your 
 trouble." In the hall he turned round again and flashed a 
 beam of penetrative laughter on to the Doctor's face. 
 " Good Lord ! " he cried, " I can't think you're serious, even 
 now. Are you ? " He held the light of his laughter on the 
 Doctor's features and saw the faint gleam of amusement 
 still flickering over the new purpose. " Aye, by Go', you are 
 and all," he said. " I'd rather it had happened to any man 
 but you." 
 
 He went off whistling down the steps, and the Doctor 
 watched him with an extension of friendly interest until he 
 plunged into the drive. Then he closed the door, with his 
 lips formed to the word " Jane." But the girl's face was 
 already peeping round the green-baize door, and the moment 
 he turned inward she ran forward with the greasy pack in 
 her hand. It was like turning from the old dark life to face 
 the new, with all its cares and compensations.
 
 XIII 
 
 WITH the dawning of his new life the Doctor dedi- 
 cated himself afresh to the district's needs, and 
 what had been but a periodic glimpse of his better nature 
 all these years, viewed through a questionable medium (as 
 people are sometimes permitted to take their peeps of a 
 house's best parlor through an obliquity in the blinds), be- 
 came, under the new influence, his steadfast and unalterable 
 phase. When he threw his greeting now, along the road- 
 way, there was a ring in it as if he had flung a coin. Now 
 that no folds of perversity wrapped him to himself, and 
 his hands were free to do the dictates of his heart, it seemed 
 he had taken all these people to his bosom. He had a word 
 for each a mere phrase, perhaps, but warm as a roast po- 
 tato, to be nursed in grateful hands long after the donor 
 had passed by. Old Stebbing the roadmender walked home 
 in his padded legs with his head nodding reminiscent pride 
 at each step, because the Doctor had asked if he did not find 
 it cold work sitting on the stone-heap. The courtesy warmed 
 him like wine. He proffered a glass to everybody on his 
 way, and kept sipping it himself between whiles with an ever- 
 growing appreciation. " Aye, he's a gentleman, you may 
 depend," he told his hearers. And to himself, " I wouldn't 
 wonder noo if he was to gie me a sixpence at Christmas. 
 Aye, and a shilling wouldn't surprise me, though I shouldn't 
 look for it." 
 
 Although the incident is trifling, it is perhaps worthy of 
 record that he got the shilling, and spat on both sides of it 
 respectfully in the compliments of the season before con- 
 
 101
 
 102 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 signing it to his pocket, and therefrom (in its sublimated 
 state) to the pages of history. That shilling did pounds' 
 worth of service in building a pediment for the Doctor's 
 future fame. 
 
 " There's a deal o' folk," said old Stebbing to such as would 
 listen to him, " that says ' I know ' instead of ' I'm telt/ 
 Noo, when you're telt a thing, it's 'appen right or it's 'appen 
 wrong, but when ye know for yoursen, ye need nobody to 
 tell ye. Them that says aught again Doctor, just send 'em 
 to me, and I can tell 'em summut that'll mebbe make 'em 
 change their opinion quick. There's many people," he went 
 on, " that talks a lot and sees me every day o' their lives 
 almost, and all they can do at year end is to wish me a 
 merry Christmas. Aye, but that's not Doctor's way. He 
 dizn't only wish it, he gies it. That's what I call practical 
 Christianity. I only wish somebody mud bring it round to 
 vicar's ears. It would do him a deal o' good to clap yon 
 cap on his lugs." 
 
 Not that this honored shilling was the only advocate 
 of the Doctor's quality. His remembrance of Christian 
 names and intimate knowledge of family history, his brief 
 references to absent sons and distant daughters, endeared 
 him to Sunfleet bosoms, and made him as looked-for as the 
 post, and infinitely more popular, since he never disappointed 
 expectation. In his new rough overcoat of Irish frieze, with 
 serviceable storm-collar and business-like belt, with his tweed 
 cap and buckskin driving-gloves, his stout boots and leg- 
 gings, he struck a note of manly strength and skilled honesty 
 that made his busy figure a sort of bank for the deposit 
 and custody of hopes. The Doctor no longer was the repre- 
 sentative of a moribund trade, a public necessity, like the 
 taxgatherer, but a bustling emblem of vitality, himself alive 
 and kindling sick hopes with smiles. Sunfleet maidenhood, 
 seeing the miracle wrought in this man of silence, the sparkle
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 103 
 
 in his eye, and the alert word on his lips, commenced to pine 
 at window-panes again, and flatten their noses at the glass 
 for the last glimpse of his passage, and rebroider the Doctor 
 with busy needle fancies into the fabric of their hopes, like 
 an old pattern long discarded, but taken up anew and liked. 
 
 And the instrument of all this wonder was the blue-eyed 
 girl. 
 
 Strange and incalculable. The same force that had de- 
 termined the Doctor's descent was effecting his regeneration. 
 Those deep and bitter waters of memory by which he had 
 sorrowed so long were become for him a pool of miracle and 
 healing. From immersion in their living wave he had arisen 
 restored and confident, full of hunger for life, and zeal for 
 the discharge of his new and unattempted duties. The eyes 
 of Hilda Brennan, purged of all their one-time promise, 
 appealing no longer to the lover but to the guardian, and 
 offering no allurement but a child's gratitude and the spiritual 
 blessing that floats from a grave these eyes, fined of all 
 their offending in the furnace of time, and looking at him 
 from under the child's brows, were his incentive and his 
 reward. The pride of veritable parentage, a strange emotion 
 compounded of tenderness for the latent beauty and fragility 
 of childhood, and the joy of guardianship and possession, as 
 though by all his suffering he had had a share in the girl's 
 creation this pride rose up in him like a star, sustaining 
 and illuminating him. Her eyes were ever in his heart and 
 in his thoughts. He framed images of her lips, nursed 
 pictures of her poutings and her passions, her fitfulness and 
 charm. Just as her own mother had known and appre- 
 hended them, he feared the girl's faults, and yet cherished 
 them, too, with all a parent's indulgence, as frail things call- 
 ing by their very weakness for a more special guardianship 
 of love. When he kissed the girl good-night, it was never 
 without an emotion to think that so much beauty and prom-
 
 104 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 ise, so much tenderness and possibility should be within the 
 supreme compass of his keeping. Nay, at such moments 
 he touched her with a sort of sacred fear the fear that 
 children have when suffered to hold for one brief pulsing 
 moment all the fate of some priceless porcelain in their 
 tense fingers when he thought how fragile are hopes, and 
 how easily lives are broken. She might linger, perhaps, in 
 the night's farewell with her arms about his neck, and he 
 might know, in his heart of hearts, that this protracted 
 leave-taking was less inspired by love than by the childish 
 ruse to steal a few more coveted moments from her bed 
 and propitiate her soul with this small theft accomplished 
 as cats will steal, at times, to reinstate their predatory pride 
 but the stolen moments (though he let her taste the joy 
 of her own cunning, as he might have let the cat purchase 
 its soul's content with a surreptitious lick at the plate's edge) 
 were not less sweet because they were windows to the girl's 
 small bosom. Through these dear doll's panes he looked in- 
 dulgently at the miniature foibles arrayed within. So girlish, 
 so very feminine, and so forgivable. What matter that the 
 impetuous clasping of her arms about his neck was only part 
 love and part dissimulation? He forgave the dissimulation 
 for the love, and forgave it more freely because it was so 
 little deceptive that it never deceived. 
 
 He was conscious of an unworthy tendency to cultivate 
 the sunny side of the girl's disposition at all cost, found 
 himself seeking propitiations to her tears, mean offerings to 
 bribe her smiles. For when she sulked or repudiated the 
 better evidences of his wise love with a chill brow and a 
 contracted nose, the sunniest day for the Doctor turned 
 in an instant cold ; he felt the need of upturned collar and 
 mufflered neck, and plotted schemes of reconciliation that 
 might not cost his conscience too dear. And yet, though 
 duty wounded him more harshly than ever it hurt the girl
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 105 
 
 like a spring-trap closing on the liberative fingers that would 
 set its captive free the conscientious part of his mother in 
 him sustained him in these issues for the most part, even 
 though he sighed at the pain their necessities caused him 
 under the girl's rebuff. Through all his leniency and in- 
 dulgence he cherished the parent's desire that no weakness 
 of his own should intercept her welfare. And soon, too, he 
 came to know the parent's distress when it finds grim duty 
 like the rock that seals the sepulcher of love. " Aye," the 
 housekeeper would tax him at times, when some petty of- 
 fending of the girl's had been compounded, and the Doctor 
 had won a kiss and a clasp from those triumphant arms at 
 the price of his own peace, " that's way to spoil a lass like 
 yon. If she comes tiv a bad end, where's the wonder ? She 
 wants a woman to deal wi' her." 
 
 He knew it. And when the older woman reminded him 
 that indulgence had been her mother's downfall, it chilled his 
 apprehension in a minute. God forbid this gentle tran- 
 script of the dead woman should ever shed her tears on such 
 a path and lay the course to him. 
 
 Strange perversity of human nature, singularly exemplified 
 in this Sunfleet doctor. Though he prosecuted the girl's 
 enduring welfare with a sincerity of heart that seemed dimly 
 to irradiate even his sleeping hours like a night-light, he 
 treasured the knowledge of her conscious dominion over him. 
 It stirred a sort of allegiant pride in his bosom. For after 
 all she was the daughter of his once betrothed. Past and 
 present mingled in her and made her doubly dear. Her 
 willfulness seemed founded on that cherished intimacy of 
 the by-gone years. Her assumption of authority was but 
 the recontinuance of that older coveted yoke. Her tears 
 . . . Aye ! her tears were drops of holy water, even when 
 they asperged passion and lay on angered lashes. And her 
 name ! That brief monosyllable of mere domestic utility,
 
 106 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 like a milkjug with not even a blue border round it; a title 
 to be listed with the kitchen necessities : mace, nutmeg, rice, 
 salt, sago, jane and black-lead how dear it became in 
 usage. 
 
 Jane. . . . Jane. . . . 
 
 Say it over softly a number of times and see how beauti- 
 ful it can become. As prim as the kitchen clock; as brief 
 as an oyster that slips down, vinegary, in one syllable ; whose 
 enchantment endures but a moment and cannot be perpetu- 
 ated save by repeating the whole process; as cool as 
 crockery ; as blunt as the oven knob ; a little demure, it may 
 be, like muslin but O ! so charming when it rustles and 
 is stirred by girlish animation, and becomes wayward and 
 alive. And when it is associated by a hundred ties with 
 beggar-my-neighbor and dominoes, and gardening, and 
 drives and long walks, and good-nights and good-mornings, 
 and Shan'ts and Don't Cares, and Do you love me? . . . 
 then . . . then what a name. 
 
 A name brimming with responsibilities like the pail that 
 brought catastrophe to Jack and Jill; a burden and a 
 reward. A name so dear that the Doctor cannot dismiss 
 it ; cannot find in his wavering heart to buy a box for it and 
 send it away to school, packed up with grammars and tears 
 and a new cake. 
 
 For how can he love her and look after her once she 
 is away at school? What is to become of him without an 
 object of his daily care without this human slip trans- 
 planted into his heart's garden to watch and tend? 
 
 Dear though she is to him, he cannot hope to have hef 
 always by his side. The months of autumn and of wintry 
 mist have broken naturally the circuit of their daily drive. 
 The habit, once interrupted, is laid aside like a garment, to 
 be assumed on privileged occasions. For a whole week he 
 has left her behind him in ill weather when he took his
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 107 
 
 journeys. For she no longer pursues him with that first 
 fierce zeal now that he has ceased to elude her. Externally 
 their relations have subsided into the prosaic intimacy that 
 comes of a shared roof. She calls him " Numphy " in her 
 amicable moods, and treats him with the delightful casualty 
 of a brother. Of respect, of course, she has none; she has 
 in lieu of it, sometimes, the shy bearing that can never 
 deceive any eyes that have once witnessed the roman-candle 
 drips of temper fizzing over her long lashes, or seen the 
 breath drawn up and held defiantly behind compressed 
 nostrils as though, till she had gained her point, she meant 
 never to breathe again. And these gala moods of pyro- 
 techny too are become more rare, and certainly more sub- 
 dued though not less to be apprehended when purposes 
 cross.
 
 XIV 
 
 BUT there is another element of danger growing up 
 within the girl's empire; and that is her beauty. It 
 has not permeated completely yet its childish envelop, but 
 it sheds the indubitable light of its approach over her whole 
 being, as when the unrisen moon kindles the soft fabric of 
 a cloud. Distress and early privation had set their grey 
 seal upon her countenance during the days of that first 
 arrival, and retarded for a while her natural development. 
 But with the freer life and altered, better surroundings 
 the sweeping draughts of saline fresh air to blow whistling 
 tunes between her white teeth when she faced it, and pour 
 its invigorating currents into her lungs; the scent of 
 iodine and wide waters borne over the Doctor's garden 
 from ocean and river her advancement took a new step. 
 When the rain lashed her lips to a deep red, and stung her 
 cheeks to gleaming crimson, and gave a humid glisten to 
 her eyes, the Doctor, looking at her, seemed to see Hilda 
 Brennan brought six years nearer, as though this growing 
 daughter were a fieldglass to the past. And he sighed with 
 a sort of content, whose reverse was apprehension to think 
 it should be so. His eyes rested on her small white teeth 
 when the lips parted, and caught solace and joy from their 
 physical wholeness. They should be tended, these treasures, 
 as dearly as properties of the soul. And those blue eyes, 
 too, with the deeper focus coming into them, shedding al- 
 ready the shallow gaze of the child they must be pro- 
 tected from the thoughtlessness of youth; from the tyranny 
 of close print that takes its victims prisoner by dusk; from 
 
 108
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 109 
 
 the danger of cross lights, and side vision. Under his 
 scrutiny of loving care it rejoices him to perceive the 
 material nature striving to write its message in perfected 
 phrase ; to round every period of the girl's being to a glori- 
 ous physical unity. 
 
 For, at the heart of him, he cherished that wholesome 
 desire for the well-being of the body which is humanity's 
 message from paganism. He saw, in his progress through 
 this scattered area of toil, how the sacred care of the person 
 was superseded by every other. Puritanism and the preach- 
 ing of corporal mortification as a means to holiness and 
 spiritual safety have left their indelible traces over this 
 narrow district. The tree is down, but its roots are still 
 embedded in the soil, strangling growth, and impeding a 
 better cultivation. He has seen, this doctor, how the 
 human body has sunk into the medium of mere labor ; 
 and often it has dismayed him and sent him home in angry 
 wonder. Here are women accounting the kitchen floor of 
 more consequence than their own persons ; scouring their 
 hands to the bone that the hearthstone may excite envy; 
 spending days at the washtub that they may vindicate a 
 character for cleanliness and give mankind its clean shirt 
 for the Sabbath; scalding churns with scrupulous care; 
 polishing stoves and scrubbing tables while bodies go 
 a-begging. All this domestic glory of gleaming stove and 
 polished hob, of red tiles and scoured pans is but a horrible 
 tyranny; a conventional juggernaut rolling over its ghastly 
 consequences of pallid cheeks and wasted teeth, coarse hands 
 and bent bodies. Bodies? Why, the body hereabouts, the 
 Doctor knows, is degraded in its very conception to a mere 
 term of shame; a thing never to be considered apart from 
 its outer and artificial integument. Sunfleet understands 
 the nude except in the case of infancy, which is displayed 
 like a picture in its nursing, at every angle, with a reckless
 
 no THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 exposure it understands the nude but as a thing for the 
 farm lads to look at for a penny through the magnifying 
 lenses of the Fine Art Galleries at Hunmouth Fair, and 
 quit reluctantly with laughter, elbowing each other's ribs 
 and crying : " Well ! I dean't know ! " When old Stebbing 
 was privileged in his younger days to take a surreptitious 
 peep round the great hall at Button Dene, under the conduct 
 of the butler, who peeped through doors in advance of him 
 over a snuffy nose, and then said, " All right. Step for- 
 ward," the one thing that chiefly astonished him was the 
 unbridled nudity of the house's decoration. He made much 
 of the subject, for its narration secured him many a drink. 
 
 " What I call brutish things ! " he said, in reference to the 
 statuary. " There was two women cut oot o' marble at foot 
 o' stairs, as naked as ever ye seed aught i' your life, holding 
 lamps and all as though they couldn't bide ye should over- 
 look 'em. Aye! right i' front o' staircase they was, so a 
 decent woman couldn't gan tiv her bed wi'oot a blush. Not 
 a bit o' muslin nor naught. But there's some wickedness 
 gans on i' syke big places, you may depend." 
 
 The pictures dismayed him no less. 
 
 " Nobody would believe," said he, " what sort o' brutish 
 things there is i' yon place, wi'oot they seed it i' print. 
 Why, there was yan picture, as big as yon gate o' Medling's, 
 and aboot same shape. It's the God's truth, if there was 
 yan there was a half-a-dozen full-grown women set oot on 
 grass, as if they was averishing, wi'oot a rag to their backs. 
 Aye, an' little naked bairns spluttering aboot their legs and 
 all. Noo you may depend I felt queer when I stopped i' 
 front o' that as close as I is to you though there was 
 nobbut me and John Podmore i' spot together. But what 
 would a respectable body feel like, think you, wi' two or 
 three more respectable folk beside hissen? Where would 
 they all 'a to look?"
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS ill 
 
 " Was there any more pictures o' same sort ? " asked Sun- 
 fleet, inquirous after truth at such moments. 
 
 " Any more ? " said Stebbing in contempt of the question. 
 " If I said ' Well, that's a capper ! ' once, I said it a hundred 
 times. And each semt to cap t' other. Even Podmore hissen 
 was bound to say, ' Aye, it is a bit of a rum 'un.' There was 
 a youngish woman mebbe about twenty-four or twenty- 
 five (about as big as yon eldest daughter o' Willi'm Belton's, 
 and something similar i' build, seeming) stood by a piece 
 o' marble as bare as my chin. She'd gotten one hand set i' 
 front of her as though keeping flies off and another a 
 bit higher ways up, as much as to say ' Don't look.' Aye, 
 but she didn't mean it, for she was a brazzent one, you may 
 depend, and was stood laughing fit to kill hersen. I won't 
 gan so far as to say she wasn't a good-looking lass, for she 
 was. John Podmore nudges me wi' his elbow and says : 
 ' Noo that's my fancy.' Aye, and he did tell me the lass' 
 name though I never rightly got hold on it. He said 
 hundreds o' folk cam to look at her i' course o' year. And 
 what licked me, there was parsons came and all so it's 
 likely folks gets a deal o' good with going to church. One 
 syke fellow was that lost i' wickedness that he brought his 
 daughter wi' him regular three days a week, and stood over 
 her while she made a copy wi' a paintbox and a bit o' wood. 
 Aye! A nice respect she'll have for her father when he's 
 dead." 
 
 The views of old Stebbing on the body material are the 
 latent views of Sunfleet. These corruptible frames are to 
 be " sown in dishonor," as St. Paul puts it, clothes being 
 but a transitory coffin for the flesh, as Purgatory is a 
 passing place for the spirit. Nowhere is there the dimmest 
 conception that human life should seek to attain the heaven 
 of a present physical content through a cultivation of all 
 its members. Often when the Doctor has driven home dis-
 
 ii2 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 pirited from his rounds, with recollections of childish bodies 
 being brutalized to the premature use of buckets; of girlish 
 shoulders bent in a senseless worship of floors, and chests 
 contracted in laborious service to some mogul of a grate 
 often, catching sight thereafter of the vicarial hat, or some 
 stray ministerial migrant, he has cast the brief contemptuous 
 look of the skilled workman for unprofitable labor and 
 muttered to himself : " Yes. If you would only quit your 
 litanies and special collects and teach the people the whole- 
 some worship of the body instead . . . you would be 
 doing better service." 
 
 And now there comes a living encouragement to his be- 
 lief like an apt text turned up by chance fingers. He takes 
 quiet looks at the girl's young beauty. Can she ever strike 
 an ugly attitude, he asks himself, or betray some incom- 
 pleteness of physical harmony by a brief discordant pose? 
 And he says it seems not. She has the native instinct of 
 her sex for movement, and the effective lines of her own 
 body. 
 
 " She will be beautiful," the Doctor told himself. " She 
 will be as beautiful as her mother." 
 
 And within the precincts of his own heart, and the cinc- 
 ture of the big house grounds, he joyed that it should be so. 
 Hoped it. Prayed for it in so far as prayer involves no 
 conscious shutting of the eyes and spreading of fingers. 
 But when he looked afield and saw all the dangers inciden- 
 tal to beauty, to think of the future made him grave. Then, 
 indeed, he wished his mother could have offered him more 
 than the refuge of a memory, and lent this wayward child 
 the blessing of her arms.
 
 XV 
 
 ALMOST as well known as the Doctor in Sunfleet itself 
 though less familiar in the district round is the 
 deaf old Sunfleet vicar, with his wide-brimmed hat of 
 hard felt, and the left arm carried in the small of his back, 
 and the right arm borrowing solid support for his slightly 
 stooping stature from a stout ash stick at such time as 
 it does not embrace a double-barreled gun. Mostly he may 
 be seen along the Sunfleet lanes, bearing the gun tucked 
 under his shoulder, accompanied by an antiquated field- 
 spaniel with chocolate ears and variegated body, that 
 breathes so hard the rabbits can hear it a field off, and sits 
 down, every time its master stops, to draw its stomach in 
 and out to a multitude of rapid breaths, just as Barnes 
 Welkit preludes a few silent staves on his accordion (with 
 the damper down) before startling some friend in the back 
 with a sudden explosion of hymnody on the high road. 
 This pleasant association of sporting fancies is a cherished 
 remembrance of the time when the vicar used to regale 
 himself with a hare of his own shooting as regularly as 
 harvest came round, but now it is rare indeed you hear his 
 gun, and consequently the prejudice against his freedom of 
 the field is dying down. 
 
 Like the Doctor he favors the single life, or whether he 
 favors it or not (on which point, too, there is a certain 
 divergence of opinion), at least he follows it, which is more 
 to the purpose. Beyond this similarity in their two estates, 
 however, comparison can find no real employment between 
 these men. The vicar is in the mid sixties; the height of 
 8 113
 
 ii 4 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 a once tall figure is being slowly absorbed again into the 
 stooping frame. He has gray brows and gray side-whiskers, 
 and the lower lip has acquired the protruding curl and the 
 broad arrows at the corners that the years mark in men 
 whose conversation is mostly with themselves, and who have 
 no external influences to draw their countenances from the 
 fixed habit. 
 
 Parochially the vicar is of small account. On Sundays 
 and festivals he preaches his thirty-year-old sermons to the 
 handful of parishioners that the Wesleyans and Primitives 
 have left him. He assumes a headship over the schools, and 
 is willing to call round upon such trouble as knocks twice at 
 the left ear. 
 
 Much more congenial to the vicar's nature than the care 
 of inconsistent parishioners is his care of the garden, se- 
 cluded from gale and blast. 
 
 Next to the garden, his nephews occupy the chief place 
 in the vicar's thoughts and affections. Their name seems 
 legion, for he had six sisters or more each of them pro- 
 lifically married and if at any moment you see his lips 
 disunite in a sanctified smile, you may be quite sure it is a 
 nephew, and not a text, which was accountable for the trans- 
 formation. Much proud thinking of these young kinsmen 
 along the Sunfleet roads seems to have incorporated them so 
 indivisibly with the place that he has come to regard them 
 as a permanent feature of Sunfleet's interest, and broaches 
 the subject of a nephew at all times with the indulgent smile 
 of a man who is opening a bottle that he knows particularly 
 favorite to his company's taste. 
 
 In the early days he had known and esteemed the Doctor's 
 mother. Her love of the garden had won his heart at the 
 first encounter, and frequently he would be seen directing 
 his steps towards the big house to bear some slip or cutting 
 in its due season; with a trowelful of vicarage soil; or some
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 115 
 
 new intelligence about his nephews. But with the mother's 
 death his perambulations fell further and further short of 
 the Doctor's gate. Now and then a stiff greeting was inter- 
 changed between the two men along the road ; less frequently 
 they came to handshakes in some house of trouble. The 
 older man could have overlooked those more personal delin- 
 quencies that the Doctor thought were the main cause of 
 their estrangement, but his conduct towards the garden he 
 could not forgive. Openly in Sunfleet he deplored the 
 change, and shook a grave head when the Doctor's name 
 was mentioned. 
 
 For twelve years he had never been nearer to the big red- 
 brick house than the roadway ; pausing at times in the 
 bleakness of winter to peer through the lattice of bare 
 branches and gaze at the dull building beyond with such a 
 sigh as he might have let issue before a tomb. But now, 
 since the coming of the girl, and the circulating accounts of 
 change in the Doctor's life and home, there seemed to be 
 evidences of a thaw in this long winter of estrangement. 
 The tidings that Tom Fetch was putting in two days a week 
 regularly at the garden, and sometimes three; and that the 
 Doctor had even under contemplation the project of en- 
 croaching on the paddock for a tennis lawn, filled him with 
 a gladness as for some minor good-fortune among his 
 nephews. 
 
 " Thank goodness the man's conscience is pricking him 
 at last," he said. And added, " But it's to be hoped he'll 
 have more sense than to allow tennis on the lawn if he gets 
 it." 
 
 The roadway greetings grew more cordial. And one morn- 
 ing in May, when the Doctor was reading the newspaper after 
 breakfast, and the girl was seated sideways on the sunlit sill 
 of the big window, playing with the tassel of the blind cord, 
 the housekeeper plunged a screwed-up face abruptly into the
 
 n6 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 room as if she were dipping it into the wash-basin, and with- 
 drew it as quickly, with the brief whisper 
 
 " Vicar wishes to have a word wi' you, if it's convenient. 
 He won't detain you." Adding in a parenthetical whisper, 
 " Antimacassar's on floor, look ye." 
 
 The girl made a hurried proffer of retirement, but the 
 Doctor bade her remain, and she smoothed her frock. Her 
 presence until the object of the visit dictated otherwise 
 was as a stay to his new character; and besides, he was 
 proud of her; not less so, possibly, in the new gray-check 
 dress, with the black velvet belt, and the broad black ribbon 
 in her hair. He noted, with the quick gratification of a care 
 ever critically exercised, that the imminence of a stranger 
 drove her nearer to his side, as to her proper haven; and he 
 was glad to see that the sun fell upon her hair and showed 
 at once of what burnished elements its masses were com- 
 pounded. 
 
 The vicar, dropping a sidelong word of acknowledgment 
 to the waiting housekeeper, came into the room with lips 
 relaxed the moment his eyes had penetrated to the two 
 occupants to a smile of greeting, and an extended hand that 
 put a very frank bridge over these twelve or thirteen years. 
 The Doctor was as prompt with his own, and the two men 
 met in a brief clasp of amity on its midmost arch. 
 
 " Ah, Doctor Bentham," said the vicar, " it seems rare 
 we meet now-a-days. I know you're a busy man, and con- 
 sequently I'm not going to keep you." He turned at that 
 towards the girl, as though inviting presentation, and the Doc- 
 tor explained. 
 
 " A young connection, vicar ; a ward of mine, though 
 doubtless you've heard about her." 
 
 " Ah, to be sure, to be sure," he cried, shaking the soft 
 fingers. " A niece of yours, Doctor, I believe." 
 
 The Doctor said hurriedly, " No, no, a sort of half-cousin,"
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 117 
 
 but he said it to the wrong ear, and the vicar, whose deafness 
 no less than his proclivities made him a better speaker than 
 a listener, continued without pause 
 
 " Well, well ; my purpose is not to detain you, my friend. 
 So I'll just tell you what my mission is, and then you must 
 forgive me if I have overstepped the limits of an old man's 
 interest. I won't say an old ' parson's ' interest, because as 
 I tell my nephews, I'm afraid there's nothing much of the 
 parson about me. But I'm told you're rather undecided as 
 to what must be done with this young lady." He turned a 
 brief smile of reassurance on the girl, and then addressed 
 his graver look towards the Doctor once more. The sudden 
 mixture of color on the Doctor's face may have told him, 
 perhaps, that his words had been misunderstood, for he 
 added, " I mean with regard to her education. Are you 
 sending her away to school ? " 
 
 The girl draws in her breath the Doctor divines and 
 holds it expectantly behind the narrow line of nose; and 
 her head tilts itself a trifle higher, and the lashes meet, so 
 that the blue eyes scrutinizing him are themselves almost 
 invisible. For the question has already been blown about 
 between these three of the house, like a cuckoo in a gale, 
 seeking how best it may accomplish its purpose and deposit 
 the fateful egg in the nest of present happiness for that 
 future displacement. 
 
 The Doctor stammered over the word school. 
 
 " Certainly ; it has been thought of," he said. 
 
 " But I am not to go away until the Christmas term," the 
 girl imparted in her company voice. There was a quiet 
 menace about the chill tones like a knife-blade laid down 
 the Doctor's back, and he was prompt to endorse the girl's 
 utterance. 
 
 " Well, no. You see," he made haste to explain, " there is 
 so much sickness about in summer. I want Jane to build
 
 ii8 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 her health up first of all. As a medical man I naturally feel 
 that health should come even before education." 
 
 " I am not strong," Jane added for the vicar's enlighten- 
 ment. 
 
 " To be sure, to be sure," the vicar responded. " And if 
 an old " the smile crept over him " I was going to say 
 ' parson ' again, but perhaps I'd better say old man instead. 
 I'm afraid there's a prejudice against the word parson, which 
 I share myself, and which, unfortunately, is rather encour- 
 aged by some of my own colleagues. As you know, Doctor, 
 I'm not one who pokes his nose into my people's affairs. I 
 try and trouble them as little as possible. Goodness knows 
 they have plenty to do without the vicar's interference. But 
 as I was going to tell you if an old man may give advice 
 to the Doctor, I would say, let your niece " (the Doctor's 
 quiet correction fell on the deaf ear once more) " let your 
 niece go into the garden all she can. It is the best medicine 
 in the world for growing children. And by the way, I'm so 
 rejoiced to hear you are maintaining all your old interest in 
 the garden. I used to admire your mother's auriculas so 
 much. I remember bringing her a cutting of wistaria the 
 day my eldest sister's youngest boy but one my nephew, 
 George Ernest Not George George, of course, as you'll 
 know, is my sister Emily's eldest but two. Two ! What am 
 I thinking of? I should say three my eldest sister's 
 youngest boy but one was appointed junior house-surgeon 
 at St. Jeremy's." 
 
 What with his garden and his nephews, the vicar's mind 
 is such an amiable tangle of briar-hooked reminiscences that 
 he finds a difficulty in tearing his way through to the plain 
 object of his visit. But he reaches it at last. He had heard, 
 he cannot say how, that there was some question of the girl's 
 remaining at Sunfleet for private tuition, and in this case he 
 had ventured to call round and mention the name of his old
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 119 
 
 friend, Miss Perritt, of Peterwick Why, of course; the 
 Doctor must know her quite well. She is a patient of his. 
 
 " An excellent woman, Doctor. I happen to know," 
 the vicar continued, " that she was recommended to apply 
 for the position in Lord Hockley's family, and without 
 betraying confidences I may say that her application was 
 one of the half-dozen finally considered. I saw her in Pe- 
 terwick only yesterday and indeed, it was her mentioning 
 of the matter and asking whether you had definitely made 
 plans for your niece's education that led me to suggest I 
 would call. I may mention that she was for a long time 
 governess to the late vicar's family, and until quite recently 
 had charge of that Hunmouth gentleman's daughters. She 
 could show you some excellent testimonials. But I leave 
 the matter entirely with you." 
 
 No matter, however, at that particular moment could 
 have found more hospitable welcome in the Doctor's bosom, 
 and his heart glowed in secret gratitude to the man who 
 had proffered him such an agreeable alternative to the girl's 
 dismissal. Dim ideas of governesses, indeed, had flitted 
 through his mind, but he had shirked exhuming those 
 mysterious identities from their narrow anonymous graves 
 in newspaper print, as he would have shirked resurrecting 
 a corpse. 
 
 " It is uncommonly kind of you," he said, " to take so 
 much trouble, and I shall certainly think very seriously over 
 the proposal." The parental feeling to prompt those little 
 touches of politeness that are sometimes lacking in the 
 initiation of childhood, turned him towards the girl. " Jane, 
 dear. You must thank Mr. Farebrother for all his trouble 
 and kindness." 
 
 The girl's face, that had followed her fate down the course 
 of the conversation, like a toy-boat committed to the river, 
 and perilously irreclaimable, with an inscrutable transfer of
 
 120 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 gaze from vicar to Doctor and back again, melted the look 
 all at once in one of her most captivating company smiles. 
 The Doctor contemplated the smile with the same pride 
 that the vicar would have indicated a dahlia bloom in his 
 own garden, and the vicar, responding with a careless, " Oh, 
 that's all right, my dear," became ten years younger again 
 almost as young as three nephews could make him on 
 occasions. And with a little more conversation, chiefly on 
 gardens and nephews, he said he must really take his leave. 
 But at the hall-door he stopped, and inquired in the more 
 confidential whisper, " Let me see. I've been trying to 
 remember. Is it her father's death that brings the poor 
 child here, Dr. Bentham?" 
 
 " Mother," said the Doctor, somewhat abruptly. 
 
 " Mother ! Ah, to be sure. To be sure. An accident, 
 wasn't it? Now I remember. Very, very sudden. And 
 her father?" 
 
 " Dead," said the Doctor with a firm mouth. " Many 
 years ago." 
 
 " Dead ? Poor child. Poor child." He assumed his hat. 
 " Give her all the garden you can, Doctor. After such 
 terrible losses she needs it." 
 
 He put one foot on the step, and was about to go when 
 again he turned. 
 
 " I too had a sad loss, this spring, Dr. Bentham," he said. 
 " Perhaps you would hear of it." 
 
 The Doctor composed a face of unenlightened sympathy, 
 and uttered those preliminary words for regret. 
 
 " That beautiful old Stag's-horn tree. In front of my 
 study window. The one your mother admired so much. 
 Blown down quite suddenly, in March. I don't know when 
 I felt anything quite so deeply. All my old friends are 
 dropping off one by one. Well, good-bye, Dr. Bentham." 
 There were actually tears in his eyes, and the Doctor made
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 121 
 
 sure he would not turn again, but almost immediately he 
 did so, with the old smile shining through the brief traces of 
 this recent emotion. 
 
 " I like your niece, by the way," he said. " Such a nice 
 quiet, modest, ladylike girl. She reminds me of my sister 
 Mary's daughter Caroline. ' Baby ' they always call her 
 though surely she's close to fifteen now. Sings beautifully, 
 and can play all the hymns, ancient and modern, with 
 scarcely a mistake. Don't forget to bring your niece round 
 to see me soon. In another fortnight or so the garden will 
 be at its best."
 
 XVI 
 
 THE Doctor thinks seriously over the vicar's suggestion, 
 as he promised, and he and the girl drive off to Peter- 
 wick and see Miss Perritt in her little parlor overlooking the 
 second-best street (having previously seen her perform the 
 vanishing canary trick from her plate-glass window) and 
 they discuss the girl's education in open voices, and the Doc- 
 tor accompanies Miss Perritt, at her express invitation, to the 
 kitchen parlor at the back of the house (though the house it- 
 self is so small that a broad-chested man on the sidewalk 
 might almost tap both windows at one time) where Miss Per- 
 ritt's voice drops into a whisper of mourning with a crimped 
 crape-edged mouth, as she says " And now, Dr. Bentham, I 
 should just like to discuss one or two rather private matters 
 with you, please." Whereupon she confesses her terms with 
 the reluctance for delicate symptoms, begging the Doctor to 
 understand that " she would not name this (or that) but 
 for her experience that such things are better discussed 
 openly, beforehand." In a point of whispers the Doctor 
 is not to be outdone. His consideration for the lady's feel- 
 ings, indeed, is so profound that on vital points his whispered 
 delicacy leads her to utter a crisp " Pardon ? " of momentary 
 anxiety, as cutting as a church cough. But between these 
 two walls of ominous whisper (that the girl can hear faintly 
 in the front much-antimacassared room, like the buzz of 
 captive flies) the compact is amicably sealed, and Miss 
 Perritt is free to tell the Doctor in the open diapason tones 
 again, when they return 
 
 " So that is all nicely settled. I felt drawn to your little 
 
 122
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 123 
 
 relative the moment I saw her, Doctor. I am sure we shall 
 come to love each other dearly in the end." Which utter- 
 ance of affection is acknowledged, on the girl's side, by a look 
 which, having tried to describe in six different ways without 
 success, I now give up. 
 
 So the prim gardener of youthful virtues takes up her 
 abode in the Doctor's house, to rake and hoe the neglected 
 beds of the girl's education; to set them round with the 
 correct box-borders of English grammar, and plant within 
 them the bulbs of wisdom and of virtue; history and geog- 
 raphy and a knowledge of the heavens material and divine; 
 music and French with such common and useful accom- 
 plishments as reading and writing; arithmetic and plain sew- 
 ing cultivated, like cabbages, in the kitchen garden of the girl's 
 mind. 
 
 They begin each morning's study with a hymn, these two, 
 that Miss Perritt gives out on the ancient piano with great 
 precision when it is in C major and familiar ; but with devout 
 lingering as though each chord were a separate prayer to 
 be pondered over when it happens to touch four flats. 
 After which they join their voices with a half-tone be- 
 tween them, like paneling that has shrunk; for Miss Perritt 
 has a pious tendency to express devotion by singing sharp 
 and go, verse by verse, through the whole hymn to the 
 Amen. Anne sings it too, about her kitchen, holding the 
 notes tightly in her clenched lips as though they were hair- 
 pins ; and Hester enters the spirit of piety with such abound- 
 ing good vigor that she has to be restrained. 
 
 " Noo then ! Stop making light o' sacred music. Sing it 
 under your breath or not at all." 
 
 And the Doctor, who hated hymns in recent years as the 
 devil does holy water, hums it too; and likes it because the 
 time-worn tune contains something now of the precious new 
 element of Jane; and that is the tune he will take round
 
 I2 4 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 with him this morning, with the girl's cool voice embedded 
 in it, floating in it like a particle of ice in devout wine, and 
 tinkling pleasantly against the rim of memory as the Doctor 
 quaffs it. 
 
 He steals now and then into the big drawing-room when 
 Jane and Miss Perritt are abroad on one of their instructive 
 walks, and inclines a kindling eye towards the varied evi- 
 dences of labor. Here is Jane's exercise book, traced over 
 with the inky industry of the girl's hand ; half laughable, the 
 seriousness of it, and yet so seriously touching. He smiles 
 to think of the willful small fingers forming these conscien- 
 tious characters, line after line; spinning fluid webs for her 
 own imprisonment, as it were, to bind the willfulness in her 
 captive, and be O ! so good. 
 
 He goes out into the garden too, and sits on the octagonal 
 tree-seat, beneath the canopy of Indian oak, when the sun 
 pours his rays out of a blue sky upon the re-appearing glories 
 of the flower beds, and smokes his pipe beyond the open 
 windows of the schoolroom, that he may hear the willful 
 ringers submitting themselves to discipline on the keyboard. 
 Dear old piano, out of which his mother could evoke strange 
 untranslatable memories from the Doctor's far-off childhood ; 
 memories that made him superbly sad at times, with no 
 reason but a something in the music. What a gentle hu- 
 manizing influence it sheds around, he thinks. It is, at best 
 now, but a frail old lady with a weak voice; for that rea- 
 son, perhaps, a fitting associate for the refractory fingers of 
 childhood. 
 
 He listens too (for love was born a listener) outside the 
 schoolroom door to the commingling of voices, and plucks 
 and bears away some trifling blossoms from this sequestered 
 garden of knowledge. " Come, Jane dear. Surely you re- 
 member when Edward the Fourth died ? " Or " Now dear, 
 and what are the chief towns in Forfarshire ? " Questions
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 125 
 
 that make the Doctor bitterly regret that his own education 
 is so shabby and imperfect, and cause him to wonder whether 
 the modern trend to higher knowledge may not be overdone. 
 When did Edward the Fourth die? Which are Forfarshire's 
 principal towns? When the schoolroom is empty he must 
 refer the points. 
 
 But now and again, through the loophole of her embattle- 
 mented calm, the girl's nature cries war, and her lashes 
 stiffen themselves to rebellious archery, to shoot their hot 
 arrows at human hearts. Her wrath, kindled it seems by 
 some mere spark, is only further fanned by argument ; the 
 fire must burn to its ashes, and its residue a little gray- 
 faced Jane must come to find the shelter of the Doctor's 
 bosom for the discharging of her willfulness in tears, and for 
 rebaptism at his hands to fresh goodness and resolve. And 
 not always does the Doctor draw tranquillity through the fra- 
 grant channel of his pipe when he haunts the schoolroom 
 windows. On a fine June afternoon, for instance, the sound 
 of his step is succeeded by the sudden pronouncement of his 
 name : eager, urgent, but wrapped in the sinister garment of 
 a whisper that makes him apprehensive of the worst. 
 
 " Numphy, Numphy ! Quick ! Before she comes back." 
 
 " Jane ! " He breathes rebuke through the monosyllable, 
 for the girl is breaking one of their cardinal compacts, in 
 addressing him out of the schoolroom window in sanctified 
 hours. But she has her face close to the open sash, and 
 there is a look of personal appeal in those blue eyes that 
 wakens all the coward in him. He halts, and says he can- 
 not, will not speak with her. And draws nearer to the win- 
 dow. 
 
 " Go back at once, Jane. Remember your promise. You 
 ought never to have looked out and seen me. What ? " 
 
 " If three workmen take seventy-five days six hours," she 
 reads breathlessly from her sum-book, with her mouth against
 
 126 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 the open window, " to build a wall twenty feet long and 
 thirteen high, how many workmen will it take " 
 
 " I won't listen to you, Jane ! " he says. And adds disap- 
 pointedly : " How can you ? " 
 
 " I can't," says Jane, " though I've tried three times. 
 Quick, Numphy. There's a dear," she pants. " Before the 
 silly old thing comes back. I am to stay in till I work it 
 right, and she has taken the key-book away with her. Mean 
 old thing. Now I can't crib the answer. And there'll be no 
 walk with you before tea. Oh ! Numphy ! " 
 
 All at once he stands possessed of a ragged sum-book and 
 a stub of bitten pencil though he knows not how, since he 
 has never ceased to withstand, or to rebuke. And at that 
 the devil gets both arms around him (before he had only 
 one) and binds him to destruction root and branch. Away 
 with all thoughts of the girl's good, and the discipline of her 
 young mind for the soul's pure harvest. Here, on the very 
 schoolroom sill, an act of unmentionable sacrilege, he com- 
 pounds the awful crime. Five into 125 ; 3 into 8 won't go. 
 Cancel, multiply and divide. 
 
 " Never never ask such a thing again, Jane ! " he says, 
 and thrusts the awful evidence of his confederacy through 
 the window and flees. For he loathes himself, and has also 
 heard the schoolroom door rattle. 
 
 He wanders round the garden with the disconsolate flat- 
 ness that succeeds all acts of crime. What a fall! What a 
 revelation of self to self! What an awful example to the 
 girl. He knows now as he had suspected miserably all 
 along that he is no guardian for such as she. These mis- 
 spent years, like nails driven into a door, may be withdrawn 
 by resolution, but the marks remain. His influence is weak 
 and his morals bad ; he is a danger to the girl rather than a 
 protection ; an incentive to the worst in her rather than an 
 inducement to the best. Aye! It is a miserable hour!
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 127 
 
 But it does not end at that. There is ever a coda to all 
 ill deeds, and when he has propitiated the dog of remorse 
 in him with the broken biscuits of resolution, and gone 
 indoors with a firm tread across the hall so that the girl may 
 hear the altered mood in him, and never, never dare to tres- 
 pass on his despised clemency again, he is met by Miss Per- 
 ritt, who holds a something dreadful in her uplifted counte- 
 nance, as though she were removing the tramp's hat out of 
 her geranium bed with the rake, and tells him, " I would like 
 a brief word with you, Dr. Bentham, please. I am exceed- 
 ingly sorry to trouble you." It looks a grim case, at sight, 
 and he leads it, consequently, into the surgery, where, among 
 the evidences of medical profundity, he feels to have a little 
 advantage in every part of him except his conscience. 
 
 " I am afraid what I have to tell . . . will rather dis- 
 tress you," she begins. He is afraid so too, but he tries hard 
 to secrete the admission. 
 
 " Not at all, not at all," he says hurriedly. " A doctor 
 should be prepared for anything." 
 
 She purses her lips to prepare him, and then commences. 
 She has set Jane a sum. (Ah!) A sum which Jane should 
 know perfectly well how to do. (Indeed!) But for some 
 reason probably the hot weather ; she is aware, of course, 
 that learning is irksome to high-spirited natures like Jane's 
 for some reason Jane has developed a fit of perversity. 
 
 Jane, continues Miss Perritt, has worked the sum three 
 times, with such varying results that they can only be attrib- 
 uted to the grossest neglect or carelessness. But after a brief 
 absence from the schoolroom, Miss Perritt has returned to 
 find a fourth solution worked so quickly as to arouse her 
 strongest surprise. 
 
 " The answer," says Miss Perritt, " is, fortunately, incor- 
 rect." (Ah!) "But on inquiry as to how she has reached 
 these figures, I find Jane quite incapable of any explanation.
 
 128 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 Indeed, she has openly laughed at me. Moreover, the sum is 
 worked out in a method altogether different from that which 
 I have taught her. Yet she vows the work is her doing 
 although I have pointed out a marked difference in the for- 
 mation of the figures, as though some ignorant hand had 
 helped her. I have even suspected the gardener, or the 
 groom. The whole affair is most suggestive and unpleasant, 
 and must, for the girl's sake, be looked into." 
 
 The Doctor gives a sickly smile, tries to belittle Miss 
 Perritt's fears. She is, he thinks, so anxious for her charge's 
 welfare that she is inclined, perhaps, to magnify these little 
 difficulties. 
 
 " Magnify them ! " says Miss Perritt, in surprise. " I must 
 beg you, Doctor, to accompany me and see the evidences for 
 yourself." 
 
 He says, no, no; that the surgery is his domain, not the 
 schoolroom. But she is firm. Without adding rudeness to 
 iniquity he cannot escape this final consequence of his rash 
 deed. He wipes his brow and says, " Allow me " and " After 
 you " in an attempt to sustain his foundering conscience on 
 politeness, and enters the schoolroom in the wake of Miss 
 Perritt's formal skirts. 
 
 " Jane ! " 
 
 That dear familiar figure, beloved even in this hour of dis- 
 grace, rises at Miss Perritt's voice, and the Doctor puts his 
 hands behind his back and drops his guilty glance when 
 Jane's eyes meet it, as though her sight had been red hot. 
 It is a terrible moment. 
 
 " Yes, Miss Perritt." 
 
 " Allow me to see your sum book. Thank you. Stand 
 there, please." She hands the book to the Doctor, and points 
 out the offending sum with his own guilty share in it. " Ob- 
 serve the difference in the handwriting," she bids him. 
 " Compare the vulgar loop to those eights, if you please, Dr.
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 129 
 
 Bentham. Notice the slovenly formation of the fives. You 
 have done so?" He signifies assent. "Very good. Now 
 will you, please, compare this handwriting with the figures 
 overleaf and tell me whether I am justified in my . , . 
 I will not say suspicion as yet, but my surmise ? " 
 
 She turns the page for him, and her gaze sits, a solid fig- 
 ure, on his eyes in silent triumph as he scrutinizes the girl's 
 round characters. He has a terrible inspiration to plead 
 guilty, to say " I admit the crime," but for the dread knowl- 
 edge of the partner who incited him to it. Instead, he turns 
 the pages irresolutely backward and forward between his 
 fingers, deliberating the two characters in a ghastly mockery 
 of comparison. If only he could be quite sure quite sure 
 of the girl, his task might be easier. But he is afraid that, 
 even should the wicked victory be won for her, she may still, 
 through perversity, betray him. 
 
 " The writings certainly appear . . . appear rather 
 dissimilar," he admits. " As though they had been written 
 at different periods. But what does Jane say ? " 
 
 " Jane has denied it," says Miss Perritt. 
 
 Jane has denied it. She has lied. To save him ! 
 
 At this he has a sudden restoration of rectitude. The 
 man in him comes bravely uppermost. He faces the girl with 
 a look that repudiates subterfuge, and holds forth his own 
 written iniquity to the fires of exposure as Cranmer pledged 
 that guilty right hand. 
 
 " Jane . . . Tell Miss Perritt who wrote these fig- 
 ures." 
 
 " I did." 
 
 The audacity of the assertion strikes a blink from him. 
 
 " If," he continues heroically next moment, " if there is 
 anybody whom you are trying to screen, through a mistaken 
 sense of honor . . . anybody who has thoughtlessly 
 helped you with this sum " 
 
 9
 
 130 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 " Nobody has helped me," says the girl. 
 
 " Or or done it for you," he adds desperately. " At that 
 window this afternoon. When I was in the garden. Dur- 
 ing Miss Perritt's absence ... I beg, Jane, you will 
 speak the truth." 
 
 She denies it again, with her eyelids at their narrowest 
 width of obstinacy, and he sighs, after one long look at her, 
 with reassurance and regret. He can do no more, except by 
 denouncement and denouncement could not save those lips 
 from falsehood now : it could only brand them with it. He 
 hands back the accursed page and quits the schoolroom to 
 seek the solitude of his own remorse where he can smoke 
 the pipe of bitterness in peace, and tax his heart with all this 
 awful breakage of the truth. 
 
 And in his solitude the girl comes to him later, and flings 
 both arms about his neck and acclaims him : " Numphy. 
 You are a dear old darling," as though his wickedness had 
 been noble and not vile. Yes. And he tries hard to retain 
 his sense of guilt under her caress, but to his shame he can- 
 not. It slips him like a hooligan, all at once, without leaving 
 so much as a neck-tie in his hands, and he feels that that 
 impulsive caress would be cheaply bought at the price of a 
 hundred falsehoods, of millions and millions of deceptive 
 sums. But he makes his voice a liar to his heart and says, 
 " Oh, Jane ! You have grieved me bitterly. I am not 
 friends with you any longer. How could you ! " She laughs 
 over his distress as though it were but a clown in comic diffi- 
 culties. But he asks incredulously, " Why ? " She says, 
 " Because it served her right. She's a silly old thing. What 
 does it matter to her who does my sums? It's no business 
 of hers. Besides, the answer was all wrong." He says, " It 
 is my only consolation, Jane. Had it been right, my con- 
 science would never have forgiven me." Thereafter he begs 
 the girl to confess their fault. But she will not. She
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 131 
 
 says that if Miss Perritt had believed the falsehood she could 
 never have rested without telling her the truth. " I won't 
 tell her at all now," she decides. " At least, not for a week. 
 She simply wants to know out of curiosity. She's punished 
 me and kept me in though I did the sum myself as soon as 
 I wanted. And I won't both be kept in and tell the truth, 
 not for anybody." 
 
 So like Jane, the Doctor tells himself. So peculiarly like 
 Jane. Try and trace the girl's most willful acts to their 
 ultimate source, and you find the motive losing itself in a 
 hundred tributaries of perversity. Her lies are not the chil- 
 dren of cowardice. Her truth is not the offspring of duty. 
 Her loyalty is not always love, but sometimes (how dread- 
 ful to contemplate) a sort of perverted animosity; a strange 
 questionable element that defies all analysis. 
 
 But whatever it is, at its root and base it is always Jane. 
 The sap that rises in this young tree may draw its sustenance 
 from strange sources, but always the leaves are green and 
 shelterful to look at; and always there is a kind of wild 
 music in its branches that talks to this man's heart at least, 
 as when one stands beneath the boughs of a mighty elm and 
 hears a soughing up above like a far-off organ that tells 
 of storm elsewhere, and of the past, and yet falls on the 
 spirit like some sigh of peace : a whisper of hope and cour- 
 age : a benediction from those uplifted leaves as from a bish- 
 op's outspread hands.
 
 XVII 
 
 ONE dark period can scarcely be omitted from any 
 history that professes to chronicle Jane. She sickens 
 with scarlet fever in the spring of her fifteenth year, and 
 for a while, indeed, the Angel of Death casts his shadow 
 over the Doctor's house. The Doctor goes abroad with his 
 very life tucked up in his lips, and people of discernment 
 refrain from asking questions of him in those days. The 
 groom fastens a bulletin each morning on the big gate, and 
 the Doctor does not read again what his hand has written. 
 She sinks ; she rallies ; she rides, as it were, on the waters 
 of death, like a boat that needs but half-an-inch more flood 
 to float her, but one incautious breath to waft her forth 
 upon the tide. One Sunday morning the vicar asked for the 
 prayers of the church on her behalf, and breaks down 
 partially in doing so. " I was quite overcome for the mo- 
 ment," he tells the Doctor subsequently. " It put me in 
 mind of my own dear nieces, and I thought what a terrible 
 thing it would be for their poor mothers and indeed for us 
 all if anything should happen to them. Fortunately, I am 
 thankful to say, my present news is of the very best. Clare, 
 her mother tells me, has scarcely a trace of the cough which 
 so troubled her in her recitations." 
 
 We will pass over the feelings of the sexton during this 
 harrowing time, for after all, he is of our own clay. He 
 bowed his head to the common prayer, and his lips moved ; 
 but when he asked, after that, for news of her condition, it 
 is said his hand trembled. It was just a year since he had 
 dug a six by three for old Aaron Stebbing, and hope eternal 
 
 132
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 133 
 
 springs in the human breast. We may conclude, however, 
 that the prayer of the vicar and the schoolmaster, and the 
 old blacksmith in the side aisle who gets four and sixpence 
 every quarter day for rubbing the dust off the pew-back each 
 Sunday in slumber with his brown velvet jacket and the 
 sexton, and Mrs. Medling, and four choir-boys, and some 
 farm lads, and one or two lasses whom not even the solemnity 
 of the occasion could restrain from sucking peppermint rock 
 during the Litany ... we may conclude that the pray- 
 ers of these availed, for the girl grew slowly better, and the 
 sexton told his wife: 
 
 " It's a caution when ye think on it praying again a 
 man's trade. Not that I'd wish lass any harm. But vicar 
 dizn't pray against his tithes when time comes round. No, 
 and he didn't want to pray for old Aaron when he was at 
 back end. ' Why,' he telt Mrs. Paston when she hinted 
 at it. ' He's growing an aud man noo, and it dizn't stand 
 to sense he can bide much longer. I think we'd best let him 
 gan without making ower much fuss, or seeming to doubt 
 Providence, Mrs. Paston. The ways o' Providence are in- 
 scrutable, and as good as any.' Aye, and it wasn't while he 
 knew Aaron had named a wish he would like to be prayed 
 for before deeing just for sake of the thing, so as he 
 could be as good as aud Mrs. Smithers, and they could tell 
 him what was said, and how folks took it that he gied in. 
 ' But tell him he mun't count on it/ vicar bids her. 
 ' There's no biding a minute longer when time's up and 
 I'se jealous his is. My poor nevvy had ti gan as promis- 
 ing a young fellow as ever went ti college . . . and him 
 but twenty-three.' " 
 
 Gradually the smile comes home to its seat on the Doctor's 
 lips, and the girl draws back to this life of joys and sorrows. 
 She is so weak that it makes them shed tears through their 
 joy to lift her, and to see in what a frail tenement that once
 
 134 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 willful spirit is lodged. And it seems that the fever has 
 consumed much of the perverse part of her, leaving only a 
 high courage, and a wonderful fortitude, out of which there 
 rises a small spiritualized voice that seems to need no help 
 of lips, but rises faintly like a mere fragrance of speech; a 
 thought, rather than a sound. And the Doctor, who has 
 rolled all the functions of father and mother and brother and 
 doctor and day-nurse and night-nurse into one, seems to 
 have passed through the girl's own suffering with a physical 
 as well as a mental intensity. He rallies as she rallies, and 
 at times, clasping this small residue in his arms, that has 
 been vouchsafed fined and purified from the crucible of 
 suffering, he cannot speak for the mother's weakness at his 
 throat, till the girl marks his silence and the pressure of the 
 arms that would hurt her but for the wonderful protection 
 they seem to afford as though never, never, never would 
 they suffer this dear life to escape them, and sees the tears 
 that hide her utterly from his sight, and smiles and comforts 
 him 
 
 " Don't cry, Numphy. I shall soon be strong and well 
 again now, and we will go to Spraith some day. How good 
 you are to me." 
 
 She is sent away with Miss Perritt for a whole month to 
 Spathorpe, to recuperate; and before she goes the Doctor 
 gives her, as a thank-offering and sacred trust, the gold 
 watch that beat up against his mother's bosom to the day of 
 her death. He had dedicated it to the girl in his heart 
 since the hour of his conversion; and all during her illness 
 he had kept it going on the little table by her bed with a 
 desperate superstitious hope that her life might be spiritu- 
 ally influenced by its vital beat, and that some guardian 
 quality derived from his dead mother would stream out 
 towards the girl along that minute current of ticked seconds.
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 135 
 
 and sustain her through the worst. Perhaps this had some 
 influence on her recovery, along with the prayer. 
 
 From Spathorpe she returns a stronger and a taller Jane. 
 She has grown much during her illness and after. All her 
 frocks have had to be lengthened, and new ones ordered to 
 meet the altered conditions. The pinched look about her 
 features is partly the work of the fever ; partly a concomitant 
 of sudden growth. Her face lengthens into a more perfect 
 oval ; the roundness of the self-willed child merges into a 
 more mature composure of countenance. Through those 
 blue eyes one sees womanhood at nearer hand, and the 
 Doctor hears Hilda Brennan all day long in stray inflections 
 of the deeper voice and Miss Perritt tells him in moments 
 of confidence that Jane's character has improved wonderfully 
 since her illness. 
 
 " She was always a dear child before," she says. 
 " Though I have since thought that some of her little dis- 
 plays of willfulness were really due to growing trouble. But 
 now her disposition is singularly sweet and amiable and 
 there is something truly Christian about her kisses." 
 
 So the new Jane resumes her interrupted life in the old 
 Sunfleet, and draws back warmth and color for her faded 
 cheeks from the copious currents of strong sea-braced air 
 that sweeps harp tunes out of all this country. And so they 
 go to Spraith, and see the Doctor's window through the 
 tube of six extensions, and the rooks above the chimneys 
 and the gray crenelated church-tower with the bleak flag- 
 staff on it, like a thorn in a finger. 
 
 The little gray weathered church, with grass growing out 
 of the crevices of its stones, and yellow lichen velveting its 
 walls, is a favorite walk of theirs, for it leads them to the 
 Sunfleet banks of the Hun, through a long straggling lane, 
 furrowed with hard-baked ruts in summer that stand up
 
 136 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 sheer like railway lines, shaded with untrimmed hedges of 
 hawthorn and elder, and wild cherry and rampant briar ; and 
 across dyke-intersected fields where the scented sea-lavender 
 grows, and the pink thrift, and many other of the salt marsh 
 herbs so dear to the fingers that have ever culled them in 
 youth. 
 
 The church, unlike so many that gather the red farmsteads 
 under their spreading wings, after the manner of a hen 
 mothering her chicks, stands aside from Sunfleet to the 
 south: within sight of the estuary of the Hun; a bleak 
 example of the Perpendicular, badly repaired, with aisles 
 and clerestory windows that emit a marine pallor viewed 
 from the outside when the light pierces them, as though the 
 church were filled with sea-water, and dead mariners and 
 anemones were floating peacefully in its interior. The 
 breezes from the Hun stir the long green grass in its little 
 godsacre, so that lights and shadows, like living things, dart 
 to and fro among the tombs of stone and white marble, and 
 mostly you will hear a shrill subdued whistling all around 
 you from grass stalks that quiver in the wind. 
 
 Here the girl walks on Sundays with a wonderful piety of 
 lip, and perhaps, too, a slightly mundane tilt about the nose 
 that betokens a new frock or pretty new shoes. Sometimes 
 Miss Perritt accompanies her (on such occasions as she is 
 spending the Sunday at Sunfleet, which grow more numerous 
 with time) and sometimes the Doctor. 
 
 In front of the two grained family holdings, all the seating 
 of the church has been re-modeled, and the high-paneled 
 boxes are replaced by open pews of pitch-pine, where one 
 can no longer play cards during the sermon, which is a pity. 
 But no restoration has been affected in the characteristic red 
 tiling that lends a quaint and kitchen homeliness to the 
 sacred floor, nor to the old fire-grate built into the corner of 
 the north aisle for purposes of heating. And, like a great
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 137 
 
 pig-stretcher in front of this, still stands the primitive 
 bier that used to bring the bodies of the drowned from 
 Beachington or bank of Hun. 
 
 In the spacious green-lined pew the girl sits on Sunday, 
 and the dim influences of this immemorial place fall over 
 her with the softness of the sunlight through the diamond- 
 leaded windows, and sink hues into the soft fabric of her 
 fancy that but eternity can quite eradicate. Even in 
 articulo mortis there will be some faint tints of all this in 
 her dissolving memory, ebbing through the narrow point of 
 consciousness like the sands of time : the stone pillars, 
 splashed up to their capitals with curious sulphur-drips of 
 weathering the work of the busy protococcus as though 
 a careless painter had chosen this way of drying his brush; 
 the sunlight streaming over the tiled floor, or leaning vivid 
 beams of gold against the windows, like ladders, for the 
 notes to circulate in ; ascending and descending with the 
 eternal activity of rejoicing seraphim ; and the vicar with 
 his long sermons bearing witness to lucubrations of thirty 
 years ago written on foolscap yellow with seclusion, that 
 the vicar reads up to the last word, as a dog licks a plate. 
 In the pulpit he rustles as dry of humanity as a straw sheaf 
 from last year's threshing, and offers his listeners the most 
 undelectable fare of superannuated theology, but, once de- 
 scended, the vicar reassumes his human character. The 
 smile revisits his lips, and he tells Medling with unaffected 
 sincerity 
 
 " I couldn't help thinking about you last night, Mr. 
 Medling, when we had that terribly heavy shower. Very 
 disappointing; very disappointing. Just when you're ready 
 to begin leading, and all was so nice and dry. I know by 
 my garden how you'll have suffered. I assure you, those 
 beautiful stocks
 
 XVIII 
 
 ON two occasions the vicar's nephew Berkeley comes to 
 visit him and occupy the pulpit, and these are great 
 occasions, when the Doctor must on no account be absent 
 from the big grained pew. The first time he must cer- 
 tainly not be absent because this is the nephew that the 
 vicar had so particularly mentioned to him, the second son 
 of his sister Harriet (who married the only son of Canon 
 Snuffley's cousin), and is now a curate at St. Cyprian's, 
 Growingham, where his preaching is preferred by many to 
 the vicar's. 
 
 On the second occasion his visit is more prolonged. He 
 preaches on two Sundays, and just misses a third much to 
 his uncle's regret so that the doctor and Jane come to see 
 something of him. To speak the truth, his qualities seem to 
 lose their luster at close quarters; he has too much an air, 
 the Doctor thinks, of keeping his glory cupboarded under 
 lock and key, as though he is afraid it may depreciate by 
 handling. The outlines of the face are rather hard, he 
 fancies, and there is something mean about the small reg- 
 ular features and the corner folds of the thin lips, but they 
 are clerical and, in a lesser degree, scholarly. He must 
 be nearly ten years younger than the Doctor (the Doc- 
 tor decides with quiet envy), but his hair is very thin, par- 
 ticularly at the back of his head and on the temples, and 
 there is a lack of nature about his complexion which, aided 
 by a cold wind, would cause him to look older than his years. 
 He has not the Doctor's clear fresh skin, or the Doctor's 
 warm eye or hand, though he has a voice that would sound 
 
 138
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 139 
 
 well in a hollow building, and carve a good record on a 
 gramophone. Even as it is, it has a portentous boom when 
 it utters parochial Yesses and Noes, with imposing capital 
 M's in front of them, like the buffers on a steam engine ; 
 and it rebounds off the walls and columns of the Sunfleet 
 church whenever he throws it out (particularly in announc- 
 ing hymns) as if he were playing fivers with it. As for his 
 sermons, the Doctor thinks perhaps that the text is as good 
 a part of them as any though the vicar seems to prefer the 
 peroration. They deal with problems as irrelevant to Sun- 
 fleet as a tail-coat by the waters of the Hun, and the preacher 
 suffers from all his uncle's dryness in the pulpit, without 
 the gray hairs or side whiskers to lend it venerableness of 
 age. Love, sacrifice, hope and charity fall from his lips with 
 the frigid fixity of mathematical signs ; unalterable things, 
 like snow crystals, that lose all their form and significance 
 when they are thawed by the human heart, and must be kept 
 perpetually frozen to retain their structure. The Doctor, 
 looking at him and listening to him, reflects what an insuffer- 
 able place heaven must be with many angels of this pattern, 
 and asks himself to what fractional degree can these theolog- 
 ical exhortations influence the human heart, which will not 
 listen to any voice except its own. Virtue, from this 
 source, becomes merely mean respectability, a vehicle for 
 self-advancement in this world and the next, and in his bosom 
 he leans for a moment with indulgence towards the patent 
 infirmities of the unregenerate Pridgeon, infirmities which, 
 purged of some of their grosser parts, have the making of 
 true human qualities. It is merely, he reflects, a matter of 
 degree. Even respectability can become mean and odious, 
 and the Rev. Berkeley Hislop hits one's morals as unpleas- 
 antly above the belt as the farmer strikes below it. 
 
 On this second visit the Rev. Berkeley Hislop comes 
 accompanied by a younger sister, who is to stay with the
 
 140 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 vicar for some weeks after her brother's departure. She is 
 a girl of about Jane's age, with a transparent colorless com- 
 plexion, and a face that, like a garment in the wash, seems 
 to depend all on the subsequent dressing as to how it shall 
 ultimately look. Starched and ironed in the ecclesiastical 
 mode, it could be turned out doubtless as passionless a pro- 
 duction as ever played croquet on the vicarage lawn or gave 
 a chill to parishioners. But wooed by warmer circumstances 
 it might, the Doctor thought, ultimately develop into a face 
 of real attractiveness. She is scrupulously polite, and 
 aspirates her h's with such punctilious care in the lowest of 
 voices, that they convey an effect of sighing, as though, per- 
 haps, her heart were a trifle weak. Most of her early con- 
 versation is done through the medium of blushes of varying 
 intensity. " Good-day " tints her pink as far as the ears. 
 For " I beg your pardon " she blushes twice, in carmine, the 
 second blush overlapping the first, and crossing both temples 
 to the roots of her hair. She and Jane content themselves 
 with looking at each other first of all, like two strange foals 
 in a paddock ; but youth is a universal language, and before 
 long they are friends, locking themselves up in the confiden- 
 tial parlor of whispers, and kissing each other on parting; 
 real feminine kisses on Jane's side, that are armored watch- 
 towers, from which she notes all the details of the girl's hat, 
 or the color of her eyes, or the way she does her hair. 
 
 This niece, whose name is Bertha ("A most remarkable 
 girl, Dr. Bentham. Nobody would think from her quiet ap- 
 pearance what a clever French scholar she is. With the 
 merest assistance from her governess at the High School, 
 she translated nearly the whole of the first act of a little 
 French play last term ") this niece of the name of Bertha 
 constitutes another thread for the close pleating of relations, 
 and in these days the Doctor and Jane go more than occa- 
 sionally to the square, whitewashed vicarage, sunk up to its
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 141 
 
 chimneys in thick shrubbery behind high color-washed 
 walls, fifty paces down the little side road opposite the 
 church tower. It is very secluded and externally undemon- 
 strative, with nothing much to lay hold of, like one of the 
 vicar's sermons. Round the south front of the house they 
 will probably come upon the figure of the Vicar, under a 
 coarse straw gardening hat, with a trowel in one hand and 
 the out-stretched fingers of the other caked up to the third 
 knuckles with garden soil, so that he has to wipe the perspi- 
 ration from his forehead with the back of his hand : thus, by 
 the confraternity of labor, made kin to old Stebbing. He 
 will be most likely, at the moment of their finding him, in an 
 attitude of awakened expectancy, between kneeling down 
 and standing up, with his head thrust over one shoulder 
 towards the visitors' path as though he were looking over 
 some one else's back, an attitude which he has maintained 
 ever since he felt almost sure he heard the bell. It changes 
 at once, at sight of Jane and the Doctor, into the upright 
 posture for a surmise gladly confirmed, and the look of con- 
 centration which seems to darken his face melts into the 
 youthful smile of recognition, while he calls in the voice of 
 best assurance towards one or other of the French windows : 
 
 " Berkeley ! Bertha ! Come along with you and see some 
 friends." 
 
 This lawn of green solace has its anxieties for the vicar, 
 as Jane of the perversities has for the Doctor. At times, 
 even in the Doctor's presence, he has looked at it with a 
 strange parental smile and a wetness of eye, saying 
 
 " I sometimes wonder, Dr. Bentham, what will happen to 
 it when I am gone. The thought makes me rather sad at 
 times. I've been inclined to regret now and again that I 
 ever gave the place so much care. I'm afraid, like some of 
 my dear nephews and nieces, it has been spoiled, and will 
 fare badly in other hands. Still, a man must do his duty to
 
 142 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 his fellow-men. I hope my successor will be a conscientious 
 fellow without any family." 
 
 Even the beautiful page of the garden, however, is found 
 to bear allusion to the other subject dear to his heart. 
 
 " I am afraid you will laugh at my bit of a lawn, Berke- 
 ley," he says to his nephew, with a gleam of gold-filled 
 teeth, " after all the beautiful places you are in the habit of 
 visiting. Let's see. How many acres did you say that 
 lovely garden was at Sir Andrew Frinton's, where you so 
 frequently take tea on the terrace ? " 
 
 The nephew says, " A little over six, uncle," with a look 
 of clerical apathy, as though the number yielded him no 
 gratification. 
 
 " Six ! They must keep several gardeners, then ? " 
 
 The nephew says again, without joy, "Close on a dozen, 
 I believe." 
 
 " A dozen ! " repeats the vicar, in a voice that interprets 
 appropriate gratification to the Doctor. " Well, well," he 
 adds indulgently, "they can afford it, Berkeley. (Extraor- 
 dinarily wealthy people," he imparts to the Doctor. " Sir 
 Andrews is reported to be worth . . ." (Here he leaves 
 the side- voice and returns to the main walk again.) " How 
 many hundred thousands, Berkeley? . . . Half a mil- 
 lion ! I wonder you can bear to tear yourself away from all 
 those lovely places where you are made so thoroughly at 
 home, and care to come and see an old curmudgeon of an 
 uncle with a handful of garden and the plainest cooking. 
 (My nephew is a particular favorite of the Frinton family, 
 Dr. Bentham. Indeed, he is wherever he goes. They all 
 treat him more like a friend than a curate.)" 
 
 The nephew himself has very little to say; his vaunted 
 greatness, like an overchoked culvert, trickles for the most 
 pan in brief sentences of commonplace, which (the Doctor 
 thinks) he rather serves out with the conscious superiority
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 143 
 
 of one reserving his better things for parishioners of impor- 
 tance. He tolerates his uncle's questions with a bearing of 
 pious magnanimity, qualifying small inaccuracies as though 
 their truth, and not their grandeur, were the object of 
 his connection. When his uncle asks him, for instance, 
 " Let's see, Berkeley. How many titled people were there, 
 in addition to the Bishop, at the big missionary meeting in 
 Lady Smythe's drawing-room, when Major Rentham, if you 
 remember, complimented you so highly on your delivery? 
 Seven ? " he corrects the figure to " Nine, uncle," with a 
 humility as if he had reduced the number rather than aug- 
 mented it. 
 
 "Nine? ... A trying ordeal, Dr. Bentham, with the 
 superb palm-house facing you through the vestibule beyond 
 those folding-doors, and the Bishop and Lady Smythe in 
 arm-chairs by your elbow." 
 
 The Doctor and Jane come here to lunch one day ; a typical 
 vicarage lunch in the cheerful dining-room, with the green 
 of the sun-lit lawn reflected on to the ceiling, and the 
 curtains by the open French window drawing breath every 
 now and then, and sighing softly with contentment. The 
 vicar is astonished when the Doctor declines both claret and 
 sherry with the remark that for a long time now he has 
 taken nothing at all. 
 
 " Ah yes, I know about that," he says. " But I should 
 have thought a little quiet claret here would not hurt you." 
 
 To his nephew he says, " I don't know whether I dare 
 recommend my wine to you, Berkeley. I'm afraid you will 
 begin to miss all your good friends now. But let me pour 
 you out a glass of claret. You needn't drink more than 
 you like." 
 
 The vicar and the vicar's nephew, and the vicar's niece, 
 come all of them to late dinner at the Doctor's house, where
 
 144 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 the three men and Miss Perritt play rubbers by lamplight, 
 and the girls make friendly competitive music in the school- 
 room, or walk up and down the broad gravel path in the 
 garden, stopping every now and then to watch the progress 
 of the game in the four lamp-lit countenances, and squeeze 
 understandings into each other's waists, and resume their 
 promenade with subdued laughter beneath the starry sky, 
 disturbing a hundred strata of warm fragrances that float 
 motionless in the still night-air above the sleeping blossoms.
 
 XIX 
 
 TWO years, that look a mass of time so chill and solid 
 as one faces them, melt swiftly away like ice on a 
 blanket. Miss Perritt goes back once more to her little 
 fiat-chested house at Peterwick, where now her white hand 
 will be a regular feature of the window, depending the 
 water-pot over the window flowers; a debtor to Time for 
 three bright years of her life that she will henceforth rail 
 round with an iron fortitude, like the wrought-work defend- 
 ing the tomb of the great Dr. Dendy, and weep over, now 
 and then, in her solitary hours. 
 
 And there are changes for the girl and for the Doctor, too. 
 During three whole terms in which the Doctor flogs up the 
 days to a feverish gallop of activity, like some lonely rider 
 spurring his steed across the desert the girl is away at a 
 finishing school in Richmond-on-Thames, completing herself 
 in the accomplishments and virtues. These terms make her 
 much taller, and lend the necessary discipline to her grace. 
 She is now appreciably taller than the Doctor which, 
 translated into the feminine scale of skirts and picture hats, 
 stoles and ostrich plumes, constitute a girl of more than 
 medium stature. With her quick eye for the picking up of 
 the pins of detail, and for threading the fine needles of the 
 suitabilities, she has little to learn on the side of the personal 
 advantages. That is to say, she has superseded the impul- 
 sive childish instinct for grace of movement and line of body, 
 and replaced it with a subtler, surer thing, suiting better 
 with these longer skirts. Her vanity is not merely a con- 
 scious parade of it, that is the pitfall of women who do 
 10 145
 
 146 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 not use adornment as a gracious extension of self, but rather 
 for self's suppression. All that Jane wears, or all that she 
 uses, seems to have a conscious affinity with the girl's 
 nature ; lending its extra note of preciousness to the body 
 beautiful, like some felicitous annotation to a poem. The 
 little battery of bangles that hang at her wrist and slide 
 down over her hand with a clash of cymbals when she lifts 
 the teapot; the little chatelaine at her skirts, that sounds 
 her presence so sweetly when she comes. The little fancy 
 watch at her bosom, that gives her such occasion to bend her 
 neck and lower those broad ribbons of dark lash momentarily 
 upon her cheek when she seeks to discern the time from its 
 tiny dial. Somehow or is it, can it be fancy? these 
 trinkets that other girls carry, seem personal and proper in 
 the Doctor's opinion, only to Jane. She is seventeen now, 
 and very like her mother. The early prophecy of beauty has 
 been fulfilled. The tints that lie so equably beneath the 
 transparent tissue of clear skin are as delicate as those paler 
 hues of old Lowestoft china, and as delightful to the contem- 
 plation. Her hair, that has all the abundance of her dead 
 mother's, and that her cunning fingers weave into a hundred 
 fascinating intricacies, is darker, possibly, than in those early 
 days when she shook its loose tresses in rebellion. Her eyes, 
 of soft Nankin blue, shaded by long lashes whose dark re- 
 flection lends them a color so deep that it sometimes broaches 
 violet, have shed much, though not all, of their willful fire. 
 Instead, there is a kind of laughter lurking in them, like the 
 pulse that quivers in the deep sky of a July noon; though 
 the merest depression of those white lids can make them 
 infinitely sad. When she speaks, these eyes play an expres- 
 sive obbligato to her words, so that it is an endless pastime 
 to the Doctor to watch them ripple, and see the wondrous 
 leaping glances in them, like trout in a pool. They are 
 alive with animated thoughts; thoughts that move, dimly
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 147 
 
 discerned in their depths, or ply like lightning below the 
 surface, or leap into swift expression with dripping spangles 
 of laughter. And then her youth seems like a magic chalice, 
 rilled with the inexhaustible waters of life; refreshing all 
 who put their lips to it and drink. It is the Doctor's daily 
 draught; rejuvenating him, encouraging him, sustaining 
 him. Hilda Brennan and all that was best in the bygone 
 years merge in Jane, and yield him all that is sweetest in 
 the present. These seem the halcyon days his life has sighed 
 for. 
 
 For she is very lovable, very companionable, a dear reward 
 for all his care. Now that he sees her as he had ever hoped 
 she should some day be, there is a gratitude in his heart no 
 words can tell. He feels since she has passed the crucial 
 point where character may be marred, he wants to spoil her 
 now; to lavish on her all the surplus of that proprietory 
 paternal love, so heavily taxed by anxiety in the past; heap 
 on her all the indulgences of which she was deprived by 
 prudence and wisdom, those apprehensive elderly sisters of 
 Love. 
 
 Elsewhere around them, little has changed in these two 
 years. Anne looks not perceptibly older, though she has a 
 growing tendency to cry " Eh ? " to any question on its first 
 utterance, and accuse Hester of mumbling. Hester main- 
 tains her years and her proportions in advance of Miss Jane. 
 As Anne puts it, in moments of anger, she is almost too big 
 for a gentleman's kitchen. When she rolls up her sleeves 
 above her elbows f o wash the pots in the steaming pancheon, 
 she reveals an arm like an athlete's leg that would be a 
 dreadful engine of destruction if actuated by wrath, and 
 indeed can beat beef-steak with a ferocity that might make 
 a prospective suitor pick up his hat. But she is, at the base 
 of all this, a monument of feminine good-nature, who takes 
 rebukes as though they were treacle humbugs, and laughs
 
 148 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 under censure through sheer enjoyment, bending to wrath 
 with a glee for facing a high wind. She would really, 
 perhaps, be better in a dairy farm, but best of all does she 
 love dangling after Jane (whom, she confesses to Anne, she 
 would dearly love to kiss, though she cannot tell why) and 
 being admitted to the boudoir of Jane's little vanities. She 
 is Jane's maid, in all but the name, and flushes so hot with 
 joy and pride when called on to dress Jane's hair, that Jane 
 can feel the warmth on her head and neck, as though she 
 were sitting with her back to a fire ; and the fingers of the 
 great hands that take up the golden-brown strands glow 
 red-hot, like curling tongs, to the admiring tribute 
 " Lors Miss Jane. Isn't your hair a length ! " 
 Further afield, beyond the boundaries of the big house, 
 the sun of change sinks on Sunfleet imperceptibly. The 
 vicar goes abroad with the left arm in the hollow of his back, 
 and the gun-barrels glint in front of him now and again, but 
 the field spaniel has been whistled home to his fathers, and 
 the vicar's lips twitch, even to this day, when he records the 
 loss. No bark replaces the muffled monosyllable that was 
 wont to acknowledge the nodding of the vicarage bell, and 
 no successor runs forth to the rattling limit of chain, for the 
 vicar says he is too old to make new friends now-a-days. He 
 points to the empty green kennel, destitute of straw, with 
 the two white enamel dishes laid reverently within, and 
 says : " A sad change, Doctor. It makes me begin to pre- 
 pare for my own. Poor old Spin. I know you won't mis- 
 understand me when I say that I looked upon that dog as a 
 Christian. I don't know when I buried any one in recent 
 years with more regret." He looks up from the sad contem- 
 plation of this sorrow with the momentary glint of smile, as 
 when the sun's finger traces some mural epitaph in gold. 
 " My housekeeper tells me I positively shed tears. Perhaps 
 I did . . . perhaps I did. Indeed, I hope I did ; the
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 149 
 
 dear fellow deserved them. Fortunately, Dr. Bentham, 
 there's no cloud without its silver lining. I've just heard 
 from my youngest sister but one, and you'll rejoice to hear 
 that Hubert . . ." 
 
 On old Stebbing, too, the sun of change sets gently, laying 
 a heavier gilding on his shoulders, but otherwise lighting 
 small change in him. He is a firmer adherent of the Doctor 
 than ever, for the shilling has been several times repeated, 
 and on cold days the Doctor has told him : " What the devil's 
 the good of coughing like that, man ! Do you want to strain 
 your buttons? Gan your ways up to house at once and tell 
 'em to gie ye a basin of soup as yat (hot) as ye can sup 
 it." 
 
 And the Sunfleet carrier and his careworn horse draw their 
 protracted shadows about the countryside, as though these 
 years were but ale-casks, empty and replenishable. He is a 
 patient of the Doctor's at last, and feels compelled to admit 
 that the Doctor frames much better at his trade in these 
 days than he did, but he misses the full-bodied mixture of 
 forty-seven ingredients that made medicine medicine under 
 the Dendy reign though here again he confesses that 
 (whether it is the Doctor or not, which he won't go so far as 
 to say) the pains in his back are less severe. 
 
 And the Beachington 'bus rolls to and fro each day, past 
 the Doctor's brand new gate; and the postman (two years 
 nearer the pension for which he is envied in Sunfleet) blows 
 his whistle under all sorts of skies, and in all sorts of 
 weather, to all sorts of effects ; now blithe and shrill, like a 
 soaring lark ; now wet and dismal, as though sighed through 
 the beak of a depressed thrush in the branches of some 
 dripping blackthorn ; now blithe and vivacious, a summons 
 and a greeting; now chill and shivering like the north-east 
 wind huddled in the angle of some smoky flue. 
 
 And the mortgage tide still threatens Pridgeon's home-
 
 ISO THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 stead or is reported to do so just as the sea swims over 
 Kenhain Beach. The years change the farmer little ; they 
 only seem to confirm and set the seal upon him. He is 
 growing noticeably gray, but the smile pays no rent to time, 
 and one almost acquires the belief that it will not share the 
 ultimate corruption of Pridgeon's body, but will take flight 
 at the moment of defunction, and re-incorporate itself with 
 the universal sunlight. Perhaps the lapse of years is chiefly 
 inscribed in the relations between the farmer and the Doctor 
 but, here, too, in a species of invisible ink, that only yields 
 its writing to the warmth of intimate comprehension. Ex- 
 ternally they greet with all the evidences of friendship, but 
 it is a friendship reduced in these days to a mere formula ; 
 a prescription of unlifted hand and cheery smile, never com- 
 pounded or made up. Truth to tell, the Doctor's respecta- 
 bility has slain the farmer's interest, like salt on a snail. He 
 cannot understand the Doctor, and would as soon try to con- 
 strue his present-day conduct as he would seek to read the 
 pages of an old school-book. With Miss Perritt's installation 
 it was for Pridgeon as though perpetual midwinter frosted 
 the roof of the Doctor's house. They meet, for the most 
 part, like good friends in a hurry with plenty to say if 
 they had but time to speak ; but the big brick house with gov- 
 ernesses in Alpine hats, and old vicars, and clerical nephews, 
 becomes a resort of too much respectability for the farmer's 
 fancy. So soon as he has decided that the Doctor's conver- 
 sion is, for some incomprehensible cause, deep-seated, he 
 consigns him to the heaven of neglect, and throws both arms 
 of friendship round Medling's neck not at all to the lat- 
 ter's advantage.
 
 XX 
 
 THIS brings us, in the third August after Miss Perritt's 
 retirement to the time of the Beachington Fair, that 
 little annual sigh of feasting that is the signal for each 
 harvest hereabouts ; and on the same afternoon that the pro- 
 prietor is giving the last screw to the bolts in the swingboat 
 frame, and shouting orders through both hands with a 
 fibrous voice, there is a queer thing on wheels creeping along 
 the Peterwick road to Sunfleet. 
 
 It is a sprawling cart, or the semblance of one, drawn by a 
 dejected ass, that plods with downcast head between a man 
 on the one hand and a woman on the other. The man is 
 an unprepossessing figure of middle age, with a stealthy 
 tread, and a multitude of silver threads in his reddish dusty 
 hair, and a shabbiness that sits on him for degeneracy. He 
 wears a dirty tweed cap with a hole through it, and a rag of 
 the worn lining flutters unheeded over a sightless left eye 
 that bears evident token to some violence in recent years, for 
 the lid has been cut through diagonally at one time, and the 
 disfiguring stitches still show in it, seaming him as far as the 
 cheek-bone. The other eye, with which he sees to cuff the 
 donkey, is a morose member darkened by brooding over 
 dusty miles of roadway, and overcast with the memory of 
 much, as it seems, that would be better forgotten. He is 
 unshorn, and this ragged neglect of his cheeks subscribes 
 unpleasantly to the forbidding eye, and the rascally sun- 
 burned coat upon his back. 
 
 About the woman's figure there is much that the gaze 
 may rest on with interest, and even pleasure; for she is of 
 
 151
 
 152 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 the picturesque breed of wayfarers, not alien to the road or 
 inimical to it (as the man seems to be; hating every yard 
 traversed, by the look of him) but at one with the hedgerows 
 and the crackling twigs that lend wild people shelter, and 
 kindle friendly fires under smoking pots; and the brown 
 soil, seamed like an old woman's forehead; and the hot sun. 
 She is younger, by many years, than her companion, and 
 there is a strain of gypsy blood in her veins ; if not of pure 
 Romany, at least of that swart-skinned race of vagabondage 
 that seems suckled of the very soil, and yet has a sort of 
 natural kingship in its eyes and brows as though it were a 
 tribe in nearer and dearer relationship to Nature's bosom 
 than the rest of us. This woman, for instance, carries her 
 head with a proud erectness as if poising an invisible pitcher. 
 She has a bust that a sculptor might love to chisel ; a gener- 
 ous breast for infancy ; a stormy habitation for pride and the 
 passions. Her eyebrows are boldly traced in charcoal over a 
 smooth saffron brow; the purposeful sweeps of God's pencil 
 that lend a majesty and a repose to the face, and would be 
 dreadful drawn to the usages of wrath. The black eyes 
 beneath glow calm like a cinder fire; burning in slow com- 
 bustion as she walks, to the smallest consumption of thought ; 
 and the dusky lips, disengaged and uncommunicative, afford 
 a sight of bold healthy teeth that lie as regular as pearls on a 
 thread, though their color suggests acquaintance with the 
 brown stem of some clay pipe. The vagabond blood that 
 stains her skin to a dim ocher rather than brown, and blooms 
 on her cheek bones like some deep dahlia, shows no less 
 surely in the touches of her attire ; the barbaric yellows and 
 saffrons in the handkerchief over her hair, or the triple row 
 of glass beads round her neck; the crimson apron over the 
 short plaid skirt, that allows to be seen the extremity of her 
 firm limbs in their coarse hooped stockings, and the pear-
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 153 
 
 shaped pendants of brass that swing from the lobes of her 
 dusky ears. Partly she is a queen ; a princess begotten of 
 the red soil by the golden sun; and partly she is a mere 
 beast of burden; a complacent ruminating animal with 
 scarce a thought to lift her higher than the moment now. 
 The cart behind them which sprawls disproportionately 
 over the diminutive wheels is cumbered with the primitive 
 necessities of nomadic life. The forepart is hooped over 
 with willow, and patched with ragged canvas for the protec- 
 tion of their sleeping accessories, and for their scant change 
 of clothing. Long wands of willow, suspended beneath 
 the cart, above its axle, seem to suggest the rudiments for a 
 tent, while pots and pans hang at its corners. Stretched 
 across the after part of the vehicle, in a litter of straw and 
 rubbish, lies a boy of some stature, verging on youth, with a 
 yellow kitten in his arms. He is most scantily clad as to 
 his upper proportions, wearing but a ragged print shirt, so 
 buttonless at the neck as to give no concealment to his naked 
 breast, which gleams curiously white in the sun. Every- now 
 and then he strangles the yellow kitten to his mouth with 
 savage affection, and bites it with white teeth for all the 
 world as though he were a dog. Sometimes his embraces 
 are so passionate as to elicit a cry from his furred com- 
 panion, and there are scratches visible all over his breast, at 
 close quarters, where the yellow kitten has dug protesting and 
 disengaging claws. From time to time he raises himself on 
 a hand, and looks with animal interest at the two walking 
 figures in front of him; now and then hailing them with a 
 brief inarticulate cry, more like a dog's bark. This cry never 
 elicits any token of responsiveness from the man ; not al- 
 ways from the woman. But when it does, and she turns 
 round her swarthy face with a guttural scrape in her throat, 
 unattended by any usage of lip, the boy plunges himself
 
 154 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 instantly back upon the litter, just as a pup will cease play 
 to seek the encouragement of its master's look, and resume 
 its gambols the moment this has been given. 
 
 In such fashion they have traversed many miles, for 
 Peterwick saw them early in the afternoon, and they had the 
 dust of transport on them then. 
 
 Thus far along the road, with small departure, these 
 people have kept up their dogged pace on either side of the 
 precise small steps of the donkey; looking little to right or 
 left, and speaking less. But as they come in sight of the 
 straggling farms that form the vanguard of Sunfleet on the 
 Peterwick side, they commence to exchange brief words 
 between themselves morose words without any inter- 
 change of glance. And as they come to the loop of road 
 that skirts Pridgeon's farm, they begin to lay arrestive 
 hands on the donkey's cord-patched harness, and converse 
 with its shaggy head under their arms, as wanderers who 
 begin to ask whether they near their journey's end. And 
 the boy, rising from his slothful straw with the yellow kitten 
 against his mouth, stares mutely at the farmstead across its 
 intervening pasture, and cries " Eh ! " after awhile, as 
 though the spot just perceived were his discovery. A brief 
 monosyllable from the man causes him to scramble from his 
 place to the ground, where he stands hugging the cat to his 
 bare breast; a loose figure of undisciplined youth, with 
 brown cord trousers held up to his shoulders by a single 
 brace, and bare feet darkened with the dust of innumerable 
 counties ; the toe of the right foot being bound with a rag on 
 which are traces of recent blood, although the rag itself 
 seems to have been borrowed from vagrant antiquity. By 
 the wayside there is a road-scraping heap, and on this the 
 woman subsides with a sigh, wiping her brow briefly to 
 right and left with a flat hand wound up in the fold of her 
 crimson apron. The man points abruptly to the farm, and
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 155 
 
 spits in the grass, whereupon the boy commences to mount 
 the gate, still holding the kitten against his breast. For 
 some reason, best known to himself, this act creates opposi- 
 tion in the man's will, for he roughly forbids it, with the 
 right fist clenched, and the left hand extended peremptorily 
 towards the cart as though enforcing the cat's replacement. 
 Instantly a look of passionate objection breaks up the placid 
 surface of the boy's face. He snarls like a fox at bay, and 
 drops to the far side of the gate, where he stands making 
 tearless whining noises of protestation, mixed with wrath 
 and hatred, keeping a keen eye for their effect on his perse- 
 cutor. The woman, who has meanwhile drawn a blackened 
 pipe from her bosom, so diminished in stem as to seem 
 all bowl, and is about to light it with a grubby match 
 (which she has already struck twice without effect upon her 
 boot) stops with the match poised for a third stroke, to say : 
 " Hold your noise, then hold your noise then, with you. 
 The master'll hear you ! " and then the poised hand swoops 
 down on her boot like a hawk, catching a flame in passage, 
 which it bears to the pipe-bowl beneath her fine aquiline 
 nose. She sucks at it with persuasive noisy lips, and casts 
 the used match into the hedge, when she is sure of combus- 
 tion, with a sighing " Ah ! " long protracted. The boy, 
 reading no further trace of opposition on the man's face, 
 casts his whining aside too, as having served its purpose, 
 and goes off to the farm with the cat's head in his mouth, 
 making savage throat-noises of affection. The man there- 
 upon draws the cart off the roadside into the shelter of the 
 hedge, where it is free of observation from the farmstead, 
 and flings himself at full-length on the rain-slaked grass, 
 which the donkey begins to tear industriously. A few min- 
 utes later the woman thrusts the pipe-bowl hastily into her 
 bosom and mutters in a dusky admonitory voice, adjusting 
 her skirt and apron the while 
 
 " Look ! Here's the master coming."
 
 XXI 
 
 IN truth it is Pridgeon's breezy voice whose accents are 
 wafted to the gate, and it is Pridgeon's smile of candid 
 inspection beneath which the recumbent man rises to his 
 feet and submits himself to scrutiny. The farmer gives 
 his disfigured eye a brief look, but his chief gaze is for 
 the woman on the road-heap, who acknowledges it with 
 a baring of her great teeth in a full-faced smile that hits 
 one between the eyes like the knuckles of a sunbeam, say- 
 ing 
 
 " Good-day, masther ! " 
 
 " Lord beggar it," says Pridgeon to the man. " So you've 
 gotten a lass wi' ye! And a strange fine one and all." 
 He gives a second more searching glance at the contour 
 of the crimson apron and adds in a more vital tone, " Why, 
 she's drawing on her time, if looks be anything. Isn't 
 she?" 
 
 A flush of anger shows hot in the man's face, but it is 
 withdrawn at once like a card half tendered, at play ; and he 
 substitutes a discreeter look, more befitting one who has a 
 favor to ask. 
 
 " Aye," he says. " She's near her time, or I wouldn't 
 have troubled you." 
 
 The woman smiles at the situation with an unembarrassed 
 usage of her fine teeth. 
 
 " It's hard on a woman, masther," she tells Pridgeon. 
 " I've walked fro' Hunmouth this very day, along o' him and 
 the lad yonder, with that very cart." 
 
 " Are you wed ? " says Pridgeon amiably, feeding his 
 
 156
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 157 
 
 curiosity alternately on the woman's teeth and bosom and 
 the man's blind eye. This time the hot flush will not be 
 denied. 
 
 " What's that to you ? " the man taxes him. " I'm not. 
 here to beg questions. If you've nothing better to give me 
 we'll move on." 
 
 His outburst, that darkens his own face appreciably, costs 
 nothing to the farmer's smile. 
 
 " Lord bless us," he says. " A good question never did 
 anybody any harm. If you're wed you're wed ; if you aren't 
 wed you aren't wed. I shall make none the worse tea 
 for it." 
 
 The man turned curtly on the woman with a word, and 
 she held out her brown hand with a brass marriage symbol 
 bitten into its third finger. 
 
 " There's the very ring he gave me, masther," she said. 
 " On the very finger you see there afore ye. The very ring 
 and the very finger, as true as I sit on this arth." 
 
 Pridgeon laughed aloud. 
 
 " And if you was to know a place called Becclesford, 
 masther, which is a little place called Becclesford close 
 beyond Louth in Lincoln-sheer, I could tell you the very 
 shop where this ring was bought. The very shop, masther." 
 She spoke with a clumsy usage of her lips, forming her 
 words with the same laborious care that an ignorant scribe 
 takes to form his letters, as one unaccustomed to the em- 
 ployment of speech, using a bastard dialect, and hesitating 
 at times with an effect of being a foreigner, and a prisoner 
 beyond the bars of this her own, and only, tongue. 
 
 " And what's your trade ? " Pridgeon asked, turning with 
 a careless laugh to the man. The man took the query in an 
 ill-sense once more, as though Pridgeon's easy smile chafed 
 some raw wound in his nature. 
 
 " Any trade you like," he said with sudden bitterness,
 
 158 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 " that has a copper in it." He burst out with an oath. 
 " Do you think this eye and these rags aren't sufficient for 
 a man to carry but you must put your blasted questions on 
 him?" 
 
 " Why, it's a baddish eye," Pridgeon admitted compla- 
 cently. " I've been looking at it a bit. How did you come 
 by it ? Was it a bottle ? " 
 
 " A bottle ? " cried the man. " Aye, it was a bottle if you 
 want to know. With a woman at the back of it." 
 
 " Lord, what a lass can do when she tries," said Pridgeon 
 admiringly. " There was a lass up Merensea way clawed my 
 face once in the dark, and I carried the slut's mark on my 
 cheek for a twelvemonth. Can ye see out of it ? " 
 
 " If I could," said the man with sudden passion, " I'd like 
 to see her burning in hell that did it. What's to be done 
 with an eye like this ? " 
 
 " Why, not a deal," Pridgeon agreed. " You might wear 
 a shade ower it. One o' my uncles did, though I can't say 
 it improved him." 
 
 " Yes, but if I were to wear a shade," the man said, 
 " people would set it down to trickery, and say I could see 
 well enough if I would. This eye," and he struck it a fierce 
 blow with a strangely white hand, dirty withal, and much 
 discolored with nicotine about the nails, " this eye has spelt 
 damnation for me. Ever since I got it folks won't give me 
 work, and they begrudge me bread. When I want a favor 
 I have to send the missus or the boy to beg it, for they 
 wouldn't give it me if I asked myself." 
 
 " Why to be sure," Pridgeon acquiesced, appraising the 
 man's affliction with a genial dispassion, as if he were the 
 valuer of crops, " the eye doesn't help you a deal. It has a 
 sort of drunken look with it. Do you drink at all ? " 
 
 " Do you ? " retorted the man curtly. 
 
 " Not nearly so much as I did," the farmer answered
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 159 
 
 without animus. " Only just now and again for company. 
 I expect I shall have an extra sup to-night at Beachington. 
 It's a poor heart that never rejoices." 
 
 "What sort o' company would you call this eye, then?" 
 the man asked him. " That would give you something to 
 drink for; something to try and forget. I'm branded with 
 it. It blots me out from all that's decent and honest. I'm 
 not a man any longer; I'm a blind eye. When anything 
 goes wrong in any place we pass through, they come after 
 this eye, and the policeman asks me to give an account of 
 it, and where it was at such and such a time. And before I 
 can open my lips to speak they warn me to tell the truth, 
 or it'll be the worse for me, and when I've told the truth 
 they look as if I'd done them an injury, and if they can't 
 fix anything on to this blasted eye they tell me I've given 
 them enough trouble as it is, and I'd best take care in future 
 or it'll be going hard with me." He wound up with an oath 
 once more. " And my father was a magistrate for his county 
 at one time though I don't ask you to believe it. And I've 
 known what it was to draw my hundred over a Derby winner. 
 I never thought then that I should come to beg the pitch for 
 my night's lodgings from such as you." 
 
 " What ! You've come down in the world, then ? " said 
 Pridgeon, renewing interest in this ragged visitor with a 
 change of foot on the lower gate-rail. " Aye, there's a look 
 of it about you, now I come to notice. I'd an uncle once who 
 turned a four hundred acre farm into whisky, and supped it 
 all in one year. He was just such another, only broader 
 across his shoulders. What's brought you to a spot like 
 this?" 
 
 " God Almighty knows," said the man. " And He gives 
 no reasons. She " he indicated the seated woman with a 
 throw of his unclean fingers " knows the district, and the 
 lad, her brother. I've never set foot this way before. I
 
 160 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 know the southern counties, and the Kent hopfields, and all 
 the racecourses you can mention, but they ought to call this 
 country World Without End, Amen." 
 
 " Can you handle a fork ? " asked Pridgeon. " Are ye any- 
 good in the harvest-field ? Can ye team ? " 
 
 " I harvested in Lincolnshire last summer," said the way- 
 farer. " But they've got a self-binder and a hired man this 
 year, and they think they'll try and manage themselves. 
 We've worked our way along the roads and here we are. 
 The missus can make besoms and clothes-pegs, and there 
 are not many things I can't turn a hand to. If you want 
 any stack-pegs I'll trim them up for you in exchange for a 
 night's shelter and a bit of something to eat. You'll find all 
 your eggs where the hens lay them, and God strike my 
 sound eye blind if I or the others would touch so much as a 
 mushroom without your sanction." 
 
 " Why, damn it," said Pridgeon stirred by the some- 
 thing human in the concluding appeal. " I mean to trust 
 you, anyhow ; and as for the mushrooms, you're welcome to 
 all you find in this field and the next. I like your words, 
 and I like the lass, and I never closed my gate yet against 
 decent people." He threw it open at that, and called: 
 " Come along with you, lass. Now, master, get yon cart 
 turned and follow me up this grass field." 
 
 The boy had been alternately reading the text of the 
 conversation in the varying countenances around him, as 
 though it had been conducted in a foreign tongue, and 
 studying the farmer's face, and fondling the yellow kitten 
 which was attached to him by a piece of coarse twine, looped 
 through the button-hole at his shirt-neck, and tied (too 
 tightly, it seemed, by the look of it) round the kitten's neck, 
 so that the kitten was ever interrupting its own play to claw 
 at the thin constriction of windpipe. The sight of move- 
 ment in the cart impelled him to fling his body once more
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 161 
 
 upon the straw, as though this were his accredited place 
 when the wheels revolved. And thus, with the moody man 
 at the donkey's head, and the tall woman poising her queenly 
 head and bearing her physical encumbrance with familiar 
 ease, Pridgeon led the way to the farm's outbuildings, where, 
 before a disused cart-shed he paused and asked how such a 
 shelter would suit their night's requirements. The woman, 
 requiting the question with her regal smile, told him might 
 they never know a worse night's lodging than this. 
 
 " Why, it'll keep you dry," he said, with a laughing look- 
 round of one not particularly prepossessed in its favor. 
 " And you'll be sheltered from the north. You can have as 
 much clean straw for bedding as you care to hug, so long as 
 you won't smoke in it. Aye! turn the donkey loose, mas- 
 ter," he said. " He'll find plenty of good meat, but watch he 
 doesn't go too gain-hand the far end. I've some young horses 
 there that might kick out at him if he got within smelling 
 distance of their heels." 
 
 The woman unmasked the full bold battery of teeth in a 
 persuasive smile. 
 
 " May we beg a bit of fire, masther ? " she supplicated. 
 " It do turn that perishing cold of a night." 
 
 " Why, I'm not fond o' fires," Pridgeon retorted. " Not 
 many farmers are. Fires are like children, best kept in- 
 doors ; you never know what mischief they'll be up to. But 
 there won't be much in yon stackgarth to take a deal of hurt 
 yet a bit." He caught a full beam of the smile and said: 
 " Aye ! damn it, go on, lass. Stick your fire in yon bucket, 
 but set her well away back fro' building end. Take what 
 kindling you want fro' warren; don't pluck fences. And 
 when you've gotten fittled up, come your ways to kitchen 
 and I'll see they give you some tea and milk. Aye! and a 
 few lumps o' coal to put a heart in your bucket; it looks a 
 hungry thing. God bless it, farming's a rum job. Do all
 
 162 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 the good you can, say I, while you're at it, for a man never 
 knows how soon somebody else will be latching his gates and 
 warming his backside at kitchen fire. I may be following 
 your trade myself some day." 
 
 That same night there was a fusillade of pebbles against 
 the Doctor's bedroom window, and the dawn-stars, steal- 
 ing from the sky later, heard before they quitted the 
 firmament a new cry registered in humanity. The blind- 
 eyed man's promise to Pridgeon that they would be gone by 
 daybreak, damping the fire and closing the gates behind 
 them, was rendered vain, for beneath their rude canvas 
 shelter the queen-mother clasped a bastard princeling to her 
 breast, and the man and the boy made themselves a still 
 ruder shelter in an adjoining compartment of the cart-shed, 
 where the man cast himself prone on straw, as though add- 
 ing this calamity to his list of grievances, along with the 
 eye. 
 
 Thus it came to pass that these wayside people, as 
 transitory in their passage for the most part as shadows on a 
 wall, were brought to attach themselves by roots of hard 
 necessity to Sunfleet soil. And the sympathetic Pridgeon, to 
 whom maternity in difficulties spoke with special appeal, lent 
 a stack-cover for the more effective purpose of shelter, and 
 gave orders that the dark-skinned mother was to have every- 
 thing in reason that the dairy or household could yield. 
 The blind-eyed man he set to work on odd jobs about the 
 farm; to the mucking out of styes and stables, the slopping 
 of pigs and watering of cattle, treating him at once with the 
 brevity for a vagrant, and something of the fellowship for a 
 gentleman. Nor did the Doctor's house contribute nothing 
 more than medical attendance. Anne, breathing fire and 
 slaughter against this wanton multiplication of poverty, with
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 163 
 
 many pious wishes that the bairn might have died at birth, 
 yet ransacked the house for things of comfort and necessity 
 to motherhood, and cooked strengthening dishes that she said 
 it was a sin to waste on syke people. 
 
 Even the vicar was stirred to interest in the event, and 
 came round expressly to the Doctor's house. 
 
 " Are they honest people," asked the good man. " One 
 does not like to think ill of one's fellows, but I must ad- 
 mit" 
 
 " Who knows ? " said the Doctor. " The woman is as fine 
 a specimen of her sex as ever passed through my hands, if 
 only she were as clean as she is healthy. But the man 
 struck me as a true degenerate. I've not had much truck 
 with him, but he led me to understand that he's seen better 
 days, before some woman laid his eye open with a spirit 
 decanter, and I can quite well believe it. He quoted a 
 couple of words of Latin to me as a proof of his scholarship 
 very unpleasant they sounded." 
 
 " Latin ! " said the vicar. " What a pity my nephew 
 Vincent were not here. A brilliant classical scholar an 
 honors man. I sometimes think to myself, that no man was 
 ever more blest in his nephews and nieces than I. I can 
 honestly affirm that they have never caused me one single 
 moment's anxiety since they were born. You will admit 
 that that is a proud boast." 
 
 Such a proud boast, indeed, that it covered the blind-eyed 
 man and the gypsy woman and the little pink-fleshed prince, 
 like the conjuror's handkerchief, and caused them to vanish 
 for the time being into illimitable space whence the Doc- 
 tor, who was already preparing to set foot on the step of his 
 Raleigh for the morning's round, made no effort to recover 
 them. 
 
 But destiny works more wonders than the wizard's hand-
 
 164 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 kerchief; brings the hated together; dissevers the loved; 
 makes dreams into reality, and teases out the threads of life 
 into the floss of dreams. 
 
 For the morrow is Jane's music day in Hunmouth. She 
 drives herself to Peterwick station in the morning, with the 
 Doctor by her side; and in the evening, when the hot Hun- 
 mouth train has panted into the station with all the tradi- 
 tional formulae of arrival, she takes her seat by Numphy's 
 side once more, and drives homeward in the mellowing light. 
 The sun is sinking towards the west, and the dust of his 
 dry beams and the dust of the powdered roadway, and the 
 fine impalpable dust from the ripe corn commingle in one 
 common glory of gold over all the landscape. The heavy 
 grain bows its head as at the hour of angelus ; gates that 
 would be drab in the more sordid light of day, gleam out 
 white with the strange purity of marble in this searching, 
 yet subjugating twilight. Swifts wheel aloft in the trans- 
 lucent sky, tracing their tireless emblems of spiritual hap- 
 piness; the blackbird haunts the hedges, and flocks of star- 
 lings make sudden palpitating wing-walls against the 
 sunlight; and there are strings of cattle trailing along the 
 roadside, with the sun on their flanks. Just such an even- 
 ing it is that seems to express in outward symbol all that 
 the human heart knows of hopes of happiness ; an evening 
 that makes of life a mystery of joy and sadness, almost un- 
 bearably beautiful; an evening to rise up on the wings of 
 memory in after years like a specter, and haunt the heart 
 to tears; an evening that seems already half immortal, as 
 pertaining to a beauty that cannot altogether die, and yet 
 tremulous with brief mortality that is the very essence of 
 its magic. 
 
 Does the Doctor divine the nature of this beauty that 
 invests the world as they drive home in it ? or Jane ? Jane 
 surely not, for her lips are full of Hunmouth doings ; of her
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 165 
 
 music and the new song that she bought at Gadd and 
 Danby's: "Love, I will love You alway," which is being 
 sung with enormous success by one known and six unknown 
 singers, and is published in five keys to suit all voices ; and 
 of Chaminade's " Les Sylvains," which she is to prepare for 
 her next lesson ; and of the summer sales in Hunmouth ; 
 and of a thousand trivialities that serve to animate her 
 countenance to beautiful fervor, as small twigs kindle flames 
 of rare consequence. She is as unconscious of her share 
 in the evening's magic as the wheat or the circling swifts, 
 but for the Doctor, sitting sideways the better to behold, and 
 receiving all her prattle into his indulgent smile, she is the 
 mouthpiece of nature's message: that human interpreter, 
 without which all inanimate beauty must be unintelligible. 
 
 SQ they drive home with the sun on their shoulders, and 
 disperse the ellipse of gilded gnats by the Doctor's main gate, 
 and neither the Doctor nor the girl can suspect that this 
 beauteous eve of mingling lights which nature extends to 
 them so bountifully, is as a goblet of fair wine in which the 
 secret hand of destiny has dropped its poison as they drove.
 
 XXII 
 
 IT is night. Jane has just gone to bed. The tingle of her 
 double kiss is still on the doctor's cheek as he returns 
 to the big one-time schoolroom (that is now a drawing- 
 room, to be completed one of these days on a scale of un- 
 paralleled grandeur when the Doctor's ship lands home) 
 where, during this past hour she had been filling its voids 
 with music of lip and finger. There, on the faded piano 
 desk, wrapped even now in the faint acridity of extinguished 
 candle, is " Love, I will love You alway," in E flat, that she 
 must have sung six times at least and not one too many for 
 the doctor's appreciation and a monthly rose on the broad, 
 old-fashioned fall of the piano where her own fingers laid it. 
 The Doctor, returning breezily into the room with a free 
 baritone transcription of " Love, I will love You alway," 
 between his lips, picks up the blossom in passing, and in- 
 hales its fragrance with a smile, as though it breathed Jane's 
 name. Barely has he laid down the flower when he turns 
 his head suddenly to an alert attitude of listening. What 
 was that? Somebody knocking? To the conviction of a 
 sound of knuckles somewhere, furtively applied, he passed 
 out into the hall. 
 
 No expectant face received the lamplight in blinking eyes 
 when he threw open the door, nor throat uttered its apolo- 
 getic scrape by way of insinuating identity; but as he stood 
 with the door-knob in his hand, gazing out into the starlight 
 night, he heard a course of footsteps winding their way over 
 the gravel round the house's front, and when these had 
 drawn at last into the magnified area of light cast through 
 
 166
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 167 
 
 the door, with his own gigantic shadow in the center of it, 
 he discerned the blind-eyed man. 
 
 The latter slouched towards the lamplit step without 
 speaking, the torn cloth cap lying inconsequently over his 
 untidy hair, with half the lining exposed, carrying his right 
 hand secretively in his left as though it were an article ill 
 come by. Not an object to inspire much profusion of kind- 
 ness in the heart of man, but the Doctor hailed his unpre- 
 possessing figure with the voice that makes no discrimination 
 in suffering, called him " my lad," and asked what brought 
 him, in tones that might dismiss all apprehensions for in- 
 trusion. To his question the man did not immediately 
 reply, but he drew so close to the door under the shadow of 
 the Doctor's chest that the latter could scent his smoke- 
 saturated clothes, with their hovering atmosphere of stale 
 beer; and he cast a keener look upon his visitor's face for 
 the signs of recent inebriation that might account for this 
 midnight call. The blind-eyed man spat to the side for 
 preface of speech, and parted his iron-gray mustache to right 
 and left with two quick movements of his knuckles. 
 
 " I'd like a few words with you, Doctor," he said, in a 
 voice so curiously low that the Doctor found hard to decide 
 whether it stood for menace or respect. 
 
 "With me?" he asked, scrutinizing his visitor more 
 closely. " You call at a queer time of night, my lad." 
 
 " It suits me if it suits you," said the blind-eyed man. 
 " All times are one to a man with the stars for his blanket. 
 Besides, I saw you were engaged, or I would have knocked 
 sooner. I've been waiting about this last hour or more. I 
 knew you wouldn't thank me to disturb your music." 
 
 The Doctor was already acquainted with the rough tones 
 of a voice from which adversity had rubbed all the surface- 
 polish, with injuring scratches here and there scarred down 
 into the very grain of speech, and he knew the persistent
 
 168 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 note of bitterness that characterized this unwilling wayfarer, 
 but for the first time he seemed to detect a sudden personal 
 edge to the man's discontent, as though he were now but 
 dallying with its blade, in the way that a butcher will try 
 the knife across his thumb before using its keenness against 
 a lamb's throat. 
 
 " Well," said he, " and what have you to say to me ? " 
 
 " Something that can be said as well indoors, perhaps," 
 the man replied in the same low voice, without direct in- 
 solence, and yet with a lurking note of assertiveness that 
 assorted ill with his rags, and lent a still more sinister aspect 
 to the blind eye. " I've no warm woollen next my skin, and 
 these blasted stars nip like bugs. There'll be frost before 
 morning." 
 
 The Doctor paused a moment with his gaze on the dirty 
 and unshaven visage that offered such an unpleasant resting- 
 place to the lamplight. Then he drew back from the door- 
 way. 
 
 " Come in/' said he. 
 
 The man obeyed the invitation with a slouching alacrity 
 that inferred he had had no doubts of its being tendered; 
 insinuating first one and then the other ragged leg into the 
 hall, and doffing the raggedness that surmounted his. hair. 
 All this he did with a curious mixture of defiance and 
 respect, as though he hated the craven motions of subservi- 
 ence in which his body, through long habituation, had come 
 to be a prisoner. 
 
 Something about his harder breathing, too, once within 
 the hall, seemed to hint at a disposition in fetters, a nature 
 writhing to cast off its artificial encumbrance of poverty and 
 assert its rights as man and equal ; but that the grotesque 
 disparity of his unkempt chin and odorous rags forbade it. 
 Instead, he gripped the torn cap in both hands, and let
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 169 
 
 the sound eye loose upon all the salient features of the hall 
 in one stealthy savage glance, as if he had popped a poaching 
 ferret down a rabbit-hole. The next moment he stood 
 within the surgery, his ragged outline blinking to steadfast 
 visibility by the door, under the kindling of the lamp. 
 
 " Now, my lad," said the Doctor, screwing up the wicks, 
 "what's on your mind?" Saying that, he closed the door 
 and took his way across to the fireplace, where, with hands 
 thrust encouragingly into his trouser's pockets, he awaited 
 the man's speech. 
 
 " I'm told there is a niece of yours living with you here," 
 the man began, after a moment's pause. " Her that was in 
 the gig with you this afternoon, and that was singing and 
 playing to you in the far room to-night. I'd like to know 
 her name." 
 
 Had the lamplight sunk two sudden degrees lower? Was 
 there a mist thickening in the room, as though, between the 
 Doctor and the blind-eyed man, the atmosphere had curdled ? 
 And was the air become, in one instant, insufferably hot? 
 If not, then what subtle poison was there distilled in the 
 man's speech to course like lightning through the Doctor's 
 veins? 
 
 " I fail to see," he said, in colder tones than he had used 
 to encourage his visitor's confidence, " what this subject has 
 to do with you." 
 
 " Perhaps you do," said the blind-eyed man. " But a 
 question's a question. I can answer my questions well 
 enough when the time comes. Is her name Jane Alston ? " 
 
 " And if it is ? " returned the Doctor. 
 
 " And if it is ? " echoed the blind-eyed man, whose very 
 rags began now to put on the semblance of a horrible 
 authority, and assert themselves like hostile and powerful 
 banners beneath the Doctor's gaze. " If it, is, then was her
 
 i;o THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 mother's name Hilda Brennan? and was her father's name 
 Julian Alston ? These are three questions for you and, by 
 God, your face answers them ! " 
 
 In truth, the Doctor had turned very white, and needed 
 no words to tell him of the change. Here was the blow 
 fallen at last, that all these years he had dreaded, and yet 
 derided too, with the maturer reason that refuses to wear the 
 fetters of instinctive fear. This was the thing that over- 
 shadowed so many of his hours in the past ; the specter that 
 he had raised on innumerable evenings out of his pipe, to 
 combat and overthrow, under a hundred guises, and in a 
 hundred circumstances but never once like this, in this 
 guise and in this room. In the silence that succeeded the 
 blow he heard the lethargic tick-tacking of the hall clock, 
 grotesquely dispassionate and unmoved in its motion towards 
 this recent quickening of the pulses of time; and beyond 
 its measured echoes he seemed to discern, with a sudden 
 minuteness of hearing, the spacious stillness that lay about 
 the upper regions of the house, on landing, and by bedroom 
 doors. 
 
 "Who are you?" he asked, though his heart and all his 
 fibers sounded the name. " Julian Alston ? " 
 
 " What is left of him," said the man with the blind eye. 
 
 The Doctor faced him in silence; behind those steady 
 eyes all his thoughts were circling about him in commotion 
 like pigeons at a gunshot. This was Julian Alston ! This 
 ragged sediment of humanity, whose very speech was be- 
 ginning to incorporate with the depravity of his life and 
 surroundings, so that it only now revealed through occa- 
 sional loopholes of accent or asjjirate the ruined vestiges of 
 the gentleman; this inciter of repulsions and repugnances 
 was the once proud unscrupulous being who had dealt the 
 Doctor his life's blow. Here, reduced to the formula of 
 misery and wretchedness, was the breaker of Hilda Bren-
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 171 
 
 nan's heart, the father of Jane, the father of that other in- 
 fant mortal whose lips made savage music at the gypsy 
 woman's breast. Had these two men come together years 
 ago, heaven knows what conduct might have been kindled 
 by hatred and hot blood. But Jane's soft lips had sucked 
 all the poison out of that old wound, and the personal part 
 of their quarrel seemed altogether expressed from the Doc- 
 tor's heart. He was no longer facing a foe on the sward of 
 an old feud ; he was defending that dearer life than his own 
 against the new evil lurking infectively beneath these rags. 
 Often and often in the years ago he had speculated on the 
 semblance of his injurer; had wondered in hours of bitter- 
 ness and anger what fashion of man had cast him forth 
 from Hilda Brennan's heart. Now, with this mortal residue 
 in front of him, his curiosity seemed strangely lulled. He 
 asked no questions of the past ; drew no comparisons that 
 were not forced upon him by the sheer exigences of sight 
 and the senses. All his thoughts were for the present and 
 the future ; not his own personal future, but the future that 
 pertained to Jane and her happiness. What obligation in 
 wisdom was entailed on him now by the apparition of this 
 sinister being? How must he manipulate this miserable 
 circumstance for the girl's best interests? 
 
 " Well," said he at last, in a voice that departed further 
 and further from the reassuring tones of kindliness with 
 which he had hailed his unprepossessing visitor as " my 
 lad," and grew hard and more tense ; " and what do you 
 want with me ? " 
 
 "Want?" exclaimed Alston, holding out the ragged cap 
 and the spread fingers of his unclean left hand that was, 
 withal, so dishonestly white beneath its dirt. " Come ! 
 That's a sanguinary cool thing to say to a man whose 
 daughter's sleeping under this very roof. Look at these 
 slops ! " he cried, with a sudden note of passion that blazes
 
 172 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 like straw in the bosom of the unclassed, ". . . and this 
 head-rag that I took from a scarecrow in the wolds; and 
 this coat that's as rotten as grass; and these beggar's boots 
 that suck up water like a squirt; and at this blasted eye 
 and ask yourself if there's anything in the God's world I 
 don't want. I've been mucking out pigs most of the day 
 treading up to my ankles in wet filth. Damn it, you must 
 smell me if you've half a nose. And eating broken victuals 
 off a cracked plate like a dog; and handing the damned 
 plate back with a ' thank you ' when I felt more like break- 
 ing it over the slut's head. And yet you've the face to ask 
 me what I want. I want what I can get the same as 
 everybody else in this world. I want my rights, and if I 
 can't get my rights I want the next best thing to them. I 
 want Something; that's what I want. I've had nothing 
 quite long enough. Now I'm ready for a change." 
 
 The Doctor shifted his posture against the mantelpiece. 
 
 " And what are your rights ? " he inquired. 
 
 " The rights of a father," said Julian Alston, with blinking 
 effrontery. 
 
 " Which," said the Doctor, " you have long ago for- 
 feited." 
 
 " Forfeited? By thunder, no. I've forfeited everything 
 that law and injustice could strip me of. I've forfeited 
 position. I've forfeited wealth and character, and I've for- 
 feited this blasted eye to jealousy. But a man can't forfeit 
 the name of father. Jane Alston's father I was, and Jane 
 Alston's father I am. She's sleeping upstairs betwixt linen 
 sheets, as likely as not, with her nose on a soft pillow, and 
 comfortable dreams. I'm standing down here with a blind 
 eye and broken victuals in my inside, but that doesn't alter 
 matters or make any forfeits. She's my own daughter, and 
 I'm proud of her, as any father might be."
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 173 
 
 " And how many years is it," asked the Doctor, " since 
 you took your father's rights seriously, and offered your 
 wife and child a home? Come. Count them. You'll need 
 both your hands." 
 
 " Not," retorted the blind-eyed man, " since my wife 
 deserted me in the time of trouble when most women 
 would have stood by a man and shown their grit." 
 
 " When you were in prison," the Doctor reminded him, 
 " and left her to face the shame and consequences." 
 
 " Yes, if you like it better. When I was in prison," re- 
 peated Julian Alston, fastening on the word with sudden 
 ferocity, as if it had been sentient flesh and blood, and 
 biting it hungrily. " Where they would never have had me 
 but for her. You stand and look at me like a judge. But 
 let me tell you there are as good men in prison as ever kept 
 out of it. What is forgery but a lie in ink and how many 
 thousand so-called honest men are there who earn their 
 daily bread by the sweat of hard lying? You pick your 
 criminals as a farmer's wife picks fowls for market and 
 not always the fattest but all the world's of the same 
 feather." He broke off with a hoarse gust of breath that 
 was the divested threadbare overcoat of a laugh. " I 
 had three years in the Jungle," he said, resuming speech in 
 the sourer tones for admission unfired by defensive wrath, 
 " and when I came out I'd neither wife nor child to meet 
 me. You'll say I ought to have looked for them, perhaps, 
 with your damned judicial eyes. I did. But I'd a living to 
 look for first, and while I was looking for that I got this " 
 he struck the blind eye indicatively with the twisted cap 
 " and that was the end of me. By thunder," he cried 
 fiercely, " if you want to know what sort of real stuff this 
 world is made of, try it with a blind eye." A kind of 
 passionate spasm seamed his features at this, with the sud-
 
 174 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 den remembrance of countless wrongs. " You might as 
 well live in hell. But for the woman lying over yonder I 
 could have starved six times over." 
 
 " And with the woman lying over yonder," the Doctor 
 took up, forcing his words through a firmer compression of 
 lip, " you come to my house to declare yourself Jane Alston's 
 father?" 
 
 "Why not?" protested the blind-eyed man. "It's the 
 truth. Neither you nor Jane Alston can alter that, any 
 more than you can change this eye." It was rare that he 
 referred to his sightless organ without some hissing exple- 
 tive, some blasphemy to thrust against it and throw its 
 disfigurement into lurid relief. He snatched a brief glance 
 round the surgery, and blew a gust of breath through the 
 straggling hairs of his mustache, as though he were taking 
 respite after a long run. " To think," he cried, " that all the 
 years I've been tramping the roads and breaking stones for 
 my night's shelter she's been housed here like a lady, snug 
 as snug. Why, I've not seen her since she sat as a child on 
 this knee, until she drove by with you this afternoon, and 
 neither of you so much as looked at me. But I knew her at 
 once as though any man that had ever known her mother 
 could mistake her and for a while I was struck dumb. 
 ' By thunder, it's my wife,' I said, and it was only when I 
 reckoned up the years that I knew it couldn't be. So I 
 asked the farmer over there whether it would be your 
 daughter with you in the trap, and he said ' Niece or some- 
 thing.' ' What's her name ? ' said I. He couldn't remember 
 it all, but he got near enough for my purpose. ' Is her 
 mother living with her too ? ' I asked him, and he told me 
 she was dead. It was the first time I'd known for a fact, 
 though I'd often suspected it." 
 
 " Did you " The Doctor hesitated with a tremor of
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 175 
 
 misgiving on the brink of the question. " Did you say 
 anything else to the man?" 
 
 " Not a word." 
 
 " Does he guess that you have the remotest interest in the 
 girl or her mother ? " 
 
 " And suppose he does ? Let's say for argument that he 
 does. What then? Is there any law to stop a man from 
 speaking the truth about his own kith and kin ? " 
 
 " Certainly not. If you have told him, it is out of your 
 hands and mine. In that case " 
 
 "Well?" prompted Alston. 
 
 " There is nothing more that need concern you. I will 
 let you out at once." 
 
 " And suppose that he knows nothing ; and that nothing 
 has been said up to the present." He had nearly over- 
 looked the last suggestive qualification, but he recollected it 
 in time, and cast it menacefully into the sentence. " What 
 then?" 
 
 " Then," said the Doctor, " I will ask you to let me know 
 your particular purpose in coming at midnight to tell me 
 this." 
 
 " Purpose ! " cried Alston, seizing hold of the word with a 
 sort of rage, as though its value, at this juncture, disap- 
 pointed him. " Is a man's own daughter not purpose 
 enough? Do you want any better purpose than that? 
 Who are you, I'd like to know, to get hold of my daughter 
 and keep her in silk and satin while I'm tramping down 
 the dust in other people's boots. How did you come by 
 her? Where's your title to her? for you never got it from 
 me. The farmer over yonder says you mean marrying her 
 as soon as she's ripe enough. Marry her and welcome, but 
 remember she has a father to consider." 
 
 A slow flush crept over the Doctor's face, suffused him up
 
 176 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 to the temples and then died suddenly out, leaving his 
 countenance paler by the comparison. Twice he resisted 
 the impulse to declare his investiture as guardian of the 
 girl by the dead woman, and his relation to Hilda Brennan 
 and the disfigured man. A third time the impulse came 
 upon him, and this third time he gave it the passage of his 
 lips. 
 
 " When you married Hilda Brennan," he said quietly, 
 " you took the place that should have belonged to me. I 
 owe you many bitter memories and years." 
 
 " What ! " cried Alston, with a sudden change of counte- 
 nance in which chagrin seemed to vie with curiosity. " You 
 don't mean to say " 
 
 " And on her deathbed," the Doctor continued, " your wife 
 wrote confiding her daughter to me." 
 
 " By God ! it was like her," commented the blind-eyed 
 man. " She thought a damned sight more of you, though 
 I never knew your name, than she did of me at any time." 
 
 " So much," the Doctor added, " for my right and title. 
 During these six years I think I can say, without hypocrisy, 
 that I have kept the trust. All this time I have lived with 
 only one thought towards Jane, and that thought has been 
 her welfare. And her welfare stands with me to-day before 
 self and every other consideration in the world. Do you 
 follow me ? " 
 
 " Follow you ! " repeated Alston, with scorn. " I'm ahead 
 of you. I know what we're coming to. Out with it, quick, 
 for I've something to say as well as you." 
 
 " So far as Jane is concerned," the Doctor explained, " you 
 have no existence. Even your name means nothing to her, 
 except as the sole memory of a father who died almost as 
 soon as she was born." 
 
 " As he would have died," broke out the blind-eyed man, 
 " if some people could have had their way."
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 177 
 
 " And so far as I can prevent it," said the Doctor, " she 
 shall never know otherwise. That is to say, until she is 
 safely past the age when such knowledge might do mischief 
 to her happiness in life." 
 
 " So that's your view of things, is it? " commented Alston, 
 turning the cap round and round in his wrathful fingers like 
 a grinder's wheel. " I'm to be cut off from my flesh and 
 blood so that my own daughter can tilt her nose up in your 
 blasted gig and drive about like a lady, while her father's 
 drawing in the holes of his belt over an empty belly, and 
 tramping a score of miles between meal and meal. Where's 
 the justice in that? I helped to make her; I've more right 
 to her than you or anybody else in this hungry world. She 
 shows my blood in her cheeks, and it's my marrow that 
 stiffens her proud back-bone. Do you think, now I've found 
 her, that I'll yoke the donkey and leave the two of you to 
 your driving and singing and playing, with the secret stuck 
 between my teeth to chew when I'm hungry? By God! no, 
 not without a reason." 
 
 " Well," said the Doctor, calmly ; " let's come to that in 
 turn. Give me your reason." 
 
 The blind-eyed man began to revolve his cap under the 
 manipulation of his dirty fingers, with a horrible effort to 
 adjust his crucial reason to the Doctor's temper. Cupidity 
 and prudence were at war on his countenance in a hundred 
 grotesque engagements, so that his lips were ever on the 
 point of opening, and yet remained shut. The Doctor, 
 knowing the enervating use of silence in such a contest, 
 leaned against the mantelpiece with an assumption of in- 
 difference that he was far from feeling. 
 
 " By God ! " exclaimed Alston, stopping the hat's revolu- 
 tion at last, with a sudden seizure of it in both hands ; " but 
 it's a big business this. To ask a man to give up such a 
 daughter as mine, just when she's at a valuable age ! I'd
 
 178 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 like to cram her down the farmer's throat next time he 
 sends me into his stinking styes, and get some of my own 
 back for all his broken victuals. I can't think things out," 
 he said to the Doctor. " And that lamp's in my eye. 
 Come; make me an offer." 
 
 It was curious, and terrible too, to witness the effect that 
 this neighboring prospect of money had upon him. Lacking 
 it, he had fought the Doctor as he might have fought fate, 
 without compromise or conciliation ; dealing rude blows, and 
 never pausing to consider whether they were best withheld, 
 or whether they might breed a worse rebuff. Then he 
 seemed armed with a certain debased independence; per- 
 verse as to its logic, but still a weapon. Now, with the 
 gleam of money in his eyes like a ray of sunshine, the fight 
 died out of him all at once as from a blinded gladiator. 
 Under lucre the tramp came uppermost, this craven para- 
 sitical growth grafted on his truncated manhood. 
 
 " Come. God knows I don't want to be hard on anybody. 
 I've been through trouble myself if any man has. But damn 
 it, think. You've got a heart of your own, for all you look 
 at me as if I was muck. She's my own daughter." 
 
 The Doctor moved from his position against the mantel- 
 piece, and the motion, coming after silence, struck the blind- 
 eyed man as ominous. 
 
 " Look here," he interrupted hurriedly ; " I'll tell you what 
 I'll do. Five hundred pounds she's yours at that. You 
 shall have my name to it. Let's have pen and paper." 
 
 The Doctor drew his heels to the level of the fender's 
 curb and let them down with a decisive click. 
 
 " It is absurd," he said. 
 
 The accusation set fire again to the ragged man's un- 
 disciplined passion. 
 
 "Absurd?" cried he. "But I'll show you if it's absurd.
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 179 
 
 That's my price. I've given nearly as much for a pair of 
 horses. Do you think I'll sell a daughter for less?" 
 
 " That may be your price," said the Doctor firmly, " but it 
 is not mine." 
 
 " Four hundred then," substituted the blind-eyed man. 
 " One hundred down and the rest in six months. If I take 
 less, may this tongue choke me ! " 
 
 At each proposal his face flashed with a degenerated 
 emotion as though all the blood in his body had coursed up 
 through the swollen veins in his neck. 
 
 " Listen to me," said the Doctor, without replying to this 
 last exaction. " You neither know the value of the sums 
 you mention, nor what it is that you are asking this money 
 for. I am not buying your silence for a crime. You have 
 no benefits to sell me. The utmost that lies in your power 
 to do is to go and tell Sunfleet people that Jane Alston is 
 your daughter. Well, for the opinion of Sunfleet people I 
 do not care that." He brought his hand from his pocket 
 to snap the thumb and finger as an easy illustration of 
 indifference for the blind-eyed man, and replaced it among 
 his keys and silver. " Do you see ? Some day, when Jane 
 has more experience to sustain her, she shall certainly know 
 the truth. But for the present, and only for the present, I 
 want that truth kept from her. Now, during the last 
 few years I have had this particular contingency in my mind, 
 and I have been living to a large extent prepared for it. If 
 you think I have no alternative but to purchase your silence 
 at an exorbitant figure you think wrong. But there are 
 other considerations involved. You say you are Julian 
 Alston, and I have not the slightest reason to doubt you. 
 You are, whatever one may say or think, Jane Alston's own 
 father, and I cannot refuse to give you some special con- 
 sideration on that ground. You have never really known
 
 i8o THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 your daughter, you have never sheltered her, or lent her 
 the least care. In this sense, viewing the life you have led 
 and are leading, it would be a mockery for you to claim any 
 need of her, or loss of her. But as her father you have cer- 
 tainly the right to use her name, if you feel so disposed, and 
 declare her your daughter. Nobody can prevent you. 
 Therefore, if for any reason you are asked to exercise 
 strict silence on this one point, at least for a while, it seems 
 reasonable that such silence should have some recompense. 
 On the other hand, I must remind you, though I don't think 
 the reminder will be needed, that you have no longer any 
 legal rights of parentage over your daughter. You have no 
 home to offer her; your conduct makes you absolutely un- 
 fit for guardianship. Even if you could produce the means 
 for her support and care, the law would never sanction 
 any disturbance of the existing relations between Jane and 
 myself. In other words, your only right is the right to 
 reflect shame upon her by declaring yourself her father. 
 That is what you understand, and what you really mean 
 when you come to me by night. Now, I am going to make 
 a proposal, and I should advise you strongly to accept it. 
 It is this ; I am going to offer you the sum of one hundred 
 pounds." 
 
 " No ! " cried Julian Alston, who had been listening to 
 the Doctor's words with constant expressions of resentment 
 and rage, spitting out his expletives and twisting the cap 
 as though he were trying to strangle his own wrath. " I 
 won't take it. My pride's worth more than that." 
 
 " A hundred pounds," the Doctor said again, " payable 
 by installments of five pounds a month." 
 
 " Installments ! " repeated the blind-eyed man. " Do you 
 think the father of a girl like mine will take your rotten 
 poor-law relief? Just because of this eye," and he lashed at
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 181 
 
 it with his cap, " you think he'll thank you for anything you 
 may throw at him. But, by thunder ! " he flung out the 
 words as though they were the preface to a deeper threat. 
 ". . . And how much down ? " he asked. 
 
 " Not a penny until you are clear of this place. The less 
 you carry in your pocket the better it will be for you, and 
 for us all. For understand, should the slightest whisper of 
 what is known only to us two get abroad, your payments 
 cease at once." 
 
 " Not a penny ? " said Julian Alston. " Come, a five- 
 pound note," he urged, in his vagrant's tone of cajolery. 
 " You'll never miss it, and God knows it will bless me 
 with the woman over yonder to think of. Look at this 
 coat," he cried. He took hold of the worn fabric of his 
 left sleeve with the fingers of the right hand and rolled it 
 between them, as though to demonstrate by this action the 
 rottenness of the texture. " You're a doctor, and you 
 should know. Is this the sort of coat to keep a man dry, 
 or turn a north-east wind from his bones, with nothing but 
 a waistcoat and a cotton shirt against his skin ? " He read 
 unshaken purpose in the Doctor's face and said : " Three 
 pounds two pounds. Damn it ! half-a-crown to cheer the 
 heart in my hand. It's never held anything bigger than a 
 shilling this last six weeks." Still the Doctor's brow re- 
 corded the same decree. " By thunder ! " he snarled, smit- 
 ing the cap across his outstretched left hand ; " I've a good 
 mind to say five hundred again, take it or leave it, and 
 keep my word." 
 
 " As soon as you are fifty miles away from Sunfleet," the 
 Doctor took up, without any reference to this last outburst, 
 " you can write me your address, and I will send you at once 
 a remittance for five pounds. From that time, provided 
 you never come any nearer Sunfleet, and nothing of all this
 
 182 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 transpires here, you will receive your five pounds regularly 
 on the first of each month to such address as you may give 
 me. Is that clear to you ? " 
 
 Judging by Julian Alston's answer the meaning was 
 perfectly clear. 
 
 " One word more," said the Doctor. " I don't need to be 
 told that you have an enemy in drink. That is why I decline 
 to contribute a single penny towards your weakness so long 
 as you stay in Sunfleet. You and I are the only people in 
 the world through whom certain facts can leak out. Should 
 they leak out in any way to reach my ears, then your remit- 
 tances will cease without further notice. In that case you 
 can follow your own bent. On the other hand, should there 
 be no question of this, and should you show the slightest 
 disposition to use this money well, and try and reclaim your- 
 self before it is too late, then I might be willing to help you 
 still further for Jane's sake. But that depends entirely on 
 yourself." 
 
 The dawn was creeping over the gray sky, and the cocks 
 were crowing from a dozen perches when this strange inter- 
 view came to a close, and admonishing his visitor to caution, 
 the Doctor let Jane Alston's father slide out into the morn- 
 ing. It was characteristic of the blind-eyed man that he 
 quitted the house as though he bore it a grudge, and spat on 
 to the gravel, once beyond the door, with all the venom for 
 a curse. Through the bars of perversity that degradation 
 had checkered across his outlook, darkening his mind and 
 casting shadows over every thought within, he viewed these 
 hundred pounds as a wounded fox might view the fangs of 
 a trap in which its bleeding paws had once been imprisoned. 
 The silence imposed upon him by the compact seemed to his 
 morose imagination like a padlock riveted on his jaw; and 
 as he slunk homeward, with his arms nipped together, and
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 183 
 
 each hand thrust in the opening of its fellow's sleeve for 
 warmth against the shivering chillness of dawn, he picked 
 over the interview with all the rogue's dishonesty to see if 
 it might not yield some hidden point of value overlooked.
 
 XXIII 
 
 A FORTNIGHT has slipped by. The blind-eyed man 
 and the gypsy woman, and the child and the boy and 
 the yellow kitten are things of the past. The hens scratch 
 in the straw where the queen-mother bore her son ; there 
 are some rags blowing here and there, gathering feathers 
 and mushroom peelings as they roll, that once helped to 
 make these by-gone wanderers a shelter; and there is a 
 charred circle with a gray core of ash bitten into the grass 
 before the cart-shed, where their fire burned, but that is 
 all. No perambulators litter Pridgeon's gate, and Sunfleet 
 children no longer hang upon his fence-rails to mark the 
 doings of the strange folk within the charmed inclosure; old 
 Stebbing finds no socks or knitted bonnets to pick up and 
 offer at various Sunfleet doors on his way home ; and moth- 
 ers, distracted by clamorous progeny, begin to forget the once 
 effective formula, " Hush, or I'll gan straightaways and fetch 
 Blindy to you, and bid him bring yon bag." For the harvest 
 is coming to its height, and at such a time in Sunfleet, even 
 gypsies are forgotten. 
 
 And Jane is away too, and it is not quite known when she 
 will come back. On the very day succeeding the Doctor's 
 midnight interview with the blind-eyed man, there came a 
 letter from Bertha, inviting her into Surrey ; and the Doctor 
 saw the extended hand of providence, and shook it with a 
 fervor that astonished Jane, so that she asked him : " Are 
 you anxious to be rid of me, Numphy ? " They were at the 
 breakfast-table at the time, and Jane stroked the crumbs 
 engagingly on the cloth by her side with the cushions of her 
 
 184
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 185 
 
 supple fingers, and the smallest motion of wrist, in the way 
 she had ; and her blue eyes sparkled like porcelain, and 
 the Doctor nipped his leg fiercely under the table and told 
 her these falsehoods. " I would like to see more roses in 
 your cheek, Jane " though heaven knows he never loved 
 high color in woman. " For some time I have noticed how 
 pale you look. Get away at once. The change will do you 
 good." And Jane said, What was she to go in? She had 
 not a single frock that Bertha had never seen ; and only four 
 hats and a best one for Sundays. But she made these do in 
 the end, and the groom brought round the Raleigh, with an 
 extra somersault glinting in the spokes; and Jane's trunk 
 was slid solemnly under the seat to the Doctor's diseased 
 imagination like a coffin; and Jane and the Doctor drove 
 away to Peterwick with the groom behind them, on the 
 brightest day imaginable ; and at Peterwick a hateful train 
 gushed into the station, full of breathing and volubility like 
 a dowager late for dinner, claiming Jane's attention as 
 though it were a right ; and Jarge Stebbing beat frenzy into 
 the blue sky with his brass bell ; and knocked Jane's trunk 
 out of time at the first round, and into the guard's van at the 
 second, with two scratches in the leather; and the guard 
 blew a horrid melancholy whistle, that choked itself over a 
 pea in the end ; and the waving hand and handkerchief 
 that constituted the last vestiges of Jane were drawn away 
 from the Doctor by the relentless forces of steam; and the 
 red guard's van shrunk down to the size of the ace of hearts ; 
 and the gates clashed across the heat-palpitating lines; and 
 the Doctor took off his straw hat and passed a handkerchief 
 over his forehead for the day was damnably hot ; and the 
 stationmaster put on his special first-class smile and said : 
 " Now this is grand weather, Doctor," and the Doctor an- 
 swered : " I think we shall have a storm." For to him it 
 looked like it. Possibly two. He drove back again to
 
 186 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 Sunfleet with a heart as heavy as Jane's trunk, but yet 
 lightened with an inexpressible sense of relief and triumph 
 too, to think that now Jane was safely out of the zone of 
 danger, where there could be no fear of any chance en- 
 counter with the blind-eyed man, or contact, unprepared, 
 with some horrid leakage of the truth. For with such a 
 cracked receptacle of secrecy as Julian Alston, there was 
 always the dread that not even gold could seal the fissure 
 in his honesty, and that the facts might escape from him in 
 surreptitious morbid tricklings of pride. Each day, there- 
 fore, the Doctor paid his visit to the gypsy woman; not for 
 her actual necessities, or the enhancement of his charitable 
 name, but for the opportunity of tightening the moral tourni- 
 quet upon Julian Alston's silence ; hating himself every time 
 he did so, for the need of diplomacy in such a quarter. Not 
 until the donkey's plodding feet were patterned along the 
 Sunfleet dust towards Peterwick, threaded like precise 
 stitches between the wobbling pleats of the cart-wheels, did 
 he draw his breath. The third day following the blind-eyed 
 man's departure brought the looked-for envelope; wonder- 
 fully dirty, as might be expected. The inscription, de- 
 spite a certain cursiveness of hand, consorted in its de- 
 generacy with all else pertaining to Julian Alston, as though 
 he were even forgetting the honest manipulation of the pen. 
 On a curt quarter-sheet of note-paper he gave the address, 
 without the slightest further word of reference to their un- 
 derstanding, and the Doctor drove the same afternoon to 
 Dimmlesea and consigned by post the first installment of 
 this salary of silence. He dropped it into the yawning 
 mouth of the postbox, as though he were administering a 
 sleeping draft to destiny, and a sort of calm seemed to ensue 
 on a sudden. It might veritably have been that destiny was 
 beginning to experience the effect of this opiate. Now the
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 187 
 
 Doctor could dedicate his thoughts more tranquilly to Jane ; 
 could sip Jane's coming through the long keen straws of 
 anticipation, like a cool summer drink. But Jane is not so 
 easy to re-absorb. She writes that she has been pressed to 
 stay still another fortnight. She wants to bring back some 
 real rosy cheeks with her when she does come. She knows 
 Numphy will spare her for that. Yes, Numphy will spare 
 her for that. He writes her a cheery letter, and then settles 
 down to the splendid misery of missing her. 
 
 And heavens, how splendidly he misses her! The silent 
 yellow keys of the old piano slumber over their past like 
 gravestones in a crowded churchyard, sealing memories. He 
 touches them now and again with a pious finger, and lo ! a 
 ghost rises up quivering, and seeks the ceiling, so that he 
 shrinks, and lets down the lid. Who would believe that, 
 amid these seeming sepulchers of departed melody, the girl's 
 fingers have threaded their lightsome way, and that these 
 are not tombstones, but faded mosaics in the vestibule of 
 music? It is incredible the difference in this house by night 
 when, after dinner, her voice has been wont to fill its spaces 
 with living song, so that never did Dendy kindle pipe and 
 digest his meals more melodiously. Everything talks of her ; 
 every scent recalls her ; every sky is blue with her. Wherever 
 the Doctor drives he passes through nature's symbols for 
 Jane. On the wafted chirrup of reapers she is borne to him. 
 When the great ink-clouds roll up over the Hun, and the 
 closeness of the atmosphere becomes almost corporeal, like a 
 hot face ; and drops of warm rain slide down it to earth, as 
 though they were trickles of sweat ; and the elemental giant 
 mutters threats of thunder in his sullen throat over Sunfleet 
 Jane is there too. Often have she and the Doctor joined 
 hands and made a laughing dash for home beneath such 
 skies, while the storm, like a drunken Irishman outside the
 
 188 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 Sunfleet inn, rocks in his boots and growls formidable inde- 
 cision whether he shall be thunderously drunker still, or 
 pass on. 
 
 Absence serves as a primer to the heart. Through it we 
 often learn our alphabet for the reading of those subtler 
 emotions in the crowded small print of life. The big black 
 capitals of loneliness, those spacious A's and B's and C's of 
 solitude that the heart pores over in its deserted hours, lead 
 to the deeper lections of self-knowledge; with their deeper 
 wisdom, if perchance not deeper comfort and in these days 
 the Sunfleet Doctor becomes a close abecedarian; is ever 
 poring over the big book of the Bosom. 
 
 Jane is not a great correspondent, though heaven knows, a 
 very dear one. She is just beginning to write with a J pen 
 on the same principle that impels boyhood to twopenny 
 cigars and makes her characters very large and reckless, as 
 though they were club-room men, all leg, sprawling in lounge 
 chairs; and she takes three dips for her name, and the 
 Doctor can always tell when she signs this, for it makes the 
 sound of a skating rink, and he laughs aloud to hear her, and 
 says : " Do it again, Jane, and don't forget the tongue." 
 Which makes Jane somewhat dignified when this occurs 
 twice at one sitting. Chiefly she sends him picture post- 
 cards, bearing the briefest of communications, mostly in the 
 interrogative. " How do you like this church ? " " Does 
 this place remind you of Peterwick ? " " Am having a splen- 
 did time. Heaps of love." Regarded as intelligence, or as 
 pictures, such cards are wretched. Viewed as emanations of 
 Jane, they are delightful. If he reads them once, he reads 
 them a dozen times. Nay, a hundred times. They are as 
 brief as kisses, and yet, somehow, as lasting ; kisses delivered 
 with an impulsive bump, in frantic haste ; clutched at and 
 gone for if life drags here in Sunfleet with the Doctor, it 
 Mies breakneck with Jane. She is always in a hurry; just
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 189 
 
 going somewhere, or just back from somewhere. Somebody 
 has just arrived. Bertha has just called her. But she says 
 she is frightfully happy, and there is nothing to show she 
 would rather be in Sunfleet. Nay. So happy that there 
 comes a second letter which the Doctor opens with trepida- 
 tion for the worst. Yes. She and Bertha have been invited 
 down to Folkestone, to stay with Bertha's Aunt Mary. 
 
 " Lors, sir ! " exclaims Hester, when the Doctor breaks the 
 intelligence. " Do you think Miss Jane's ever coming 
 back?" 
 
 Anne takes the announcement in a darker mood, for she 
 has been secretly promising herself Jane's return at the end 
 of this week. 
 
 " Some day," she tells the Doctor ominously, " she'll be 
 stopping away for good, so I suppose we'd best get used to 
 it. Do you think she means to bide single all her days and 
 live i' Sunfleet. Not natural. We shall be hearing some- 
 thing yet." 
 
 He laughs : " Do you think so, Anne ? " But almost 
 before she is gone his face flushes and then grows white, 
 and the laugh without transition sinks its lines deep into 
 his countenance and assumes almost the bitten intensity for 
 pain. 
 
 For the Sunfleet doctor is no longer the thing he seems. 
 Make a bonfire of these pretentious documents of duty ; burn 
 all these pious forgeries of guardianship to ash. Strip him 
 of the saintly disinterested robes he has been wearing in the 
 past; those righteous vestments of parental care. From 
 henceforth he has no right to them. He is not any more a 
 parent. The blue-eyed daughter of Hilda Brennan, who 
 crept into this room six years ago, to spill her tears uncom- 
 forted before the closed doors of his embittered heart has 
 heaped on his head a fine revenge. He loves her. 
 
 That second spotted missive from the blind-eyed man,
 
 190 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 sinister, unhealthy, causes him no tremor. He disengages 
 the curt address, and consigns the second fee for silence. 
 The blind-eyed man, indeed, becomes in some sort an in- 
 centive to the nobler parts of love ; a spur to championship 
 and chivalry; a purge to those impurer elements of worldly 
 interest that choke so many passions. For, to the Doctor, 
 Jane is only made more dear by such a shadow threatening 
 her; his defensive love dissevers her from every mortal tie 
 or ligament, so that in their supreme detachment she is 
 become divine. Nothing, he feels, can add to; nothing 
 detract from her intrinsic worth. She is Jane. Just Jane 
 and so much Jane unbounded by everything but the 
 stars; herself one of them, one of the sisterhood of pale 
 celestial singers who stand before the curtain of the night 
 with scrolls in their lily-white hands, and fill life's void with 
 music.
 
 XXIV 
 
 SEPTEMBER, like a dusky queen, draws round her 
 shoulders the rare-wrought mantle of changing leaf, 
 whose every fold diffuses the scent of sweet decay; sighs 
 with a warm breath of ripening apples and turns upon 
 her heel. The harvest is all but over. Belated wagons may 
 be met, creaking homeward beneath brown loads of peas ; and 
 there are stooks of somber beans still standing, starred with 
 the downy heads of bonded swine thistle. But all the grain 
 is gathered, and pallid carpets of ribbed stubble spread away 
 in each direction to the horizon, where, afar, they gleam with 
 a chalky whiteness, showing the sun's shadows on them 
 like the traceries of some fine pencil. Great yellow pikes 
 ripen on their steddles in every stackgarth, while already the 
 thatcher rears his form into the gray-blue sky at the end of 
 a thirty-spell stee, with sacking round his knees to defend 
 him from the stabbing stalks, and weaves industrious webs 
 of thatch against the wind and rain. There comes a deeper 
 throb into the air, that is not of the reaper; a looser pulse 
 that beats from dawn till dusk, and the sooty haze lingering 
 over distant farmsteads denotes that the threshing has be- 
 gun. 
 
 The roadways show the great diagonal treads of the 
 traction-engine's wheels, on either side of the track of scat- 
 tered cinders that mark the monster's passage. Gates that 
 were the object of a pious care some days ago, are left with 
 drunken recklessness ajar, and will not close again until the 
 plow has polished his share in the stubble, and the drill 
 and harrow have consecrated these slumbering acres to an- 
 
 191
 
 192 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 other year of service. There is talk of harvest festivals and 
 Hunmouth Fair. And Jane comes home at last, bringing 
 Bertha with her for Bertha is to stay at the vicarage now 
 until Christmas, and keep her uncle Horace company and 
 Berkeley is to follow before long, on purpose to preach the 
 special harvest sermon; and the Doctor meets both girls in 
 Hunmouth, as he happens to have business there that day 
 (which is not true), and from Peterwick they drive home in 
 a soft October mist; and life seems to kindle on a sudden 
 at the sight of Jane, as a smoldering taper leaps into light 
 at the first kiss of flame. 
 
 A taller Jane. More beautiful; dearer, even, than he had 
 dreamed; a thousand times more to be desired and dreaded. 
 All this sojourn in the south, this mingling with the kinsfolk 
 of the mighty, seems to be incorporated in her very essence. 
 Her beauty, realized, dismays him. His heart flags under 
 this opulence of charm, like a fire too generously replenished 
 all at once. Over her unaffected freedom seems spread a 
 subtle quality, like a fine net, that makes as though to gather 
 every movement of her body into the invisible meshes of the 
 unattainable. Her very laughter, when her dear face is held 
 so friendly close to his, and the blue eyes thrill like stars 
 causes the flesh of aspiration to creep; sends a fine shiver 
 over his hopes. The music of this symphony of graces, he 
 feels and fears, is not for him. 
 
 And yet, how dear and how unchanged she is to him. 
 Beneath this atmospheric isolating beauty, in which seem to 
 lurk a myriad chill currents for quelling hope, her being 
 appears to be fed from the warmest springs of memory and 
 feeling. She flies back to the old home like a bird delayed 
 to its nest, has a thousand questions to anticipate her own 
 arrival. The train cannot steam too quickly for her; the 
 brown mare cannot pound the road too vehemently with her
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 193 
 
 ringing bright shoes. And when at last they reach the red- 
 brick house, and the groom drives Bertha forward through 
 the dusk to the vicarage, and Jane and the Doctor enter the 
 old familiar hall, she turns upon him with the swift smile 
 that is twin-sister to tears, and says : " After all ... 
 it's a dear old place, Numphy." 
 
 She has the true woman's eye, that travel and lapse of 
 time only make into a preciser instrument for remembering 
 familiar things, and detecting the subtlest element of change 
 in them. She notes at once the new darn in the stair-carpet 
 that she had long anticipated, and known inevitable. Her 
 eye, shooting its glances, never fires a blank. Even in the 
 profusion of first greetings it is taking quick double-barrelled 
 aims to the right and left, like a practiced sportsman, that 
 never misses his mark. 
 
 " So you've had the door looked to, Numphy." " Hester, 
 there's a cobweb over the cornice." " Who broke the lamp- 
 shade ? " Nor does she count on looks alone to tell her what 
 degrees of change these weeks have wrought. She has a 
 woman's scent to supplement her eyes; a keen instinct that 
 can run along the imperceptible fine thread of an odor, like 
 some tiny web-spinner, ascertain the source of the vibration 
 and be back again without the least betrayal of the journey 
 or break in her speech. Even through the flower-perfumed 
 hall, and the faint clinging odor of warm oil that the lamp 
 diffuses, she goes by scent into the kitchen and discovers 
 the roast duck and the wreathed acidity of apple-sauce, and 
 the mild olfactory resignation of sage and onions that 
 pious accompaniment to the dish, that wraps the spurting 
 crackling bird in a chastened vestiture like widow's weeds. 
 She knows too, that somewhere in the house there are floors 
 still damp to recent scrubbing, and cries : " Why ! Which- 
 ever ceiling have you been white-washing, Anne ? " To 
 13
 
 194 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 which Anne makes rejoinder : " There ! I said so. What's 
 use o' trying to gie anybody a bit of surprise ! I wanted you 
 to see it first, not gan smell it." 
 
 Nothing escapes her notice or her memory. Beneath the 
 sweep of illusory grandeur, this disconcerting dignity of 
 movement and of robe, it is still the old Jane come back into 
 her inheritance; taking up the threads of interrupted Sun- 
 fleet life with the fingers of affectionate enthusiasm. She 
 moves detached in the new atmosphere of fashion and dis- 
 tant places and strange people that envelops her, and lends a 
 preciousness to the old charm like some piece of family por- 
 celain seen for the first time through protective panes of 
 glass; yet all the while she is trying to draw near to the 
 house's very bosom, as a child that will not be content with 
 the first kiss, but yearns ever to find some nearer passage- 
 way to love. What will serve but she must enter all the 
 sitting-rooms in turn, whilst Numphy bears the lamp, as if 
 she would assure her heart its anchorage is safe, and that by 
 these restless later weeks she has been dragged in nowise 
 from her cherished moorings. She must see the kitchens too, 
 and take a peep into the surgery all in her traveling coat, 
 with her two gloves alternately blown to a quivering sem- 
 blance of vitality and drawn caressingly fine through a hand 
 and coax a chord from the old piano's yellow keys with 
 roguish fingers, laughing over the sound to Numphy as if 
 the brief triad were a treasured secret shared by themselves 
 alone. Nay, in this very room before they leave it, whose 
 ceiling winks with the rosy comfortable firelight from the big 
 grate, where a fire has been kindled for her welcome, and 
 partly, too, in case she may feel a disposition to sing " Love, 
 I will love You alway," before retiring to bed (though Num- 
 phy would not seek this if she is really tired ; and of course 
 she has had a long journey; but still . . .) in this room 
 consecrated to memories of Miss Perritt and pen-nibs, and at-
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 195 
 
 lases and rulers, and arithmetic and rebellions, she turns 
 suddenly towards him with the old full-hearted impulsive- 
 ness, and lays her warm lips laughingly on his cheeks before 
 he can divine the meaning of the movement, with her two 
 hands on his shoulders, and says 
 
 " Dear old Numphy. How well you are looking. You 
 don't know how glad I am to see you. It does seem an age 
 since I went away." 
 
 That kiss, distilled, coursed through the secret channels of 
 his love like a drop of exquisite swift poison ; with a potent 
 sweetness that seemed to search out his very heart to slay it. 
 Sure, two such tokens must have killed discretion and lib- 
 erated the soul of truth without ado. Those earlier public 
 kisses, bestowed dutifully upon his tendered cheek as Jane 
 descended from the railway carriage door in Hunmouth were 
 but ministers of pride, heightening his color and causing 
 him to covet more witnesses to his glory. But this one 
 quick kiss in its reaction woke all the lover in him. He had 
 the thought to take her in his arms and tell her there this 
 Numphy was another Numphy; that her kisses now were 
 other kisses half of heaven and half of hell; balm and a 
 burning fire; that he loved her and could not live without 
 her love. But almost as it grew to accomplishment he cast 
 the thought behind him. Was he so unsure of her that he 
 must needs leap at her love as a dog jumps to snatch food 
 from the hand that bears it? No, no. It was the greed of 
 apprehension, not the desire of love, that sought to precipi- 
 tate itself in words. He said, in place of it " But what am 
 I thinking of, Jane ! You must be as hungry as a crocodile 
 after your long journey. Let's go to dinner at once. I'm 
 sure Anne will have prepared something good for you." 
 
 "Yes. Roast duck," said Jane. "And a little fish. 
 Sha'n't I enjoy it!" 
 
 And as soon as Jane was ready they took their places,
 
 196 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 these two, and embarked upon the meal. More blessed than 
 sanctus bell was the silver bangle-music at her wrists; silent 
 so long, and O! so keenly missed. Even her laughter 
 seemed to have shed its material particles of mirth this 
 night, and to assume the pure character of an element divine, 
 whose merriment was as the twinkling of stars in clear 
 ether ; a mirth of the soul, that is the supreme high harmonic 
 of happiness, like flageolets on the fiddle ; goodness of heart 
 thrilling under the light finger of gratitude to supertones 
 of immortal gladness. Her face, animated to its tireless 
 sequence of expression, yet preserved, for him, a certain 
 fundamental gravity, almost sublime; the changes of coun- 
 tenance were but as the passing play of lights upon an 
 altarpiece, that leave the underlying truth or type unaltered. 
 
 She had much to tell him, and all this new experience 
 poured out in the familiar vivacious voice magnetized his 
 attention like the plashing of a fountain. For Jane's eye 
 was a born traveler, taking advantage of every opportunity 
 for busy excursions; and Jane's tongue was a veritable 
 Froissart. 
 
 And when they had talked the dinner to an end, they 
 laughed their way into the drawing-room, and there Jane 
 played and sang to him before she went to bed, including 
 " Love, I will love You alway " (that Mrs. Penterton Ashley 
 admired so much) and other songs all fraught with mem- 
 ories of the past, so that each time she sang them did but 
 distill another drop of quivering happiness to add to their 
 cherished store; and the Doctor sat in the deep chair and 
 listened, while the spirit of him hovered over the girl's soft 
 shoulders, kissing with silent lips the slim white neck that 
 bent in song, and coveting the moment when it might 
 descend at last and fold her with all her melodies into the 
 
 bosom of his love. 
 
 *********
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 197 
 
 And now the Doctor's life, reduced during the dry 
 weeks of Jane's absence to a trickling channel of ex- 
 istence, like a stream in summer draught, was re-fed all 
 at once from its suspended tributaries of happiness, and 
 flowed forward once more with a strong and buoyant cur- 
 rent. The vicarage and the big brick house were no longer 
 drawn close by bonds of mere masculine loneliness, but 
 by vital chains of girlish laughter that garlanded these 
 two homes and wove a magic round them. There was 
 croquet on the Doctor's lawn, and tennis ; and tea at both 
 houses, and music at the vicar's on an evening where Jane 
 and the Doctor generally wended their way after dinner, for 
 the vicar was now no longer partial to the October mists 
 that are wont to roll up from sea and Hun, and lie upon the 
 land at this time of the year, vast and impregnable, filling 
 all the interstices of hedge and tree, and dripping dismally 
 from the beaded branches along with dying leaves and 
 splitting chestnuts. And so by daily stages we are brought 
 in the second week succeeding Jane's return to the fateful 
 Harvest Festival, and both she and Bertha begin to be most 
 wondrous busy, for everywhere the spirit of thanksgiving 
 is abroad, and there is to be a special service in the gray 
 old Sunfleet church. 
 
 Jane and Bertha begin to haunt the precincts of the 
 church like industrious specters. Each day they repair to 
 their labors behind the pale green windows, bearing armfuls 
 of chrysanthemums and golden sheaves of cleansed wheat; 
 and toil at the head of a small band of workers until the 
 sun sinks and the dim lamp-light through the diamond- 
 glazed windows tells of an unabated industry. And the 
 vicar is on his feet all day, smiling anticipated welcomes to 
 his nephew along the lanes, and calling round on parishion- 
 ers and others to fire their interest in the event. 
 
 " A wonderful fellow, Mrs. Duncey. Spoke for forty
 
 I 9 8 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 minutes at the Bramleigh Working Men's Institute the other 
 day. Without a single note. And I'm told you might have 
 heard a pin drop. The church ought to be crowded if 
 people have any sense about them." 
 
 " I hope you won't fail us on Thursday, Mrs. Smeaton, 
 when your favorite preacher comes. We must feel ourselves 
 very fortunate in having secured him, for I may tell you now 
 that I had small hope of it when I wrote. I've just had a 
 peep at the decorations, and without betraying confidences I 
 think I may go so far as to say that they will be a surprise 
 to everybody. Be sure and bring your husband with you." 
 
 And the Rev. Berkeley Hislop comes at last, in time to 
 superintend the final touches, and bestow clerical praise in 
 response to cunning demands for criticism. And the eve of 
 thanksgiving descends.
 
 XXV 
 
 AND Jane puts on the skirt and coat of deep plum purple 
 in which the Doctor loves to see her, and over the 
 folded masses of her hair, those insidious serpent-like strands 
 of golden-brown, coiled in fine slumber, she sets the spread- 
 ing amplitude of dark straw that is called a hat, with 
 wreathed veils of violet about it. And all this shadowed 
 bloom of mauve and violet serves to define the perfection of 
 her face, and to caress with indulgent color the soft texture 
 of her flesh, and to deepen the azure in her eyes till through 
 their lashes they diffuse a liquid purple: laughter clad in 
 regal robes of light. 
 
 She comes down the staircase with her lips pursed to the 
 buttoning of her glove ; drawing the soft music of her skirts 
 behind her, that sigh at each step like the whisper of admira- 
 tion behind fans. The button, for all her red lips devise 
 a hundred insinuations of movement for its captivity, will 
 not yield to those two persuasive fine fingers. She sees 
 Numphy waiting for her in the hall, and says, " Bother ! " 
 and tosses the hand to him with a swift outburst of smile 
 that irradiates her very flesh, crying : " Button for me, 
 Numphy." He takes the hand, in his heart's eagerness, as a 
 hungry traveler might seize upon a cutlet, for despite the 
 close proximity of their daily lives, occasions do not bring 
 this treasured member so frequently within the compass of 
 his own as he could wish. The very nearness, even, of their 
 intercourse robs him of some of those desired privileges; 
 closes many cherished avenues to love, and sets proximity 
 like a tantalizing gulf between them. He is anxious to serve 
 
 199
 
 200 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 her with his skill, and yet not to employ it too cruelly for 
 the curtailment of his own content; dallying with the pearly 
 emblem of perversity that has procured him this joy, while 
 the warmth that is current in that little wrist steals through 
 its integument of suede and returns the soft pressure of 
 his fingers wherever they dwell, as with lips that kiss. 
 Twice he could have caught the button captive; twice he 
 lets the fugitive elude him that he may have the joy of 
 Jane's warm wrist prolonged. Until at last he hears Jane's 
 voice exclaim incredulously, " Why ! it must be buttoned by 
 this time, Numphy. Of course it is, you silly boy. Didn't 
 you know ? " 
 
 She summons Hester, ostensibly to brush her skirt, but in 
 reality to admire, and lend a further mandate to vanity. 
 Hester, her plump cheeks glowing with zeal like oven-plates 
 on cooking day, drops down on her knees to eradicate one 
 microscopic spot upon the skirt's hem, and exclaims, " Oh, 
 Miss Jane, you do look lovely! Folks will stare." To 
 which Jane in her dear prim voice retorts, " Nonsense, 
 Hester. Why should they? I hope they never will, in 
 church. Besides, there will be nobody much there. And 
 it is not as if I had been saving the dress, Hester. I wore 
 it quite regularly all the time I was away. I declare it 
 begins to look shabby now." 
 
 As soon as these two shall be gone, Hester is to make a 
 hurried assumption of her outdoor things and follow to the 
 church, where, the plausible groom has said in an undertone 
 by the kitchen door, " I shall maybe see ye someweers. 
 Look aboot ye when ye come oot. I'll gie a whistle." Anne 
 has rejected all suggestions to become a worshiper, saying 
 that she can catch cold easy enough at home without going 
 out for it. But she comes into the hall to lend a counte- 
 nance of approving severity to Jane's toilette. 
 
 " Skirt would do to be a good two inches higher at back,"
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 201 
 
 she says. " And them shoulders puckers a bit." But she 
 baptizes the effect general with a sparing sprinkling of com- 
 mendation, telling Jane, " You'll do nobbut you lift your 
 skirts well up, and look where you tread. Roads isn't fit 
 for syke dresses." 
 
 The service does not begin before half-past seven, but 
 Jane wishes to be in good time, so that from the big pew she 
 can watch the worshipers assemble, and they leave the 
 house before the hall clock shows the hour. 
 
 They are among the early worshipers, though not the 
 first. Already, dispersed in the pitch-pine pews about 
 the body of the church are straggling visitors, mostly from 
 afar, as their anxiety to be seated shows. Those who, 
 holding their hats aslant and lowered, appear to be weaving 
 invisible webs in the air with the forefinger and thumb of 
 each hand, two inches before their nose, have most probably 
 driven from Beachington or Peterwick. They are repair- 
 ing the ravages to fringe of quick night air and mist 
 the latter a much more injurious thing to curls than it is to 
 weak chests. Those who can be heard breathing in the 
 pauses of the bell, and rubbing the high color from the 
 forehead downward, as though they were polishing apples, 
 and telling each other in strepitous undertones how hot they 
 are belong to the ardent army of walkers, who have most 
 likely covered half a dozen miles of rough road at a racing 
 pace in the frail shoes fashionable to the district, and whose 
 petticoats will be surreptitiously compared behind the cover 
 of the pew back, to establish who can claim the dampest 
 skirts, and the deepest margin of adherent dust. All of 
 them are known to the Doctor for some complaint or other, 
 sniggering self-consciously at the sight of him according to 
 the recency or delicateness of the disorder. His advent with 
 Jane serves immediately to compress a whole pewful of 
 heads into the whispering apex of a confidential pyramid;
 
 2O2 
 
 after which the pyramid resolves into a row of human faces, 
 so frankly turned that it gives the pew the sudden effect of 
 being transposed towards the belfry. This bucolic feeding 
 of curiosity does not in the least disturb Jane's equanimity. 
 With her wonderful artillery of charms and fortified vani- 
 ties she seems made for observation: it is her natural ele- 
 ment. 
 
 Jane sweeps into the great square carpeted pew with a 
 smile of infinite condescension, for she never forgets the 
 position due to her through Numphy, and drops on her 
 knees with the prettiest grace imaginable, plunging her face 
 at once into her hands in a single movement as rapid and 
 spontaneous as one of her own smiles, and showing the full 
 circumference of hat, with all the intricacy of its violet 
 wreathing, to the whispering pews which alternate in con- 
 sequence so violently between pyramids and faces as to give 
 a convulsed appearance to the aisle. The Doctor, preparing 
 himself more carefully, and holding the rim of his hat mo- 
 mentarily to his forehead, as though prayer were a some- 
 thing rather to be recalled than uttered, wonders, while he 
 inclines gravely to the grained ledge, what it is that ani- 
 mates Jane's mortal heart when she kneels thus before the 
 presence of her starry overlord. What is receptacled in this 
 sweet posture of sincerity? Does she ask blessings with her 
 lips, or pour thankfulness out of a full heart? Or is all 
 her prayer but outward seemliness, and this pious attitude 
 the sole expression of it? Even so, and merely supposing 
 what then? To each, thinks the Doctor, pasturing his 
 eyes upon her as she kneels to each his language. To 
 one, lips and a fluent tongue; to another, a fervid heart; 
 to a third, a sort of soul's hunger, that speaks through star- 
 vation. To the fourth and this how rare the silent 
 tongue of Beauty. Is not Beauty indeed first cousin to 
 prayer, and harmonious movement a sort of worship?
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 203 
 
 She is longer on her knees to-night than usual, he 
 fancies; and when she rises, the pressure of her gloved 
 hands is tinted in soft pink upon her temples. There is a 
 liquid brightness about her blue eyes, and a distance in their 
 focus, as though they had been looking far into the realms of 
 heaven or the future. But she turns to seek his gaze, and 
 the long-drawn look melts down in a brief flash to the inti- 
 mate short distance between them. The liquid blue eyes 
 brighten to a smile as when sunlight kisses still water, and 
 laying her hand upon his sleeve, she begins eagerly to en- 
 gage his opinion on the result visible of all these latter-days' 
 labor. The church, indeed, is filled like a granary; fatness 
 drops from it in comfortable abundance at every hand. 
 Rows of rounded produce line the broad sills and sanctuary 
 steps; swedes and common whites, green barrels and wur- 
 zels ; great red cabbages and roots of beet, intermingled 
 with the humble potato. 
 
 The light from the twinkling lamps distributed sparsely 
 through the church on their wooden standards that fit in 
 brass sockets in the pews, holding their broad wicks coiled 
 to view within vessels of transparent yellow glass was 
 absorbed thirstily by the deep mellowness of the decoration. 
 Jane, herself and human, even in the house of God, points 
 out with a special forefinger the pulpit and the lectern, say- 
 ing she particularly wants to know what Numphy thinks of 
 these which means, in effect, they are her doing. And 
 Numphy thinks the world and very heaven of them. The 
 pulpit is wreathed with wheat and ivy, and the most wondrous 
 autumn leafage from the hedgerow ; blood-stained briar and 
 crimson bramble, with the variegated maple and the mellow 
 bullace gold. 
 
 Dripping from the sermon ledge are bunches of fat 
 grapes (some of them Numphy's own giving), as though 
 the pulpit were the horn of plenty ; with white chrysanthe-
 
 204 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 mums festooning the sounding-board to indicate this higher 
 part pertains to heaven, and symbolize the dedication of all 
 this increase to the pure glory of God. The lectern is sim- 
 ilarly treated though Jane must tell him that Bertha sug- 
 gested the effective use of the red cloth. To which Numphy 
 says : " No matter. It would have looked quite as well 
 without." And Jane says: "Perhaps it is just a thought 
 too red," but adds magnanimously that she doesn't know. 
 And " Thou givest them their meat in due season," shines 
 forth in gleaming splendor of straw capitals from a cardinal 
 ground above the reredos, whilst all the columns are gar- 
 landed with spiral wheat and ivy, typifying fruitfulness and 
 faithfulness in the worship of God. 
 
 Meanwhile, the church has filled to the fair semblance 
 of a congregation; rows of chipped straw hats and varie- 
 gated blossoms rustle dryly between the Doctor's pew and 
 the chancel, with a sprinkling of boys and men, who sit 
 plunged to the ears in coat collars, as though this were the 
 Assizes, and the case stood black against them. 
 
 So, the watchfinger being upon the hour, the bellringer 
 terminates his tolling, and silence seems an abrupt and 
 churlish thing by comparison with this previous amicable 
 jangle. 
 
 Simultaneously, the boy blower's head is seen moving pre- 
 cipitately up and down the profile of the American organ to 
 a gasping sound of hassocks being beaten, and the school- 
 master embarks therewith upon a frail and simple voluntary 
 something in the likeness of a Lenten hymn, only slower, 
 and more mournful. And after a while of this lugubrious 
 music the vicar and his nephew issue gravely forth behind 
 the wanded verger, and straightway the voluntary flutters 
 to extinction like a candle blown upon, and these thankful 
 people are bidden in the vicar's voice to raise the shout of 
 Harvest Home. Whereat, to stimulating strains of the fa-
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 205 
 
 miliar hymn, rising, after the first uncertainty of lip and hic- 
 coughing organ, with the fullness of a ripening crop from a 
 hundred uplifted throats, the harvest festival begins, and 
 the worship goes up before God. 
 
 It is over; the hymns are hushed; all this worship is 
 gathered up into the endless peace of Abraham's bosom. 
 
 And the evening hymn, void of aspirates, but buoyant 
 with a gustatory devotion that bursts these frail channels 
 for the compression of human breath, has been raised to 
 the coffered roof of oak 
 
 Praise God from oom all blessings flow, 
 Praise 'Im all creatures 'ere below, 
 Praise 'Im above, ye 'eavenly 'Ost, 
 Praise Father, Son and 'Oly Ghost. 
 
 And hats have been groped for during the benediction; and 
 the double doors have been thrown open, and the farm lads 
 have rushed through them like an armored dragon of endless 
 sections, a pair of legs to each, striking sparks out of the 
 tiled floor with their hob-nailed boots. And the solemn wor- 
 shipers have lingered about the aisles, noting and admiring. 
 And the vicar, under the stimulus of his nephew's oratory, 
 has dived into the congregation with a pregnant look of 
 anxiety on his face lest he should be too late for the best of 
 them, dragging Berkeley round with him, to be exhibited 
 right and left, and yet retained too, in the showing, with the 
 possessor's greed; introduced with all the affability that 
 pride can kindle in an uncle's bosom, and withheld by the 
 very glory that gives this showing its zest. 
 
 And when the vicar has shaken the last hand though he 
 uses this form of recognition sparingly, and then only to 
 better visitors of five-miles' standing, preferring to dispatch 
 his own parishioners with a dismissive touch on the arm that
 
 206 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 blends condescension with authority he calls on Berkeley, 
 and Bertha, and Jane, and the Doctor, as pre-arranged, and 
 these five thread their way through the gravestones and 
 stragglers, and go across to the vicarage, where there is a 
 special Harvest Festival supper prepared, to prolong the 
 night's worship with friendly communion. And here, glow- 
 ing under the stimulus of good thanksgiving and well-re- 
 quited pride, the vicar rises to the very best of spirits; and 
 even the Rev. Berkeley seems to clap the dust out of the 
 dry volume of his reserve and assume a human color in his 
 temples; and the Doctor tells one or two stories excellently 
 well ; and Bertha laughs with less restraint than ever he has 
 known her; and Jane sings though Bertha, despite all 
 pressure from her uncle, refuses, saying she really cannot ; 
 she cannot really. Which is the one thing that detracts 
 from the vicar's happiness, for, after each song that Jane 
 gives them, he turns to Bertha and says : " Now, Bertha 
 . . ." in a voice of fresh persuasion, as though Jane's skill 
 were only serviceable in that it should stimulate Bertha to 
 a display of hers. But Bertha is obdurate behind her smiles 
 and blushes. 
 
 It is a trial to the Doctor that music always makes the 
 vicar loquacious, for he would like to sit and steep himself 
 in the pride and joy of Jane's attainments, to render his 
 own gladness in her greater, and to glorify this temple of his 
 worship with shared hymnody. He has not the true un- 
 derstanding of the pieces she plays and the songs she sings, 
 he is aware, any more than a worshiper knows the period 
 and style of architecture of the church he kneels in, but her 
 music moves him always to a sort of sacred silence, as a soul 
 is hushed by the sight of tall columns and tranquil aisles. 
 But the vicar seemingly hears his music only as a conversa- 
 zione of sounds inviting to discourse; after the first bar of 
 piano his tongue begins to wag, and thereafter it will not
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 207 
 
 cease to vex the Doctor's ear until the harmony is at an end. 
 However, though the full devotion of this secular service 
 is denied him, the Doctor's word-imprisoned soul draws 
 consolation through its bars, from glimpses of Bertha's so- 
 licitude in ministering music to the singer ; and the Rev. 
 Berkeley's attentiveness, that even materializes itself to the 
 point of turning Jane's pages, though the Doctor is glad to 
 see he misses some, since this is his own offense. Then, 
 the music at an end, and the watches, when referred to, 
 showing midnight, they rise, and the party breaks up as 
 parties not infrequently do in a supreme outburst of 
 animation; so that all the friendship of the evening seems 
 epitomized in a brilliant leave-taking. The air is as keen as 
 iced wine, as chill and as warming ; but keener and warmer 
 and more quickening to the Doctor's pulses is the soft arm 
 that Jane slips into his, drawing herself breast-close to him 
 as they walk. Walk? Why, to be truthful, out upon the 
 lonesome road they trip in trochees a long and a short to 
 each foot like home-going scholars ; and more than once 
 Jane strains impulsively to her bosom and cheek the arm 
 she holds with both her hands. Surely, something in this 
 night of worship and clear happiness has brought them 
 closer ! 
 
 They come into the hall, with the brass candlesticks laid 
 ready for their bedroom use on the hall-table. But Jane 
 has no mind for bed ; she wants to sit and talk with Numphy 
 yet awhile. How little she seems to have seen of him all 
 these recent days, while she has been threading tedious 
 festoons of autumn-leafage and wreathing dusty old pillars 
 and window ledges. Come ! Numphy must have a pipe in 
 the big chair, and she will sit on the arm of it, and they shall 
 talk, talk, talk.
 
 XXVI 
 
 THE fire still flickered in the grate, bursting out into 
 reminiscent flames now and again (like the vicar when 
 his gold-stopped smile gleams to radiant memories of some 
 nephew) and casting the trellised shadow of its protective 
 guard in brief snatches on the ceiling. Jane it was who 
 drew the big chair into the charmed area of firelight and 
 comfort, and Jane removed the guard and coaxed the coals 
 till they burned a willing red, like human cheeks. So far 
 she had not taken off her hat, nor would she seat herself 
 until the Doctor had yielded to her playful pressure and 
 sunk back on the cushions with an attitude of comfortable 
 submission. Then, when his pipe was lighted, and the strag- 
 gling threads of fire coalesced in the briar bowl to a disk of 
 glowing red each time he drew upon it, Jane seated herself 
 side-saddle on the fat chair-arm, and lifting up her lissome 
 hands in a becoming movement that made a frame for her 
 face, drew out the deadly rapier pins that pierced her hat. 
 Almost at once, as though the action corresponded with 
 some new turn of her thoughts, she became pensive, laid the 
 hat upon her lifted knee, and pricked its trimmings abstract- 
 edly with the gathered pins, by seeming way of accompani- 
 ment to some deeper reflection. So deep, indeed, that on a 
 sudden she sighed, and the sigh ended it. For at that she 
 mocked her own sigh with an immediate " Heigh-ho ! " and 
 laughter. One, two, the pins were thrust through this 
 spacious thing of adornment, and Jane's left hand, sliding 
 along the arch of upholstery above the Doctor's head, took 
 an ebullient dive into the Doctor's hair, where the fingers 
 
 208
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 209 
 
 ruffled his locks to splashes of rallying affection. Swift, her 
 face descended upon him with the brevity and beauty of 
 a rare meteor drawing its dazzling train of blue-eyed 
 laughter, her arms encompassed his neck, her lips impressed 
 themselves upon his forehead in a quick round O impul- 
 sively bestowed. Next moment they sought his ear 
 mendicant lips, garbed in petition, that breathed his name 
 with a warm coax in it 
 
 "Numphy . . ." 
 
 With his own purpose thickening all the current of his 
 blood and clogging his heart's channels, the name wrapped 
 in this magic of warm breath like spring's message in a 
 south wind spread a sudden mist about him. The very 
 flush that rose to his temples seemed a veritably visible 
 thing; licking him like a flame, and burning hot. He drew 
 the pipe from his unsteady lips, and blew the long trumpet 
 of silver smoke aside from the girl's face in a protracted 
 expulsion, before venturing to trust his breath to speech. 
 She whispered the name again, more coaxingly, and his 
 courage outstepped the mist as she and he together had 
 outstepped those recumbent floating shapes that lay across 
 their walk to-night. 
 
 "Numphy . . ." 
 
 " Well ? " His voice was a little ragged and self-con- 
 scious at the edges. " What is it, Jane ? " 
 
 She had withdrawn her face to a gazing height above him, 
 and her blue eyes, still dancing in laughter, but shooting 
 every now and then a glance of keener purpose, shed their 
 starry beams upon his uplifted countenance. Thus she 
 gazed at him for a space, between earnestness and mirth, 
 purpose coming to focus once in a while only to be dissipated 
 by the dancing rays. She burst into a coil of laughter at 
 last, when his gaze magnetized by her shimmering eyes 
 became too seriously intent, and drew herself further 
 14
 
 210 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 away, with but the tips of her fingers retaining their caress 
 on his shoulders. 
 
 " How you look at me, Numphy ! " she said, and bit her 
 underlip out of sight. It sprung forth again next moment, 
 on the crest of another laugh ; a redder lip than before, with 
 little teeth-marks fretted enticingly into the white soft flesh 
 below the crimson. " Tell me . . . Numphy. Do you 
 see anything at all different about me ? " 
 
 It was under his tongue to tell her that he did; to take 
 the question boldly by the hand and say : " I think I see you 
 love me, Jane . . ." but some process of dissimulation 
 deeper than his own impulse shaped and uttered his reply. 
 
 " What should I see about you, Jane," he asked with a 
 smile, " that I have not always seen . . . and loved to 
 see?" 
 
 His words and the sight of his face seemed to warm her 
 confidence and affection. She linked the dallying hands be- 
 hind his neck and bent her eyes upon his, till her lips almost 
 touched the slumbering bowl of his pipe. He withdrew it 
 from his lips and said, " See ... let me put this 
 smoky old pipe away, Jane. It will be burning your chin," 
 but she unlinked her hands to hold his down in their place. 
 " No, no," she said. " I want you to go on smoking, 
 Numphy, just the same as you always do. When you take 
 the pipe out of your mouth and look at me like that . . ." 
 She did not complete the sentence, but reached across him 
 to seize his extended left hand, with the pipe in its hold, 
 and forced the well-bitten stem back to his lips. " There ! " 
 she cried, when his smiling lips closed over it. " Now suck 
 away, Numphy, and make as much smoke as ever you like. 
 I don't mind a bit. I love it." 
 
 The heart of the bowl glowed like a red penny as he com- 
 plied with the girl's request, and puffed upward though to 
 a side the long spires of gray vapor that Jane looked at
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 211 
 
 in ascension with the momentary steadfast eyes for a thing 
 dearly familiar, yet viewed afresh through a brief clear loop- 
 hole of sentiment. One hand, the left, lay still on Numphy's 
 shoulder; she brought the right to meet it, round his neck, 
 and the eyes, hidden from him by upturned velvety lash, 
 swam down to him like swans. 
 
 " Numphy ... I want to say something to you. 
 Suppose suppose some one cared for me very, very much 
 indeed." 
 
 She emphasized each " very " with an inclination of her 
 head and a corresponding pressure of the encircling hands. 
 There was tender apprehensiveness in her eyes, and yet 
 behind and through their seriousness floated the sweet witch- 
 laughter, that tense roguish current in her look like the 
 rippling of blue sky beyond sun-kissed hedgerows in sum- 
 mer. " Some one," she went on to say, " who has cared for 
 me . . . without ever saying so ... for oh, ever 
 such a long time." 
 
 Was it possible this girl's courage was going to anticipate 
 his own? His heart began to throb; his arm that 
 wretched right arm that had trembled to the impulse so 
 many times before, and then turned coward at the last 
 made ready to enfold her. He drew the prosaic pipe from 
 his mouth's corner and held it casually towards the fender, 
 where at a moment's signal it might be dropped. Like a 
 general, in one clear vision of battle craft he saw how he 
 would win her; how draw her down to him; where lodge 
 that first kiss of conquest and supremacy. 
 
 " Suppose ? " he said, and the tremor of emotion crept 
 into his voice. " There is no supposing, Jane. I know it." 
 
 The pipe dropped with unregarded clatter. His arms 
 were about her. She sank down in all her softened beauty 
 from above like the white crest of a wave, that broke over 
 him and blinded him though with perfumed warmth and
 
 212 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 love in place of surf and foam. Not since his arms opened 
 to embrace that first and bitter passion of all those years ago 
 had he known a moment like this. For it was but a mo- 
 ment, and yet what crowded wonders passed through it. As 
 he held her to his breast and laid his first real kiss upon 
 her lips, all his life seemed to leap up in a fierce jet like a 
 fountain, and saturate him with its waters; permeate him 
 with the streaming sense of every moment that had ever 
 saddened, or cheered, or stimulated it, or given it color 
 or a mood. 
 
 She was his; he was exultant. She was his; he was 
 tender nay, remorseful. He felt like one who has plucked 
 a blossom more by desire than intention, and regrets the 
 spoilage, so easily accomplished, as a sort of sin. After 
 all ... so young, so trusting. His years condemned 
 the deed. What experience had this girl of hearts? She 
 had fallen to the first ; through ignorance, not wisdom. His 
 years acclaimed the act; rose up in all their strength to 
 crown her queen, and bond themselves for her protection. 
 She was his ; this soft miracle of womanhood ; this wonder- 
 world of pouts and sighs, and smiles and looks, and words 
 and laughter. How he would guard her, cherish her; wrap 
 her in the warm strong garment of his years against all 
 bleak assaults of the world. In this brief moment his life 
 was purified to an incredible degree. He forgave all his 
 enemies ; human antipathies sank away from the purer part 
 of him like dull sediment. The vicar, Bertha, and the dry- 
 cheeked Berkeley were raised, on this sudden, into the sub- 
 limity of a heavenly group; the little church, with all its 
 fleshly worshipers, was lifted far up above him ; translated 
 to the skies, a temple in the courts of heaven, sheltering the 
 immortal and the blest. And through all the causeways of 
 his consciousness swept that final harvest hymn, dimly haunt- 
 ing him before, glorified now into a paean. His every fiber
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 213 
 
 thrilled to it ; his mortal part was no longer flesh and blood, 
 but music. The very girl against his breast was music ; 
 they were become music, both of them, interwoven melodies, 
 preserving their identity by some strange principle in a vast 
 harmonious tide. In this brief moment, as he held her to 
 his bosom, with her smooth face covering his own, all the 
 windows of his life were thrown open; facing every pros- 
 pect in eternity : past, present, and future ; each seen at 
 once, and perceived in a sudden blinding revelation, as 
 though to the clash of cymbals. So, for six pulsing sec- 
 onds, perhaps not more though to him a century of life 
 distilled in drops of inexpressible sweetness, he held this 
 joy within his arms ; his lips to her cheek, and one rhythmic 
 current of melodious blood seemed to course through their 
 undivided veins. And then when for all time he could 
 have remained like this the spirit of a fine division cleft 
 their union; resistance materialized swiftly into liberating 
 laughter and girlish hands. The hands contended against 
 his bosom for release; his lips suddenly sucked air where 
 that warmth of cheek had been. Her face, flushed with a 
 kind of exultant shame, clad in a garment of crimson 
 laughter, receded to the old roguish distance above him. 
 Across her brow and one of the blue eyes trailed a lock 
 of her golden-brown hair that the embrace had loosened, and 
 his first real consciousness of the material moment after the 
 spiritual filtration of experience through his purified senses 
 was in the sight of the girl's white fingers as she put back 
 the straying strand. 
 
 " No, no, Numphy," he caught with his corporal ear, 
 while that inner hearing still surged to the sound of music 
 and the harvest hymn, " don't be silly. Look what you've 
 done to my hair, you naughty boy. And oh ! Just look at 
 my hat. You might have crushed it altogether." Even at 
 such a supreme moment as this her feminine mind deserted
 
 2i 4 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 the greater topic in a trice, and dropped on its knees at the 
 sight of trimmings in distress; touching the injured folds 
 with deft sure fingers of sympathy and skill. " There ! " 
 She applied the last touch of fastidious finger to the thing 
 of flounces, and leaning forward, laid it on the table out of 
 harm. " Now ! " Whereat her smile, undistracted by ca- 
 lamity, poured its full rays on him again. " Let me tell 
 you all about it, Numphy. I've got, oh, such heaps and 
 heaps of things that I'm dying to talk about. I shall never 
 go to sleep again. Whatever made you guess? He only 
 told me this afternoon . . . but of course I've known 
 it ever such a long time. Bertha was the first to notice it 
 . . . when we were at Folkestone. She and I slept to- 
 gether there, and she told me one night in bed . . . 
 And I said, * Oh, nonsense, Bertha. I don't believe a word 
 of it.' But I did . . . and I knew. And the next day, 
 when we were watching the Boulogne steamer . . ."
 
 XXVII 
 
 ALL noiselessly, and with a noiselessness that is in itself 
 a horror like some dire apparition of the night from 
 which no word can be won, but that approaches silent and 
 cannot be stayed or swerved or altered in its course by 
 human speech all noiselessly the bubble burst. 
 
 Fool ! Fool ! Fool ! 
 
 That it had ever come to this. Now he knew, staring at 
 the face above him, like some transfixed visionary who sees 
 death's image riding out of the blue sky now he knew the 
 meaning of those haunting supertones that had troubled the 
 first cathedralled music of his love. His smile, that had 
 seemed coexistent with eternity, shrunk down through a 
 swift course of realization and shame to a mere garment of 
 dissemblance barely covering his lips. He turned hot and 
 cold to the thought of his folly. More than the blow which 
 had just fallen on him was the sudden consciousness of his 
 own scorn. He despised and hated himself; saw the full 
 folly in him, and loathed its presence like some noxious 
 reptile in a pit. In the bitterness of the moment he could 
 have laughed aloud horrible laughter it would have been. 
 And the very sense of shame saved him in his dark hour, 
 stung pride in him to its function though not a second too 
 soon, fcr the light in the girl's dancing eyes was already 
 commencing to contract with a curious perplexity. At all 
 cost must he save his folly from suspicion ; one flicker of her 
 scorn would bring his overburdened spirit to the dust. He 
 drove the relentless spur into his heart, and faced her smiling 
 while all his nature bled. 
 
 215
 
 216 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 Had she suspected? Did her quick woman's instinct 
 divine that sudden disconnection in their sympathies; per- 
 ceive even now the strain in the fine web of their relations, 
 as when a falling raindrop imperils the tightened cables of a 
 spider's net? No. For once her instinct had failed her. 
 For once, enveloped in that thrilling new current of her own, 
 the sense of his passion had not reached her. Besides 
 how should she guess? The very absurdity of this thing 
 gave him sanctuary. By the wildness of his folly he was 
 placed safe beyond the pale of her discovery or scorn. Not 
 in senseless dreams would her soul be led to suspect that 
 that embrace with which he had bound her to his bosom was 
 other than a protective gladness exulting in her own joy, 
 spontaneous, impulsive, fervent rather than passionate. 
 
 Sick at heart, and full of shame for the necessity, he 
 stooped to his discarded pipe. The mouthpiece, still wet 
 from his lips, came back to them a cold and cheerless and 
 condemnatory thing. The smoke, as he drew it, flowed over 
 his tongue with a stale and dissatisfying flavor, seeming to 
 mark reunion with a life of years ago. Between the moment 
 that he clasped Jane to his breast and now, brimmed a great 
 gulf of leaden water like eternity. 
 
 And now he needed all his courage, all his wisdom, all his 
 artifice. Full of her own new-found happiness; quivering 
 in every pulse with the glorious knowledge of being coveted 
 and desired ; proud to be the instigator of such worship, and 
 apprehensive, too, of this power that the magic of her charm 
 had wrought now she began to pour out her heart to him 
 in a trickling tongue of impulses that taxed his fortitude and 
 dissimulation to their last degree. 
 
 For in her unconsciousness and joy she played upon his 
 misery like a harp. Her tongue that dear keen member 
 dissected sacred passions with the sang froid of the sur- 
 geon's knife. She was the woman all told, now it came to
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 217 
 
 love, fascinating and horrifying him. She had the real 
 woman's mind that arrives at its perception of great matters 
 piecemeal ; breaking up the divine subject of love to its 
 minutest fragments, and classifying them in patient pro and 
 con with all a woman's industry and calculation. Nothing 
 was too small for her observance, nothing too sacred for 
 chronicle. Now she handled love like costly silk a fabric 
 to be touched and coveted with pricing fingers; now like 
 cold utilitarian calico. Man rises under love to heights of 
 magnanimity, grows larger in soul than his mortal stature, 
 seeks cecity as an attribute of worship in the way that 
 children are taught to close .their eyes in prayer. Love, to 
 man, is more or less of a divinity or he would have him 
 so; he does not wish to probe into the mystery of the god's 
 being and find it naught but human flesh and bone and 
 blood; he blinds himself and makes believe the texture of 
 the flesh is burnless fire and soft-searching flame. Woman, 
 in love, is as inquisitive as a forbidden child. She brings all 
 her scrutiny to the new passion, as if it were a hat; seeks to 
 know the mystery of its material and creation, and would not 
 hesitate to read (if she could only find it) the price upon the 
 label. 
 
 Jane, athrill with the unscrupulous feminine desire to pass 
 her wisdom through the magic of a listening ear and collect 
 its drops, distilled to a rare new virtue, from every conduit 
 of expression, trickled confidences that made the Doctor's 
 heart writhe expiringly in its constricted shelter, like one of 
 the forty thieves under the boiling oil in his earthen- 
 ware tomb. Only a thin and ghastly mortal smile concealed 
 the heart's tragedy from the girl's sight. At times, in agony, 
 he feared it must be rent ; this fabric of deception torn asun- 
 der, but ever the swift fear of what should accompany that 
 frozen consciousness of the truth in the girl's look spurred 
 his flagging fortitude afresh.
 
 218 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 He beheld himself a veinless, passionless, unsentient thing 
 in her estimation, as dearly familiar as a frequented pool 
 lying still and placid beneath the fringe of deep green trees, 
 in whose shelter she divested her heart unashamed, as she 
 would have stripped her body to the cold companionable 
 waves, one with her in spirit and yet of another element, and 
 naught. His manhood winced beneath her confidences, for 
 they seemed to proclaim him not of the acknowledged race 
 of men and lovers ; their very closeness served to sunder him 
 from her, as if their sex had been the same, so that though 
 she drew him nearer to her bosom, he stood infinitely further 
 from her heart, shorn of all that made the proximity bear- 
 able. And now, now that he dared no longer return her 
 fondlings or kindle to her kisses, she did not stint him with 
 affection. Her arms would tighten on his neck, her face 
 would dip laughingly to his, her lips, cold with much cal- 
 culating discourse, would press against his cheeks until he 
 felt the first flush of deadly warmth pulsing to their surface ; 
 she would apostrophize him in a hundred parenthetical trib- 
 utes to his goodness, his dearness, his lovableness. What 
 he suffered beneath those wave-like caresses himself and the 
 gods above him only knew. More than once, desperate for 
 freedom and the spaciousness of his own unbounded misery, 
 he prescribed bed as the wisest of all medicines for a heart 
 in love, but Jane would have none of the suggestion, held 
 him captive by the shoulders and begged with eyes that 
 well-nigh blinded him for " one more pipe yet, Numphy, 
 before you go." All the inner secret of that ten weeks' 
 absence was unfolded ; her first inklings of Berkeley's attach- 
 ment; her self-interrogation whether she really cared for 
 him ; her pride in him at services here or meetings there ; 
 her wish that he had been taller, like his brothers ; her 
 private talks with Bertha, when she confided to Bertha that 
 she did not think she could ever really love him ; and
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 219 
 
 Bertha's heart-felt petition : " Oh, Jane ! do try and like him 
 all you can, for my sake. I would love to have you for a 
 sister." And Bertha shame on a woman's shameless 
 heart that it should be so was set to spy upon her 
 brother's feelings, to tap in secret the source of his affec- 
 tions, and bring back the stolen fluid for their joint analy- 
 sis. She had drawn from Jane a sacred promise to let her 
 know as soon as Berkeley made proffer to kiss her, and 
 asked : " Shall you refuse him first of all, Jane ? " and Jane 
 had said : " It all depends, Bertha. What should you do ? " 
 And Bertha had confessed : " Jane, dearest, I wish I could 
 advise you. But it is so difficult. You see Berkeley is 
 my brother." More than once, at the sound of Berkeley's 
 footsteps, Bertha had jumped up from the settee that she 
 shared with Jane, or contiguous chair, and said : " Here 
 he comes. I promise I won't listen at the door. But if 
 if he says anything, don't forget to twist your bangle 
 as soon as I come back." 
 
 Bertha found out which of Jane's frocks he liked the 
 best, and which hats and Jane wore them ; and which 
 songs, and Jane sang them; or pieces, and Jane played 
 those. And Bertha said : " Oh, Jane, you do look sweet 
 when you sit at the piano with your left hand on the keys 
 and the right just touching the music-stool, and your face 
 three-quarters. Berkeley must sit just here I'll leave the 
 chair for him and then look at him like that." 
 
 He did not speak of love to her before she left though 
 once or twice she began to be a bit afraid he would but 
 as she was drawing on her gloves for departure, in such 
 a quick, queer voice and a sort of funny lump in his cheek 
 just here, he said he wanted very much to see her again be- 
 fore long. And at the moment of leave-taking he had bidden 
 her good-bye with her hand in his, and said : " Must I call 
 you Miss Alston? Bertha says it sounds so strange and un-
 
 220 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 familiar. And if I am to confess it I always think of you 
 as Jane." She had told him, with her eyes down, " Call me 
 Jane like Bertha." And he went ever so red, all down 
 his neck, and pressed her hand as hard as hard, and said: 
 " Thank you. Thank you for that, Jane. I shall think of 
 you a great deal. You must call me Berkeley in exchange 
 if you will." And she had promised. Both Bertha 
 and she knew why he had come to preach to-night. First 
 of all, when Uncle Horace (she spoke of the vicar as Uncle 
 Horace now, it seemed; the title stung the Doctor's bosom 
 like an asp) when Uncle Horace wrote to ask him, 
 Berkeley said he feared it was quite impossible, but Bertha 
 told Jane she was sure he would come, and Jane knew for 
 certain that he would. To this stricken heart, beating with 
 the throes of despair behind the Doctor's smile, she repeated 
 the sacred history of Berkeley's avowal. It took place in 
 the vestry just by the little broken table with the cracked 
 looking-glass on it, and the carafe, where Bertha and she 
 were making some extra chains of ivy for the end pillars, 
 for they had run short. Berkeley came in, and Bertha 
 jumped up and said : " How many yards more shall we 
 need, Jane? I'll just go and see." And Jane said, "No,, 
 no. Let me go, Bertha." But Bertha pushed her back, and 
 she knew she colored up to her ears, as Berkeley did. He 
 said : " How busy you are." She said : " Oh, this is noth- 
 ing. This is just a little bit for the end." And then he 
 coughed and came close to her and took her hands. 
 " See, just like this. Give me your hands, Numphy." 
 
 Her white fingers seared them like fire-bars ; at the clasp, 
 in this hateful conjunction, the Doctor withdrew his hands 
 as though a cry had accompanied their withdrawal. 
 
 " No, no. It is dishonest. It is unfair of you, Jane. 
 You have no right to tell me these things. They should be 
 sacred."
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 221 
 
 She had no understanding of his scruple, no divination 
 deeper than his smile. For her, this love was as a glorified 
 new frock to be tried on delectably for the arch display of all 
 her graces; a rustling silk garment, whose every movement 
 diffuses proud music when she walks or languishes or curt- 
 sies in it. As well might such a gown be hidden in some 
 cupboard with the dark and the moths for its companions, 
 as hide her love from sight in the wardrobe of silence. 
 She pursued his fugitive hands and caught them in her own, 
 and drew them back for their ordeal. 
 
 " See . . ." The torture recommenced. " He took 
 my hands in his like this ; no deeper than the second joint. 
 I know my thumbs were quite free. And I dared not look 
 at him . . . and I think he held me quite half-a-minute. 
 You don't know how my heart beat. I said : ' But this is 
 not getting on with work, Mr. Hislop'. I daredn't call him 
 Berkeley just then isn't it funny, Numphy? And he said: 
 ' Berkeley, Jane ... to you.' And I told him * You 
 must really let go my hands, Berkeley, please. I'm sure 
 Bertha will be coming back.' He lifted them up ... 
 just like this, and held them quite close together, and said, 
 ' Before I let them go Jane . . . there is one very 
 solemn question I want to ask you. Can you guess what the 
 question is ? ' I shook my head and said : ' I'm sure there's 
 somebody listening.' He coughed and looked round the 
 door without leaving go of my hands, and said : ' Nobody 
 would do such a thing, Jane, in the House of God.' And 
 then he said : ' Jane, ever since I saw you last, I have been 
 living in the hope that I might one day ask you, and you 
 would one day consent, to be my . . . wife. Don't 
 tell me the hope has been presumptuous or vain.' I said : 
 ' Oh, Berkeley ! I . . . never expected this. What a 
 long time Bertha is. I think we ought to go and seek her.' 
 He said : ' Perhaps this is scarcely the moment and the place
 
 222 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 to say what I'm saying to you now, Jane . . .' And 
 oh, Numphy, you don't know how beautifully he talked 
 to me then ! He told me what my name really means. 
 Do you know, Numphy? I like it ever so much better 
 now. It means the gracious gift of God. Isn't that beau- 
 tiful!" 
 
 The gracious gift of God ! Its very meaning mocked him. 
 He could have groaned. 
 
 " He asked me if his proposal had come as a very great 
 surprise. ' Perhaps ' he said, ' I have been a little too 
 precipitate and hasty. If so, forgive me, Jane.' I know I 
 cried a little, and told him : ' Whatever will Bertha say 
 when she comes back! Don't let her come in yet, Berkeley. 
 She must not see these eyes.' And he said, * I think there 
 is hope for me in those eyes, Jane.' I said he must not take 
 them for a promise. ' Not a promise, perhaps,' he answered, 
 ' but shall we say a token ? ' And I was forced to admit 
 when he asked me that he had often been in my thoughts; 
 and that, if anything, I liked him better than anybody else 
 I knew (Except you, Numphy!" she cast in impulsively. 
 " But that's different) and that there was nobody else who 
 stood in the way. And he said, ' Jane- . . . even though 
 you have not given me your final answer, I think there is no 
 happier man to-day than I.' Then he pulled my hands a 
 little, and said: 'May I . . .' And -just at that moment 
 Bertha came in and said : ' We shall want fifteen yards, 
 Jane.' It was rather stupid of her. I said : * Fifteen ? ' and 
 she said ' Yes. At least ... I think so, Jane. But 
 I'll measure again and make quite sure.' " 
 
 So the rest of this wretched glorious history was distilled 
 drop by drop to its end. How Berkeley had kissed her then, 
 such a beautiful kiss, that seemed from her description like 
 the Jubilate and the Benedictus combined, and made her 
 feel dreadfully wicked, and happy, and suddenly desirous of
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 223 
 
 sanctity and the purer life. And how he asked her what 
 text he should preach from, and she had suggested the text 
 over the reredos, and he had told her, " Jane, this will be 
 your sermon." " I don't care how long it is, Berkeley," she 
 assured him. 
 
 Then, the service over, had not Numphy noticed how she 
 and Berkeley lingered outside the vicarage porch so that 
 Uncle Horace had to call them in? There it was, with the 
 sound of Barnes Welkit's accordion wafted faintly to them 
 as he marched along the road to Peterwick town-end, playing 
 " There is a Fountain filled with Blood " to the hedgerows 
 and plowed headlands there it was that she had finally 
 consented ; for she had talked it all over with Bertha as soon 
 as Berkeley left the church, and Bertha had begged her to 
 say " Yes " to-night. It would be so beautiful, Bertha 
 thought, to say it after Berkeley's sermon, and be able to look 
 back ever after on this night as the great night of all. And 
 Bertha had shed tears too. Didn't Numphy notice how 
 she went out for awhile, so that Uncle Horace said, " God 
 bless me, Berkeley. First of all it's you, and then it's 
 Bertha. What in the world has got the girl ! " Yes, Num- 
 phy thought he had noticed. And didn't he see how she sat 
 far back, away from the lamp for a time, so that the light 
 could not shine on her wet eyes? He scarcely remembered. 
 To him everything was fast assuming the horrid unreality 
 of a nightmare. Well, she had. And she had been up to 
 her bedroom and thrown herself on the bed, and given her- 
 self over to a real good cry. After supper she and Jane 
 slipped up to the bedroom together, and lay on the bed for 
 three minutes with their arms twined round each other's 
 neck, and cried a duet. Bertha said she found it impossible 
 to describe her feelings. First she felt supremely happy, 
 and wanted to dance Jane round the vicarage. And then 
 an awful feeling of supreme misery crept over her like a
 
 224 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 pain that comes close to, without touching so that she 
 felt, with the least encouragement in the world, she could 
 have cried her heart out. She said it made the harvest 
 festival seem more like a funeral to her. Jane was as 
 though dead to this world of suffering, translated to a 
 higher sphere of celestial gladness and reward, leaving 
 Bertha lonely, piously rejoicing in Jane's happiness, but 
 mourning the lost part of her entailed by the change, that 
 seemed a very spirit fled. She had clutched Jane's hand 
 and cried that already she perceived a difference. Jane was 
 altered towards her. Jane vowed it was untrue. " Will you 
 promise me on your sacred word," Bertha begged her, " that 
 you will never love Berkeley better than me? I knew you 
 first. I was your friend first." Jane promised, saying, 
 " How could I love him better than you, Bertha ? There's 
 nobody in the world I love better than you (Except you, 
 Numphy ! " she cast in again. " But that's different alto- 
 gether.)" " You will have no secrets from me," Bertha had 
 petitioned. " You will tell Berkeley nothing that you 
 keep from me ? And you will always tell it me first ? " To 
 which Jane, with that unblushing feminine fidelity in friend- 
 ship which breaks the stoutest bars of reason like ginger- 
 bread, said, " Why, of course, Bertha. Whatever do you 
 think!" 
 
 Bertha shed tears, and sighed she wished she could believe 
 it possible. " Jane," she demanded, " Do you hate me ? " 
 Jane cried her friend's name in an accent of scarlet protesta- 
 tion. " Bertha ! " " But you begin to look down upon me," 
 Bertha said. " I can see it in your face. You have a sort 
 of compassion for me now; and yet he is my brother, 
 Jane, after all." She was driven to reflect on her own posi- 
 tion in the world, and confessed, " I am turned twenty, Jane. 
 Two years older than you. Do you think speak truly 
 that I shall ever marry? " Jane had to reassure her. Bertha
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 225 
 
 caught from the assurance no spark of comfort. But her 
 own doubts suddenly flamed to a superb prospect in possi- 
 bility, " Oh, Jane ! Wouldn't it be glorious if some one 
 had wanted me too, and we could both of us have been happy 
 together ? " 
 
 All this had been seething in signs and portents around 
 him to-night, in corners and behind the pages of music 
 shared, and he had caught no single hint or whisper ! 
 
 Fool ! Fool ! 
 
 And Berkeley was coming to-morrow to see him, to sear 
 the final brand into his shrinking flesh. Berkeley had of- 
 fered to break the news himself, Jane said; but she had 
 wished to have the joy of telling dear Numphy just in her 
 own sweet way. Thereat she kissed him passionately three 
 times, and fell suddenly a-weeping over him with her face 
 against his, telling him he was the dearest Numphy in the 
 world, and he must promise to love Berkeley. Thoughts 
 of her dear dead mother, too, welled up to trouble both, 
 with smiles succeeding tears in heavenly revelations, pure 
 gladness pouring over glistening lashes like blinding sunlight 
 over wet leaves until the Doctor, steeped in misery, made 
 the final resolute dissimulation, and brought the ordeal to 
 an end with feigned thought for the girl's welfare. 
 
 " Come, Jane," he cried, pulling forth his watch and tap- 
 ping the face of it significantly with his forefinger. " Close 
 on two o'clock, and here we are, with the fire out, talking as 
 though it were mid-day. And I'm supposed to be a doctor, 
 and don't know better than that. Not another word ! Bed's 
 the place without delay for a serious case like yours." 
 
 He knocked the ashes out of his pipe into the fender, and 
 they rose. On a sudden she clasped his arm retentively. 
 
 " Numphy ! Do you know, now I come to think of it, I 
 don't believe you've ever said one single word to tell me you 
 are glad ! " 
 is
 
 226 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 " Surely Jane . . ." he protested, but she was positive, 
 and said, " No, not a single word." 
 
 For a moment this last lie stuck in his throat, huge, un- 
 dislodgeable ; but he met the necessity with almost physical 
 exertion, as an athlete strains to the throwing of the discus. 
 
 " If it is your happiness, Jane," he told her, " you must 
 surely know there can be no one in the world more glad 
 than I." 
 
 That was the last and best he could do. He kissed her 
 and turned to the lamp.
 
 XXVIII 
 
 WHAT is this dismal sound of waters in commotion, 
 of mournful wavelets dredging shingle, or splashing 
 plaintive over pebbles, or suffocating the hollow cavities 
 between wet chalk bowlders with passionless melancholy 
 music, like a dirge of death and the drowned? 
 
 It is the dank night-noise of the Hun, moving full-breasted 
 to sea beneath the stars ; murmurous with its myriad voices 
 of leaping waters that stretch out joyless hands and arms, 
 and talk to one another in chill undertones as their host 
 moves on. There is no joy in all these riotous waves; the 
 clash of their cymbals and their tambourines is muffled; 
 they dance to lamentation, like draped mutes, subsiding over 
 sobs; weeping, mourning spirits, that depict affliction with 
 their winding limbs, and dissolve upon despair. A tide of 
 tears and fluent grief. 
 
 Who is this silent being wrapped steadfastly in the sound 
 of the waters by the banks of the Hun; with the Spraith 
 lijylit groping over him inquisitively like a surreptitious 
 hand; dealing soft touches to watch-chain and scarf-pin, 
 collar and pale tweed cap? Surely, there can be but one 
 such figure hereabout; it is the Sunfleet Doctor who stands 
 thus with his left wrist grasped in the right hand behind 
 his back, as if he were his own captive, and stares like a 
 sleeper at the full flood moving by. Bed for him? The 
 thought had been intolerable. With such a heart on fire, 
 and such a mind suffocating in the thick smoke of it, bed 
 was but a superadded torture. He donned his cap and 
 sought the air. The spaciousness of a sky, distilling stars 
 
 227
 
 228 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 like dropped dew, is more a medicine for consumptive hearts 
 than the closeness of chambers. 
 
 Fool ! Fool ! Fool ! 
 
 How had he been deceived? How had he come, in the 
 supreme arrogance of his folly, to take all this coinage of 
 affection and ring it, without test or scrutiny, into his own 
 exchequer ? 
 
 He blushed shame, even with the frosty starlight on his 
 cheek, to think upon his blindness. Her kisses of him had 
 been but prefatory of the kiss to come that was to part them. 
 Her new-born attachment to the home no more than the 
 clinging of fond arms about the neck of things beloved 
 yet not so much beloved but that another love prevails ; con- 
 verting the old love, in its sense of a deserting baseness, 
 rather to compassion : a quality that pays its pity in advance, 
 knowing the nearing need of it. 
 
 And he had been sure of her! As well might the ephem- 
 eral gnat lay claim, in its quivering happiness, to the un- 
 divided heritance of God's sunlight. He was no more than 
 an insect joying in her beams; blindly deeming them pos- 
 sessions instead of benefits : glories to hold and have, rather 
 than blessings to know and share. The dead woman's 
 words came back into his memory; those words which he 
 had let like a sacred tablet into the walls of his love. " And 
 do you know, Humphrey " His heart retched at them. 
 Down with this pious tablet, deceiving hope. Down to the 
 dust with this wonderful temple that sustained it, and lent 
 the lie shelter. Down with all these high pillars, vaults and 
 arches; buttresses and towers. To earth with them forth- 
 with ; let him clear himself of all their wreckage, and emerge 
 the mere man, with no false worshiping-place built round 
 him; nothing but the nakedness of the sky above, and the 
 empty world about; and his own lonely courage to uphold 
 him.
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 229 
 
 From himself and his own suffering part in the girl's 
 choice, he turned aside at intervals to view with wonderment 
 the object of it. That she should ever have chosen Berkeley 
 Hislop seemed incredible to him; of all hearts in the world 
 this seemed the least and last alighting-place for Jane's 
 affection. Magnanimous moments had touched him to 
 occasional thoughts of pity for Jane's youth ; and warmed 
 him, on a basis of security, to generous regrets that the girl's 
 young love was to be bestowed on sober years. He had told 
 himself that those remorseful moments when her sweet kiss 
 had made him sorrowingly sure of her, that she deserved 
 some more romantic mate : some sanguine boy to match her ; 
 some flexible green sapling in whom the juice of folly was 
 pardonable nay, almost admirable to bend and sway 
 with her in all her lightsome moods ; not a tough oak to give 
 her grave and solid shelter. This much has been the specter 
 in his passion ; the shadow of his years upon her. And now 
 she had chosen one but little younger in terms of time; 
 infinitely older in terms of character and disposition. 
 
 He looked back at the bright companionable hours that 
 were gone, and forward to those lonely leaden hours the fu- 
 ture held for him; striking brief glimpses of a life without 
 her; truth's matches kindled in the dark, whose quick blaze 
 caused his sight to shrink, and made surrounding darkness 
 darker. O, Jane, Jane, Jane ! What have you done ! 
 
 A thought caught him, inflammable, " One breath of truth 
 might blow down all." He dropped the smoldering stuff 
 and ground the heel of resolution on it, in the dust. The 
 evil flame was trodden underfoot, but the reeking memory 
 stayed, an acrid thing assailing conscience unpleasantly, like 
 burnt rag beneath the nostrils. How far was Jane's happi- 
 ness to be sustained by fraud? For fraud, the moment 
 Berkeley Hislop asked a dearer relationship, the Doctor's 
 silence would become. His mind had not so high an esti-
 
 230 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 mate of Berkeley Hislop's passion as to suppose it capable 
 of transcending a solid earthly difficulty such as this. The 
 thought of Julian Alston and his gypsy paramour, with the 
 girl's bastard half-brother at her breast; the remembrance 
 of his compact with this drunken degenerate, jerked con- 
 science to a sudden halt on its heel. He had a momentary 
 vision of the vicar's face when through the single portal of 
 his sound ear the dread truth should be passed to his in- 
 credulous intelligence; a vision, too, not less disquieting, 
 of Berkeley Hislop's dry countenance in the hour of dis- 
 closure; a vision, more poignant than either of these, of an 
 inconsolable Jane, weeping under abandonment and mur- 
 dered pride; a wet-eyed denunciatory Jane, shedding tears 
 and dripping fire for that he had thus wickedly deceived her 
 and his courage sank. Nay, he winced, even at the 
 thought of it, with fear her weeping might accuse him of 
 some still more crimson charge; level the accusation of his 
 love against him, and tell him this sudden exercise of con- 
 science was but a base unworthy means to reach her. And 
 the knowledge of how easily, but for his very love, it might 
 be so, restrained him from the nobler, manlier course. 
 Were his own interests alone at balance on the scales, he 
 would have had no hesitance or doubt. Truth would have 
 been his pathway; at all cost he would have taken it. But 
 as it was 
 
 As it was, he bitterly deplored his silence that legacy 
 from the girl's dead mother, so sacredly accepted. Silence, 
 packed and stored, is an explosive scarce less deadly than 
 guncotton, whose power conies only with compression. All 
 these years had stamped this secrecy to an almost solid 
 charge. Fired ten years ago, the consequences might have 
 been, perhaps, a sputtering flash no more ; without force ; 
 nearly noiseless. But now, with all these interests involved, 
 ignition could be no longer gentle, no soft tissue-paper com-
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 231 
 
 bustion, succeeding the worded spark. Lay the match how- 
 ever discreetly to the touch-charge of truth, and an explosion 
 must inevitably follow, doing what harm he knew not, but 
 wounding one or more, he felt assured. The dark perplexity 
 of the question rose about him like a flood. In the need to 
 battle with it, to breast and swim the threatening waters, he 
 cast aside unconsciously the burden of his nearer grief. It 
 was enough he saw his dearest Jane in danger to the flood, 
 and thereat he strove only for her succor, lightening himself 
 of all his personal impediment of thought. 
 
 Day was beginning to dawn in soft expirings of pink and 
 primrose, quenching the eastward stars and lending clear 
 reality to the Doctor's chimneys when at last he took his 
 tired face homeward.
 
 XXIX 
 
 JANE cast good-morning arms about his neck, called him 
 " dear Numphy " and hugged him, and held him at 
 arm's length to look at him and infer her confidences of 
 overnight, and hid her head momentarily on his bosom, like 
 a bird flying back to the secret nest built there. 
 
 Yes, yes, it was his Jane ; his heart's sickness ; the cause 
 and cure of it. 
 
 In his bedroom he had dreaded meeting her. All this 
 night of self -interrogation, torture and dull despair had 
 warped his sense of the actual, confounding reality with the 
 apprehended; giving finality's semblance to what was still 
 to come. He had feared the sight of her face, for what 
 he should read on it ; and the display of his own for what it 
 might reveal. 
 
 But now, one look at her revived him, restored his cour- 
 age. If he was to bear this trial as he sought, it could 
 only be with Jane's unconscious help. He must draw his 
 fortitude from her; must drink the laughter rippling spring- 
 like from her lips ; absorb the spiritual significance of her for 
 sustenance. Away from her his mind would drift, his 
 thoughts run down to the motionlessness of despair. He 
 was a poor piece of mortal machinery, needing the girl's 
 fingers to wind him and keep him going; a clock, to drone 
 mechanically the moments and chime the hours ; his motive 
 power, the leaden weights of despair tugging on the cogged 
 wheels in his heart, that no hand but the girl's could raise. 
 The touch of her embrace cruel though it was the clarid 
 coolness of her kisses, the quivering of her blue eyes, served 
 
 232
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 233 
 
 to rewind the run-down weights of lead within him. The 
 beating of his heart stopped briefly dead to the brisk turns of 
 the key, it is true ; leaden despair was lifted from the ground 
 with protesting ratchet and jar of sullen chain ; but the tick- 
 tack pulse was stronger, steadier, when, from the reversal of 
 movement, it reclaimed its beat; and the chime of his voice, 
 when he used it, had its old ring to comfort and deceive. 
 This ordeal over, he told himself, he would dread no second. 
 Solitude should be shunned like alcohol : an intemperate 
 drink with disastrous consequences for such as he. Already, 
 in contact with that clear unsuspecting eye he began to 
 divest himself of night's feverish thinking, to repudiate his 
 unworthy wounded thoughts, as men blush over the irrespon- 
 sibilities of their youth ; to borrow a saner, manlier mood to 
 meet the circumstance. Where was the terrible in it, so to 
 stir and incapacitate him? Must beauty ever be desired? 
 Was Berkeley Hislop better kissed than he? Or better 
 clasped? Or better comforted, besought, endeared, beamed 
 on, smiled at, laughed over? Nay, in this great wide 
 province of sacred guardianship, he had her all his own. 
 Not Berkeley Hislop nor another could beat down his 
 scepter. Why bear love's standard into this other kingdom, 
 and try and bind two realms beneath one crown? Each 
 territory had its privileges ; each love its throne. She 
 would be a heart's princess, journeying honored from one 
 kingdom to the other; linking their affections, tightening 
 their interests. Secrets unbreathed to Berkeley would be 
 his ; from his privileged protective place he would watch 
 the current of her life; a something more than husband; 
 something higher ; less of earth, more spiritual. This very 
 love that took her from him in name and seeming, would 
 draw her near to the better part of him in heart and deed. 
 He would be apotheosized; these years of fervent guardian- 
 ship, unstained by worldly questions of requital, pure, im-
 
 234 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 personal, dispassionate, would wreath him to her love with 
 thought of tender gratitude. Let him tint his resignation to 
 the color of a noble revenge ; regard goodness as a weapon ; 
 and guardianship his knightly armor. Look to it, Berkeley 
 Hislop, for the consequences of this secret joust ! and you, 
 too, Jane Alston, dearest of your sex. For the Doctor will 
 make the armor of his guardianship so pure and bright for 
 your protection ; will shield you so tenderly ; love you so 
 dearly; enter into your heart and hopes so deeply; yearn 
 with you so generously; live and rejoice with you so daily, 
 that when the time comes to leave the guardian's shelter 
 for the husband's roof there will be tears spilled (God grant) 
 and hands clasped and fingers wrung. Vowed to such a 
 sweet revenge, he seemed girt all at once with magnanimity ; 
 his laughter had a holy flow, like sacred oil ; above his brow 
 he was conscious of a saintly kindling warmth, where, all 
 unseen by mortal eye not purified to spiritual discernment, 
 his nimbus burned. 
 
 Not Jane nor any other could have read Sir Percival be- 
 hind the Doctor's brow, or seen the fine mesh of spiritual 
 mail with which his every look was armed. To her he was 
 the dear old Numphy ; " good-looking," yes, she accorded 
 him the title frankly; just as she laid her 'sixpence on 
 the plate in church, proud (like Jane) that it showed dis- 
 tinct amid so many coppers; and proud, too, that she could 
 contribute such an unmitigated silver adjective to the offer- 
 tory of the doctor's virtues. The same dear, old, good- 
 looking smileful Numphy that Bertha had so often coveted 
 whom she loved like an elder brother; so familiar as to 
 seem almost a part of herself though much more unani- 
 mous with her than herself could ever be and yet finely 
 differentiated for the purpose of argument when she felt in 
 her bosom the Jane-yearning to contradict. The dear old 
 N T umphy-brother whom she could kiss and tease and practice
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 235 
 
 her wiles on, and coax presents and indulgences from, so 
 that she might glory in her prowess and bear the spoils to 
 Bertha, and tell her : " What do you think Numphy has 
 promised to buy me?" and enjoy the caress of Bertha's 
 softly envious voice: "Oh, Jane dear. What a fortunate 
 girl you are. You have never known the trial of being one 
 of a large family, with four brothers." 
 
 Their breakfast was of Berkeley. All her confidences of 
 last night were repeated to the tintinnabulation of those 
 bangled wrists little flexible musicians making light of love ; 
 laughing at the passion under her very nose; shaking their 
 fairy timbrels in her face, so that even the man within the 
 armor asked himself with one of those twinges of bitter- 
 ness : " Is her heart like that ? " The question was a balm 
 to soothe the wound. Stricken mortals will summon the 
 interrogative to sustain them vicariously, and draw solace 
 thus from what they would not affirm. This second time the 
 little tongue, running glibly in a track prepared ; following 
 grief's furrow that the silver plowshare had already 
 graved, and that his thoughts, playing ceaselessly over them 
 all the while, like breezes, had crusted to a certain surface 
 hardness this second time the little tongue was easier to 
 bear. There was no talk of marriage yet, it told him once 
 again. She might live on with Numphy here for Oh . . . 
 as much, in probability as two or three years. Berkeley said 
 he would not wish to take her away until he could offer her 
 a fitting home. " A vicarage, Numphy ! Think of that ! " 
 Jane's thoughts were like goldfish in a bowl this breakfast- 
 time ; darting here and there on flash of tail or wink of fin 
 to seek their nutriment, sometimes mere deceptive bubbles 
 that they sucked in, deluded, for solider stuff; inspiring 
 questions that Numphy found hard to answer; delivering 
 confidences that he found harder to bear. What did Num- 
 phy think of Berkeley, for instance ? The truth, mind, from
 
 236 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 the bottom of his heart ! All sorts of answers floated 
 vaguely in his mind. A voice in him cried : " Praise her 
 choice. Gild the man. Sanctify him. Win toll of her love 
 by laudations." A graver voice said : " Have a care. Every 
 good word is a brick for the building of his temple. Why 
 should you act the captive Israelite, and furnish bricks with- 
 out straw for these tyrannous alien taskmasters of love ? " 
 A third voice, a whispering sinuous voice like a snake stir- 
 ring the dry undergrowth of the mind, said : " Poison your 
 reply. Drop malice in the word. Dash some secret vitriolic 
 scorn into the face of her ideal, for the corrosion of its 
 features. 'No acid bites more deeply into a woman's pride 
 than derision of the object loved. She will sharpen her eyes 
 to seek the justice of the scorn in him she loves, and their 
 sharpness may pierce deeper than the tongue that set them 
 seeking." He paused between these three counselors and 
 the dictates of his own heart, and she read the delay with a 
 sweetheart's swiftness. " You don't care for him, Num- 
 phy!" 
 
 He demurred reproachingly. " I never said that." 
 
 " But you hesitated." 
 
 " Surely ... a little hesitation is forgivable in a 
 matter touching your happiness so deeply, Jane." 
 
 " If you had liked him you would not have hesitated." 
 She bridled defensively with arms round her Berkeley; at 
 bay even to a hint of a liking not completely shared. He 
 had to trample down this suspicious spark; extinguish it 
 flatly. Berkeley was dear to him ; doubly dear, now, since so 
 dear to Jane. Reassured, she had a concession to make. 
 Berkeley was not her original ideal of a wooer. She and 
 Bertha had exchanged views in the earlier stages of their 
 friendship, as to the kind of sweetheart each desired. Jane 
 said hers must be tall, with long elegant legs, and raven-black 
 hair. The Doctor fell by each standard. Bertha said she
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 237 
 
 preferred a medium. Tall men made her blush and feel so 
 awkward. They always seemed to be staring down on you, 
 and when you took a peep to reassure yourself that they were 
 not looking, your eyes were always caught in the act. Also, 
 she preferred nut-brown hair, slightly curled about the neck 
 and temples. She said it looked so strong and frank and 
 manly. Jane decided for jet-black eyes ; Bertha thought a 
 nice gray much better though later on she said : " Don't 
 be angry with me, Jane. I think I'd like to have your jet- 
 black eyes too, if you don't mind. They could look, as you 
 say, so deep and thrilling." She also thought, after all, that 
 there was something to be said for long legs. " Though, of 
 course," she pointed out, " they need to be particularly well 
 used, Jane. I should want them haughty and debonnair, so 
 that when they sat down on a low sofa they did not scrape 
 up the carpet with their heels." Both Jane and Bertha had 
 decided that long legs, properly displayed, lent a pictorial and 
 elegant effect to a drawing-room ; and were so masculine in 
 their firm stride (though difficult to keep up with, grace- 
 fully) stepping over gates and palisades, and so on, in the 
 full air. However, it was discerned that they must not 
 harmonize their ideal of the heroic too closely, in case one 
 answering to both requirements were to appear and 
 cause feud and bitterness between them. Both vowed, in 
 that case, they would sacrifice their claim to the other, but 
 Bertha went back, for safety, to brown eyes. (" Very dark 
 brown, though, Jane ; " she would add prudently. " Almost 
 black in some lights,") And four sizes shorter in legs. 
 Jane who promised at that time to be slim and stately, 
 much more than her friend adhered to the piercing jet- 
 black orbs and the debonnair extremities. By the latter 
 standard Berkeley Hislop failed. But in her love of him 
 a wondrous magnanimity crept into his heart. " At one 
 time, Numphy," she told the Doctor, " I never did think I
 
 238 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 could care for a little man." He winced. " It seemed too 
 silly." He blinked at that with both eyes. " But now I 
 don't mind one little bit. I wouldn't have him changed." 
 It appeared she had renounced black eyes and lordly legs for 
 Berkeley's sake; and disliked all thought of what the world 
 called " Good looks," preferring the subtler facial harmonies 
 of intellect and virtue. Before these worshipful qualities her 
 own assurance sank to its knees. She doubted her worthiness 
 for such an one as Berkeley. All the voices cried on the 
 Doctor at once : a chorus. He rose, formidable in resplen- 
 dent armor, and protested she was worth a dozen Berkeleys. 
 Aye ! a hundred. His sudden loyalty touched her to a smile 
 that showed her pride in both of them. She looked at him 
 for a while as though requiting him by the steadfast bright- 
 ness of her glance for his championship, and then she shook 
 her head with humility for herself, as though the cause were 
 less than good. " Berkeley is frightfully clever, Numphy ! " 
 she said, giving the qualifying adverb three r's, and under- 
 scoring it by emphasis as many times. " I wish I knew 
 Latin and Greek. The other day Berkeley used a Latin 
 quotation. All I could do was to smile and bite my lip at 
 him, as though I understood. Miss Perritt ought to have 
 taught me." 
 
 " Berkeley knows Hebrew as well," she went on, " and 
 French and German and mathematics. Oh ! Numphy, what- 
 ever would he say if he thought I wasn't too sure of my 
 twelve times ! " 
 
 " If he loved you at all, he would love you all the better 
 for it," Numphy told her stoutly. 
 
 " Do you know, Numphy," she said, after a moment, " I 
 begin to think that you have spoiled me." 
 
 It was the sweetest confidence he had received from her 
 since the falling of the blow. " No, no, Jane," he parried 
 quickly, but not so forcibly as to turn altogether so sweet a
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 239 
 
 blade aside, for it was a delight to be gently wounded with 
 such a weapon, " No, no." 
 
 She continued, " I fear it. You have not been firm enough 
 with me, Numphy. I am horribly self-willed, and idle and 
 careless. It makes me almost angry, now, to think how 
 much of my own way I have been allowed to have. You 
 ought to have been stricter with me." She had the feeling, 
 like so many in her case and circumstance, that his in- 
 dulgence had been bought out of her well-being, and that a 
 firmer hand would have been more to her advantage. " Do 
 you know," she said, " I was calculating last night in bed 
 and you have never once been really angry with me, 
 Numphy." 
 
 He asked, " Who could be angry with you, Jane ? " 
 
 She cried, " That's just it. You did not take me seri- 
 ously, Numphy. You have treated me all along as a mere 
 girl, to be spoiled and petted, and now I am having to pay 
 for it. I wanted somebody grave and serious to deal with 
 me. I feel it. Life is a ... well, it is a serious thing. 
 There are nearly ten thousand people in Berkeley's parish. 
 There is much distress, and the church is in need of repair. 
 He tells me the indifference among the poor to religious 
 matters is dreadful . . ." 
 
 And this was Jane. 
 
 He looked at her incredulously for a moment through 
 unfamiliar eyes, that seemed of a sudden to have been lent 
 him for the purpose like borrowed spectacles and the 
 brief sight of her serious brow and her earnest lips, and the 
 slight heightening of color about the cheek-cushions that 
 comes when the self-conscious speak on a subject more 
 earnestly than is their wont touched the springs of his 
 mirth, and he laughed, coughing correctively next moment, 
 for the color in Jane's cheek deepened and her nostrils drew 
 together.
 
 2 4 o THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 " Oh, if you are going to make fun of serious matters, 
 Numphy," she said. 
 
 He was humbly serious in a moment. Her resolve, ex- 
 pressed, was to apply her heart unto wisdom, that a vicar's 
 wife might not be found wanting when knowledge was ex- 
 pected of her. 
 
 " I must not be a drag on him, Numphy, when the time 
 comes, but a true helpmate." She said it with a clarid 
 sincerity and a tender softening of her eye, so that all the 
 Doctor's voices were silent of a sudden, lending him no word 
 to patch the ensuing pause. Such a dedication of her heart 
 as this to Berkeley's service touched him twice in his love 
 and in his despair. 
 
 Both of them became restless, with the conclusion of their 
 meal, in apprehension of the expected visit. Now that it 
 was imminent, the Doctor began to busy himself with that 
 dreadful mine, laid underfoot, awaiting but a word for 
 explosion. Should he draw Berkeley aside, enlist his love 
 as a recruit to serve in the ranks of loyal silence? After 
 declaration? that was impossible; such a course would be 
 but the honesty that seeks to screen no blemishes when the 
 bargain is concluded. Before? Impossible too. He did 
 the act in thought merely, and suddenly its consequences 
 struck him with such vivid reality that he blazed hot to his 
 hair roots. There seemed no escape from the position short 
 of a wreckage of Jane's happiness involved in it. He was a 
 prisoner under capital sentence on this charge; his reprieve 
 but the starting place for a new train of terrors. 
 
 At last, listening and waiting, Jane raised a quick fore- 
 finger in the air and cried, " The gate ! I hear Uncle Horace 
 talking to Major. Quick, Numphy, that book ! " He was 
 not swift enough for her, and laying a hand on his knee she 
 reached over him to where her book lay, on the corner of the 
 small side-table beyond his chair. " They mustn't think we're
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 241 
 
 waiting for them." She thrust the morning's newspaper into 
 his unready hand. " There ! Read away, Numphy. Sit 
 back and cross your legs." Jane herself, subsiding on a chair 
 by the big table, threw the book open and assumed in an 
 instant a convincing attitude of interested absorption. Foot- 
 steps and voices drew near. The Doctor, with his back to 
 the window and his nose to the crowded page, heard the 
 footsteps halt; laughter, softly shared, beyond the open win- 
 dow in the garden. They had followed the short cut from 
 the vicarage and were taking indulgent stock of Jane through 
 the open sunlit window from the garden walk. Jane, deep 
 in perusal, turning a page with most sublime unconscious- 
 ness of scrutiny, lifted her eyes to the pale blue sky and 
 yellow sunlight. The look sharpened to incredulity; melted 
 over glad surprise, and she jumped to her feet with the 
 name " Bertha ! " as interjection. " Whatever has brought 
 you out so early! I never thought to see you at this 
 hour." 
 
 16
 
 XXX 
 
 WELL, the ordeal was not so dreadful as the Doctor 
 had been inclined to fear expectation proved the 
 painfuller part of it. In the presence of his adversary his 
 courage stood uprigkt, a defiant friendliness sustained him 
 a shining quality that was but the sun agleam upon his 
 armor. 
 
 Jane, who had run to admit the visitors, slipped deftly 
 aside at the door with Bertha, on some whispering expedi- 
 tion of mysterious importance. The vicar and Berkeley 
 came forward to meet the Doctor without feminine attend- 
 ance : both the auriferous stoppings in the vicar's smile were 
 gleaming to a look of mock concern. 
 
 " A nice thing this, Dr. Bentham ! " he cried, as soon as he 
 caught sight of the Doctor's figure a bulwark to the fire- 
 place. He became conscious for the first time of the attenua- 
 tion of his retinue, turned upon Berkeley with a sudden 
 incredulous look beyond, " Where is she ? God bless my 
 soul, what's got them both. I thought they came in with 
 us." 
 
 Berkeley, holding his soft felt hat piously before his bosom 
 in both hands, professed to look round, too, in quest of the 
 absentees, and " believed " they were gone into the other 
 room. He offered some suggestion as to a song. 
 
 " Song ! " exclaimed the vicar. " Songs at this time of the 
 morning! What next! Well, well," he capitulated frankly 
 with the incomprehensible in feminine nature, " I suppose 
 we shall be seeing them again before long," and reverted to 
 his old overture. " A nice thing this, Dr. Bentham : you 
 
 242
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 243 
 
 never told me your niece was a thief. I declare, the girl 
 deserves to be sent to prison." 
 
 The sinister conjunction of names, even through their 
 envelopment of friendly laughter, dealt two hard knocks 
 against the Doctor's conscience, as though administered by 
 fleshless knuckles, a sudden warning rap from the skeleton 
 in his cupboard. 
 
 " Surely ! " he said, dissipating the inward pang with a 
 smile that traversed both faces before him, " not quite so 
 bad as that, vicar ! " 
 
 The vicar shook his head. " Well, well ! I don't know. 
 Here's Berkeley been telling me this morning before break- 
 fast that Jane has stolen his heart. It came as a complete 
 surprise to me. I suppose Jane has let you into the secret. 
 I never knew a word of it till this morning. Here! What 
 have you got to say for yourself, you rascal? Do you ex- 
 pect your uncle to pull your chestnuts out of the fire for 
 you? Come along and burn your own fingers. It's your 
 own affair, not mine." 
 
 Berkeley, thus directly admonished, laughed a lenient ad- 
 mission of his guilt: a youthful phase of countenance that 
 rather became him. The Doctor, fixing friendly but pene- 
 trative eyes on his adversary, was frank enough to acknowl- 
 edge to his own heart that the Rev. Berkeley Hislop was 
 less dry of cheek, less sharp of feature, less scant of hair 
 about the higher reaches of his temple, less obviously book- 
 constructed, and younger than his wounded mind had ad- 
 mitted him. The smile upon his lips that drew them 
 apart somewhat diagonally, was markedly reminiscent of his 
 uncle Horace a smile of the reluctant genus, filtered 
 through a dispositional gravity, like a spring through clay, 
 yet very clear and agreeable when at last it issued. 
 
 " I'm afraid Dr. Bentham will incline to reverse that state- 
 ment, uncle," he said, " and say it is I who am the robber.
 
 244 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 Jane has told you, of course," he added to the Doctor, 
 who answered, smiling : " Jane broke the news to me last 
 night." 
 
 " She wished to be the first to do so. I hope you won't 
 say the news is bad ? " 
 
 The Doctor told him, " On the contrary. The news," he 
 said (and said it with a sincerity which would have deceived 
 a much more acute observer than Berkeley Hislop) rejoiced 
 him greatly. He coupled it with the fervent hope that their 
 two happinesses were to be united and secured, and that 
 the contemplated step might prove wise for both of them. 
 The vicar, itching to improve the occasion on Berkeley's 
 behalf, interposed : " Between ourselves . . ." He ap- 
 proached his face towards the Doctor's with the familiar 
 gesture for a confidence, cutting Berkeley out of the con- 
 versation. " Between ourselves . . . your niece ought 
 to consider herself a highly-favored young lady, Dr. Ben- 
 tham. I don't think I'm betraying any confidence when I 
 tell you that Berkeley has received marked encouragement 
 from several important wealthy families . . . How 
 many pairs of hand-worked slippers did you get last Christ- 
 mas, Berkeley ? " 
 
 Berkeley murmured a protesting : " Uncle ! I never wore 
 them." 
 
 "There, there! You see what a modest fellow he is!" 
 the vicar cried, indicating him with a hand that seemed to 
 despair of ever overcoming the quality. " And yet . . . 
 if I'm to speak the truth " he approached his mouth 
 towards the confidential zone once more, " I do really be- 
 lieve he could have had a baronet's niece and very little 
 opposition, too." 
 
 Berkeley protested again, but the vicar astride his Pegasus 
 and deaf of an ear, was a difficult rider to restrain. Since
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 245 
 
 the truth must be told, he would confess it, this attachment 
 of Berkeley's caused him both pleasure and disappointment. 
 There was no girl for whom he entertained a higher regard 
 than Jane. " Indeed, I may have mentioned it before," he 
 said, " that she holds quite a niece's place in my heart." He 
 admitted her grace, her beauty and her talents, but still 
 . . . marriage was subsidiary nowhere to so many con- 
 siderations as in the church. The frankness with which his 
 uncle's mind pursued this pathway to its extreme end was 
 the only quality that made the subject tolerable. " But the 
 silly fellow has fallen quite in love with her," he concluded, 
 " and she with him. So you and I, Dr. Bentham, can only 
 submit." In the course of his conversation, the vicar, whose 
 mind in its narrowing circumference of age and infirmity, 
 seemed capable of admitting no relationship other than 
 nephew or niece, spoke repeatedly of Jane in the latter cat- 
 egory towards the Doctor. 
 
 " But surely," Berkeley took up at length, actuated, it 
 seemed, by the Doctor's unprotesting acceptance of the title, 
 " Jane is not really a niece of yours, Dr. Bentham ? " 
 
 The Doctor smiled correctively, " No, not really." 
 
 The vicar, sensible of an interruption from some quarter 
 or other, cried " Eh ? " in turn to Berkeley and the Doctor, 
 revolving a face of pained incomprehension, not knowing 
 from which quarter his hearing would be called upon to 
 receive its intelligence. " What is it ? What are you say- 
 ing?" 
 
 Berkeley inclined his face to explain. 
 
 " Nothing, uncle. I was just asking Dr. Bentham . . . 
 You spoke of Jane as ' Your niece,' that's all." 
 
 The vicar repeated " Niece ? " blankly, as though his mind 
 could see no sensible reason for any interruption in the 
 word.
 
 246 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 " Well, well ! " he exclaimed. " Surely I ought to know 
 she is his niece by this time. I have called her that since 
 she was a child." 
 
 Berkeley smiled indulgently towards the vicar, the smile 
 that makes allowance for affliction, or for elderly faculties 
 impaired. 
 
 " I understood ... a sort of cousin," he said, with 
 the slight tone of interrogative that asks, if wrong, to be 
 corrected. 
 
 " Scarcely even a cousin," the Doctor said, with a secret 
 quickening of the heart, for this question of relationship was 
 as an insecure handbridge over a dark void. " But Jane's 
 mother was connected with my family by marriage . . ." 
 He tongued the falsehood glibly, for not less of deception 
 than this he felt would avail to screen the girl from that 
 closer inquiry which must for a certainty ensue should all 
 the prop of relationship be withdrawn ; and even this slender 
 buttress of half-cousinship seemed scarce sufficient of itself 
 to sustain the reason of his uncontested guardianship of the 
 girl. He concluded his statement of fact and fable, that 
 showed no breach in it to Berkeley. ". . . And ever 
 since we were children she was accounted among us as a 
 cousin. My favorite cousin, indeed, I may say." 
 
 The vicar, listening with his sound ear foremost, and his 
 mouth on one side like a milk-can on some area rails, caught 
 the word incredulously. 
 
 " Cousin ? What does he say, Berkeley ? " His face un- 
 derwent a rapid cycle of changes, as intelligence behind 
 his deafness revolved, and stood still at an expression of 
 disillusionment, in which reproach showed undisguisedly. 
 " A cousin ! " he repeated. " Here I have been thinking her 
 a niece all these years. You have never corrected me," he 
 charged the Doctor. There was unmistakable injury in the 
 voice, and disappointment in the eye. The Doctor defended
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 247 
 
 himself. " On the contrary, vicar, I assure you ... I 
 tried to let you know on quite a number of occasions." 
 
 " Well, well, I never heard you," the vicar said. " I 
 declare it comes as a positive surprise to me." He said he 
 supposed it was all the same, and deplored his deafness inci- 
 dentally, but the fact rankled. " It's very unsettling. . . . 
 After all these years. You know my affliction; I make no 
 stranger of you. But everybody seems to insist on speaking 
 to the wrong ear. Then she's not your poor sister's child ? " 
 
 The Doctor admitted that his only sister died in early 
 childhood. 
 
 " I declare I don't know where we stand," the vicar pro- 
 tested. " It's all new to me. Upon my word, I never seem 
 to get two answers alike from anybody. If it's their son one 
 day, God bless me it's their father or somebody else's brother 
 next time I see them. Then Jane is not related to you any 
 more closely on the father's side? He's dead, of course. 
 Yes, yes. Thank God, I almost feared you would say the 
 fellow was alive. It's so vexing to one's pride to find that 
 every opinion one holds is wrong. And this deafness only 
 makes it worse. Let's see . . . surely I ought to re- 
 member. Didn't you tell me ... Don't say he wasn't 
 an architect ! " The vicar's mouth twisted to an almost 
 pathetic intensity in its attendance on the Doctor's reply. 
 " No ? Not an architect ? What in the name of fortune 
 was the man? (God forbid you ever have my affliction to 
 bear, Berkeley)." 
 
 " As a matter of fact " the Doctor felt their eyes on him 
 like weights " I believe the poor man was what would be 
 called a gentleman." 
 
 The vicar cried " Eh ? a what ? " The word gentleman 
 visibly mollified him, though he admitted in these days it 
 was much abused. " But then, of course, Dr. Bentham " 
 after so much darkling perplexity his smile crept out like a
 
 248 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 ray of sunlight " Your niece " he stopped with a pained 
 " There ! " as though the gout had twinged him. " You see 
 how these misconceptions stick. I tell you I shall have no 
 end of trouble in getting rid of the idea. Your cousin 
 but no; that doesn't sound right, somehow. The word 
 cousin carries no meaning to me. I suppose, I shall be 
 driven to call her Jane now, without variation, at every end 
 and turn." He picked up the interrupted thread. " Well, 
 well. Jane, as I was going to say, is her own guarantee for 
 antecedents. Nobody would suspect her of being anything 
 less than the daughter of a gentleman. In that respect I 
 couldn't have wished Berkeley to make a better choice. 
 She'll do credit to Lady Frinton's terrace." The pained look 
 took hold of him again. " And the worst is I've been seeing 
 a resemblance between the two of you all this time. Most 
 provoking. I only told my housekeeper a week ago that it 
 was easy to see which side of the family Jane got her smile 
 from. The silly woman agreed with me. What age do you 
 say the poor fellow was when he died ? " 
 
 The Doctor drew upon his inventive resources, suggesting 
 the early thirties. 
 
 " Just poor Cyprian's age, if he had lived, Berkeley," said 
 the vicar, with a sympathetic shake of the head. 
 
 Berkeley looked suitably sad. " Promising fellow, Dr. 
 Bentham. Terrible shock to his friends. Would have been 
 an ornament to the Bar. Everybody expected him to take 
 silk." 
 
 Jane's father was momentarily obscured behind this deeper 
 trouble, but he cropped up again; a sort of floating spar, 
 tossed about on the shifting tide of the vicar's speech; a 
 menace to security on that waterway; now and again 
 threatening ; always miraculously removed. Sometimes near, 
 sometimes more distant, this waterlogged topic of Julian 
 Alston rolled heavily in the waves of conversation, and little
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 249 
 
 by little, inappreciably to himself as it seemed, the Doctor 
 fended off the dangerous subject. What he would never 
 have dared to fabricate in one breath, or in cold blood, was 
 accomplished, to his subsequent dismay, in a series of mere 
 preservative impulses. Julian Alston was dead and buried, 
 lying in some far-off Indian grave. His life had been brief ; 
 certain discordancies were subtly hinted at to mar the course 
 of it. Before his death his wanderings and temperament 
 had alienated him sadly from the best of wives. It is to be 
 confessed the Doctor lied with skill. Threads of thin truth 
 indeed were cunningly drawn upon, to lend substance to 
 falsehood; the spiritual essences of the facts extracted and 
 metamorphosed to a quality that seemed to preclude all 
 further inquiry as an irreverent thing. 
 
 Thus the interview that the Doctor had dreaded ran its 
 course and drew to a close, leaving him the ultimate task of 
 quartering the ground traversed, and marking mentally the 
 points to which he stood committed. Like most reluctant 
 liars he found in retrospect that he had outstripped inten- 
 tion. This screening was oppugnant ; not the passive thing 
 of inference by silence that he had intended, but a militant 
 defense. For such there was no pardon. His sense of the 
 enormity of the sin, now that it stood committed, led him to 
 contemplate confession of it, just as before the thought of 
 confession precipitated him into the sin. The function of 
 conscience cannot be pre-stimulated ; men temporize with its 
 penalties as the Peterwick stationmaster handles his bees, 
 cheerfully awake to the sting; made careless, withal, by 
 much custom. Now that this swarm of winged falsehoods 
 buzzed about their master, driving their formic spurs into 
 his conscience, he was seized with the sudden panic for 
 preservation. He would confess, call these two men back; 
 undo these words. The summons : " One moment before 
 you go," was as near to his lips as his own breath, drawn
 
 250 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 extra deep for the pronouncement. The breath passed 
 soundlessly by; a ghost only; the living part of it seemed 
 to die in his throat. For the ill was done. The lie alone 
 would lend a blackness to the sordid truth suppressed; give 
 the living Julian Alston a dreadfuller frame for the presenta- 
 tion of that sinister eye. And Jane . . . Between his 
 love of her and his hatred of everything that went to the com- 
 pounding of fraud, his conscience, circling aimlessly like a 
 lost pigeon, settled down at last on the midway branches of 
 procrastination, watching alternately the two horizons. 
 Honor was already besmirched, but his love of her at least 
 was pure ; which shows eloquently how the whitest flame 
 can forge an ill weapon, and good motives bring forth a bad 
 progeny. Thus, whatever preachers of the Berkeley Hislop 
 type may reclaim, much of the beauty of this earthly world 
 is made by the sin in it; and moral beauty will disappear 
 (we may believe) with the slow preponderance of righteous- 
 ness. For righteousness, perfected, will become but as a fine 
 instrument, mechanically designed, and goodness will lose all 
 significance when it ceases to be the flower of mortal sin- 
 fulness; as the soul of art is crushed in the wheels of the 
 machine whose function is faultlessly to simulate it. A 
 perfect rectitude would be as impossible in practice as a 
 music compounded of perfect harmony; dissonance is as 
 necessary to the warmth of soul as it is to glow of musical 
 color. So, righteousness may be conceived in theory as 
 perpetually tending to its own destruction, since the perfec- 
 tion of it is a mere frigid equipoise of emotions; such an 
 Arctic balance of passions as will freeze the palpitating soul 
 of life to death, and substitute an uncalculating rote in 
 this last supreme Polar region of rectitude for that equa- 
 torial sinfulness which has been productive of so many beau- 
 tiful offenses. All which is inspired by thoughts of the 
 Sunfleet Doctor's untruthfulness, since there are those, I
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 251 
 
 am aware, who hold that with the first falling of the standard 
 of truth, the battle is lost and Satan counts his own. 
 
 They rejoin Jane and Bertha, and for awhile the Doctor's 
 torture is pleasantly varied. He has to bear the lashing of 
 the vicar's mock-reproaches to the girl for her larceny of his 
 nephew's heart; has to witness the kindling of Jane's cheek 
 beneath the pleasurable raillery; her fugitive glances at 
 Berkeley, so full of proprietory submission, that he ejects 
 from his perception with a smiling violence, casting the sight 
 aside as though it were a snake though never before the 
 reptile has bitten him. 
 
 Berkeley leaves for Growingham this afternoon. Mean- 
 while his uncle is to perambulate him through Sunfleet and 
 gather up the fragments of homage to his last night's ser- 
 mon. Already the vicar begins to show anxiety for motion, 
 and to cast his preparatory " Well, well's," like the seeds of 
 departure. Jane and Bertha are to accompany these two, 
 and exchange whispered confidences at gates, while the vicar 
 is heard " between ourselves " to give his opinion of Berke- 
 ley's talents to anxious-faced women, whose nostrils are 
 too preoccupied with oven odors, and ears made anxious 
 with internal sounds of sizzling, to appreciate these talents 
 even if they were all that the vicar claims for them. He will 
 be heard to impart, too, here and there, as a momentous and 
 solemn secret, that Berkeley is leaving his heart behind him ; 
 the vicar commences to believe they have a young lady to 
 thank for the rare privilege of last night's sermon. Well, 
 well. He couldn't have wished his nephew to choose more 
 wisely; the niece of their esteemed doctor, and the accom- 
 plished daughter of a (God bless him! the name's gone 
 again) of a gentleman well known in India one of our 
 indomitable Empire-builders. 
 
 All this will lend Jane a pretty pride, and make a fine 
 arch to her neck. Her eyes will be bright beneath disdain-
 
 252 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 ful lids, and she will tread queenly the Sunfleet roads as 
 though pages carried her train. And the vicar, the personal 
 conductor of this parochial tour, will halt suddenly in his 
 progress at times to cry : " God bless me ! Niece did I say ! 
 Why didn't you correct me, Berkeley? Stop . . . 
 Where is the woman? Well, well. We can call on our 
 way back. Most provoking. ... I told him what it 
 would be." 
 
 Before the Doctor shakes farewell hands with this felt- 
 hatted worker of his wretchedness, to mount the Raleigh for 
 his morning's round, he asks Berkeley what time he takes 
 train from Peterwick. Berkeley says he is putting himself 
 at the mercy of the Beachington 'bus. Whereat the Doctor 
 says : " Nonsense. I've only a short round this morning. 
 The mare'll be quite fresh. Jane had better drive you." 
 Berkeley says : " O, really. ... I hadn't meant. . . . 
 It's extremely kind of you ... I didn't wish . . ." 
 and looks at Jane with a look that is only bearable to the 
 Doctor because it is the fruit of his own magnanimity. He 
 feels a nobler, better, purer man for this beautiful act of self- 
 abnegation. A bright-eyed Jane says : " Won't you drive us, 
 Numphy ? " with a sudden generosity that comes of grati- 
 tude. Numphy says he has some cases in Sunfleet to attend 
 to, and Jane has more policy than to ask which, or where. 
 It is settled and Jane looks proud and radiant, and Berkeley 
 pleased, and Bertha smilingly sentimental ; and the Doctor 
 shakes hands again and wishes his guest a pleasant journey, 
 and assumes his brisk professional step, and springs up into 
 the waiting trap, and rolls down the drive beneath the over- 
 hanging branches, over a yellow carpet of chestnut and 
 sycamore leaves. It is some comfort to him to reflect that 
 Berkeley Hislop will be one hundred and thirty odd cross- 
 country miles away by nightfall.
 
 XXXI 
 
 THE history of a man in contest with a hopeless love is 
 a history of the centuries. Whole dynasties of thought 
 prevail and run successively their regal course: tyrants of 
 melancholy, despots of bitterness, emperors of holy peace, 
 kings of crimson courage all in turn aspire for conquest 
 of the Doctor's mind, and lead their hosts to battle. He 
 goes to bed under the sway of some beneficent ruler; he 
 wakes up next morning beneath the rod of an usurping 
 tyrant, who crushes thought with groaning imposts, and 
 levies grievous taxes upon hope. 
 
 At times the Doctor seeks to sulk in heart; is anxious to 
 find a pretext for hating Jane, and cannot. Hints of her 
 indifference strike him wretched ; proofs of her affection 
 make him just as wretched, because that she has robbed 
 him first of the wherewithal to requite it. Love knows no 
 coinage but its own ; he is outraged at this compulsion to 
 tender the spurious currency; dreads she will detect it, and 
 yet feels anger that she accepts the false coin with such 
 complacency and unscrutinizing faith. Is she blind? She 
 never tests the coin. He cannot esteem it a compliment to 
 the forgery; it is a token rather, of how little she pays him 
 heed, how little he weighs of consequence in her esteem. 
 People do not ring coppers and the smaller silver, only gold. 
 He knows there is not a word of Berkeley Hislop's but will 
 be rung a hundred times for the pure joy of hearing its value 
 repeat itself musically in a thrill of pure love-metal ; not a 
 coin but will be tried with her small white teeth, bitten for 
 love, to be assured by hard test of a worth undoubted. Nay, 
 harder still to bear than the surety of it is the fact that she 
 
 253
 
 254 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 makes him party to its probate; brings each coin to ring 
 before him; strikes it down upon his sensitive heart; shows 
 him unblushingly a picture of the look that went with the 
 word; constitutes this love-sick wretch a twin to her own 
 happiness. Love has no sight, no thought, no mercy. 
 
 He believed he had been armed. Pah! This self-forged 
 armor is as vulnerable as the paper helm and card cuirass, 
 and pasteboard make-believe of childhood. And love is as 
 fickle as a child ; coaxed, will play itself with these toys into 
 a state of self-cajoled content; frustrated, will cast them 
 scornfully aside, their paper pretentiousness a thing of 
 mockery. 
 
 Strangely, and cruelly too, this love that took Jane from 
 him drew her closer ; he seemed necessary to reflect her 
 happiness, as the vanity glass to mirror her hair. He was 
 sensible of being his rival's proxy. She gave him kisses that 
 were, he knew, for Berkeley; practiced looks of ultra-ten- 
 derness upon him that had Berkeley's visage at the extreme 
 far-end of them like a face viewed through an inverted tele- 
 scope. When they sat at table he was aware, at times, that 
 Bishops were present by the way she extended her fourth 
 finger in drinking from the cup, or pouring out the tea; she 
 has smiled upon him with the condescension for one of Berk- 
 eley's churchwarden's ; or the organist, Christianly suffered. 
 Grace before meat and thanksgiving after were reinstated 
 to their former place at meals, and not left to be honored 
 at irregular periods by a cry of conscience on Jane's part: 
 " Numphy ! Whenever did we last say grace ! " Jane read, 
 he knew, each night and morning a chapter out of the Bible 
 to prepare her for the seriousness of life and Bertha 
 had promised to do the same. A wave of piety was notice- 
 able. " But promise me you won't read more than one, 
 dear," Jane demanded of her. " Don't be mean and get 
 ahead of me, Bertha." Thoughts even of family prayers
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 255 
 
 occurred to Jane, as a pious responsibility, with Anne and 
 Hester kneeling respectfully against the chairs by the door ; 
 their noses to the wall, and the soles of their feet turned 
 upward for comparison towards the breakfast table, where 
 Numphy was pictured reading psalms and collect out of 
 some devotion book. Jane had seen this done with fine 
 effect at Mrs. Percivale's, where the domestic staff trooped 
 in twice a day, morning and evening, (each in order of 
 seniority) and out again. The idea was only vaguely raised. 
 Numphy gave it scant encouragement. Anne, he plainly 
 hinted, would kneel at her time of life (with draughts from 
 under the door) for nobody; and would least of all submit 
 to be read at by him. The subject dropped. It raised the 
 thought uneasily within him whether this influence of Berke- 
 ley over Jane was for her betterment. Natures, like flowers, 
 do not thrive in every soil. Was this pious loam the prop- 
 er bedding-place for such a plant? He loved, despite the 
 fault admitted, the willful spirit in her that tossed its blos- 
 soms against bondage; that argued authority and made its 
 insubordination sweet. Were these graces to be withdrawn 
 from her ; cropped, suppressed ? Was the old Jane of sweet 
 impulse to give way to some orthodox-framed creature; to 
 have the buds of impulse church-nipped; her character 
 trained to a prim symmetricalness on a wall-trellis of formal 
 piety? He prayed not. 
 
 It is only, after all, his slumbering jealousy that quickens 
 him to a sense of disappointment sometimes in the revealed 
 quality of Jane's love, when the light within her rests upon 
 some prosaic thought incomprehensible to man. For the 
 essential difference between the results of love on the two 
 sexes is this, that it inspires a man to poetry, a woman to 
 prose. A man casts practical considerations aside, seeks to 
 intoxicate himself on the passion ; a woman bursts illusion 
 like a sheath, and becomes practical to a fault. And how
 
 256 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 sweet, the Doctor is aware, would be this poetical practicality 
 if he were only the inspirer of it. 
 
 As it is, he is a proxy. She clings to him but that she 
 may have her Berkeley closer. Each night she will not go 
 to bed until he has ceded that hour or more of bitter-sweet 
 communion. She lays his pipe to hand, brings his tobacco 
 in its lidded brown jar; coaxes him to his inevitable fate like 
 a siren. If he is called out and the occasions are now 
 more nightly numerous she warms him against the in- 
 clement night with her sympathy; helps to fasten with her 
 own fingers the great bone buttons of his dreadnought; 
 winds the scarf about his neck, and consigns him solicitously 
 to the elements. The deed recalls his mother. Under her 
 ministration he had been wont to fret at heart because he 
 knew she was dismissing, not the dignified doctor, but her 
 own dear boy. Again, he has the chafing sore at heart. 
 This is still no doctor, or so he feels but Berkeley 
 Hislop, dispatched on some nocturnal mission to the soul- 
 sick. He sees it in Jane's face, this admiration silently 
 transferred. Perhaps it is blowing knife-blades from the 
 north-east; perhaps a southerly squall is slashing foot-long 
 raindrops through the darkness, so that Jane's profile, haz- 
 arded beyond the door, has to be hurriedly withdrawn. Per- 
 haps there is some sleet. So much the better; Berkeley's 
 heroism is the more admired. She says, " How good and 
 cheerful you are ; Numphy, to be sure." It is a great tribute 
 to Berkeley, for the Doctor never complains. 
 
 Sweet above its bitterness though this nightly session 
 with Jane may be, he is not always sorry for the necessity 
 to leave her. It makes him sensible of a manhood ; stern 
 thoughts of duty substitute these softer hankerings of 
 love. For can he sit beside her and not love? Sometimes 
 he is weak; her kindness cruel stinging him to the 
 verge of a retort he dares not utter, but must turn in upon
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 257 
 
 himself, like nails into the palm ; a pain for pain's suppression. 
 
 She wondered one night, seated close by his side, why 
 Numphy had never married. She had asked the question, 
 he remembered, as a child ; but it had been easier to parry 
 then. Now it made him wince, and his smile above it was 
 but the facial eddy of a stirred bitterness, the laugh of a 
 soul in motion. Why? Oh, he did not know why. Why 
 should he have married ? " Numphy . . ." Her face 
 descends from its height persuasively to woo confidences; 
 the blue eyes are melting; the red lips kissably close. 
 " Were you ever in love ? Tell me." She is ripe for secrets. 
 
 He laughs the question aside, and yet it affords him a 
 bitter pleasure, too, to know she will return to it. 
 
 " What nonsense, Jane ! " 
 
 " But were you ? " She is more serious in supplication. 
 He finds it easy to be serious too, and sighs. Ancient his- 
 tory seems volumed in the sigh, as though it bound the cen- 
 turies. " What do you think, Jane ? " He would like 
 even in his bitterness, to know whether this persecuting 
 loveliness conceives him human ; flesh and blood, or merely a 
 formula. 
 
 " I remember asking Anne, once," Jane says confidentially. 
 " And Anne told me you had had more sense. She was 
 quite angry with me, Numphy. But I don't know . . ." 
 She withdraws her gaze to calculate probabilities on his 
 countenance. After a while the face swoops close to his 
 own. " But you were . . . weren't you ? Say you 
 were, Numphy; just for company's sake." 
 
 He surrenders to her appeal and tells her sadly, " Twice." 
 This multiplication of the passion seems to cancel all Jane's 
 fervor for it. Plainly love is one of the qualities which 
 cannot she thinks be multiplied without weakening the 
 multiplicand. " Oh, never twice ! Numphy ! " she cries. 
 Of a surety one of these two loves must have been treachery 
 17
 
 258 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 to the other. So much he sees denoted in her face. The 
 look of genuine disappointment in it adds to his bitterness. 
 One unrequited love might have made a hero of him; two 
 do but make of man a fool. 
 
 " But not both at one time, Numphy ! " she expostulates. 
 
 He assures her there was a lapse of years between these 
 passions. She pleads : " Tell me all about it, Numphy." 
 He says, " Some other time, Jane." " Not now, Numphy ? " 
 She is a temptress born ; she wooes him for his secret terribly. 
 Eve and she and the Serpent seem one. He smiles an 
 aggravating obduracy. She tries a bribe. " Numphy 
 . . . if you will tell me this ... I will tell you 
 something Bertha told me. It was a secret." 
 
 He is dismayed. " Jane ! Have you no honor ! " 
 
 Oh, woman, woman! All your fine qualities seem in 
 perpetual tangle, like skeins of silk raveled in a careless 
 work-basket; the virtues plain to see, but twisted and in- 
 extricable, mocking man's patience to unpick. She laughs 
 consciousness of her delinquency, who so late regarded love 
 as a quality almost too sacred to duplicate, and exclaims, 
 " Well . . . there's no harm in it to You, Numphy. 
 I tell you everything. Heaps more, I believe, than I ever 
 tell Bertha." He is mollified, despite his sense of high 
 honor. This tribute of preferential favor even tainted 
 with feminine disloyalty is balm for a wounded heart. 
 But his repudiation of the bribe makes Jane the eagerer to 
 implicate him in the secret ; seeking now to press upon him 
 as a gift what she had stipulated as a reward. " It was 
 only " she began, but he put up a defensive hand. " No, 
 no, Jane. I won't listen to you. A secret is a secret." 
 She laughs again behind a busy eye, that is, he knows, 
 merely making a reconnoissance to learn the force of his de- 
 fenses and ascertain his vulnerable quarter. 
 
 Besides, he has already a suspicion what the secret is.
 
 XXXII 
 
 AND it presses on him, hostile to his peace. He sees 
 glints of it through Jane's laughter, catches sight of it 
 in her full-eyed looks upon him whole companies of the 
 enemy's cavalry, so to speak, that glide away into their 
 ambush and leave him doubly watchful and apprehensive. 
 This question of his celibacy crops up again, for marriage is 
 now with Jane a golden topic. She speculates upon his 
 single state, and the cause of it. Was Numphy ever really 
 engaged to be married? This much he is prepared to admit 
 to her he was. Jane had thought so. And why who 
 was it? Which of them had ? 
 
 " I will tell you, Jane," he says. " There are some men 
 that women never take seriously, or think anything of." He 
 pulled at his pipe. " I'm one of them." 
 
 She denied it; denied it strenuously. It was not a bit 
 true. Anne had told her that he could have been married a 
 hundred times if he had wished. And Jane herself knew 
 what people thought about him all round the district. 
 
 " As a doctor," he said bitterly. Once he had thought 
 this the proudest sort of estimation, and chafed against a 
 liking built solely on his human qualities. Now How 
 strangely men change! 
 
 " No, no ; not as a doctor," Jane contested ; " but as a 
 You know, Numphy; for yourself." She took advantage 
 of his smiling defenselessness. " Do you know what Bertha 
 told me about you ? " 
 
 He sprung up to his protection, hot of face. " No, no, 
 
 259
 
 2 6o THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 Jane. It was a secret. I won't listen to you. You have 
 tried twice. It is mean, unfair." 
 
 She laughed, convicted. " Oh, very well, Numphy." 
 But the fortress was breached, and she knew it; his de- 
 fenses were penetrated. The secret, even without articula- 
 tion, was a secret no longer. He could not accuse her of 
 betrayal, and yet Bertha had been betrayed. 
 
 In a sense, of course, he had known it. The secret was 
 but as a face pressed wanly against a window-pane. Ever 
 since that fateful night when Jane first poured her poison 
 in his ear he had been conscious of a web as fine as gossa- 
 mer which was being spun in the air about him a web of 
 whispers and glances, of smiles and blushes, the busy work 
 of two weavers. At first he had brushed the thought away 
 from him for self-delusion, and turned a stern face and a 
 hard eye to confront reality through this morbid meshwork 
 of imagination. But soon he saw the threads of the net 
 were actual, and woven from some point external to him- 
 self. Jane began to eulogize her friend sought to engage 
 him in discussions on her merits. Knowing the loyalty of 
 woman, as exemplified in the case of Berkeley Hislop, he 
 was guarded. Jane might terminate some eulogy of Bertha 
 with cunning interrogation : " Don't you think so, Num- 
 phy?" "I am sure you could not have a better friend, 
 Jane," he would answer. " She seems devoted to you." 
 " She is devoted to other people too," Jane told him. " Her 
 uncle will certainly miss her when she goes," the Doctor 
 said quickly. Jane looked up and laughed. " Nobody but 
 her uncle ? " He turned the topic. 
 
 But not alone in speech with Jane was he conscious of 
 this subtle peril a-weaving. A slightly perceptible embarass- 
 ment began to sheath Bertha from him as with a fine film ; 
 she met his eye directly less and less, and yet he knew she 
 took a deeper stock of him through that secret vision which
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 261 
 
 is the added sense in woman. All that inner history con- 
 cerning Berkeley Hislop's courtship so faithlessly and shame- 
 lessly made known to him by his bride-to-be, shed the light 
 of a flickering irony on his own case, making it dark and 
 dimly visible by turns. He was not ignorant of Jane's pre- 
 texts to leave them bashfully twain, and Bertha's quick- 
 drawn breath when Jane rose to do so, as though her going 
 were a desertion or betrayal. Jane could not leave them 
 thus for ever so brief a time but Bertha commented on the 
 length of it ; would greet Jane's return with a notable relief, 
 as though her absent friend had been in danger. " Jane ! 
 what a time you have been. I was just coming to look for 
 you." And in the days succeeding Berkeley Hislop's de- 
 parture, days of October and November, when the skies be- 
 came gray and watery and the autumn mists rolled up, and 
 the migrant bird-flocks drifted over the land, and winds blew 
 and fires gleamed grateful, and hospitality was constantly 
 exchanged between the red-brick house and the vicarage, 
 never a night passing but that Jane and the Doctor made 
 their way across to Uncle Horace's to spend some portion of 
 the evening there in these days the Doctor and Bertha 
 were continually thrown in each other's company, and he 
 read the signs. 
 
 As this knowledge of her love for Berkeley had disturbed 
 his peace, the knowledge of his love for her might make 
 Jane miserable; put an end, indeed, to all comfortable living 
 under this roof; precipitate silence and constraint. From 
 thoughts of any such avowal he turned away ; only the baser, 
 weaker, wounded part of him had ever stooped to them in 
 hours of pain. And in this final renunciation, his mind 
 began to turn, fitfully, towards Bertha with a curious specu- 
 lation. 
 
 She was no substitute for Jane, he was aware, but she was 
 Jane's friend. Something of a reflected Jane irradiated her
 
 262 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 and made her smile acceptable. She was filled with Jane's 
 sayings; steeped and saturated with an admiring allegiant 
 friendship of her that made her, in essence as it were, akin. 
 Tested against Jane, merit by merit, he knew in his heart 
 she failed, as lamplight to the light of day. And yet, in the 
 hours of darkness the lamp can cast, he knew, a quiet and 
 peaceful glow; afford a comfortable dreaming-place for 
 fancy, give a buffeted spirit peace. She was young; her 
 face screened a certain beauty that flashed forth now and 
 again in keener moments, when animation focused the best 
 in her. It seemed, then, she had only missed an abiding 
 beauty by the merest sobering of the component qualities. 
 Not infrequently in those earlier, happier days, when he had 
 caught himself comparing the two girls, it had struck him 
 of what impalpable qualities true beauty is composed; by 
 what minute degrees it is differentiated from the lack of it. 
 An indefinable matter of texture; something in the grain of 
 the skin, the setting of the eye, the curve of the lips make 
 two faces otherwise not much dissimilar as wide asun- 
 der, expressionally, as the poles. Jane's beauty never 
 seemed to sleep. 
 
 Bertha's was a more homely spirit peaceful, capable of 
 sustaining long silences with a comfortable patience, tract- 
 able, loyal. A man might be happy with her; she had no 
 wide diapason of moods; contentment shone in her cheek. 
 Her smile was a sort of indulgent surrender, as though it 
 yielded, friendly, to another's will. It never flashed forceful, 
 like Jane's, swiftly emphatic, with the drench of tears be- 
 hind it, or brightly quivering in irresistible star-like gladness. 
 At the first conscious thought of her as heart's substitute for 
 Jane, he shrunk ; it seemed disloyalty to self, treachery to all 
 within him that he had accounted dear. But the phase of 
 hot repudiation passed, and gave place to one of more tran- 
 quillity, in which the thought was philosophically entertained.
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 263 
 
 Was this, he asked, to be his refuge? Was he to find, by 
 this means, his peace and respite from those other assailant 
 thoughts ? 
 
 The contemplated step once taken would make, towards 
 Jane, his loyalty sure. And a dream not that he reposed 
 belief in these nocturnal earthquakes of the imagination, but 
 this was vivid and impressive, even reviewed by daylight 
 a dream helped to lean him to the favor of it. He saw a 
 visionary Pridgeon, of whom, in the flesh, since their final 
 divagation, he continued to see strangely little. Mostly their 
 acquaintance was a distant thing of uplifted arms. Now and 
 again at a turn of the road they might meet face to face, the 
 Doctor mounted, the farmer on foot. Their cry of greeting 
 was friendly, they would interchange shouts about the 
 weather and the crops, but neither seemed anxious for closer 
 grips, though the Doctor was aware that Pridgeon always 
 turned after a few paces to look curiously back at him. The 
 day of Jane's wedding, so the Doctor dreamed, was close at 
 hand ; a visionary despair flowed through him like a troubled 
 tide. On every hand were preparations for the ceremony, 
 strange people thronged the house, encircling Jane with 
 laughter and congratulations. Everywhere was rejoicing. 
 He alone passed through the rejoicers like a ghost, mantled 
 in his own misery, silent, unobserved. All at once he seemed 
 to have quitted this home of festive mockery, and found 
 himself upon the high road, hatless, and walking swiftly. 
 Through his preoccupation a voice reached him. It was 
 Pridgeon's voice, full of nasal reflections and friendly. He 
 saw on turning his head that the farmer was leaning over 
 his own gate, but the house visible beyond was the Mariner's 
 Leg at Kenham Beach, and it came back upon the Doctor 
 that he had heard report of Pridgeon's forsaking his farm 
 for the more congenial role of publican. Signs of this, too, 
 were plainly observable in the farmer's face, and the pro-
 
 264 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 nounced extension of his girth. He was coatless, with his 
 white shirt-sleeves rolled above each elbow; his two arms 
 were laid flat upon the topmost rail of the gate, his chin 
 rested on these ; one leg, encased in a brand-new orange- 
 colored leather legging, was raised to the second rail ; a great 
 smile enlarged his ample face. " It's true, then ? " cried he. 
 The Doctor knew the meaning of the query, though he 
 professed ignorance. " What is true ? " he asked. " Why, 
 about yon lass o' yours," Pridgeon retorted, withdrawing to 
 open the gate. " She's chucked you after all ; I knew she 
 would. Come in wi' you." He went in, submissive to 
 destiny. Pridgeon produced glasses for two. The Doctor 
 demurred. Pridgeon said, " Why what ! She's leaving 
 you, man! What's the call to be teetotal now, and make 
 yourself miserable any longer for a lass that doesn't care 
 that for you? You've done your duty fair enough. Lord 
 bless us, taste a little happiness before you die." 
 
 And suddenly a kind of desperate rage filled him. It was 
 true ; his reformation had been for her, and she had scorned 
 it. Fill the glass; what else was left him? Now he would 
 drown sorrow in earnest; be done with women and the 
 thoughts of them for ever from henceforth. All the ancient 
 reckless friendship for Pridgeon revived; he felt he had 
 wronged him all these years. The potion went down his 
 throat for pledge of amity, like fire. In his dream the proc- 
 ess of intoxication was precipitated: he reeled at once; a 
 gorgeous disregard possessed him. Where was Jane? Let 
 him seek her and show her in triumph this vindication of his 
 manhood ; let her tears course in shame and expostulation as 
 when, but a child, she had pleaded with him for his reform. 
 Here was her own doing; this reckless leaning tower, far 
 out of the perpendicular, was constructed out of her scorn. 
 
 With that he woke, and saw at once the nonsense and the 
 truth of it. While Jane was here at hand, lost to him by
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 265 
 
 anticipation, yet present to mitigate the suffering appre- 
 hended, he might be certain of himself. But in those in- 
 tolerable days when she should be gone, what was to be- 
 come of him? Was this dream-danger indeed to be appre- 
 hended? Might human perversity develop a passion to pull 
 down this edifice built up on the girl's foundation; seeking 
 its revenge upon these aspirations so mislaid ? He conceived 
 it might, and felt the danger real. It turned him more point- 
 edly to thoughts of Bertha. He had the belief he could be 
 sure of her; her lamp was trimmed; its flame sometimes 
 blown upon by gusts of girlish apprehension invited the 
 bridegroom. And Jane had told him, in relation to nothing 
 under discussion : " How blind men are," and " I don't be- 
 lieve you ever notice anything, Numphy." He had noticed 
 the new trimming on Bertha's hat all the same, and thought, 
 philosophically, it suited her. " What should there be to 
 notice, Jane ? " " Somebody," said Jane, with a slight accent 
 on the first syllable, " is very fond of you, Numphy . . . 
 if you only had eyes to see it." It was the glove direct. 
 He did not touch it; neither picked it up nor flouted it, but 
 let the token lie. 
 
 And in this state of emotion in balance, the months slipped 
 by, with occasional concerts and theater-goings in Hunmouth 
 when the Doctor took charge of both girls, and Bertha 
 spent the night with her friend, so that Uncle Horace needed 
 not sit up for her. (Blessed occasions for Bertha, fruitful 
 of confidences, and generally consecrated with a few happy 
 tears shed upon Jane's pillow, that liquid language which 
 woman has made her own.) And walks and drives when all 
 these three seemed part of a mystic circle, each so very 
 much detached, and yet so completely one and indivisible. 
 Autumn merged into winter; winter softened protractedly to 
 spring; spring tremulous with the bird voices that shake, 
 jeweled, over its first flesh-warm days like gems on a bosom,
 
 2 66 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 grew slowly steadfast to summer. Bertha took flight and 
 came back again. The vicar caught cold and had to preach 
 fore-shortened sermons with a piece of flannel shirting round 
 his neck. Berkeley paid one brief visit of two days. Jane 
 spent much of her summer away, at the homes of the vicar's 
 second sisters but three, and eldest nieces but four, people 
 whose identity Numphy did his best to assimilate, with in- 
 different success. Now she was with Bertha; now they 
 were divided again: Jane had the grace of making friends. 
 For Numphy those weeks of absence were a horrible period ; 
 the summer days were torture implements, dipped into the 
 sun red-hot for branding loneliness upon him. Time 
 flowed like the Stygian stream once more, hideous with 
 memoried ghosts, wailing and haunting the tide; beseeching 
 relentless old Charon to waft them over to the further shore 
 of blest forgetfulness. And there was not even Bertha to 
 mitigate his misery. Had she been with Uncle Horace 
 who knows! Perhaps the Doctor might have succumbed; 
 certainly he thought more seriously of her during this lonely 
 time. But the summer passed, and Jane returned without 
 her. Bertha's mother was sick, and the sister who 
 took the adjutant place in the home, had gone to assist one 
 of the youngest but something in a domestic crisis, daily 
 expected and Bertha was having to remain as nurse, at 
 home. And there was another harvest festival, painfully 
 like the last; a sort of facsimile in fiasco. Bertha had not 
 yet returned ; Berkeley came with a fearful cold in the head, 
 which knocked all the heroic out of him; turned all his M's 
 into B's, and all his N's into D's, so that he preached with 
 a handkerchief in one hand. And there was a dense Oc- 
 tober mist over the world beyond, out of which great tear- 
 drops fell, as though the weather were weeping in a shawl ; 
 and all through the sermon could be heard the monotonous 
 Hoo-ee, Hoo-ee, Hoo-eeee-e! of the fog-signal from the
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 267 
 
 Farsand lightship ; two short hoo-ees in the bass, succeeded 
 by a third protracted hoo-ee that soars screeching into the 
 treble like a beast in pain, every three minutes, with miser- 
 able reiteration. 
 
 And the next news of Bertha came one breakfast-time, in 
 a letter of innumerable pages that Jane strained intently to 
 her intelligence through sips of coffee. 
 
 " From Bertha, surely," said the Doctor, with careless 
 inflection, recognizing the script. Jane said, " Yes." 
 
 " She writes at length." 
 
 Jane finished the last page and refolded the bulky letter. 
 
 " Poor Bertha ! . . . Yes. She is rather troubled 
 just now." 
 
 " Not her mother ... I hope." 
 
 " No. Not her mother." Jane sipped her coffee piously, 
 as though respecting distress by a most commiserate silence. 
 " She wants my advice. I wish I could give it." 
 
 " Perhaps you can." 
 
 " I don't know." Jane shook her head dubiously. " She 
 . . . of course it is to be a secret, yet, Numphy. But I 
 think I may tell you. She has had an offer of marriage." 
 
 He could have laughed. His luck again. Every avenue 
 that offered an outlet from grim self closed to him as he 
 looked at it. 
 
 " Come . . ." said he. " Is that so very serious, Jane ? 
 Of course . . . she has declined ? " 
 
 Jane shot a quick glance into his cheerfulness, as though 
 it might be an ambush. 
 
 " No . . . she has not . . . not exactly de- 
 clined," she said. 
 
 " You mean she has accepted." 
 
 She passed a reluctant Yes through lips that had the look 
 of doubting it. " At least," she began, with a semblance of 
 reversing agreement, but stopped, seeing the impossibility of
 
 268 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 it, and fell back upon a modified affirmative. ". . . Yes 
 . . . I suppose she has accepted . . ." 
 
 " And now, of course, that the step is taken, she wants 
 advice ! " The Doctor laughed. " To be sure. How like a 
 girl." 
 
 " She has known him a long time," Jane said, ignoring the 
 imputation. 
 
 " And consequently," the Doctor supplied, " she never 
 really knew how much she cared for him ! Oh, Jane, what a 
 funny thing this falling in love is." 
 
 " She says . . ." Jane lowered her eyelids and her 
 voice, and spoke more hurriedly. " (She told me all her 
 secrets.) She says she is afraid she can never care for him 
 so much as for ... as for somebody else. For all he 
 is tall; nearly six feet." 
 
 By mutual understanding they did not look at one another. 
 Jane poured out more coffee; the Doctor broke his toast. 
 " She asks me," Jane continued, " what I should do in her 
 place." 
 
 The Doctor was curious. " She has consented to marry 
 him?" 
 
 " Oh, yes." 
 
 " And told him . . . that there is somebody she likes 
 much better ? " 
 
 Jane bridled a little at that. 
 
 " She said, of course ... it was very, very sudden, 
 and she had not been prepared for it. They were by the 
 pianoforte in the drawing-room. Of course you don't know 
 it. She says he went rather white, and she is sure his voice 
 trembled. But he pressed her and asked if she thought she 
 could ever care for him sufficiently to marry him." 
 
 "And could she?" 
 
 " She said she would try." 
 
 " I'm sure she'll succeed."
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 269 
 
 Jane looked at him, he knew, as though studying an acros- 
 tic whose simplicity has seemed undoubted until we strive 
 for the solution. Was her reading of this familiar Numphy 
 at fault? That, he saw, she was asking herself now. Did 
 he lack perception; had he ever divined, did he even at this 
 moment divine to what issue with Bertha all these references 
 had tended? The question jousted with her silence, and 
 before their breakfast was over, gave it a fall. She took 
 advantage of a favoring look on the Doctor's face, and 
 plunged her query. 
 
 " Do you know who the Somebody is, that Bertha cared 
 for, Numphy?" 
 
 " I will try hard not to guess, Jane." 
 
 "Don't you . . . don't you care for Bertha? I 
 thought at one time you did, rather." 
 
 " I am exceedingly fond of her. But . . ." 
 
 "But what?" 
 
 " But nothing, Jane." He laughed frustration of her 
 query. 
 
 " Shall you never, never marry, Numphy ? " 
 
 The question was too direct, like a fist in the eyes. He 
 blinked under it, but the answer was prompt enough. 
 " Never, Jane. Now." 
 
 And that was his leaden plummet of conviction, dropped 
 down to his heart's bed. He felt no loss of Bertha; some- 
 thing told him that he would never have broken through his 
 outer self to reach her. But the mental loss of her left 
 something of a void in his thought; made loneliness more 
 perceptible. He said to himself : " Well, you are all by 
 yourself at last. Stand up to it, and play the man."
 
 XXXIII 
 
 MARCH, and the Doctor's Lass is to be married at last. 
 Berkeley Hislop has been presented to the living of 
 Burgis-Pocklesford ; prudence offers no further bar to matri- 
 mony. Jane, to all intents and purposes, is a rector's wife 
 already. The Doctor cultivates a braver smile; keeps dip- 
 ping his reluctant heart into the sense of the girl's happiness, 
 as a mahogany-faced bathing woman grasps remonstrant 
 youth at the sea-side and plunges it beneath the beneficent 
 waves, telling it how warm the water is (though youth be 
 shivering) and how good for the constitution. He says this 
 final wrench will cure him; when the girl goes to take up 
 her new duties his own will become more vital. And behind 
 this thought, or in the shadow of it, crouches another, that 
 assesses the probable price of house and practice, and con- 
 templates flight precipitate from a life so hollow and haunted. 
 This home of two heart's tragedies can be no longer tolera- 
 ble to him. Even now when the twilight sinks to dusk there 
 falls over the place a terrible stillness, a pall of silence 
 borrowed from the future as though the dreadful sever- 
 ance were over, and the aging years lay on it. 
 
 And Anne and Hilda are stirred to lives of rhetoric by the 
 imminence of Jane's glory; she is transfigured before them, 
 is no longer their mistress of mortal components, but a more 
 blessed creature of celestial essence, with beams irradiating 
 from her brow. This dawn of wifehood renders woman 
 infinitely beautiful to woman; in its glow she is shown 
 wonderful, flushed with the hymeneal rays that sparkle in 
 reciprocal tears, like daybreak on dew. The hard marital 
 
 270
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 271 
 
 daylight may slay the sentiment, like another Daphne, but 
 it is lovely while it lasts, and makes even the face of a plain 
 woman gleam with something of the goddess for a while. 
 
 And the vicar comes out of his winter quarters like a 
 hibernating tortoise, warmed to animation by this sunlight 
 of good intelligence. He walks about the Sunfleet roads 
 smiling to himself, and framing sentences for use half-a- 
 dozen parishioners ahead; and throws up his chin to the in- 
 dulgence of his own laughter as though he were draining 
 champagne from a goblet, and passing a hand over his chin 
 to stroke it to seriousness. Anon he shakes his stick with 
 playful menacement plainly some niece or nephew is 
 whimsically threatened. He misses nobody on foot along 
 the road, and thrusts up a penetrative eye, like a musket, at 
 all who meet or overtake him on wheels. The splendor of 
 the occasion melts him to sympathy with his kind, in 
 which even his long-congealed memory seems to thaw, and 
 flows to unprecedented acts of remembrance and recognition. 
 
 And a blustering March day blew Berkeley Hislop to 
 Sunfleet in person at last, charged with all the latest intelli- 
 gence; to confer with Jane and put the final term on their 
 engagement. Here are photographs to whet her appetite 
 and please her; photographs of St. Michael's taken on a 
 cloudless noonday; a cheerless-looking modern church, with 
 an undecorated broad and steep-pitched roof, as angular as 
 a problem in Euclid, with every tile showing, and three 
 errand-boys sitting in a row on baskets before the porch to 
 lend the necessary local color. And here is the vicarage, 
 taken four years ago ; a somewhat Tudor house of red-brick, 
 promising space within, but otherwise unbeautiful ; standing 
 in its own grounds of half-an-acre, with a crescent carriage- 
 drive, in at one gate and out at the other as though drawn 
 by compasses. There are photographs, too, of Burgis- 
 Pocklesford that is now virtually a suburb of busy Grow-
 
 272 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 ingham and they sit and converse over them ; and pass 
 them from hand to hand, with talks of parishes and ruri- 
 diaconates, and inductions, and bishop's mandates and pa- 
 trons and advowsons ; and the vicar wants to know all about 
 the garden, and Jane all about the house; and the Doctor, 
 through his show of interest, wants to know things of deeper 
 moment than these. 
 
 He feels himself the veritable Judas in this pleasant 
 discipleship ; scrip-carrier for all their happiness; seared 
 with the knowledge of his own guilt; a traitor to both 
 parties. Berkeley Hislop's eye is an unbearable orb, like a 
 midday sun; his conscience writhes under the light of it. 
 Jane's pride and happiness are as goads to treachery. Can 
 he betray such qualities as these? While he laughs and 
 talks with them he is busy going round all his horrible 
 defenses; visiting redoubts; inquiring at what point this 
 fortification of falsehood is vulnerable. Vulnerable at every 
 point, the answer comes, so long as Julian Alston lives; 
 vulnerable at many, even when the graveyard worms are 
 threading him. And Jane's happiness is not alone a thing 
 of Now; happiness is not to be won like a jewel and worn 
 for all time : it is a perishable flower ; plucked, it may wither 
 in the hand. And this knowledge of the blind-eyed man 
 may rise like an exhalation some day for the poisoning of 
 Jane's wedded life; make her the defenseless prey of a 
 husband's reproaches. Ought he, in justice to the girl, to 
 break through his sentiment that vainly tries to shield her 
 from all sorrow and make her partner to this pestilent truth ? 
 Some such thought indeed oppresses him. In this present 
 atmosphere of close interests he feels himself suffocate. He 
 has clung to procrastination all this while, dreading a revela- 
 tion untimely this extreme and desperate use of surgery in 
 morals as he would avoid the knife in cases where a pallia- 
 tive treatment may succeed. But here procrastination ab-
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 273 
 
 ruptly ends; he is arrived at the eleventh hour where 
 measures must be prompt and butcher-cruel. May is being 
 mentioned as their month of marriage; Jane is to go down 
 and spend some time with Berkeley's mother for the discus- 
 sion of those practical matters connected with their home-to- 
 be. Shall he speak? Shall he open these lips of his to her 
 and let issue the truth? In mind he sees her eyes grow big 
 to the horror of it. 
 
 Yes. He fears the duty, but he thinks he does not shirk 
 it. He will tell her. She can break the truth to Berkeley 
 without revealing it; show him some of the trouble in her 
 heart; hint the dire cause of it. Surely who better than 
 Jane can spin love's magic over this sordid truth? And 
 what she has initiated he can complete; break truth into 
 fine particles and scatter its solid weight as impalpably as he 
 can, so long as none of it be missing. 
 
 The thought assumes the aspect of a resolution at the din- 
 ner-table on the second day of Berkeley's visit. The vicar, 
 deterred by March gales, and possibly, also, by some whim- 
 sical consideration for hearts infatuate, is not one of the 
 party. They sit, three at table, and the talk is formal 
 enough. The floods are out at Kenham Beach; to-morrow, 
 if it be fine enough, Jane is to drive Berkeley for a sight of 
 them; whole fields are submerged; the Doctor has been told 
 it is a wonderful sight. And with to-night's high tide, and 
 the wind blowing occasional gales from the north-west, 
 there is prospect of further flood. The air is keen; old 
 Stebbing predicts snow. There seems likelihood of a back- 
 ward spring. As they sit they hear the riot of the breeze 
 outside. Now and then a clap of wind strikes the house 
 with a flat hand and makes the chimneys tremble ; whereat a 
 fugitive spirit seems to run down the flue and cower to ex- 
 tinction in the red coals. Rising from the table, the wind 
 that has been buffeting the house from the north-west most 
 
 18
 
 274 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 of the day rattles the rose branches against the eastern 
 side of the big bay window. The Doctor comments upon it. 
 If the wind means changing suddenly to the east, it will blow 
 up a big tide on the existing north-west roll. The gust 
 against the window is repeated with a sharp artillery of hail 
 that startles Jane into a sudden exclamation. She hopes 
 there will be no call for Numphy on a night like this. 
 
 The words are barely uttered before they hear as though 
 the saying had some pre-conscious sympathy with it the 
 sudden ringing of the front-door bell. The Doctor smiles, 
 and holds himself submissive to fate by the fireplace. In his 
 heart of hearts he is hoping for a call, devoutly dreads this 
 interview with Jane, will welcome any means for its defer- 
 ment that bears the brand of destiny. And by this trade- 
 mark he seems for the moment saved. Hester shows at the 
 door; his visitor is Jack Thatcher from Kenham Beach, and 
 the Doctor's services are wanted. Jane whispers, " What a 
 shame, Numphy ! " as he passes her. Berkeley assumes an 
 expression of sympathy, piously restrained, to imply no 
 aspersion on providence. They hear the Doctor greet his 
 caller in the hall : a slouching youth with a head that seems 
 to grow downward on his chest, like a Jargonelle pear against 
 a wall, with the thickest part undermost. He holds a cloth 
 cap pressed to his stomach like a hand camera, and with his 
 head over it seems on the point of taking the Doctor's por- 
 trait as the latter emerges from the room. Interrogation 
 reveals that he has the faintest knowledge of his mission 
 beyond the fact that he was asked to fetch the Doctor, and 
 that the sufferer is his sister. On the subject of symptoms 
 he shows all the characteristics of the Doctor's callers of 
 the male sex in regard to difficulties not their own. And 
 even those who come in charge of their own malady search 
 after this hazily in the Doctor's presence as though it were 
 a mislaid coin, and tell him pathetically : " Noo, I know very
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 275 
 
 well I'd gotten a strange pain about me somewheres, or I 
 shouldn't 'a come. I had her when I cam' thruff yon gate. 
 But she's slipped me noo fairlins." He exhibits to the full, 
 too, that baffling degree of acquiescence in every symptom 
 suggested that is the doctor's bane. Is his sister feverish? 
 He thinks she is. Sick ? Aye, very like. Has she any pain ? 
 Why, he never heard them say. Happen she has a bit. 
 The case seems, by his showing, so little imperative that the 
 Doctor is led to ask " Will it be all right if I call to-mor- 
 row ? " and the visitor says " Aye. I should think it'll do 
 all right then." But something in his steadfastness of 
 posture, and circumferential fingering of cap, hint at some- 
 thing more urgent to the Doctor's practiced eye, and he goes 
 over all the ground again. This time he establishes fever 
 and troubled respiration. The visitor's sister makes noises 
 when she tries to swallow, and she is supposed to have 
 caught cold. The Doctor asks : " Who told you to come ? " 
 The youth admits : " My mother." 
 
 "Have you ridden?" 
 
 " Walked." 
 
 " The water's out at Kenham. How did you get across ? " 
 
 " I cam' roond by Hun Bank along o' William Opler. 
 He had a stable light. There's aboon three feet by road, 
 i' some places." 
 
 " Did your mother know that when she sent you?" 
 
 " Aye." 
 
 " Then she must be anxious on your sister's account. Is 
 she?" 
 
 " A bit, 'appen. She telt me to look sharp and stop 
 nowheres." 
 
 " Did your mother mention croup ? " 
 
 The boy shakes his head. 
 
 " That'll do." The Doctor surrenders interrogation. " Go 
 through to the kitchens you know your way and ask
 
 276 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 them for the stable lantern. We won't trouble the groom. 
 I'll come along with you." 
 
 He goes into the room again to tell Jane, and takes his 
 leave of Berkeley. Jane heaps her commiseration upon him, 
 and takes hold of his shoulders, in the hall, to kiss him god- 
 speed. There is a kiss for each cheek, drawing the blood up 
 to counteract this cold March wind, and he cannot quite 
 subdue the elation that receives these tokens in Berkeley's 
 presence as the reward for heroism. All the same he tries, 
 for there is (God wot) but little heroism in such going forth. 
 He is just a country doctor no more slipping his pocket 
 case into the bosom of his big coat, and turning up the collar 
 to fare forth and seek his living. Such heroism is the Sun- 
 fleet policeman's nightly portion ; and the coastguards, tread- 
 ing their pathway through the treacherous twitch-grass by 
 the cliff-edge, night by night, reduplicate the heroic in these 
 nocturnal editions till it becomes as common as our daily 
 print.
 
 XXXIV 
 
 THE night was not so formidable but that the Doctor, 
 tucked up to the ears in the collar of his great frieze 
 coat, felt a compensation for being out in it. On many a 
 worse evening of mid-winter had he turned his face to the 
 blinding east, with sleet upon his lashes, and flakes of it ever 
 melting on his lips. The wind to-night had veered com- 
 pletely, blew no more from the north and west, but from the 
 east, coming in great gusts, like chords smitten from a harp ; 
 bringing such a weight against them as to hide all sound of 
 their motion, and make the gig seem for the moment station- 
 ary. Then, this pressure as suddenly released, the candles 
 in the lamps that had been blown to the very verge of ex- 
 tinction leaped into yellow life again ; the Doctor and his 
 companion lifted their heads, aimed to meet this solid 
 onslaught, and the trap seemed to spring into motion once 
 more. They heard the blast careering to the west behind 
 them; thundering in the distance like wild horses in stam- 
 pede. Then all to the front of them would be left tranquil, 
 as though this blast had consumed turbulence in its passage ; 
 in the lull ensuing they could listen, gleaning sounds from 
 far before. The tingling of the telegraph wire overhead 
 alone told of a wind somewhere in motion, and warned them 
 of its fresh assault. With a sudden whistle of hedgegrass 
 and crack of dried branches, it would be on them again ; the 
 protesting wires would scream in high treble; dead leaves 
 and blown twigs would strike their breasts and lowered 
 heads ; and there would be a drum-rattling among the 
 leathern shreds of the old buggy's hood for, on a night 
 
 277
 
 278 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 like this, and with water to traverse and winds to oppose, 
 the Doctor accounted economy before grandeur, and saved 
 his raleigh. 
 
 There was no moon, and flying clouds, following fast upon 
 each other in the darkness, lent a shifting quality to the stars 
 as though all the heavenly bodies were blown into motion; 
 careering wildly with these driven canopies and vestiges of 
 vapor. But unless there be mist, this flat, low-lying sweep 
 of country is never altogether lightless. Let the air only be 
 crisp and clear, and without any aid from the heavenly bod- 
 ies, a multitude of mortal fires conspire to make the darkness 
 cheerful. To-night as they drove, with their faces to the 
 south-east, and the wind sharpening itself on their teeth, and 
 playing music in their mouths, three great fans of palpitating 
 light rose up from as many points on the horizon behind 
 their shoulders. Away to the left, Dimmlesea stained the 
 lower edge of the sky a luminous yellow, shooting out at 
 intervals the beam from its fixed light in the familiar signal 
 of two brief flashes succeeded by one protracted stare. 
 Distant Hunmouth, twenty miles or more behind them, 
 raised her quivering dome of light into the sky, the aerial 
 vault surmounting her glittering docks and flaring thorough- 
 fares; and on the right, brought strangely near to hand in 
 those periods of lucidity when the breeze sped by and inter- 
 posed no curtain of fine snow, Grimethorpe and her suburb 
 sent up a double aura from their string of lights beyond the 
 river. Nor these alone made company for them : they were 
 ringed with broad gleams and starry twinkles ; drove forward 
 in a circus of light. Spraith, in this frost-cleansed atmos- 
 phere, plunged forth her beam to the jeweled hilt through the 
 miles of darkness : a sword of fire, naked and piercing. At 
 every twentieth second the thrust was aimed, a stab of sud- 
 den light, and swift withdrawal, intensified so startlingly by 
 the keen air, and their own dilated pupils straining for
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 279 
 
 glimpses in front of them through the dim web of yellow 
 lamplight that the thrust was as though delivered out of 
 the very hedge. A pilot steamer, twinkling red and white at 
 her masthead, threaded the river-course; the Cowsand light- 
 ship winked her alternating flashes from the Hun; right in 
 front of them, away to the south-east of Beachington, they 
 saw the periodic gleam from the outer lightship marking the 
 Farsand banks far out beyond the Point, a faint semi-circu- 
 lar glow that crept up into the sky as though some moon 
 were rising, and briefly fell. Other lights, mere pin-pricks 
 of fire in the darkness, decorated the horizon all around 
 them ; here, from lanterns on some rocking sloops at their 
 moorings in the river, from tug or plowing steamer ; there, 
 from farmsteads near and far. A stable lamp, swinging 
 across the foldyard of Cobham's at Fotham highlands, 
 flashed rays like a diamond; great elongated beams as 
 though a fiery asterisk were in motion, perambulating the 
 heights ; a celestial portent such as was wont to mark the 
 birth or the demise of the anciently august. Then, as they 
 looked, some part of what they looked at would wane on a 
 sudden dip and disappear. Next moment the cause of it 
 would strike them broadside, volleys of fine white snow 
 in some cases actual hail, or " agglestones," as our district 
 calls them. Never prolonged, for the gale was far too 
 boisterous, such volleys would succeed each other quickly, 
 three or four in briefest repetition, sheeting their breasts 
 and coat-sleeves and the inclined crowns of their caps with 
 momentary white, and therewith the obliterated lights would 
 shine again. 
 
 Thus they drove, wrapped up in these swift fugitive snows, 
 these distant encircling lights and their own reflections. 
 Few words were interchanged. Now and again the Doctor 
 cried, " Come, Kitty ! " and sent a ripple of encouragement 
 along the reins to where the mare's ears pricked sensitively
 
 28o THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 in the all but darkness on the verge of the lamplight; but 
 of talk there was none. The wind, and inclination on the 
 Doctor's part, forbade. Through all these lights and ele- 
 mental furies his mind made small advancement ; the gig bore 
 his body onward, in heart he stayed at home. Many of his 
 cries to the mare were, in fact, but swift dismissals of some 
 difficulty in his thinking, some breach of an interrogation 
 that interposed its threatening bulk. Again and again, jolt- 
 ing shoulders with his lump-headed companion, he framed 
 the words for Jane's enlightenment; begged her forgiveness 
 first of all for what he had to tell her; drew her hand into 
 his ; asked with his eyes upon her, if she thought she were 
 brave enough to be told something painful to her pride 
 thus stimulating the curiosity that in woman serves almost at 
 times the purpose of a natural anaesthetic, deadening the 
 force of the truth told through the keenness of desire to hear 
 it. She gave the assurance; pleaded, girl-like, for the quick 
 telling. He involved her in a debt of promises, pledging 
 conduct, all aimed at her vanity and courage. And then, 
 when these were given, drew his breath to breathe the first 
 and lightest of the worst, in form of query. Suppose . . . 
 Suppose he were to tell her that this dead and buried father 
 had no claim upon her love or her respect? Suppose he 
 had done things to forfeit both? So, in mind, he paved the 
 way to the deed ; rehearsed his odious duty too long delayed. 
 The violent assaults of the wind scarcely found a way into 
 his consciousness. Thought was almost a chamber to him, 
 secure against the elements for all he saw and felt and heard 
 of them. 
 
 They drove through zig-zag Beachington at last, lamp-lit 
 and casement-sealed. The coast-guard hailed them from the 
 doorstep of the White Cow, and a riot of laughter reached 
 them from the bagatelle-room window beyond, where heads 
 were shadowed in activity against the white blinds. There
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 281 
 
 was even a remnant of the customary town-end club pinned 
 flat against the lee side of the post-office corner, like beetles 
 on a setting-block, with its hands in its pockets, and its pipes 
 gleaming in rotation. An incredulous greeting came out of 
 the murmuring flatness of it : " Aye, it's Doctor an' all. 
 What ? He never means to gan roond by Kenham ti-neet ! " 
 and the Doctor cried back a cheery " Good-night, my lads," 
 as though it were midsummer, and the occasion joyful. That 
 men should choose a night like this for setting their shoulders 
 against cold plaster did not surprise him; he had seen the 
 same thing on wilder nights, and colder. Just as there are 
 swimmers who make it their morning ritual to cleave the 
 waters of sea or Serpentine, so there are Beachington men 
 who would not sleep sound in bed without the impress of the 
 post-office brickwork upon their backs. And when the Day 
 of Judgment dawns, and Gabriel sounds his final fanfare, six 
 men at least (and three in jerseys) will knock the ashes from 
 their pipes against this corner, saying 
 
 " Lawks-a-Massye ! Yon's nivver Judgment-Day ! Ay, it 
 is an' all ! Time flies, you may depend." 
 
 And now the Doctor's buggy cast off the shelter of these 
 window-kindled houses, and stripping these comfortable 
 vestiges of civilization, took the naked road once more, due 
 south this time, for Kenham Beach. All in the dim circum- 
 ference of their flickering lamp-light, with the terrestial 
 darkness lying thick beyond, and the horizon lights pricking 
 out the great amphitheater in which they journeyed, they 
 heard when the sudden gale had thundered by, the thresh of 
 great breakers punishing the shingle on the sea-shore, that 
 here runs parallel with the road, and but a field or so remote. 
 Sometimes, like artillery, this sound of breakers sped down 
 the coast in a succession of sharp reports : curled waters in 
 collision. Overhead the telegraph wires, bearing the full 
 brunt of the gale, sang like a choir of archangels; at times,
 
 282 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 too, every single blade of grass seemed instinct with a voice, 
 minute but penetrant. So they traveled, broadside now 
 to the breeze that rocked the gig upon its ancient springs 
 and more than once blew up the hood startlingly above their 
 heads with the clap of a gun, until at last they topped the 
 embankment that runs across the road from Hun to beach, 
 and the Doctor drew a tighter hand upon the reins. 
 
 Already their lamps had elucidated, on either side, stray 
 streaks and flatness of water in places where water should 
 not be; rinding a liquid reflection in fields that had lain 
 fallow some days before, at which the Doctor's companion 
 aimed a finger through the darkness. " Yon's Masham's 
 sixteen-acre, look ye. She'll be swum a foot deep by noo, 
 I'll awager." 
 
 The dykes, too, running on their right and left were 
 swollen almost to the summit of their once dry rustling flags, 
 but here, poised on the vault of embankment for descent 
 of the Kenham side, they saw the full extent of the flood. 
 Where they had left dry road behind them in this brief 
 gradient, they dipped down now to meet a waste of plashing 
 waters in which all trace of road was lost. Only the tele- 
 graph posts pricked a sparse way through the formidable 
 flood that danced in vehement commotion like a sea. In- 
 deed, to all intents and purposes, this was the sea. Its 
 waters were heaped up over the land by the breakers of the 
 German Ocean not two hundred yards away that carried 
 Kenham's low beach by assault, wave after wave, and rushed 
 like lines of liquid soldiery to force their passage to the 
 Hun. 
 
 Before this turbulence of nocturnal waters the Doctor drew 
 momentary rein. More than once he had forded the spot by 
 daylight, keeping the mare's nose to a rigid center of the 
 submerged roadway; judging his course by the guide-stakes, 
 and telegraph posts, and the suggestive deepening of the
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 283 
 
 water's hue that showed the swollen ten-foot dykes on either 
 hand; aiming by these aids to where the roadway lifted 
 itself free of the flood by Martin's farm and ran in track of 
 dust to Kenham. But now he had no such aids to guide 
 him. The telegraph posts stepped into the swirl of waters 
 and were lost to sight at a stride. Martin's farm was indis- 
 tinguishable ; the waves took the feeble lamplight and tore 
 it up to distracting shreds of reflection serpentine gleams 
 lighting nothing, but baffling motion and lending assistance 
 to bewilderment. For all that lay in front of him dis- 
 tinguishable from this living volume of water, the Doctor 
 might have been setting his mare's nose to the North Sea. 
 
 The danger was more pictorial than real, he knew. In no 
 place along the roadway could he but keep it would 
 there lie a greater depth of water than four feet; but this 
 water was in motion, driven by sea and whipped by wind, a 
 distraction to the mind and eye. But to go back was no 
 part of the Doctor's business; for five minutes he would be 
 fording a nightmare, conscious that its terrors were dis- 
 torted. And a fleeting thought of Berkeley Hislop touched 
 his pride to a sort of courage and contempt. He cried, 
 " Come along, Kitty lass," and coaxed her forthwith into the 
 flood. 
 
 The mare, with pricked ears and arched neck her nos- 
 trils trumpeted towards the thunderous sea, source of all this 
 turbulence took the trap's weight upon her breeching and 
 advanced by minced steps into the waters, protest and sus- 
 picion writ upon her frame from croup to muzzle. Soon 
 she was up to the knees and deeper; holding her nostrils 
 clear of the waves that noisily slapped her belly, and sprayed 
 at times the occupants in the gig; advancing with a short 
 sawing movement as though she girded under all these 
 tyrannies of trappings and elements. Each step had to be 
 coaxed by a gentle usage of the reins and an appeal to her
 
 284 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 name, with the reassuring " Kt ! Kt ! lass. Come, Kitty ! 
 Come, my lass! Steady there, mare. What's frightening 
 you? You're safe enough." And with the step taken, the 
 lamplight showed her blinkered eyes investigating the dark- 
 ness to right and left of her; mouthing her bit, and tossing 
 her expanded nostrils into the air. Step by step, after this 
 fashion, they forded the dizzy sweep of water; writhing 
 snakes of light were all about them; they moved slowly in 
 contorted serpents of fire that invested them with a satanic 
 ring, and blackness reigned beyond. Every now and then 
 they were compelled to pause until some gust of wind had 
 spent its fury, and the gig-lamps recovered from the assault, 
 spreading irradiation far enough to touch dimly some sub- 
 merged signs and give the Doctor his pledge to proceed. 
 But soon this instability of tenure told its tale; the vexing 
 convolutions of light swept out all direction; the multitude 
 of waters dinning in the ear and baffling the eye undermined 
 assurance. The Doctor looked back; already darkness en- 
 veloped their point of departure; on every side the waves, 
 leaping to facets of fire, hemmed them round. To turn 
 forward again, after this retrospect, was to doubt direction 
 in front of them still further. The boy cried, " Yon's wires, 
 see ye! We're strangelins gain hand dyke on this side." 
 The warning found an echo in the Doctor's fears; he pulled 
 the mare's head to the left, against her instinct and the pres- 
 sure of the wind. A few paces forward and an ominous 
 softness under their left wheel caused him to cry a sudden 
 " Whoa ! " Surely that was grass beneath them. A certain 
 element of consternation permeated both bosoms. The boy 
 said, " We ought tiv 'a gone round by bank." If the Doctor 
 had been unsure of his mare, their position might have been 
 precarious. To turn back was impossible even had he 
 decided that the only solution was to essay the shorter pas- 
 sage rearward, to the road they had left. He called upon
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 285 
 
 the mare again for a trial step " Come, lass ! Come, 
 Kitty ! " leaving the direction of it to her instinct. She 
 pawed the water and took one, and on that he ventured a 
 second; but all this uncertainty of driving had infected her 
 own confidence ; timidity seized her ; she fretted in the shafts 
 with startled head thrown to each side of her; trembled; 
 began to back. The Doctor rose from his seat. "Whoa, 
 Kitty! Whoa, mare." She stood, champing a terrorized 
 bit, as though the blackness held specters for her, plainly on 
 the verge of panic. There was only one step to be taken, 
 and the Doctor took it without a thought. 
 
 " Hold the reins, my lad," he said, and threw off his coat, 
 and let himself down into the water. 
 
 The wetness of its embrace ran up to meet him as he 
 dropped from the gig, and hugged him icily, breast high. 
 Their left wheel rested on the very verge of the dyke; but 
 for a timely grasp of its spokes he would have been over- 
 head, indeed, and the next wave smote him across the neck. 
 As he left his momentary danger, a strange thought flashed 
 through him almost exultant. 
 
 " Perhaps Jane will miss me when I am dead." 
 
 But even as his mind emitted it, he had pulled his soaking 
 figure out of immediate peril, and crept, hand over hand, 
 along the shaft to the mare's head, soothing her by voice as 
 he did so. Now, with this knowledge of their whereabouts, 
 he could lead her tediously, but in safety, interposing his 
 own body between the mare and danger. So long as he 
 skirted the dyke's grass border, thought he, reassuring him- 
 self cautiously of its close proximity from time to time, and 
 making certain of no driftage to the unprotected danger on 
 their right, they might proceed without real peril. He 
 stroked the mare's rounded nostrils with cajoling hand, wet 
 but familiar, and breathed his confidence in her ear. Still 
 champing her bit, though more with the terror for a danger
 
 286 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 past, she submitted her head to his guidance and they forded 
 through the flood. But even now their progress was labored 
 and unsure. This constant beat of waves breast high, and 
 blinding spray that the wind cut from their leaping pinnacles 
 and cast like scorned jewels in the Doctor's eyes, stung and 
 blinded him. From the gig he had been clear of these 
 assaults, and free of bufferings to peer through the darkness 
 and pick direction in periods of tolerable calm. As he 
 struggled in this frigid riot of water, all his time was 
 taken for defense: warding the spray; stemming the weight 
 of waves that struck him; dashing the wetness from his 
 lashes with the back of a hand. And, clad as he was, clogged 
 in clinging garments, water soaked, this incessant buffeting 
 dazed and harassed him. Wave after wave rolled up against 
 his body ; the constant multiplication of blows seemed to bear 
 down the resistance of his reason ; the mind, so continuously 
 assaulted, began to lose its power of concentration. No 
 beacon led him ; no bell-buoys marked his melancholy course. 
 He was but a sentient point in all this tumult; a spark of 
 consciousness pitting itself against legioned forces that drew 
 their power from the infinite. His feet, chilled and sod- 
 dened, told him nothing of the nature of the solid stuff he 
 trod on, beneath this liquid investiture. From time to time 
 he stooped and thrust his hand below the water to seek the 
 fringe of roadside grass that was his safety; nearly always 
 he found himself strayed from it in but a few paces borne 
 irresistibly astray by these unceasing forces. All the road- 
 way under water measured, at most, no more than a couple 
 of hundred yards in probability, less and already he 
 seemed to have been battling with the elements for centuries. 
 Still he could discern no nearance of the point aimed at. 
 Spraith thrust out her blinding periodic ray, and left the 
 night blacker, but lent no help; the light offered derision 
 rather than comfort. A feeling of futility crept over him,
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 287 
 
 born of numbness. Surely he was not living these things, 
 but dreaming them; this was a delirium, no experience. 
 His mind had given way and he was suffering a madman's 
 delusion. Let him lie down on these leaping pillows and 
 sink to sleep. To-morrow, he would awake and find they 
 were his bed. Mechanically he dipped his hand to grope 
 for the dyke-side grass, while the waves slapped his cheek, 
 and found it, by dint of successive plunges, a yard or so away 
 from him. And all at once a light stupendous in its bril- 
 liancy burst out in the darkness ahead of them; a great 
 stable lantern of seemingly gigantic proportions, projecting 
 the shadows of its metal framework far into the night like 
 solid extensions; beams of blackest oak rather than light's 
 intangible contrary. The Doctor halted, holding the mare's 
 head; the light made a swift diagonal, oscillating its beams, 
 dipped, leaving but a halo above it, that outlined the rise of 
 road the Doctor aimed at, came in sight again, and sank 
 finally to where its rays smote the water's leaping edge. 
 
 " Yon's Martin ! " cried the boy from the gig. " He seed 
 us fro' stackgarth end." At the same moment the lantern 
 hailed them with a human " Hello ! " that mitigated like 
 magic the hostile violence of these waters, and made their 
 plight seem puny. Not more than thirty yards of flood 
 divided them from their friendly beacon ; and though it 
 helped to augment and make interminable the vastness of 
 the tide through which they forded, the Doctor gave back a 
 brisk " Hello ! " and waded towards the light with almost 
 reckless energy. 
 
 " Come straightways along wi' ye," they heard the voice 
 of Martin cry through a lull in the blast. " You've a sheer 
 road, and lantern's set plumb i' middle on her. That's right. 
 Dean't bear ower much ti yon side pull a foot ti your 
 left." 
 
 Thus directed, and pressing onward, the Doctor suddenly
 
 288 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 cast this wetness from him as a woman sheds a skirt; rose 
 like a dripping sea-deity out of the flood, beneath the upheld 
 lantern, and met, with words of gratitude on his cold lips, the 
 farmer's exclamation of surprise. " By Go' ! It's you an' 
 all, Doctor ? " 
 
 The Doctor squeezed the water out of his trousers and 
 dripped his hands. 
 
 " Aye, it's me, Martin," he said. " Or it was when I left 
 yam." 
 
 " What i' the name o' fortun' ! " cried the farmer, survey- 
 ing the saturated figure. " Lord, but you mud 'a been lig- 
 gin' i' yon dyke as easy as nought a night like this and 
 then what! What ... an' Jack Thatcher's set up 
 alang wi' ye? Nay, dean't stand there, mun come your 
 ways in and let's get ye some dry things. Ye'll catch your 
 deead o' cold i' them." 
 
 The Doctor knew the soundness of the counsel, but a 
 perverse heroism that is mere disregard of all consequences 
 in so far as they affect self, impelled him. 
 
 " That's good of you, Martin," he said, pulling himself 
 into the trap, " but I've a patient to think of and there's 
 but a step further to drive. I'll dry myself before Thatch- 
 er's fire." The farmer, after his first solicitude, showed a 
 tendency to expand in broader discussion of the disasters of 
 this night; the costly ravages of wind and water, but the 
 Doctor dropped acquiescence and a cheery good-night, and 
 promising to stop and thank his benefactor at greater length 
 the next time he drove by, flicked the mare once more to 
 movement.
 
 XXXV 
 
 BUT a few minutes' more buffeting by the wind and 
 they turned up the rutted occupation lane to Thatcher's 
 farm, where a square lamplit window proclaimed expect- 
 ants in the kitchen. As the gig wheels crunched upon peb- 
 bles and ground fragments of brick with which the ruts 
 were rudely mended, a second rectangle of light opened out 
 in the darkness by the window, framing the black figure of 
 a woman. The Doctor jumped to ground, stiff and heavy, 
 and beat his arms twice or thrice together for a circulation 
 that commenced to flag. 
 
 " Loose the mare out, my lad," said he to his companion of 
 the drive, " and give her a rub down before she has her 
 supper." 
 
 He patted the velvet nostrils that turned round as though 
 to seek some token of commendation, at the sound of his 
 voice, and trumpeted warmth into his neck. 
 
 " Poor old Kitty. You've earned your feed, my girl. 
 Can you manage ? " 
 
 The boy said, " Aye ; I'se unyoked her before." 
 
 The Doctor turned to the waiting figure. " Now, mother." 
 
 " You've come then, Doctor. I began to be i' fears you 
 wouldn't." 
 
 " Why? Didn't you send for me? " 
 
 "Aye. But with a night like this ' 
 
 " When has the weather stopped me ? " 
 
 " Not oft." 
 
 " Well then . . ." He stamped one foot after the 
 
 19 289
 
 2QO THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 other on the cracked doorflag. " Don't lose faith in me yet a 
 bit. How's the lass?" 
 
 " I doubt you'll say she's badlins when you see her. 
 Come your ways in." 
 
 She withdrew from the door and he followed her into the 
 red-tiled kitchen, lighted by a fragile one-wick china lamp 
 on the square center table, but drawing the bulk of its 
 illumination from the flames that leaped cheerily up the 
 chimney from the log-fed grate. Evidences of a recent meal 
 still littered the table, spread out with agricultural pro- 
 fusion on the covering of rose-patterned oilcloth; empty 
 blue-hooped basins, with Britannia-metal spoons a-cockbill 
 in them, that but a while before had been smoking reposi- 
 tories of bread and milk; the remains of a miscellany pie 
 in a great oven-browned dish, the knuckle-end of a ham; 
 cheese, and the eternal cheesecake. Thatcher himself, drawn 
 up in a straight high-backed chair to the far corner of the 
 table between this and the fireplace, sideways to both, 
 appeared to be protracting in lonely grandeur the meal from 
 which all other worshipers of the belly-god were gone. A 
 dog at his knee thudded the hearth-mat with his tail. 
 The Doctor, unconcernedly encouraging the dog to friend- 
 ship with snapping thumb and finger, tossed a greeting to 
 the trencherman, who thrust the gravy-streaked knife blade 
 between his lips as though slitting a pig, and cried a welcom- 
 ing " Noo, sir " on its withdrawal, no veins being severed, 
 apparently. " A roughish night for you, this." 
 
 " It blows a bit," said the Doctor, and added a quick 
 " Hello ! " for his eye caught sight of a second chair drawn 
 up to the hearth, where a childish figure wrapped up in a 
 gray plaid shawl, and eased with patchwork cushions, lay 
 back in flushed exhaustion and drew a labored breath. The 
 Doctor stepped quickly forward and stooped over the small 
 face; took up the wrist and held it; laid his hand upon the
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 291 
 
 dull burning forehead ; turned up the half-closed eyelid and 
 looked with an altered intentness at the distressed nostrils 
 laboring in their fight to win a little breath. 
 
 " Let's have the lamp," he said. " How long has she been 
 like this?" 
 
 The woman began to measure time doubtingly. 
 
 " Why . . ." threw in the farmer, scraping the dish. 
 " She's nivver aught but a wreckling at best o' times. I'm 
 sure one dizn't knaw what ti mek on her." 
 
 " She semt ti loss her appetite o' Monday," his wife took 
 up, " but it wasn't while yesterday she spoke about her 
 throat." 
 
 " You ought to have sent for me sooner than this," the 
 Doctor exclaimed. " Why didn't you ? " 
 
 The woman caught the note of grave remonstrance in his 
 voice. " It's not . . . not," she said. A sudden flush 
 of tears completed the sense of the fear at which her lips 
 stumbled. " I did want to send yesterday. I semt as 
 though I couldn't sattle. But master said . . ." 
 
 " Why," cried the farmer in sheepish defense, dropping 
 his eyes quickly before the Doctor's look. " I nivver 
 thought. I didn't like troubling on ye. Missus would be 
 sending for you yance a fortnet if anybody'd let her. An' 
 there's yon last bill o' yours aback o' chimbley yonder." He 
 added apologetically : " I'se not forgotten it, if missus has. 
 I know very well I wish bill was paid but times dizn't 
 mend i' this part o' country." 
 
 " By God, Thatcher," the Doctor interposed, without other 
 warmth than the words themselves imparted, " put the bill 
 on the fire, man, if it's too big for you. I'm not a bailiff. 
 You ought to know that by this time. I've been in your 
 kitchen often enough." 
 
 The relief for a difficulty disposed of showed in the far- 
 mer's cleared brow and admissive lips.
 
 292 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 " Why noo," he confessed, " I know very well there's not 
 another chap i' the warld like you. But I feels I dizn't like 
 to overdo your kindness . . ." 
 
 The Doctor was not listening to this laudation. Instead, 
 he stooped over the sick child while the mother held the 
 lamp above him, sharpening her apprehensions on his silence, 
 and striving to win from a surreptitious study of his cheek 
 what she dreaded from his lips. All her stored fears were 
 being heaped on the scales at this moment ; she saw the bal- 
 ance-beam rock ominously ; the breathing in its stolid absorp- 
 tion grew stertorous; the bovine bosom, rising and sinking 
 hugely, made the lamp to swerve. She saw the Doctor lay 
 a tender hand upon the flushed hot temples, draw gently 
 down the chin and take his sight of the awful mysteries 
 beyond. The dreadful yellow membrane met his gaze hor- 
 ribly extended, and the action roused a horrid suffocating 
 cough that told him all too clearly the worst of what he 
 sought to know. He let go the child's head ringed with its 
 flaxen curls, and rose to the upright again. 
 
 "Well, Doctor?" 
 
 " Is your kettle on the boil ? " He rendered no answer to 
 her question. 
 
 "There should be a sup in her." 
 
 " I may need more than a sup. And there's my bag under 
 the seat in the gig outside. Just fetch it, Thatcher. Look 
 sharp, man. I shall want this table cleared." The Doctor 
 showed uppermost in him all at once, and the woman had no 
 need to repeat her question. For she divined what the 
 Doctor knew : that this was to be a fight for her child's life 
 to the bitter finish. Already those virulent poisons had got 
 the start and were working ahead of him; in his heart he 
 doubted whether he could overtake or subdue them, and to 
 himself he cursed the ignorance of these people and the 
 stupidity of their messenger that had brought him so little
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 293 
 
 prepared for a task like this. For these were diphtheria's 
 more dreaded days. Treatment by antitoxin was, for remote 
 practitioners, but a name, a principle comprehended rather 
 than established. Probably at this time the remedial serum 
 was in use experimentally at the big Hunmouth hospital, 
 and from that source the Doctor might have been able to 
 procure the phials; but the efficacy of the treatment was 
 still subject to controversy, and even had it been otherwise, 
 there was not the slightest possibility of applying its benefits 
 to a distant case like this. The telegraph office at Beaching- 
 ton would be closed till the morning; with every assistance 
 from wire and rail and willing horsemanship, no hope could 
 come from Hunmouth before the morrow noon. And they 
 were not fighting hours now, but moments those minute 
 components of time whose formidable stature grows with 
 every subdivision, so that seconds in this paradox of need 
 become as giants, the hours pigmy by proportion. Truly 
 to-night must take its place in the Doctor's calendar as a 
 night of combat. Already he had jousted with the elements ; 
 now, all wet and weary, he must joust again. He drew off 
 his saturated coat and held his chill body a moment to the 
 comfortable blaze. The farmer's wife, red about the eyes, 
 and spilling tears as she moved, stirred rapidly to do the 
 Doctor's bidding. 
 
 " After all care I've ta'en on her," she sniffed. 
 
 " Come, come," cried the Doctor. " We're not giving in 
 yet. But it's diphtheria that we have to deal with, and 
 you've let it go far." Thatcher came through the door 
 bearing the well-worn bag; his son followed him with hang- 
 dog head, rubbed his feet awkwardly on the mat, looked 
 about for a vacant peg over the settle, hooked up his hat, 
 flattened his hair with a hand, and seated himself in silence. 
 His mother, moving the supper things to a side table, indi- 
 cated a knife and fork at the end of it. " Ye mun sit your
 
 294 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 ways here." He took the place appointed without any look 
 at the invalid, seeming to avoid the sight of suffering with 
 such discretion as a visitor might ignore a hole in the carpet. 
 Silent, he took up knife and fork in clubbed hands, and with 
 uplifted elbows as though he were endeavoring to extri- 
 cate himself from some narrow difficulty embarked upon a 
 furtive meal. Thatcher, not less uneasy than his son in 
 the face of extremity, consigned the Doctor's bag to the 
 table and appeared to seek extinction on the settle, but the 
 Doctor, busy with his preparations, called upon the farmer's 
 services again. 
 
 " I shall want some feathers," he said. " Don't sit down, 
 man; keep on your feet. I've not done with you. Good 
 long wing feathers such as you grease your cart axles 
 with. And a cork," he added to the farmer's wife, who had 
 cleared the big table of its recent garniture and waited anx- 
 iously on his word. " Any kind will do. Don't you keep 
 your old corks in yon far drawer, there along with the car- 
 tridges ? " She cried, " Aye, to be sure . . . I'se not 
 thinking," and drew out a handful, dusting them on her apron 
 with an involuntary movement as though they were apples. 
 He picked one, and asked now for a piece of twine, which the 
 same drawer yielded. With these he improvised a gag, 
 tying the twine securely round the cork's middle. Then he 
 called for basin and kettle and hastily mixed a warm anti- 
 septic wash, whose temperature he tried with a cautious fin- 
 ger, and approved. He had no potassium permanganate or 
 boracic acid, but fortunately his case contained a small quan- 
 tity of carbolic, which he used for the dilution instead. 
 
 " Now," said he, and took the half-unconscious child in 
 his arms. " I want her lying on this table. Just roll up 
 that shawl, mother, and slip it under her neck. There. 
 That will do nicely. Now you'll have to hold the lamp 
 again, and I shall want you, Thatcher, to take hold of her
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 295 
 
 hands. Don't grip them; just keep her from struggling, 
 that's all." 
 
 Both fell silently into station as he told them, and gently 
 coaxing apart the child's teeth, he introduced his gag; the 
 long ends of the string being left loose to allow for the 
 cork's safe recovery in case of any accidental displacement 
 into the mouth itself. Thereat, dropping his feather into 
 the basin, the Doctor commenced his work to combat the 
 purulent formation on the patient's throat that threatened 
 to overgrow the air-passages and choke her. Even as he 
 took up the task his heart was a doubter. Already the 
 spurious membrane threatened the nose and eustachian 
 tubes; downward he feared its encroachment was more 
 serious still. And the symptoms of diphtheric paralysis 
 showed how far the poisons were at work within this puny 
 system. But, constrained now and then to desist by the con- 
 vulsive cough and protesting paroxysms of a throat resent- 
 ing this abrupt intrusion and the child's murmuring struggles, 
 he persevered. Seizing each available opportunity, he plied 
 his slender antiseptic feather. A silence fell over the kitchen 
 as he worked; the faces of all his watchers changed, seemed 
 to coalesce slowly with those other features, gray and 
 dreaded. Death, scared of his own presentment, peered ap- 
 prehensively out of their eyes and gazed along with them. 
 The boy, laying down his knife and fork at the conclusion of 
 a bolted meal, shed his boots clumsily by the table end, and 
 stole away, cowed, in his stocking-feet to bed, mumbling 
 an averted " Good-night, all " between downcast lips : a 
 ghost precipitate. The farmer, reduced to a grim vestige of 
 his former self, stood holding down the child's hands ; the 
 upper lip tucked desperately into the lower; breathing 
 heavily through his nose; a bull ringed up to the felling 
 block. His wife, seeing already her child passed out of the 
 first circle of her care, in a dread zone where mere mater-
 
 296 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 nity had no place or power prophetic of a sterner re- 
 moval held the lamp with alternate hands, and sighed now 
 and again from the heart, like an echo of the wind outside. 
 
 Yet the rigors and the spasms of suffocation gained on 
 them, despite the busy feather. The flapping nose-wings 
 and the rattling difficulty of breathing showed, for all the 
 Doctor's labor, through what constricted air-ways the breath 
 was having to be drawn. The passages for this precious 
 principle of life were almost closed. No doctor's eye was 
 needed to tell the gravity of the moment now. Father and 
 mother, gazing down upon that tortured countenance of the 
 child, saw plainly but an arena its placid surface torn up 
 in the combat where death and life strove thigh to thigh, 
 and life drooped. The Doctor lay down his feather and 
 drew back a space, a hand on each hip, his brow gathered. 
 The farmer unfolded his lips to ask : " Ha' ye finished, Doc- 
 tor?" 
 
 "For a while . . . Yes." 
 
 He let go the hands and passed the back of his own great 
 hand across his eyes, as though to rub out the sight of what 
 he had witnessed. 
 
 " I can't fairlins bide it, Doctor. And I can bide as much 
 as most men." He turned away. " Aye, poor bairn, poor 
 bairn." 
 
 The woman, still holding the lamp, drew in her bosom to 
 something like a sob. " It's bad to part wi' any on 'em," 
 she said. " For all we've six." 
 
 " Just when she'd gotten to be a bit o' use to anybody," 
 the farmer added. " She could mek bands as well as a man 
 ommost. An' tent pigs." 
 
 " I nobbut bought her a new frock last Anniversary," his 
 wife said. " If she was to be spared us, she'd wear it again 
 this." 
 
 " Aye, you've looked after her, missus," Thatcher threw
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 297 
 
 in. " There's no bairn this way roond been better done to. 
 Bread and meat and chissuks " (cheesecakes) " i' her basket 
 when she sets off to school. As much as ever lass could 
 twine intiv her and more. Many's the time she's brought 
 main part on it back." 
 
 A paroxysm on the little patient's part checked the speech 
 on their lips all at once, and smote their mouths to mere 
 loose circles of apprehension. The struggle for breath was 
 momentarily more desperate; the body rose upon an arc of 
 spine in its endeavor to reach the vital element shut off from 
 it. The farmer blew an unbearable " Bff " through his lips, 
 like the snorting of a horse. 
 
 " It's warse to watch bairn suffer than to bide it," he said. 
 
 His wife laid down the lamp and put spread fingers to her 
 brow ; perspiration oozed out of her forehead, drawn by the 
 sight of a suffering beyond her aid. 
 
 " Can nought be done, Doctor ? Must bairn choke before 
 our eyes ? " 
 
 " There is only one thing," the Doctor said. He had been 
 watching the threatening struggles and debating it this while, 
 and now he knew the thing inevitable. " I had hoped we 
 might avoid it. But we cannot ... I shall have to 
 open the trachea." They acquiesced in dumb submission 
 before the dread incomprehended word; watched him help- 
 lessly out of wondering eyes as he drew his pocket-case from 
 the bosom of the great overcoat. Only when the sinister 
 small blade of the scalpel glittered in the Doctor's fingers 
 did the farmer arouse from his lethargy of helplessness to 
 understanding. 
 
 " Nay," he said suddenly. " Put knife down, man. I 
 wean't have her cut." 
 
 " It is her last chance," the Doctor said. 
 
 " If we'm to lose her, then we mun lose her," the farmer 
 argued obstinately. " But bairn shall die i' peace. I let
 
 298 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 nobody lift hand again her when she was wick, and I don't 
 noo she's half dead." 
 
 " Nonsense, man ! " the Doctor retorted upon him. 
 " There's just the chance we may save her. Pull up your 
 pluck and take hold of her hands again. Give me a couple 
 of hairpins, mother." She drew them out of her hair, and 
 the Doctor bent one after the other to the rude shape of a 
 spread hook. 
 
 The woman, all her mother's instinct in revolt at the sight 
 of the cruel blade, uttered a beseeching "Oh, Doctor! 
 . . . Div ye think it can do her any good? I'se feared 
 to see it." 
 
 " Nay, then thoo needn't be feared," Thatcher cried de- 
 terminedly. " For he wean't use yon knife while I stand i' 
 this kitchen. What else but knife killed my uncle? Aye, 
 as stout and bonny a man as onnybody mud mish to see. 
 They took him to Oommuth yan Tuesday morning, and he 
 never spoke a word after. But for that he wad be living 
 noo, very like. Put yon thing away, Doctor." 
 
 " Are you mad, man ? " the Doctor threw at him. " Noth- 
 ing can save her now, but this. The child's throat is made 
 up. She can't draw a thread of air through it." 
 
 " We've all gotten oor time ti gan," the farmer answered. 
 " An' when we mun gan we mun gan. Div ye think a bit o' 
 steel like yon will do onny good if God means tekkin' on 
 her? Sin' His mind's made up, so's mine." 
 
 " Just a prick in the throat," the Doctor urged. " To let 
 a little air in. By Lord, Thatcher, I shall do it despite you. 
 If she dies like this you're a murderer do you hear ? " 
 The paroxysm came on again. " Look, man. Quick. Take 
 her hands." 
 
 The farmer cast a glance at the agonized countenance, his 
 own face working. " Nay . . ." he cried. " I wean't 
 . . ." and took them tightly with averted head.
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 299 
 
 " Hold up the lamp." The Doctor stooped quickly, re- 
 adjusted the roll beneath the neck to throw back the purple 
 head and raise the trachea. Then, without hesitation, the 
 keen point of steel touched the throat and sank swiftly in, 
 tracing a crimson streak down the white flesh. An answer- 
 ing spasm from the little patient met the blade, and the farm- 
 er, whose own breathing was become so stertorous as to 
 partake almost of the nature of a groan, had to strap his 
 twitching lips together and exercise his strength to restrain 
 the tortured figure, whose struggles added a deeper peril to 
 the doctor's knife. The Doctor himself, as though become 
 the insentient instrument of some fierce decree, paid no 
 heed to these evidences of suffering. While all the other 
 breathing about him was turbulent and distracted, his own 
 was curiously stilled; responsibility served only to steady 
 his hand and lend a keener determination to his eye. The 
 point of the scalpel in his fingers moved within a labyrinth 
 of dangers, he knew ; magnified by the spasmodic movements 
 of the living material he worked in. Now he had of a sud- 
 den to desist, in order to put aside some intercepting artery. 
 Now, with tightened lips, he was severing the treacherous 
 envelope of venous tissue that hides, in childhood, the deep- 
 seated trachea from view, while the engorged blood gushed 
 furiously at first about the blade and threatened all his skill. 
 But working thus resolutely yet with a grim caution 
 (providence being his helper, as it seemed) he pushed his 
 work to its conclusion. All suddenly his watchers heard in 
 the contracted stillness of the kitchen the suck of air through 
 the punctured trachea at last. For a brief while the child's 
 heightened struggles and the horrid whistling through the 
 bleeding orifice seemed but prefatory of violent dissolution ; 
 but even as the mother gave utterance to a lamentable cry 
 of grief the tortured body relaxed its quivering sinews to 
 a state of prostrate calm. Quickly the Doctor affixed his
 
 300 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 improvised hooks to each edge of the incision and drew 
 them apart by means of the string passing through them 
 and secured beneath the child's neck. A little blood still 
 trickled from the gaping wound, but very little. He wiped 
 away a lengthening thread of it that crept like a red worm 
 down the white flesh, and turned upon his helpers. " It's 
 done. Cheer up, mother." 
 
 The mother put down the lamp unsteadily without a word, 
 all her body rent with sudden sobs that shook her as though 
 she wrestled with an unseen adversary. Thatcher, unrecog- 
 nizable beneath a profusion of faces that seemed striving 
 among themselves for the mastery of him, released the list- 
 less hands. In that first moment he reeled like a drunken 
 man, dizzy with the sickness of an agony shared, and sought 
 the fireplace, where he laid his left arm against the black- 
 painted mantel and leaned his brow upon it, staring down 
 into the flames. The Doctor, sensible of an emotion almost 
 palpable, that lent a pulse to the very stillness all about him, 
 succumbed suddenly to its influence, acrid about his eyes and 
 nostrils. For a moment the little girlish figure, drawing its 
 breath of animation through that ghastly crevice held open 
 by the cruel hooks, swam somewhat before him. But he 
 mastered the tyranny, and as soon as he was sure of his 
 own voice, broke the silence cheerily with it. 
 
 "Come, Thatcher," he cried. "The worst's over. We 
 may make a woman of her yet, and some day, perhaps, you'll 
 live to bless this little knife. If only her heart stands it." 
 
 The farmer withdrew slowly from his place by the fire, 
 wiping his coat-sleeve across his brow. 
 
 " I've killed as many as four pigs i' yan day at Christmas 
 time," said he. " Aye, and some on 'em weighing close on 
 thotty stean. But I couldn't tek up your trade, man. No, 
 not for a thousand pounds. I dean't know how ye bide it. 
 Onnybody mud think ye'd gotten no feelings."
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 301 
 
 To this night, indeed, the inquiring historian may trace 
 not a few of the varied later myths of the Sunfleet Doctor. 
 Thatcher, rising bit by bit with the aid of time to a state of 
 hyperaesthesia, began to see, with the opening of this exalted 
 eye, many things not clearly perceived in the hour of despair. 
 To open-mouthed listeners he described, with pictorial ver- 
 nacular, the look that raced over the Doctor's countenance 
 when he drew forth his knife. It was, said he, another man. 
 " I telt him," Thatcher was wont to record, " that I wadn't 
 let him touch bairn wi' it. Ye sewd 'a seed Doctor's face. 
 ' By God, man ! ' he says, * stand back, or there'll be murder 
 betwixt us. I never drew this knife yit but I sucked blood 
 wi' her. She gans inti somebody to-night aye! and deep 
 or I'se a Dutchman.' And she wad a' gan into me an' 
 all," Thatcher added, quite conscientiously, " if I'd tried ti 
 stop him. He'd gotten his lips set tiv it like a dog." All 
 which has given some countenance to a belief that the Sun- 
 fleet Doctor could be, at times, a violent man, and was as 
 partial to the knife, by trade, as a hired assassin. But the 
 manipulation of the weapon was chronicled in breath of radi- 
 ant admiration ; a sort of golden sunset glorifying the sinking 
 edges of a storm. The Doctor handled it like a pen ; stuck 
 it into the throat quicker than a man could write his name ; 
 the bairn never uttered a cry. 
 
 " Aye ! an' him wet thruff ti skin at time," Thatcher was 
 wont to add. " As soon as he set knife doon he tremmled 
 frev head to foot like a reed. I thought job had fair over- 
 mastered him, till he says, ' By Gum, Thatcher ! these clothes 
 nips cold, man. Fetch me some dry things and I'll slip inti 
 them afore fire, nobbut missus '11 turn her back."
 
 XXXVI 
 
 THAT blind weaver who sits at the loom of destiny, 
 fashioning the fabric of our mortal lives, works strange 
 surprises into his pattern. Threads that have been hidden 
 behind the woof of days, until we think them lost to the 
 design, flash up all suddenly anew, and show themselves part 
 of the eternal warp. On this wild day of March Julian 
 Alston comes back into our history. 
 
 Pridgeon, driving home from Hunmouth where he has 
 been converting the last acres of his hereditary soil into 
 parchment, with nothing now much more substantial be- 
 tween himself and them than his own exertions comes upon 
 the blind-eyed man some four miles out of the seaport. The 
 farmer is driving a young half-broken horse, with a head like 
 a pickaxe, and legs that show a horrid extensive capacity for 
 striking both sides of the road at once, so that, in moments 
 of alarm, it seems to make two of itself. He sings as he 
 drives, snatches of sudden song that make his steed swerve 
 violently to the right and left in quick succession and up into 
 the air huge, like a winged thing, poised for a space, with 
 arched forelegs, as though taking spring for flight ; then down 
 come the ringed hoofs, one after the other with the rattle of 
 carronade, and for awhile the farmer cannot hear his own 
 song for the wind that whistles by. In such a spirit as this, 
 of a sudden he shaves dangerously close past the slouching 
 figure of a man. The stable lantern flashing upon the pedes- 
 trian's shoulders, reveals the quick upthrow of defensive 
 right arm, the half-turned head, as the startled figure leaps 
 to a side in the roadway grass. Probably a curse accom- 
 
 302
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 303 
 
 panics the gesture ; it has the look of it, but the farmer does 
 not hear this, for the wind is blowing from the north, and 
 the whole wall of heaven seems leaning against him from the 
 east, and the horse's hoofs sound a rataplan upon the road- 
 way. Pridgeon cries "Hello!" and "Whoa, then!" and 
 puts all the weight of his two brawny arms for the stoppage 
 of his steed, sawing the reins to a hissing sound of repres- 
 sion through his clenched teeth, bare of lip as far back as the 
 bicuspids. He brings the horse, trumpeting and smoking, to 
 a restless stay, and still pulling on the reins that resist 
 him like a tense spring, ready to catapult him forward along 
 the road again looks back into the darkness, crying, " D'ye 
 want a lift?" For the farmer is of the class which finds 
 solitude as flat to the heart as cold water to the palate. Any 
 sort of chance company is preferable to it ; plowboys, cattle 
 drovers, tramps even, are welcome to the vacant place in the 
 cart beside him, so long as they can supply a " Yes " or 
 " No " to his breezy interrogatives. Strapping the reins 
 round his right wrist, and putting his foot for leverage 
 against the dash-board, he unhooks the lantern and casts its 
 spreading beams backward over the road. It shows him the 
 figure of the blind-eyed man, at a stooping halt in the grass 
 behind, as though debating whether to incorporate his iden- 
 tity with the darkness, or come forward and accept the 
 farmer's invitation. Under the sudden douche of lamplight, 
 that makes his one eye blink, he elects to do the latter 
 draws forward to the trap side, sulkily withal, and submits 
 to recognition. Even on this stormy night, beneath the rays 
 of the wind-blown lantern, he shows tokens of external bet- 
 terment, that the farmer is prompt to notice, though the 
 betterment is after all but degeneracy raised to a higher 
 stage of itself no real prosperity or contentment shows in 
 it. He carries a less greasy cap, and wears an overcoat but- 
 toned up to the neck, but the garments and his way of wear-
 
 304 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 ing them seem steeped in the unmistakable sense of dissolute- 
 ness broodingly at war with the world. Beneath the slouch- 
 ing shoulders one feels instinctively that the embers of a forge 
 are darkly smoldering; but a breath from the bellows is 
 needed and they will gleam red and hot in a moment. A black 
 patch covers the blind eye, held in its place by a band of thin 
 elastic that cuts his brow diagonally, and at nearer quarters, 
 as he comes under the direct light of the lantern, it is plain 
 that he has been drinking. His face, indeed, bears deeper 
 traces of the liquor disease than it did ; there are venous 
 threads of purple in his blunted nose, and fleshy pouches 
 droop beneath each eye. As he draws up to the spring cart 
 the farmer hails him more familiarly, with suitable expletives 
 of surprise. " Why man, it's going in two years since I 
 clapped eyes on you. I thought you'd turned to grass and 
 daisies. What brings you to this part of the country in 
 March? It's a rum time to be moving." 
 
 " That's my business," retorts the blind-eyed man. 
 
 " Why, so it is," Pridgeon agrees with cheerful alacrity. 
 " And I'm not jealous to rob you of it." He replaces the 
 stable lantern over the dash-board, crying a threatening 
 " Whoa ! " to the horse, whose frettings keep the cart in 
 perpetual ferment on its wheels, for the blind-eyed man 
 suddenly throws up an elbow before his face with an oath, 
 and says, " Have you looked plenty ? Do you want to spoil 
 what bit of sight I've got?" 
 
 Pridgeon answers, " Step up into cart with you, man, for I 
 can't hold the horse in much longer." In parenthesis he 
 bellows out a blood-curdling " Whoa " at the pickaxe head in 
 great capitals, and next moment, with the blind-eyed man 
 beside him, lets the three-year-old go. It speeds like a yard 
 from a cross-bow, and Julian Alston tumbles back into the 
 vacant place with a lurch that threatens to unseat him. 
 Pridgeon, seemingly the most careless of drivers, takes a
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 305 
 
 sideway seat as soon as he has a companion to talk to, and 
 gives but the briefest glances to the wind-swept darkness 
 ahead of them, occasionally, through wantonness rather than 
 necessity, slashing the reins to impart activity to their pound- 
 ing steed, as though any were needed. There is no light in 
 the cart, but from the halo over the dash-board and through 
 the nail-hole punched in the tin back of the lantern, a certain 
 irradiation reaches Julian Alston's face, and Pridgeon is not 
 too considerate to peer at it in the gloom. He cannot over- 
 come his feelings of surprise to find the blind-eyed man in 
 this locality. 
 
 " Why ! What ! You weren't coming to seek me ? " he 
 asks, in a sudden outcrop of astonishment. 
 
 Alston cries, " You ? No ! Thank God I've no need to 
 muck out pigs any longer, now." Pridgeon laughs a 
 laugh that, did he but know it, blows up the smoldering 
 ashes of the strange passion beside him. Even the small 
 gratitude for the present favor of a ride upon this ink-black 
 road does not subdue Alston's wrath at the remembrance of 
 those summer days when, fuming like the dung he dealt with, 
 he did the farmer's bidding. " Why, it's a messy job, and 
 all," the farmer acknowledges. " I'm glad you've got a bet- 
 ter. What's your trade now, then ? " he asks with his fatal 
 proclivity for questions. Alston exclaims, " There you go ! " 
 Pridgeon retorts, " Why, damn it man, if I didn't ask for 
 myself you'd tell me naught. What's got the lass and all ? " 
 
 Alston makes a noise in his throat that may be a cough of 
 exasperation, or an oath suppressed. Pridgeon, probing to 
 the blind-eyed man's face in the gloom, strikes a sudden 
 surmise. "What!" says he, "has the wench jilted you?" 
 Alston retorts, " To hell with her and you and your ques- 
 tions." " Come, there's no hurry," says the farmer. " We 
 shall all get there in good time. When did she leave you ? " 
 Alston draws in his breath with a curious hissing sound, but
 
 306 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 yields no audible reply. Pridgeon, seeming to take answer 
 from his silence, says, " She was a grand lass. I could never 
 reckon her up for taking on wi' syke a chap as you. But 
 it's a fool that trusts a woman ower long; there isn't a lass 
 in petticoats that knows what constancy means. What's 
 gotten her now ? Do you know ? " 
 
 Alston, who had been expectorating morosely over the cart 
 side, as though the farmer's words brought up a fluid poison 
 into his mouth, suddenly burst out with a cry of passion, 
 and smote the cushion between them. " Where is she ? " 
 he repeated. " By thunder, I don't know where she is now 
 - whether she's in this world or the next. She's got my 
 mark on her, wherever she is." 
 
 " What ! " exclaimed the farmer. " You didn't strike her, 
 man?" 
 
 " Didn't I ? " cried Alston, with a fierceness that marked 
 too clearly the intensity of the act in question. " I tell you 
 she won't forget this arm in a hurry." He held it out- 
 stretched, with fist clenched, across the farmer's chest ; it had 
 the double effect of testimony and intimidation as though 
 he were daring the world to deny the deed or dispute the 
 righteousness of it. Pridgeon, untouched by the latter sense 
 of the gesture, said 
 
 " Nay, man. You never laid hands on a lass like yon, 
 surely. Damn it, there's better uses for women than that." 
 
 " Who gave me this eye ? " Alston shouted through the 
 wind and clamor of their progress. " A woman. By thun- 
 der, and I've paid a woman back for it. They're all alike. 
 One's as bad as another. Now I'm quits and done with 
 them. No more women for me. Let's be free of this 
 blighted country." 
 
 " What ! " says Pridgeon. " Do you mean to say you've 
 been getting into trouble? You've not damaged the lass at 
 all ? " he said, putting his face closer. He is prepared to
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 307 
 
 shift his position for the better hearing of the blind-eyed 
 man's confidences, but Alston confides nothing in cold blood. 
 His secrets are like sparks belched upward, blown by forced 
 draught from his forge fire. As soon as the farmer lends a 
 listening ear the vagrant's cinders cool to a dull silence. 
 
 But by dint of industrious rakings and bellowings as they 
 drive, the farmer begins to see glimpses of fugitiveness in 
 his companion's outlook though how such flight should 
 bring him to this part of the globe he cannot divine. Alston 
 makes mention of America. The farmer, quick to draw 
 conclusions, says, " So you're bound for America, man ? " 
 Whereat his companion says obliquely, " Any country's bet- 
 ter than this." Pridgeon asks bluntly as to means. " It'll 
 cost you something," says he. " Is your purse fat enough ? " 
 Alston affirms he can manage that. He has been to America 
 in his palmier days, it seems, and the farmer is disposed to 
 seek information about this middle-heaven of the desperate. 
 " For," says he, " I don't know but what I mayn't be follow- 
 ing you there before long. England's a dowly spot, God 
 knows, and farming's about dead i' this part. As soon as 
 my mother dies and she can't hope to live so much longer 
 now there'll be nothing to keep me. They tell me there 
 are some grand lasses over there, man. Is it right?" 
 
 Thus in their respective fashions they draw together con- 
 versationally during the drive. After a while the blind-eyed 
 man touches on the Sunfleet doctor in a curt sentence of in- 
 quiry. Pridgeon says, " Why, man, what do you know 
 about him ? " and then recalls the circumstances of the Doc- 
 tor's daily visits to his farm, adding, " Aye, to be sure. He 
 let yon bairn of yours into the world. I'd forgotten." 
 They discuss the Doctor, or rather Pridgeon holds forth on 
 him. " Bless you," he tells Alston, " I scarcely see him once 
 in a blue moon. He's not the sort of man anybody can 
 make much of a friend of. Not that I'm saying anything
 
 308 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 against him, but he needn't be so down on the drink. The 
 stuff's right enough when it's not abused. Yon lass of his 
 is going to be married. Did you ever see her?" 
 
 Alston rasps his throat. 
 
 " Who's she marrying ? Him ? " 
 
 " Nay," Pridgeon lashes the reins. " I think she'd have 
 done better with him than chap she's having. He's a par- 
 son. Nothing much in our line, man. You and I can get 
 wed without syke fellows. All the same, I wouldn't mind 
 wearing his shoes for a bit; she's a fine lass. And to think 
 I can remember her when she was a bit of a thing as big as 
 your watch-pocket, sniveling aback of a handkerchief in yon 
 Doctor's room first night she came. God bless it, but time 
 makes old men of us all. I'm steering for the fifties." 
 
 This topic of the Doctor and his ward is plucked at with 
 strange insistence by the blind-eyed man. Even Pridgeon, 
 following the careless flow of his own tongue, discerns sud- 
 denly with what keenness the course of its current is being 
 prompted. 
 
 " Damn it, man ! " he cries at length. " You ask a deal o' 
 questions about Doctor and yon lass." And all at once the 
 thought comes to his mind : " Is it him you're coming to 
 see?" There is a laugh with the words, a breath of taunt 
 that blows the blind-eyed man's wrath to a sudden red 
 heat. 
 
 " And what if I am ? " cries he. 
 
 " Why," Pridgeon drives awhile in silence, peering at him 
 incredulously, " I'm thinking he won't be over well pleased 
 to see you." 
 
 The blind-eyed man lets fall an oath. 
 
 " Pleased or not pleased," he shouts through the wind, 
 " he won't say no to me." 
 
 There is a meaning in the words; they wave to defiance 
 like a banner. The farmer believes himself on the brink of
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 309 
 
 some rare disclosure ; his brain is at work ; through the wafts 
 of alcohol blown out at him from his companion's hot 
 mouth he scents the odor of mystery dear to human hearts. 
 
 " Why ! What ! " he begins with his customary formula, 
 bending his face close to Alston's own, and coming nearer 
 over the cushion. " Is there anything betwixt you ? " 
 
 But the tramp has cooled suddenly again; his indiscretion 
 has checked his anger. His next curse is at Pridgeon for 
 exciting him to a dangerous outburst. 
 
 " Keep your questions to yourself." His degenerate pride 
 itches to slap the farmer violently in the face with the procla- 
 mation that the Doctor's lass is his daughter, that his own 
 blood fertilizes the beauty Pridgeon thinks so much about; 
 but he knows and the knowledge goads him that he 
 would be laughed at for his pains, and that, with the estab- 
 lishment of his right to claim paternity, he would forfeit that 
 other secondary right which is a matter of greater moment 
 to him now. 
 
 So the drive is continued. The wind begins to veer 
 noticeably to the east, and its action upon the three-year-old 
 is more potent than the farmer's reins; he can sit now with 
 slack wrists. Not yet have they encountered the squalls of 
 snow that are to characterize the later evening, but the wind 
 that faces them grows icy cold. Here and there along their 
 route the farmer cries an inn-side halt, and he and Alston 
 line themselves with liquid fire for the sustaining of their 
 further journey. For out-of-door men the night is nothing. 
 As they stand drawn-up by lamp-lit hostel there are those 
 who speak of the weather as " wildish for driving," but the 
 adjective bears a mere conversational value. That supreme 
 hour of gale is not yet. 
 
 At Peterwick Pridgeon finds Medling and a smoking bar- 
 ful of worthies in the Fox and Hounds. His resolution to 
 reach home and his previous thoughts for the three-year-old
 
 310 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 falter. He says : " To heaven with driving. Let's set down 
 and warm oneself a bit. Come in, man ! " this to Alston, 
 but the latter takes his drink at the door, outside the area 
 of good-nights and recognitions, and will not be cajoled, 
 though (truth to tell) the farmer in view of this congenial 
 company does not try his hardest persuasions. The blind- 
 eyed man drains the last glass, hands it silently to the wait- 
 ing landlord, wipes his mouth morosely with the back of a 
 hand, and lurches away into the darkness without good- 
 night. Pridgeon, finding him gone, throws open the door to 
 shout " I shall overtake you, maybe," but no voice answers 
 him out of the darkness.
 
 XXXVII 
 
 NOT to the Doctor alone, during these recent days, has 
 the faculty of hard thinking pertained. Behind the 
 small white brow and clear blue eyes of his beloved Jane, a 
 brain has been busy. This precipitation of things foreseen 
 by the heart, yet held by the mind so comfortably remote, 
 has brought perplexity to both. Both seek to realize, un- 
 known of the other, what the step involves. 
 
 Woman's heart is, to man, a well unfathomable. Some 
 say it is a deep shaft, sunk down through the emotions; 
 echoing to every voice with a hundred overtones and 
 reflected distortions; empty, yet bricked round with artifice 
 all the way down to where a little water of clear truth winks 
 deceptively in the darkness, seeming to be much nearer than 
 it is. Others describe it variously, in terms of praise or 
 despair; all haunt it; many hopeful pitchers are broken at 
 the well head. Each inquirer assumes that woman the will- 
 ful knows, of her innate wisdom, what the heart hides ; 
 none imagines that her artifice is often but the harmless 
 expediency of ignorance attempting to know itself ; that her 
 wiles are defensive rather than initiatory ; and that her heart 
 holds as deep a secret from her own gaze as that they try to 
 make it yield. Jane, retiring to her own little blue-cushioned 
 sanctuary up-stairs when Berkeley has gone, sets to work, 
 ostensibly on the table-center in silks of saffron and shaded 
 yellows that has been occupying her external attention dur- 
 ing the past week; truthfully, to sift her thoughts and feel- 
 ings, and try and sort these muddled silks of sentiment 
 whose very disorder has frightened her from the task before. 
 
 3"
 
 312 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 She is horrified to hear a voice within her asking if she really 
 loves Berkeley Hislop so well as she had imagined, and she 
 is scarcely less horrified to discover that the question is not 
 one to be dismissed by a Yes or No. 
 
 Of love indeed, when she studies their relations critically, 
 she finds disappointingly little. Since that first October 
 afternoon when all the fibers thrilled responsive to Berkeley 
 Hislop's confession a confession sweet by reason that it 
 established and enthroned the woman within her, and con- 
 secrated her queenly right to dominion over the heart of 
 man she finds that the love between them has been in- 
 appreciably relegated to the cold region of accepted fact. 
 It has been incorporated into a bond; her heart has been 
 formally conveyed. She and Berkeley Hislop appear to be 
 mere subscribers to a legal instrument of love, participating 
 now in the consequences rather than the quality. Investi- 
 gation shows, too, how far her vanities have been involved 
 in this conveyance of affection, and on the threshold of the 
 hymeneal vestibule, she halts, quieting her heart with a 
 hand. 
 
 Three brief months from now and all is to be changed 
 with her. To the wind with her name; thenceforth that 
 part of her will be shed as lightly as a leaf. Beneath a new 
 name once lipped in eager rehearsal ; now tried dubiously, 
 like a lock for her imprisonment she will face a fresh life ; 
 cast the old home in favor of a new ; dwell amid strangers ; 
 adopt unfamiliar modes of living; mold herself dutifully to 
 her life-lord's will. Does she love him dearly enough to 
 make the change? 
 
 She wishes, girl-like, that Bertha were here. Bertha's 
 absence has involved a subtle difference in her thoughts ; a 
 chief thread has been withdrawn. For doubts, submitted to 
 Bertha, were made whole ; the feelings of affection were 
 caressingly stimulated; the sense of devotion to Berkeley
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 313 
 
 piously sustained within her. Since Bertha's absence, she 
 had been conscious of a slippage in sentiment ; she perceives 
 a tendency to relapse upon her earliest doubts; to question 
 if Berkeley is really so intellectual-looking, after all; to be 
 in two minds concerning his gravity ; to be dubious of those 
 crooked matters so frequently kissed straight by Bertha's 
 supplicating lips. She begins to doubt her piety; to debate 
 whether she has a true vocation to act the vicaress. The 
 pride of it still possesses her; her neck arches involuntarily 
 as she sweeps in thought up the aisle of their Joint Church, 
 and seeks the pew before the eyes of a hushed, observant 
 congregation. But can this vanity be really love? Has she 
 not been led astray from the true pathway of her heart by 
 thoughts of coveted grandeur? Is she not contemplating to 
 pledge her happiness for mere mortal pride? 
 
 She is dismayed to find how much of the stranger occupies 
 this man she has consented to marry. Thoughts of her fu- 
 ture life, of the proud home that is to be hers, have absorbed 
 and beguiled her fancy at times almost to extinction of this 
 other marital element. It comes upon her now with some- 
 thing of a shock that the grave being, with whom she makes 
 no real advance in intimacy, is gateway, corner-stone, and 
 pediment of all her hopes. She takes covert stock of his 
 countenance from time to time, and finds it almost what it 
 was in the earliest days of all, when she had a maiden fear of 
 it. His voice subdues her. Beneath her somewhat chill 
 external a very hot and human little heart is burning. She 
 has tried to woo Berkeley with warm blood to put forth the 
 spring buds and blossoms of the passion. Often her lips 
 have been offered unobtrusively to his own, the little hand 
 has lingered to be plucked and fondled ; but in such ars 
 amoris he has no skill. He takes her hand in his and shakes 
 it gravely, decorously; the kiss he lays upon her cheek 
 (never her lips) is a flat and tasteless thing like a poached
 
 314 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 egg grown cold on the plate through long neglect ; affording 
 the heart a certain nourishment, indeed, but checking the 
 appetite rather than encouraging it. One kiss of the kind 
 is quite sufficient; Jane never asks for more; she folds her 
 hands after it, and says an inward grace. Since the day 
 that he kissed her for the first time in the Sunfleet vestry, 
 she finds that the quality of his kissing has declined. She 
 has a dread surmise that he takes no pleasure in it could 
 subsist quite comfortably on mere handshakes alone. Love 
 decorative seems far beneath him; he, loftily above. His 
 discourse makes no reference to it. Half a day at least, after 
 each absence, is needed to thaw him to the degree of fa- 
 miliarity on which they parted; he would be prepared to sit 
 at half a room's length away from Jane, toying with the 
 gold crucifix on his watch-chain, as though he were giving 
 her moments that might be devoted to deeper purpose, and 
 sending his resonant deep voice in great cable-lengths across 
 to her. She finds herself at times with both hands in her 
 lap, serving out submissive " Yes, Berkeleys," and " No, 
 Berkeleys," " I beg your pardon, Berkeleys," almost in ac- 
 cents of timidity. Imperceptibly she has acquired the family 
 attitude of meekness and respect for this grave verbi dei 
 minister; offers her mind as a footstool to his, that he may 
 plant the sole of his learning on it. Now and again he tries 
 with an obvious effort to descend to her level and indulge 
 her to a little lighter converse; but he cuts it wedge-shape, 
 as sparing matrons carve cake for juvenile consumption, and 
 one piece formally proffered must suffice. He has no range 
 in the lighter topics ; swims clumsily in them, with manifest 
 discomfort to himself; soon he lapses into his chancellary 
 manner, assumes the liturgical voice, and Jane is of the 
 congregation once more, breathing her meek Amens and 
 Spare us, Good Lords. 
 
 At first this solemn booming of his voice had stirred her;
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 315 
 
 her vain little ears throbbed crimson to their lobes to be the 
 solitary favored receptacles of tones on which whole listen- 
 ing churchfuls hung. In his presence she felt the beauty of 
 being good; his piety protected her; with such a husband 
 she might be sure of heaven. But that was in the beginning. 
 Since then her heart had pined for a less cloistral love ; she 
 had even found her mind wandering during his recital of 
 parochial affairs to some other topic, and had come back 
 with a guilty jerk to a sense of its truancy. In theory this 
 priestly-affianced was all the heart could wish; in practice 
 he was a disappointment. She was conscious of having tried 
 very hard to talk herself into the love of him; with Bertha 
 and with Numphy both, she had done her best to rear this 
 being upon a pedestal for her own heart to kneel before and 
 worship ; had essayed to perceive in him those very qualities 
 whose need she had most keenly noted. Each time a smile 
 was wrung from him, a vindicating pride rose up within her, 
 rejoicing, to record the fact and claim for him a character of 
 friendly cheerfulness from the exception. But now, with this 
 uncalculated precipitation of affairs, her synthetic idealism 
 reached a sudden end; in place of it she found a keenly 
 analytic heart, probing into half-suspected truths that made 
 it tremble. Did she love Berkeley Hislop after all? 
 
 And then she thinks of Numphy, battling now against the 
 blasts that take the big house as in encircling arms and hug 
 it threateningly; or clap its roof with flat hands of thunder, 
 blowing the smoke out of Jane's small fire abruptly into the 
 room, and sucking it surprisingly back again all at once, so 
 that but a wisp of it drifts beyond the mantel. All these 
 nightly sessions will be converted into mere sighs of remem- 
 brance; here in Sunfleet he will be left to follow his dreary 
 life alone. Thoughts of a certain sadness fill her. She 
 sheds a few tears, recalling his goodness to her, and the 
 many happy hours spent together. If only Berkeley had his
 
 316 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 smile. . . . His ready word. . . . His manly ten- 
 derness. . . . 
 
 But that is silly and impossible. She wipes her eyes and 
 puts the filmy handkerchief aside. And yet, at this very 
 moment, of the two men absent it is Numphy that she 
 misses most. From her lonely want of him she interprets 
 his lonely want of her. It is a thought her heart has har- 
 bored on many an occasion. What will become of Numphy 
 when she leaves him? Faint images of duty hover round 
 the question. Ought she to desert him? A sense of help- 
 lessness pervades her; the need of a comforter, of one to 
 whose ear her lips may be laid, and from whose mouth she 
 may coax breath of counsel. Suppose . . . Suppose. 
 It is a desperate idea, she is aware; but suppose she were 
 to tell Berkeley Hislop that she can never be anything more 
 than a sister to him? What should be the consequences? 
 
 She fears to picture it. What would Berkeley say? 
 What Bertha, and Uncle Horace? Whatever Numphy? 
 Could her pride sustain all their looks and wonder and inter- 
 rogation; all their searching after reasons; all their accusa- 
 tions of girlish fickleness and inconstancy? She fears not. 
 She foresees the inevitable inquisition of her recusant heart ; 
 the varied ordeals to which it must be subjected; the at- 
 tempts to save her from apostasy ; consternation hardening in 
 the lips to grave resentment and rebuke; disgrace closing 
 fast around her; her ultimate martyrdom for a cause her 
 judges cannot comprehend; truth to her, rank heresy to 
 them. 
 
 No, no. She has not courage. She must try and care 
 for him; must recommence her idealizing; shut down the 
 analytic processes. Affections are plastic; love is a flexible 
 quality to be shaped by the will. And besides . . . 
 love in the sense she seeks to perceive it is a figment of 
 the romanticists. She is not a heroine going large-bosomed
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 317 
 
 and deep-breathing into an epic, but plain Jane Alston of 
 Sunfleet, about to assume the prosaic duties of an English 
 wife. 
 
 Of course. She has been ridiculous. It is absurd. What 
 can she have been thinking about? 
 
 And all for no reason she suddenly lays down the fancy- 
 work on her knees and throws back her head silently with 
 her hands over it while the tears well through her fingers. 
 
 Life is full of disappointments, dismays, and disillusion- 
 ings.
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 AT ten o'clock comes Hester to Miss Jane's room with 
 Miss Jane's customary tray of dry biscuits and hot 
 milk, to say : " Lord, miss ! Don't you get stalled o' sitting 
 with yourself? " and " Hasn't it been a night! There's snow 
 blown under the kitchen door, and Anne says she's never 
 felt her feet so cold all winter." Miss Jane smiles indul- 
 gence at the one, and shakes her head assentively at the sec- 
 ond. " I am afraid the Doctor . . ." she begins, and, 
 breaks off suddenly with a listening attitude to ask : " Is that 
 the bell ? " Both lend ears. Hester thinks her mistress is 
 mistaken, but next moment Anne's footsteps are audible, 
 crossing the hall, and they hear the sound of the latch with- 
 drawn. " Who can it be, I wonder ? " Jane speculates. 
 " Hush, Hester. I hope it is not for the Doctor again." 
 Almost before the words are out of her mouth, the front 
 door slams with the force of a cannon, and a bolt is rattled 
 home. The vehemence of the act scares both these listening 
 faces. Hester's mouth drops in apprehension, Jane rises in 
 graceful perturbation to her feet. " Whatever is the mat- 
 ter! Anne can never have. . . . Let me pass, Hester." 
 She crosses the landing with authoritative footsteps, and 
 descends the staircase to the first bend, Hester close upon 
 her skirts. At the same moment Anne is beneath the hall 
 lamp; an indignant Anne with a red patch on either cheek, 
 casting back a look of injury towards the door, as though in 
 that direction lay the source of some deeply-resented affront. 
 And suddenly, while these respective attitudes are preserved, 
 the hall re-echoes to the furious assault of a man's fists upon 
 
 318
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 319 
 
 the door-panels, and a man's voice cries out with the suffoca- 
 tion of rage beyond. Hester exclaims : " Oh, miss ! Hark 
 at him! What a passion." Jane's head is very high; her 
 dignity is touched. 
 
 "Anne. Who is it? What has happened?" 
 
 Anne, breathing so vehemently that she has to rebuke her 
 bosom's violence with a hand, said : " I'll larn him to behave 
 hisself. I'll teach him to be civil. My word, I will and all. 
 Aye ! you may knock ! " she cried, and shook her fist at the 
 door. Jane repeated her question. 
 
 " I lets nobody call me a liar," the seething woman 
 responded, " nor never did. Not even when my husband was 
 living. If I was a man I'd gan oot quick and larn him his 
 manners. A bonny idea for a fellow to shove his foot i' door 
 again a respectable woman. What's good o' growing old if 
 you get no respect for it? Nobbut I'd had my boots on 1 
 mud a gied him summut to remember me by but there's 
 no use i' syke slippers as these." 
 
 " But Anne. . . ." Jane assumed her voice of author- 
 ity. " I insist. Who is it ? What has happened ? " 
 
 "Who is it?" retorted the injured woman. "Why, it's 
 yon blind-eyed chap that cam' wi' gypsy lass to Sunfleet a 
 couple o' year sin'. Rings bell as if it was for syke as him 
 to handle, and asks for Doctor as bold as brass. Aye, and 
 when I say Doctor's not at yam he calls me a liar, wi another 
 name tiv it, and tries to set his foot i' door. As drunk as a 
 pig bucket." 
 
 " But Anne. He may need the Doctor seriously. Are 
 you quite sure he is really drunk ? " 
 
 " If noses is aught to gan by, I am," the housekeeper re- 
 plied. " As soon as door opened I could smell him o' drink 
 strong enough to put lamp oot." 
 
 Her words were interrupted by the battery of fists once 
 more. Hester cried, " Oh, miss ! Come your ways back.
 
 320 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 Don't gan gain-hand yon door. What if he was to peep 
 thruff keyhole. I'm all of a tremmle." 
 
 Jane put a dubious forefinger to her lip and looked dis- 
 quietly towards the door. The summons was certainly 
 peremptory, but stronger force than alcohol might be at 
 work to make it so. She felt also that she ought to rise, 
 superior over alarm, to some height of mistress-ship before 
 these under-women. Not that she had any wish to face that 
 fierce identity behind the door. 
 
 " Perhaps," she said, " it is something very urgent and 
 dreadful, Anne. You ought to inquire." 
 
 " Not me," said the housekeeper in a mutinous voice. " I 
 don't open yon door again for nobody. Mebbe I might not 
 be so quick i' shuttin' her a second time." 
 
 " I am not frightened," Jane declared, raising her small 
 proud head. " I will see the man myself." 
 
 She descended a step, but Hester, wrought to a panic by 
 the sight of the move, clasped .her hysterically by the arm 
 her face rendered terrible by the sense of horror for this 
 audacity. " Oh, miss ! Don't gan no nearer. Grip tight 
 hold o' bannisters, like me, and get ready to run if yon door 
 bursts open." She showed tokens of tears. " There's 
 naught no worse nor a drunken man." 
 
 " Hester ! " Jane turned upon her imperiously, withal not 
 sorry to be restrained. " You are forgetting yourself. Let 
 go my arm." 
 
 Hester, rendered desperate by reproof and terrors, released 
 it, crying : " Not while you promise me faithful to stop 
 where y' are. What if yon man was to get i' house. Oh, 
 miss! There was a woman an' bairn murdered nobbut last 
 week i' Hunmouth paper, wi' their fortygrafts. I don't 
 know why, but I've semt low spirited all day. I couldn't 
 sup aboon half my second cup o' tea." 
 
 The thought of the house's invasion by this drunken vis-
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 321 
 
 itor, fermented by Hester's obvious alarm, played somewhat 
 pregnantly on Jane's fancy. She said, " Nonsense, Hester ! " 
 in a sharp voice of reproof, but she asked, " Are you quite 
 sure the bolt is fastened, Anne?" 
 
 " Not," she added, " that anybody would dare to walk into 
 the Doctor's house without permission." 
 
 " They'd walk i' any house," Anne commented, " when 
 the drink moves 'em. If I hadn't slammed yon door quick, 
 he'd a been inside noo." 
 
 " All is quiet," Jane remarked, after a listening pause. 
 " Has the man gone ? " They lent their three profiles to the 
 door, and drew, after awhile, a sense of consolation from the 
 silence. 
 
 " Perhaps you were too hasty, Anne," Jane reflected. " I 
 do not feel altogether comfortable. It seems dreadful to 
 shut the Doctor's door in anybody's face. The poor man 
 must have had a reason for calling." 
 
 " You'd a' shut door as quick as me," Anne said, " yance 
 you'd seed his face." 
 
 Their brief sense of security, growing out of silence with 
 the seconds, received a rude abuse ; the assault upon the door 
 panels was renewed. Threats, almost indistinguishably 
 hoarse, added to the sinister effect of this siege. What the 
 threats were, or precisely against whom leveled, in their per- 
 turbation they could not make out; moreover, the man's fists 
 were foes to his voice. They caught the words : " Worse for 
 you. . . ." " Wait all night . . ." and other words 
 less possible of reproduction, which Jane, as a prospective 
 vicaress, tried vainly to ignore, but which the impulsive Hes- 
 ter forced upon her notice with a horrified " Oh, miss ! Did 
 you hear yon ? What a word to say ! " The use of her own 
 name, " Jane Alston " however, twice unmistakably raised 
 by that dread throat beyond the door, lent a new complexion 
 of terror to the assault. Jane's inclination to pity turned
 
 322 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 steeply aside to disgust and fear; blind menace, much more 
 than supplication or urgency began to show in this battery 
 upon their defenses. The tail of her vanity trodden on, she 
 rose swift to the height of dignity and disdain. 
 
 " Come away, Anne. Do not listen to him, Hester. It is 
 shocking. Perhaps he will go if we leave the hall." 
 
 The intermittent fusillade ceased with a sudden usage of 
 the man's foot. A brief pause succeeded, and then some- 
 thing fragible crashed against the door a bottle, Anne 
 said as though hurled with the purpose of stimulating 
 terror. In this it did not fail. The gratuitous violence of 
 the deed made the listeners tremble for the motives that 
 urged it, and the further consequences that might ensue. 
 Even from the silence following, Hester's fertile apprehen- 
 sions conjured a new terror. 
 
 " Oh, Miss Jane ! What if yon man was to gan round by 
 kitchen door ! " A still more horrible fear assailed her : 
 " Or any o' them lower winders ! " 
 
 The fear infected all three. Jane said, " How can you 
 suggest such horrid things, Hester. Do you really wish to 
 frighten people ? What are you looking at ? " 
 
 " Hark ! " said Hester. " What's that ? " 
 
 " Lord, lass ! " exclaimed Anne, suddenly glancing round 
 her, and gathering her skirts. " What a start you gied me, 
 calling oot i' that road. Ain't ye more sense? I declare I 
 thought door'd burst open. Here! let me come up-stairs 
 and all. You're making me feel queer." 
 
 " I hear somebody trying to push yon breakfast-room 
 winder open," Hester communicated in the ghost of a whis- 
 per. She had the eyes of a voyante. " There ! Oh, miss ! 
 He's jumped i* room. He's groping his way past yon 
 writing table . . ." 
 
 " Hush ! " Anne threw at her in a voice reduced to its last
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 323 
 
 shred of authority. " Say another word at your peril un- 
 less you want to hear me scream. That's next thing I shall 
 do, I know. What wi' them cold flags, and him, and you 
 and your fond talk, my teeth's chattering. Get higher up- 
 stairs wi' you we mud as lieve be i' hall as where we are. 
 Do you want him catching hold o' my leg?" 
 
 Feminine fears are quickly bred and propagated. Hester's 
 terrors infected all three. Even Jane, trying her hardest to 
 be brave, felt the current of alarm thrill through her. After 
 all, they were but lone women in this big house. The beating 
 at the door, and the man's hoarse voice had been both pas- 
 sionate and threatening. Their assailant was drunk. From 
 these three premises can be argued an infinite train of dis- 
 quieting conclusions. Nevertheless, Jane tried to rise to her 
 conception of the heroic. 
 
 " He cannot be in the room," she said. " You are mis- 
 taken, Hester. Besides . . . Why should he wish to do 
 such a thing? If he had meant to rob, he would not have 
 rung the bell." She paused a moment for her supreme effort, 
 and plunged into it with an icy voice. " I will go down 
 and lock all the doors . . . and put the catches in the 
 windows." 
 
 For a moment she feared they would be base enough to 
 let her, but it was the disturbing audacity of the proposal 
 that took away their breath. Next moment four hands 
 restrained her. Hester cried : " Oh, miss ! You mustn't. 
 I dursn't stop along with her." Anne said : " Are you taking 
 leave of your senses? Who knows what mud happen if yon 
 chap got hold o' you i' dark." 
 
 The thought was sufficiently appalling to send all a stair 
 higher, where Hester of a sudden liquified. 
 
 " Doctor ought never tiv a' left us a night like this," she 
 sobbed.
 
 324 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 " No house is safe wi'oot a man in it," Anne commented. 
 " Syke a spot as this needs a couple by rights. There's not 
 evens a spare hat on yon stand." 
 
 Hester, with swollen eyes, biting in fearsome expectancy 
 on a corner of her apron, exclaims 
 
 " Oh, Miss Jane ! Whatever will he do at us ? I don't 
 think I could run noo, if it was ever so. Could you ? " 
 
 Gradually the sense of terror, raised dominatingly above all 
 other emotions like a mountain peak, subsides to a level with 
 more reasonable feelings. Jane, anxious to assert and estab- 
 lish her own courage before the opportunity was lost to her, 
 would be no longer dissuaded from her purpose, or restrained, 
 but divested herself of those clinging hands and descended 
 the stairs, entering all the silent darkened rooms in turn; 
 putting the catches into the windows, and locking the room 
 doors on her emergence on the hall side. Her heart beat 
 desperately as she did so; the wish for Numphy was on her 
 lips like a prayer the whole while never for Berkeley. 
 
 With the turning of the last lock they breathed security, 
 but their emotions still bore testimony to the disturbing 
 storm, like the troubled waters of the sea. Thoughts of bed 
 brought no consolation to the mind. Hester said : " I 
 couldn't bide to shut my eyes noo. And oh, Miss Jane! 
 I dursn't blow candle oot, yance I got i' bedroom for aught 
 you'd gie me." They repaired to Jane's sanctuary and kept 
 wishing, with the moments, for the Doctor's return. Time 
 became figurative to their troubled senses as a vast ocean, 
 damming by its immensity this feeble piece of mechanism 
 on the mantelpiece that tried to filter it drop by drop. The 
 measured tick-tack of Jane's tiny clock pricked them to 
 impatience like needle points. And as the seconds brought 
 no sign of him, the Doctor's absence added still another 
 element to their anxiety. From the selfish need of him, 
 Jane's mind moved onward to less tranquilizing thoughts,
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 325 
 
 involving his safety. Length by length she measured out 
 the road in mind; ticked off its miles against her fingers; 
 calculated the time this double journey should have taken. 
 Surely, no accident had happened to him! The night had 
 been stormy ; the wind furious at times ; he had had to drive 
 through the flood at Kenham. And on such a night . . . 
 who knows? Terrors like this proved an antidote for 
 former fears ; after awhile of this sort of apprehension they 
 returned to thoughts of drunken men with tolerable equa- 
 nimity. Sleep took toll of Hester; the girl's head swung, 
 irreclaimable, like a somnolent bell. Anne blinked, found 
 inclination to yawn. Close on midnight they re-debated bed. 
 Hester, indeed, tried to resurrect her qualms, but these were 
 now but children aroused in the night, fearful, but easy to 
 pacify. She took her way to bed, bearing a second candle 
 with her for fear of waking in the dark. Anne cried: 
 " What nonsense of a great lass like you. I wonder you 
 aren't ashamed to let Miss Jane hear you talk i' syke fashion. 
 As though dark would hurt anybody that behaved theirsens." 
 But she made sure her own match-box was full. Jane, the 
 last to go, bade both good-night, and hesitated awhile. 
 Which was the bravest thing to do ; to sit up or to go to bed ? 
 At first, with a firm heroism, she said she chose the former; 
 said she would keep watch for Numphy. But the query 
 came quick upon her resolution : Was she electing this to 
 save her from the fear of going to bed? Numphy's return 
 was uncertain ; he might not come for hours ; might, indeed, 
 find reason to protract his visit till the daybreak. And she 
 was not frightened of bed; not a bit. It was ridiculous to 
 suppose it. So, more for the purpose of proving her cour- 
 age, and led, properly speaking, by the fear of cowardice, she 
 sought her room at last. There, she lifted the valances 
 and peeped cautiously under the bed before saying her 
 prayers ; coloring the latter with a rare warmth and sincerity.
 
 326 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 So long did she remain on her knees, that several times she 
 had to lift her head and peer over a shoulder to reassure 
 herself she was alone with her Creator, but at last she rose. 
 Prayer had beautified her lips, and lent a look that was half 
 sanctity, half noble courage to her blue eyes. Sanctity, in- 
 deed, was partly tearful, though courage shone like a sword. 
 Peeping out of the window, she took a glimpse of the dark- 
 ness in which the outer world was wrapped. The gale had 
 died away as rapidly as it had risen ; the wind came now in 
 tolerant breaths, without any of the fierce organ-mixture 
 music of three hours before. The thick branches of the 
 evergreen oak hid from her window the cheery Spraith 
 light, that winked its rhythmic beam into Numphy's bed- 
 room beyond. All was black without. She saw a star or 
 two, uncurtained by the clouds and as quickly occulted ; and 
 felt the coldness of the night, and shivered. " Poor Num- 
 
 phy."
 
 XXXIX 
 
 DAY breaks at last, to a hundred stories of the night's 
 storm. The tide has been the highest on record for 
 fifteen years; half Kenham Beech is flooded. John Dennit, 
 Adam Medling, and Styring of the Tithe Farm are reported 
 ruined men. Martin, too, has thirty acres under water; the 
 waves go rippling over land that will offer no further work 
 to plow or harrow this summer. Tons of cliff have been 
 washed away all down the coast. At Fotham High Lands, 
 Cobham's straw stack was blown clean out of the stackgarth ; 
 there has been mortality among lambs, injury to stock. The 
 lips of the morning are full of a night's disasters by sea and 
 land. And the doctor has not come home. 
 
 From hours of sleepless tossing on her bed, Jane subsided 
 at last into the crowded thoroughfare of dreams, where real- 
 ity after unreality opposes itself to a perplexed intelligence; 
 dead people and the living mix in strange juxtaposition; 
 external sounds lend verisimilitude to nightmares ; clocks be- 
 come funeral bells; the hooting of steamers provides the 
 voice for drunken blind-eyed men; a broody hen, strayed 
 from Medling's pasture to the precincts of the doctor's gar- 
 den, is converted into dream-stuff of most poignant agony. 
 At length she was aroused by Hester, bringing the customary 
 tea, keen to awaken the sleeper and resume la^st night's 
 horrors by the comforting light of day. But the statement 
 that the Doctor was still away caused the girl's mistress to 
 put a brief term to the conversation, swallow her tea hastily 
 on elbow, and seek her bath. The Doctor had spent whole 
 nights away before, and come home smiling reassurance in 
 
 327
 
 328 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 the sun ; making light of his vigil and rallying Jane for her 
 alarms. Something in Jane's breast this morning, however, 
 refused to accept these consolations plucked from precedent. 
 She experienced, despite herself, a sense of urgency, a haste 
 trying to outstrip time. The towel would not dry her body ; 
 the buttons refused submission to her fingers. Once or 
 twice her heart beat with such abrupt violence that she had 
 to spread her hand over the palpitating area, to quell the 
 disturbance. And the insurrection quelled, added a fresh 
 note to her innate fears. Why had her heart thus outrun 
 its regulation? What subtle cause, unknown, was influenc- 
 ing her alarms? How came it that she began to conceive 
 last night's episode as an omen whose fruit was darkly ripen- 
 ing now; a presage of trouble to come rather than the ac- 
 complishment of it? Many resolutions came to a shape in 
 in that small head as she sped the service of her toilet. For 
 once, at least, vanity had no place in the ritual; no finger- 
 tips traced critically the texture of brow or cheek; the 
 strands of golden brown hair were ruthlessly twisted as a 
 farmer's wife dispatches poultry, trussed and pinned. 
 Scorning her mirror she ran down the staircase, so lightly 
 that not a board creaked though they were tell-tale stairs, 
 each one of them ; cracking like knee-joints to Anne's labor- 
 ious tread. She passed straight through the brass-studded 
 baize door and made towards the kitchen, saying a prefatory 
 " Anne ! " Almost at once, with a scuffle of skirts, the 
 housekeeper was out upon her, blocking the stone-flagged 
 passage. 
 
 " Aye ! " she responded ; and then a strange abruptness 
 characterized the voice. " Gan back inti room. Fse com- 
 ing." Her skirts advanced; mechanically Jane receded. It 
 was not until they stood beyond the green-baize door once 
 more, in the spacious hall, that she thought to test the 
 strangeness of her repulse by a reference to Anne's face.
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 329 
 
 On inspection, it struck her as curiously gray ; sewn all over 
 with innumerable small lines like the minute hairs that show 
 themselves to close view on a plaster wall. And the lips 
 appeared to be compressed, too, with all the signs of anger 
 or high reproof. For one moment, and for some inexpli- 
 cable reason, Jane fancied herself the object of the house- 
 keeper's displeasure. 
 
 " Anne ? " she said, and an impulse, detached from all 
 motive, led her to ask, "What are you doing? Where is 
 Hester?" The lips parted with the semblance of an anger 
 that resents being coerced into speech. " T kitchen," said 
 the housekeeper. The strange economy of words, after a 
 night of terrors so intimately shared as the last, struck 
 forcibly on Jane's attention. She saw that the lips beneath 
 their tight compression were working; that the bosom rose 
 and fell. And she had mistaken this attitude for anger. A 
 faintness seemed coming to her from afar; when next she 
 spoke her voice had stripped half its volume. 
 
 " What it is ? . . . Why do you ... do you 
 look like that, Anne ? " There was a strange dryness about 
 her mouth. " Speak." Involuntarily she had put both her 
 hands up towards her ears, as though to hold these chan- 
 nels of intelligence defended from anything ill ; to close them 
 against bad tidings, at a word. " The Doctor . . ." 
 
 The housekeeper opened her lips to the invocation ; some- 
 thing like a sob escaped them, outstripping speech. 
 
 " It's naught," she said, but her mouth and bosom belied 
 her. " Gan back i' room, and don't listen ti syke tales. 
 Doctor'll come back when he's fit, and not before." 
 
 " Tales ? " The faintness seemed nearer ; there was a dim 
 bell tolling in it. 
 
 " Anne . . . you are keeping something from me. 
 What have you heard ? " 
 
 " I'se heard naught that I'll believe," Anne retorted obsti-
 
 330 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 nately, and drew breath by a spasm through one twisted nos- 
 tril. " Folks tells ower many lies. Gan back i' room and 
 set doon." 
 
 " I will not," Jane cried, all her fears coming forth in a 
 supreme display of mistress-ship. " I am not a child, Anne. 
 You are making me feel dreadful. It is too absurd of you. 
 Tell me at once. I insist. What has happened ? " Strug- 
 gling with the sense of a duty incumbent on her, yet visibly 
 anxious to be made to ease her bosom of the burden beneath 
 which it rose and fell, the housekeeper weakened in resist- 
 ance against Jane's authority. " Naught's happened," she 
 protested. " Not it. It's nobbut what yon milk-lass says. 
 Fond thing ought to for-shame on herself, bringing syke 
 nonsense tiv a body's door." Her face began to twist as 
 she approached circuitously to the dread weeping-cross of 
 her tidings. "Aboot folks being . . . being drowned 
 and all." 
 
 " Drowned ! " It was a marble mistress that echoed the 
 word, struck motionless beneath the meaning of it. 
 
 " Don't believe it," Anne threw vehemently at her, using 
 her hands as if she cast away credence like dust. " Drowned 
 he never is." 
 
 "Drowned!" said Jane. "Not ... the Doctor." 
 
 " Oh, miss ! " cried Anne, subsiding backward on to a chair 
 and burying her streaming eyes in her apron, " don't look 
 at me like that. You make me almost think it's true." 
 
 She sobbed into her apron : " I was the first to nurse him 
 when he was a bairn." 
 
 " Anne ! " It was all that Jane could utter. She used 
 the name as a leaning pillar for distress ; rested the body of 
 grief against it ; melted over the friendly word in tears. All 
 about her, for the moment, a sea seemed surging ; the threat- 
 ening faintness from afar rolled up and submerged her. She 
 did not sink, but stood and swayed while the darkness em-
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 331 
 
 braced her, and laid cold wet lips upon her forehead, and 
 let her go. The weeping figure of Anne swam into view 
 after a brief eternity, as though the whole hall had been 
 revolving around her in the blank spin of her thoughts. 
 Drowned! Her mind laid hold of the word again, and the 
 horror of it woke her. For all the streaming of her tears 
 she was herself once more the Jane of imperatives ; quick, 
 forceful ; possibly, too, impatient ; with more than a wish to 
 shake the weeping woman. This thing could not be true. 
 It must not be true. It should not be true. " What have 
 you heard ? Who told you ? Quick ! " She thrust the sen- 
 tences unceremoniously at the stricken figure ; tore away the 
 apron from the bent head, and forced the weeping eyes to 
 meet the daylight and her questions. Thus adjured, the 
 housekeeper substituted sniffs for the apron corner, and 
 spoke in paroxysms, with one side of her face convex. 
 
 " Milk-lass asked Hester just noo if it was true," she 
 sniffed. " Hester runs inti kitchen. ' Oh, mum ! is it true 
 Doctor's drowned ! ' The housekeeper wiped her eyes and 
 mouth with the apron, and dried her fingers on it. " I says 
 ' Drowned ! For shame o' yourself to say syke a thing. 
 There's many a true word spoken i' jest.' She says : ' Milk- 
 lass says he's been drowned up at Kenham,' and then she 
 throws apron ower her head and sobs while I was jealous 
 you'd hear her." 
 
 " Where is the milk-girl ? " Jane made a movement to- 
 wards the door. 
 
 " She's gone. I went oot to try and mek her take back 
 her words. * You'll regret 'em yet,' I tells her, but she said 
 she was only telling us same as she'd been telt. So I fetches 
 Hester a clatter across shoulder, and calls oct, ' What's use 
 o' blairin' there like a three-days' calf. Gan your ways to 
 townend quick, before I fetch ye another, and ask question 
 o' somebody we can believe. There never was a milk-lass
 
 332 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 yet could speak truth.' He's not drowned," she protested, 
 emerging out of liquid grief into her old fierce semblance. 
 " Nor nobody'll ever make me believe it." 
 
 Jane pressed a palm against each throbbing temple. 
 
 " When was it ... do they say ? " 
 
 " Lass said last night. But he had Jack Thatcher i' trap 
 wi' him. If he's drowned, why isn't Jack Thatcher drowned 
 and all? It dizn't stand to sense. If onnybody's been 
 drowned, do you think it would be doctor? Not him. It's 
 that Jack Thatcher, a deal more like. Lad's fond enough 
 for aught." 
 
 Jane shook her head. 
 
 " I ... I wish I could think it, Anne," she said. 
 " He might have been driving home alone." Anne sank 
 forthwith into tears again. Jane followed her, not less 
 agonized. 
 
 " I do my best to cheer ye," the housekeeper sniffed, " and 
 gie ye a bit o' comfort; but ye wean't let me. Ye mek me 
 feel as bad as you. Syke a man as he was. Don't cry. I 
 can't bide to see you. Them Thatchers will never dare to 
 lift up their heads again if anything's happened him. It was 
 them that fetched him. Aye, a nice idea and all; syke a 
 night." Their grief was flowing in swift sympathy now. 
 Neither woman doubted, in her heart, the truth of what she 
 contested with her tears. The struggle against this cup of 
 bitterness was brief; weeping compliance, they shared the 
 potion. Even as they drank they nurtured dim thoughts of 
 deliverance from the draught; raised their heads for the 
 tokens of Hester's return. But she would bring horror with 
 her, both knew. The first sound of her footsteps would be 
 the signal for their renewed and deeper weeping; corrobora- 
 tion would make her face dreadful to look upon. 
 
 " Wi'oot disrespect," the housekeeper sniveled, " I 
 thought as much on him as if he'd been my son. It would
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 333 
 
 be ... a comfort to me to think he knew it. I've 
 spoken roughish tiv him a time or two. God knows I never 
 meant aught by it . . . but love. His mother will be a 
 proud woman when they lay him next her." 
 
 The confession of the aged housekeeper wrung Jane's 
 heart. Some power irresistible within her; some rising 
 sense of a personal sinfulness needing pardon, of a guilt 
 indefinable calling to be cleansed and purified, drove her on 
 a sudden to her knees. She cast herself on the flagstones 
 by the weeping woman; hsr attitude suggested a sympathy 
 bestowed rather than one coveted. 
 
 " Don't. Don't," she begged. " I can't bear to hear you. 
 You have nothing to reproach yourself with. But I ... 
 Oh, Anne! If he is . . . what they say, I shall never 
 forgive myself. Never. Never." 
 
 " I've been jealous o' you," the housekeeper admitted, and 
 one hand found the dear small head bowed in its extremity. 
 " I wean't deny it noo, wi' death at door. Many a time 
 . . . But I ask pardon for it. What was I but a fond 
 aud woman ? It's easy to forgive syke. There was nobody 
 i' the world he loved better than you." The tribute at 
 this sacred hour drew forth a burst of tears. 
 
 " And I ... I was going to leave him ! Oh, 
 Anne ! " Silent sobs in the girl's bosom suffocated her. 
 " After all his goodness ! " 
 
 " Ah, my lass ! " Anne wept over her, " you don't know 
 half his goodness yet nor even a quarter. Some day meb- 
 be, you'll know as much as me. Then you may weep. He's 
 worth . . . he's worth anybody's tears." 
 
 " Last night," Jane said, impelled by the desire to pour 
 forth all that her condemnatory heart held, " last night I 
 could not sleep. I kept turning over in my bed . . . 
 and saying : ' How can you leave him ! How can you leave 
 him ! ' And then I don't know why ... I was over-
 
 334 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 wrought by that dreadful man I said, ' Suppose he never 
 comes back alive ! ' I had a presentiment. Three times I 
 rose and looked out of the window. Once I stole out to 
 his door. It was open. Anne ... I will tell you. I 
 prayed for him ... by his own bed. Oh, Anne if 
 God has not answered my prayer ... I will never pray 
 again never, never ! Hush ! " Her hands fastened on 
 the old woman's knees; her head rose up from its abase- 
 ment. In that intense moment of expectancy, her face 
 seemed to detach itself in a flash from all the weakness of 
 its tears; the tears lay on the cheeks as they might have 
 lain upon stone, but the countenance was carved, inexorable ; 
 a decree that some sculptor of the emotions had chiselled 
 for ever in marble. Never, it seemed, could the look be 
 melted or subdued. " What is it ? . . . Who is there ? " 
 She rose to her feet, gauntly, haggardly, as though a specter 
 sued her with beckoning finger. Footsteps approached the 
 door. Voices commingled ; a hand was on the bell, drawing 
 the wire as some dread archer might have drawn his bow- 
 string to discharge the quarrel of death. White, without a 
 word, the girl crossed the hall, took breath with bowed head, 
 and opened the door. 
 
 " Berkeley ! " 
 
 The sight of his grave face, with the vicar's lips twisting 
 beyond, confirmed' her worst fears. There was no comfort 
 for her in these countenances. Like her own they were 
 carved in stone. She noted, with grief's quick discernment, 
 how her unexpected presence discomposed them, lent trouble 
 to their faces. She found strength to whisper: 
 
 "You have heard?" 
 
 Berkeley bowed his head.
 
 XL 
 
 SHE drew back from the door; Berkeley and the vicar 
 followed her into the hall. Neither looked at her. 
 Berkeley held his head constrainedly aside ; the vicar's lips 
 moved as though he were reciting prayers, or rehearsing the 
 multiplication table. Jane unlocked her fingers; her lower 
 lip was drawn quivering back, suggesting a sob held in 
 captivity. " It is true ? " 
 
 Berkeley lent her his eyes for the fraction of a second; 
 noted the wetness of her cheeks, and dropped his glance. 
 
 " It is what I am here to inquire." He fingered the brim 
 of his hat as though it were the keyboard of Barnes Welkit's 
 accordion. " I ... I hope not. It has come as a ter- 
 rible shock to me." He caught sight of the housekeeper^ 
 hanging terribly on his words, her fingers industrious with 
 the corners of her apron. "Where is the Doctor?" 
 
 " The Doctor ? " Jane gazed at him incredulously. 
 " Surely you . . . you have heard ? " The blank face 
 meeting hers caused hope to leap with fierce unreason, but 
 the necessity to dislodge once more by speech this dread 
 thing at the source of her tears caused them to flow afresh. 
 " Why else are you here ? They say . . ." the wall of 
 tears hid him from her ; . . . " Numphy was drowned. 
 Last night . . ." 
 
 Not much comfort issued from Berkeley's lips. The 
 tidings nipped them to sudden gray solemnity, as though a 
 hoar frost had fallen on them ; under the intelligence, and 
 before the sight of Jane's distress, his features became in- 
 finitely small and insignificant, a countenance incapable of 
 
 335
 
 336 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 the finer consolations, expressive merely of the gravity due 
 to death. After a while he said hurriedly, under his breath : 
 " That is very shocking. Have you made inquiries ? I hope 
 it may be untrue." 
 
 The vicar, laboriously straining their words for enlighten- 
 ment, with a face wrinkled in its perplexity like butter 
 muslin, cried, " God bless me ! . . . Speak up, some of 
 you. I declare I haven't caught a word. What's the mat- 
 ter now ? " Berkeley turned his mouth, portentously shaped, 
 towards the vicar's face, which was at once replaced by a 
 large and thirsty ear, with a hand cupping it. 
 
 "Jane has heard a report . . . that Dr. Bentham 
 was drowned last night." 
 
 The words were uttered with no more voice than the 
 vicar's deafness demanded, but to Jane's shrinking heart 
 their volume struck her cruel and callous. The vicar caught 
 the word " Drowned," and started away from it as though 
 cold water, not words, had been poured into his listening 
 ear; a face of fermenting trouble replaced the receptive or- 
 gan; the lips trembled. 
 
 " Drowned ! Dr. Bentham ! God bless me, Berkeley ; 
 what next ! " Tears swam into his eyes. " When ? How ? 
 Where? It seems incredible. Poor fellow, poor fellow. 
 You shouldn't have shouted the news so abruptly," he ex- 
 claimed, groping for his handkerchief. " I wasn't quite 
 ready for it. I declare it's come as a shock to me." No 
 consolatory scriptures visited his lips, but his grief was genu- 
 ine, and the sight of the mopped handkerchief, staunching 
 honest tears, was not without companionable comfort for 
 Jane. It was the vicar, not Berkeley, whose hands took 
 hers and held them in commiserative clasp. " There, there. 
 Poor child! Poor Jane! I grieve for you with all my 
 heart. He will be terribly missed. What age would the 
 poor fellow be ? Drowned ! God bless me. Who'd have
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 337 
 
 thought it from the look of him? It only shows how im- 
 portant it is for everybody to learn to swim. There, there. 
 Let us go and sit down. I declare you've made my legs 
 quite shaky, Berkeley. I'm a bit surprised at you. You 
 knew how friendly we were." Jane withdrew her hands. 
 
 " I cannot sit down, Uncle Horace. I thought you had 
 brought me news. I must go ... I ought not to be 
 staying here. Anne . . . tell Holmes to harness Daisy 
 for me at once." 
 
 Berkeley's lips moved in faint lines of dissuasion, scarcely 
 audible. The vicar, catching the sense of her determined 
 clear voice, cried : " No, no. That is not the task for a girl. 
 You would only distress yourself unnecessarily, and cause 
 trouble. Come along to the room with me, Jane. Poor 
 fellow . . . poor fellow; so fond of his horses! They 
 will bring him reverently back, you may be quite sure. 
 Whatever was he thinking about! I fear we shall discover 
 he has been foolhardy. It does not matter how harmless 
 water may look, there's always an element of danger. One 
 can't be too careful." 
 
 Jane's eyes and Berkeley's met in a swift glance of under- 
 standing, alive with dismay; both had heard the ominous 
 sound of wheels. Berkeley, shirking the sight of further 
 distress, prompted retirement. "Jane, you would be better 
 in the room. I will stay here. Uncle . . . there is a 
 conveyance coming up the drive. Will you take Jane away 
 with you ? " 
 
 Jane, half a fugitive to her own fears, yet scorning flight 
 as at once unworthy of her courage and dishonoring to the 
 beloved Numphy of her weeping, stood her ground obsti- 
 nately for a while against the vicar's persuasions. So long, 
 indeed, did she resist his tensive arm, with all her being 
 thrown into the supreme balance of that awesome sound, 
 that the advancing wheels gained over hesitation ; reached
 
 338 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 too suddenly a point where her retirement would have been 
 but flight precipitate. She drew her arm from the vicar's 
 hold and faced the door. There was a scuffle in the hall 
 behind her: excited aprons in a whirl; voices, half sobbing, 
 half laughterful. " Miss Jane, Miss Jane . . ." And 
 next moment, out of the bemuddied wet trap, drawn up be- 
 fore the open door, the Doctor tripped to ground. 
 
 Berkeley said : " The report is utterly without foundation. 
 You have been needlessly alarmed." He stood to a side. 
 The vicar dropped his arm from its attempt to persuade 
 Jane into the breakfast-room, and threw forward a face at 
 the advancing Doctor as though he were some illegible and 
 incomprehensible word. 
 
 " God bless me ! " he cried, as his eyes, confirmed, without 
 joy, the Doctor's figure. " Why, here the fellow is. I de- 
 clare ... I thought the man was dead. Who told me 
 he had been drowned? Here I've been using my handker- 
 chief in a perfectly ridiculous fashion, and he's alive all the 
 time. God bless me! Everything grows into a nightmare 
 for a deaf man. Who are we weeping for? The chap's as 
 dry as a bone." 
 
 " Numphy ! " The single heartfelt cry was Jane's. 
 Jane's very soul, as though torn out from her body by a joy 
 too triumphant, leaped forth in the word. Hopes requited, 
 with fears not yet dispelled ; terrors reawakened by the sight 
 of him ; swift yearnings to embrace ; affection liberated from 
 anxiety, springing to rebuke ; the need to have and to hold 
 him safe within her arms, and to feel this living semblance 
 of him no illusion, but comfortable flesh and blood all 
 these sent her headlong to his neck. " Oh, how you have 
 frightened us ! " She wanted to hug and shake, caress and 
 scold and kiss him in one great comprehensive act, but at 
 the approach of her lips he suddenly turned aside his mouth ;
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 339 
 
 interposed a hand. " No, no. You must not kiss me, 
 Jane." 
 
 " Not kiss you ! " She fell back from that prohibitive 
 hand; never had his care of her taken less welcome guise 
 than this. 
 
 " It is not safe. ... I have been up with a dangerous 
 case all night." He put her gently away. " Some other 
 time, Jane." He noticed now the signs of weeping. 
 " What ! Tears ? " Half subsiding into them once more in 
 the narration, as is the way with women whose grief makes 
 of tears a fluent and intelligible tongue, speaking fears and 
 subtleties beyond expression in our grosser speech, Jane 
 breathed forth in quick dislocated sentences the history of 
 this wetness on her cheeks. For him! She had wept for 
 him ! This little cold entity, more precious to his heart than 
 the finest work of Phidias in marble, had translated her love 
 of him into tears! He smiled on her a smile that Jane 
 never forgot ; like the smile of a sinking sun when, from be- 
 hind some leaden clouds of thunder, the sanctified orb kisses 
 the world good-night, and makes all heavenly the golden 
 countryside. From her he turned a flushed and tired face 
 to the two visitors, giving them greeting in terms of surprise 
 for their so early call. 
 
 " You don't mean . . ." he said, " that you were 
 brought out by this silly rumor. I don't know how ever it 
 has got abroad except that I had to drive through the 
 water last night, on my way to Kenham." He stopped at 
 that, for the faces of these two listeners struck him, all at 
 once, as curiously troubled. No gladness showed for the 
 fallacy of a report which allowed him to be among the living ; 
 their faces were shallow of interest in his speech, as though 
 some other thought within them offered a dead wall to his 
 words. A curious constraint came over them all, as of be-
 
 340 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 ings rendered suddenly uncertain of each others' thought 
 and motives. Jane, watching with a swollen heart her 
 Numphy's eyes seek first the one and then the other of these 
 two faces confronting him, felt rise within her a swift 
 championship of the tired-looking man; an anger almost 
 tinged with momentary hatred at the sight of Berkeley's 
 face, so pinched and joyless. To her it seemed even dis- 
 torted with a quality of vexation at the Doctor's safety. 
 The vicar, restless under observation and his sense of deaf- 
 ness, kept muttering unintelligible phrases between his lips. 
 The pause which showed these figures to her thus was of not 
 more than a second's duration, but it photographed the 
 picture on her mind like a landscape, lightning-revealed. 
 Next moment she heard the doctor ask if their visit were to 
 him. Berkeley answered in the affirmative. " I would like 
 to speak to you," he said in his dry voice, and added the 
 word, " privately," as though the word were needed, without 
 any direct look at Jane, in a way which stung her pride. 
 " I will go if you wish it, Berkeley," she told him. He did 
 not bid her remain, or dispute her interpretation of the 
 odious word, but seemed to move his head in token that he 
 heard her. 
 
 She raised her chin with one high shining look at Numphy, 
 and quitted them.
 
 XLI 
 
 THE doctor led the way into the little antiseptic smelling 
 surgery, where the pills and mixtures, the lotions and 
 liniments for the troubles of a whole district were com- 
 pounded, and closed the door, pointing to chairs. Neither 
 visitor seated himself. The vicar threw out a hand depre- 
 catory of any trouble on his behalf, saying : " Not for me 
 . . . I get more sitting than is good for me. I declare 
 I wear a pair of trousers bright in a fortnight." Berkeley 
 shaped a grave negative with his lips pursed above the soft 
 felt hat that he held compressed against his bosom, in the 
 attitude dear to the junior clergy. A second brief silence 
 fell upon them with their entry, and in that silence the Doc- 
 tor's color heightened. For the first time his tired mind had 
 energy to rise and exercise its function. Berkeley's opening 
 WQrds confirmed his fears. 
 
 " It is a painful subject I have to speak on, Dr. Bentham." 
 
 The formality of that " Dr. Bentham " marked the breach 
 in mind between them. The doctor inclined his head. 
 
 " Don't fear to be open with me." 
 
 " I understood ... I understood from you that Miss 
 Alston's father . . ." The doctor drew his breath. 
 This morning, of all mornings, he was ill prepared for the 
 momentous struggle. Berkeley, who had paused just ap- 
 preciably on the summit of his sentence, as though to take 
 some sight and guidance from the Doctor's countenance for 
 its descent, completed the phrase, ". . . was dead." He 
 said no more. The sentence put forth seemed to writhe in 
 the silence that followed like a live thing, a snake, twisting
 
 342 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 and horrible, calling for dispatch. Both men turned their 
 eyes upon the mortal whom this writhing falsehood chal- 
 lenged ; both men saw the surrender in his face. He stepped 
 back to the fireplace, and turned there, facing them again. 
 " So I had hoped ... at one time." 
 
 " Do you believe that now ? " 
 
 " I am afraid I cannot." 
 
 " You know he is alive ? " 
 
 " I have reason to fear it." 
 
 " You have been contributing sums of money to his silence. 
 Is that true?" 
 
 " If you seek to put it in that way . . ." 
 
 " I do put it in that way. I must put it in that way." 
 
 "Then ... it is true." 
 
 " You are acquainted with Miss Alston's father ? " 
 
 " I have seen him." 
 
 " He has lost the sight of an eye. He is ... I can- 
 not bring myself to describe him. You know that he has 
 fallen away from all respectability, that he could not be ad- 
 mitted into any decent society." 
 
 " I fear so." 
 
 "Why have you practiced this deception?" 
 
 The Doctor raised his hand in a scarcely appreciable in- 
 dication of the door, and of what lay dearest to his heart 
 beyond. " For Her sake." These questions falling regu- 
 larly upon the naked body of his submission seared him as 
 though they had been whipthongs. In this hour of his degra- 
 dation he hated the hard dry face of Berkeley Hislop, armed 
 with the scourging rod of righteousness that his own decep- 
 tion had put into these hostile hands. For pride he could not 
 bring himself to raise a defensive arm against the lash of 
 each query as it fell, although the questions stung him to do 
 fierce battle with the foe that wielded them. Contempt of 
 himself made the blows scarce bitter enough. That he
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 343 
 
 should ever have suffered his moral body to be flagellated for 
 untruthfulness by such a rod-master made him sick and help- 
 less. In the first revolt he felt only the desire to be done 
 with this ordeal, to be left to nurse his wounds, to lave this 
 injured self-esteem. His mind lacked energy to ask by what 
 means imprisoned truth had been let free ; shame swallowed 
 up all speculation. Before these men, who had sat at his 
 table and taken his hand in friendship, he felt himself stand 
 on a sudden convicted and humbled. They were judges, 
 both of them; he, stripped of his truth and honor, could 
 only plead for their mercy by extenuation. 
 
 " For Her sake ? " he heard Berkeley Hislop repeat, and 
 the words in their repetition seemed to strike back at him, 
 contemptuous and condemnatory. " Had you no thought or 
 consideration for Me ? " For the first time the younger man 
 showed the trouble he was in, passing his flat right hand 
 across the corresponding temple. " Did you never reflect 
 what the ultimate discovery of this thing would mean, to all 
 concerned? You must have done, or you would never have 
 tried to conceal it." His fingers were nervously at work 
 upon the circumference of his hat. " It alters everything 
 . . . I am placed in a most ignoble position. Whatever 
 you may be disposed to think, I had come to care very 
 sincerely for her. This sudden change falls as a dreadful 
 blow." He touched his forehead passingly again with his 
 hand. " Why did you not tell me from the first ? All this 
 time . . . over two years . . . and I in complete 
 trust and ignorance, never doubting. It is terrible. How 
 am I to explain my position? I can scarcely say what I 
 think of you, Dr. Bentham. Your conduct strikes me as 
 both cowardly and wicked. The words come to my tongue : 
 I must utter them. Is falsehood any pledge for happiness? 
 Had you no better thought for Miss Alston than to allow 
 her to enter upon the most sacred obligation of a woman's
 
 344 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 life without any knowledge of the terrible truth that . . . 
 that overshadows her. For I am doing her the justice to 
 suppose she is ignorant of what has come to my knowledge." 
 He faltered momentarily in his faith. " If I thought 
 . . ." he began. But the Doctor was quick to save him, 
 for Jane's sake, from the utterance of such a base suspicion. 
 
 " She knows nothing. Not a word. It has been my one 
 endeavor to keep her from all knowledge of it." 
 
 " Under certain conditions such care might be commend- 
 able. But as soon as another interest becomes so closely 
 involved with Miss Alston's . . ." He left that sen- 
 tence unfinished too, and returned restlessly to a previous 
 question, as though his troubled mind could scarcely bear to 
 remain long in one locality of thought, but must keep pacing 
 to and fro. His reflections seemed of the nature of a figured 
 carpet, whose patterns he was prepared to trace and retrace 
 endlessly underfoot. " Why did you not reveal the truth to 
 me two years ago? It was your duty." 
 
 The Doctor said, " I admit it. I ought to have told you. 
 But the mischief was already done. If you had yourself 
 forewarned me of your intentions towards Jane, I should 
 never have withheld it from you. But the first intimation 
 of your feelings came from Jane herself. It was . . . 
 a shock to me. I was plunged into the deepest trouble by 
 it. It has cost me hours of sleep and peace of mind." 
 
 " That is no excuse, Dr. Bentham," Berkeley said through 
 his dry lips. 
 
 " I suppose not. But I shrank from the consequences of 
 telling you. You had won Jane's affection; all her heart 
 was wrapped up in you. Nothing else was in her thought or 
 speech then. And I was afraid lest anything I might 
 say . . ." 
 
 " In other words," Berkeley Hislop took up, " you were 
 prepared, Dr. Bentham, to sacrifice me for your scruples to-
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 345 
 
 wards Miss Alston. You would have let the present ar- 
 rangement continue without a word, until my position was 
 irrevocable." There was a dry heat animating the cold 
 workings of his lips. " Am I to understand that that is 
 what you meant ? " 
 
 " Even if I tell you the contrary," the Doctor answered, 
 " you will have, under the circumstances, the right to dis- 
 believe me. Until two days ago, your arrangement with 
 Miss Alston was so indefinite ... I sustained myself 
 on the prospect that the necessity for revealing the truth 
 might never arise. But your present visit did away with this 
 remote contingency. I felt concealment was no longer pos- 
 sible not only on your account, but Miss Alston's. Had 
 I not been called away it was my intention to have told the 
 truth last night." 
 
 Both men spoke in the low tones of earnestness for a topic 
 of privacy, and the vicar's patience, pursuing the unintelli- 
 gible sounds from lip to lip, came to an abrupt end as he 
 saw the Doctor's statement escaping him. " God bless me ! " 
 he cried, tapping Berkeley's adjacent shoulder, " I haven't 
 caught two words all the time. What's the man saying 
 now ? Is he denying it ? " 
 
 Berkeley shook free of his uncle's touch a little irritably, 
 as he might have brushed aside a gnat. 
 
 " Dr. Bentham has admitted it." 
 
 " Admitted it ! " The vicar's face was eloquent of con- 
 sternation. " No wonder he doesn't speak up." In his 
 blank distress he conversed with Berkeley, as though the 
 Doctor were not present. " How long has he known it ? " 
 Berkeley said, " Some time." The vicar shook his head. 
 " The man cannot pretend to offer any excuse. It is a ter- 
 rible situation. Have you told him about last night?" 
 
 Berkeley said, " Not yet." 
 
 " A dreadful scene, Dr. Bentham," the vicar proceeded,
 
 346 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 taking charge of the topic raised. " The fellow had actually 
 the barefaced audacity to ring the vicarage bell at half-past 
 ten at night. I should never have heard him myself, if he'd 
 rung till doomsday, but Berkeley brave fellow insisted 
 on putting on his hat and overcoat, and going to the garden 
 door. You may think it an exaggeration, but I assure you 
 the wind, when Berkeley went into the garden ... I 
 assure you the wind blew the hall lamp out. There was 
 actually snow. And Berkeley in his thin slippers ! " 
 
 " Boots, uncle," Berkeley corrected, scrupulous for truth. 
 
 " Eh ? What ? The vicar's face grew murderous in its 
 suspicion of a deafness at fault again. " Boots, do you say ? 
 I declare, I thought . . . What were you doing with 
 boots on at that time of night? Well, well. Boots then. 
 But such boots as yours were no protection against a night 
 like the last. And there at the wall-door, Dr. Bentham, was 
 this disgraceful fellow, on the verge of delirium. Berke- 
 ley says his face was horrible to look at. He could smell 
 him of drink even in that high wind." 
 
 Little by little it dawned on the Doctor, what he had least 
 of all suspected, that Julian Alston himself was the traitor to 
 this secret. And the vicar, warming to the subject, gradually 
 unfolded a history that left him in no further doubt. It was 
 Julian Alston, indeed, and no other, who had disturbed the 
 vicarage peace last night, rilled with thoughts of fierce re- 
 venge for his rebuff at the Doctor's house, and suspecting, 
 in his drunken wrath, the Doctor's hand in the firm resist- 
 ance to his siege. And with the information gained from 
 Pridgeon earlier in the night, he had fought his way through 
 the gale to score a drunkard's revenge, and to try and find at 
 the vicarage a last profitable market for his silence. Amer- 
 ica, it seemed, was his immediate objective. Reasons the 
 vicar surmised of the very worst compelled him to leave 
 his native land. He needed money for the purpose ; failing
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 347 
 
 money he threatened a hundred consequences of the direst: 
 exposure; systematic persecution. Jane Alston was his 
 daughter : he had the right to declare it. Wherever she went, 
 no man could prevent his following. He would no longer 
 skulk about the country, leading this dog's life of obscurity 
 unless the task were well requited. Hundreds of pounds 
 were hinted at ; but the first installment of these must be im- 
 mediate. With the remembrance of his own midnight inter- 
 view with Julian Alston in that very room, the doctor was 
 able to conjure up a vivid picture of the scene that had 
 shaken the serenity of the vicarage the night before. 
 Through a haze of inward hotness and shame, he received 
 the charges of the vicar's voice without defense. 
 
 " I assure you, Dr. Bentham," the vicar told him, " the 
 man's conduct was violent in the extreme. At one time 
 Berkeley was quite prepared for the fellow to strike at him 
 and not a single policeman within a mile of us. A shock- 
 ing state of things. I've often thought about it when my 
 narcissuses were coming up. Anybody's garden might be 
 devastated in the night by such reckless fellows, and not a 
 ha'porth of redress. By the mercy of providence Berkeley 
 was able to get the door shut on him at last though the 
 man kicked against the woodwork like a horse. He must 
 have had terribly strong boots. The marks are there to this 
 moment and will remain for many of my successors to 
 see. My poor Berkeley was terribly upset. The brave fel- 
 low tried to keep me in ignorance of what had happened, 
 but I could see from his manner that something terrible had 
 taken place. I assure you his face was as white as a sheet. 
 However, the noble fellow could not be persuaded to take 
 any stimulant. A man of rare principle, Dr. Bentham! I 
 could no more have gone to bed myself, after what he told 
 me, without a moderate glass of whiskey about a third of 
 a glassful, no more than I could have flown."
 
 348 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 Berkeley, who had been fretting visibly under his uncle's 
 monopoly of the conversation, and engaging the doctor's 
 eye from time to time, for an opening of his own, broke in 
 at last. 
 
 " Well . . . there is no more to be said. I shall 
 never cease to blame you, Dr. Bentham. It has been a mis- 
 erable experience for me." 
 
 " And not only that," said the vicar. " The fellow must 
 have used incredible violence in ringing the bell. I assure 
 you the door crank is positively twisted." 
 
 Berkeley's lips twitched and a gray hardness seemed to 
 settle upon them. " This, of course, puts an end to every- 
 thing." For the first time he avoided the Doctor's eye, and 
 spoke aside. 
 
 "Just think what might have happened," pursued the 
 vicar, " if I had gone to the door myself. The very thought 
 dismays me. My deafness might have goaded the man to 
 murder. Berkeley tells me his language was positively 
 blasphemous. From that point of view, I suppose a deaf 
 ear is something to be thankful for. I declare I can't get 
 over it. At the vicarage, of all places! Half-past ten at 
 night! And by this probably all Sunfleet knows who the 
 fellow is. Terrible ! terrible ! " He turned to Berkeley and 
 asked in a huskier voice, significant of a confidential whis- 
 per : " Has he expressed regret ? I declare . . . when 
 I think of it, I can scarcely contain myself." 
 
 Berkeley disengaged his hat from his bosom for an indi- 
 cation that nothing now was to be gained by speech. 
 
 " We will detain you no further, Dr. Bentham," he said. 
 " My profession teaches me to forgive all those that trespass 
 against me . . . but in your case I will confess I find 
 the task hard. Your conduct has placed me in a humiliating 
 position. I would rather not see Miss Alston personally
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 349 
 
 again. It would be too painful. I will write. The bulk 
 of the explanation, of course, must rest with you." 
 
 Until this dire moment, the Doctor had bowed before the 
 wind of accusation, man enough to feel it no more than 
 just and merited. The castigation of Berkeley Hislop's 
 moving lips and righteous eye was the proper reward for 
 such duplicity as his. But when he saw himself confronted 
 with the dread consequences for Jane, that all his deceptive- 
 ness had struggled to avert, his submissive silence rose to 
 a more supplicative quality. Berkeley Hislop had already 
 made a movement on his foot to seek the door when the 
 Doctor said, " Stop . . . One moment." He turned at 
 once to the appeal, but there was no encouragement in the 
 nipped face and tightened lips. 
 
 " Will you not . . . Will you not take time to think 
 over this ? " the Doctor begged him in a low, earnest voice. 
 He saw the refusal shape itself behind Berkeley Hislop's 
 lips, and struck on hurriedly. " Let me earnestly beg of 
 you to try and forget the incident of last night before com- 
 mitting yourself to a decision. May I see you again in the 
 course of the day ? " "I am leaving here at noon," Berke- 
 ley Hislop said, and his mouth tightened as though the 
 thought of this necessity stung him. " Nothing is to be 
 gained by conversation. The fact is established ; mere words 
 cannot alter it." 
 
 " For Jane's sake . . ." the Doctor urged him. The 
 twitch contorted his lips again, as though the supplication 
 went home. Just for the brief moment of the spasm, when 
 the little hidden threads seemed to pucker the gray flesh to 
 relentment, the Doctor felt a hope of him. With the lever- 
 age of Jane's name and memory he might still be able to 
 move this rock of resolution that blocked the mouth of 
 Berkeley Hislop's forgiveness. But the lips' immediate
 
 350 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 hardening undeceived him. " Your thought for Miss 
 Alston," he returned coldly, " is responsible for all this mis- 
 chief. You seem to think that Miss Alston is a sufficient 
 justification for any falsehood or unreasonableness, so long 
 as they are in defense of her welfare. I gave you credit for 
 more discernment; and, I will add, for more honesty. Does 
 it never occur to you to reflect what would be the position 
 of the vicar of an important parish, liable to such visitations 
 as that which was paid to me last night? What respect do 
 you suppose I could obtain from my parishioners with such 
 facts as those within your knowledge clogging my authority ? 
 My position would be impracticable impossible. You 
 must see it. You ought to have realized it from the very 
 first, and given me a timely warning. Two years of my 
 life . . . and this as a result. It almost makes me 
 doubt the providence I preach." 
 
 The Doctor said, " I do not contest your words. The 
 fault is mine. I have lived with but one thought in these 
 recent years, and that was Jane's Miss Alston's happi- 
 ness. But this punishment does not fall on me for all I 
 feel your reproaches keenly, as you must see and know. It 
 falls on Miss Alston's shoulders. It is she who is being 
 made to suffer. At a time when her heart is full of you, 
 you contemplate retraction. I feel I have no right to be 
 appealing to your better nature after what has passed . . . 
 but I am the only advocate she has in all the world. I 
 think you cannot realize what your loss will mean to her. 
 Do not act hastily. Let me beg of you ... A little 
 grace before the step is taken . . ." 
 
 " It is impossible. The circumstances leave me with no 
 alternative." 
 
 " You have declared your love for her." 
 
 " Under a misconception, deliberately fostered." 
 
 " You spoke your heart to her without inquiry."
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 351 
 
 " There again your conduct stands impugned. I had a 
 right to suppose that any favored friend of my uncle's would 
 be worthy of regard. You owed a plain duty to him 
 more especially when my sister became a visitor at the vicar- 
 age." 
 
 " Miss Alston is a lady. Your sister has suffered nothing 
 from the friendship." 
 
 " My behavior in the past sufficiently shows my admira- 
 tion for Miss Alston's personal qualities and attainments. 
 But I contend that it was for my uncle to decide on her 
 desirability as my sister's friend, and not for you. Had you 
 taken the proper course in the first instance, perhaps the 
 present dreadful complication would never have arisen." 
 
 The vicar, encountering his nephew's eye, acquiesced with 
 a shake of the head and a " Horrible, horrible ! The man 
 ought scarcely to be at large. Have you mentioned Lady 
 Frinton? I declare, poor Berkeley, the case grows more 
 terrible as you think about it. God bless me! Here you 
 have been wasting your time all these years . . . and 
 letting baronets' daughters go by. But the fellow's con- 
 science ought to be pricking him now if he has any Christian 
 feeling left in his body." 
 
 Berkeley uttered a terminative " Well ! " as though to 
 imply the futility of further speech. " It all seems a dream. 
 I shall be thankful to get back to work again and shake off 
 the memory of it." 
 
 " For God's sake . . ." protested the Doctor. " Show 
 a little thought ... a little mercy. Because I have 
 failed in my duty to you, does that justify you in this cruel 
 breach of duty towards her? You have won her affection, 
 her love. Can you contemplate casting it aside like this, in 
 the first shadow of adversity ? " 
 
 " My conception of love includes honor and respect," 
 Berkeley Hislop replied.
 
 352 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 " You preach equality before God," the Doctor exclaimed 
 almost contemptuously, ". . . and the supremacy of the 
 soul, and yet you are prepared to break the sacred principles 
 of love like glass for a matter of earthly pride." 
 
 The swing of the argument that had first borne him down 
 to humility and submissive despair lifted him up again on 
 the sweep of this nobler view of love. On a sudden he had 
 transcended earth-born shame and the rectitude of Berke- 
 ley Hislop, and felt, in the higher, purer atmosphere, that 
 right to a passion which, on the lower plane of their en- 
 counter, in shame he had forgone. Almost eloquently he 
 pleaded for his adversary's allegiance to the one object of 
 his love. All the personal hopes and yearnings were burnt 
 out of him by the ordeal through which he had passed to 
 whose flames he was still submitted indeed, except that the 
 sentient and perishable part of him seemed consumed, and 
 only the finer qualities survived combustion. But he spoke 
 against clay. The ardor that kindled his eloquence only 
 served to bake and harden the porcelain face confronting 
 him ; he read Jane's doom on Berkeley Hislop's brow. 
 
 " I can do no more . . ." he said. " It rests with you, 
 and your conscience." 
 
 Berkeley Hislop turned to the door. The vicar, following 
 in his nephew's wake, with troubled lips, confided as he 
 passed the Doctor : " Dreadfully upset. Dreadfully upset, 
 poor fellow. Surely you must see it. Left most of his 
 coffee untasted. What's to be said in the village? Even 
 now, I declare, I can't realize it. Poor fellow . . . poor 
 fellow. What a terrible end to his visit. So bright and 
 cheerful last night." At the hall door three chill good-clays 
 were interchanged; no hands were clasped. Berkeley His- 
 lop never turned his head in tendering the formal word that 
 meant so much. The vicar, quitting the step with a certain 
 aged reluctance, as though his body were being torn away
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 353 
 
 from this familiar spot on reasons insufficiently compre- 
 hended or established, called out " Dr. Bentham 1 Dr. Ben- 
 tham! . . ." as the Doctor was closing the door. He 
 came upon the step again. 
 
 " You see the poor boy's contention. Terrible thing, ter- 
 rible thing. Here we've been thinking the man dead and 
 suitably disposed of, and he turns up drunk as a piper. 
 Only one eye. You can imagine the shock to Berkeley's 
 system. I can't bring my mind to discuss it this morning; 
 it's all too sudden and strange to me. I'll look in again when 
 Berkeley's gone. Yes, yes, when Berkeley's gone." He 
 paused for departure with a pained face, and added : " God 
 bless me! . . . I've been trying to think of the fellow's 
 name. No matter ... no matter ! " He hurriedly 
 descended. " Berkeley will tell me when he's feeling more 
 composed. It's too much to ask of you under the circum- 
 stances."
 
 XLII 
 
 JANE." 
 Her white face met him in the hall as he turned 
 from the door, and the incredulous eyes and dismayed small 
 mouth struck a deeper remorse into his heart than any he 
 had felt in the presence of Berkeley Hislop. 
 
 " Numphy . . . They have gone ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Berkeley did not ask for me? " 
 
 " No." He pointed to the surgery that had been the 
 scene of his first ordeal this morning. " Come in here, Jane. 
 I have something to say to you." 
 
 She followed, holding her head high, her chin tilted. 
 There was a tremor about her compressed nostrils akin to 
 mounting anger or tears repressed. Her eyes were clear 
 and studiously defiant; resolved to show no weakness, even 
 at the cost of simulating wrath to disguise the softer and 
 more womanly quality. They entered, and she stood with 
 her hand upon the closed door, facing him. " Well ? " 
 
 " I have to break bad news to you, Jane. Can you be 
 brave a while ? " 
 
 His appeal to her courage softened her at once, although 
 she professed displeasure. 
 
 " Do you think me a coward, Numphy, that you ask the 
 question ? " 
 
 " You know the contrary too well. It was only my way 
 of preparing you." 
 
 " Berkeley Hislop has broken off our engagement ? " She 
 spoke the words in her coldest voice to let him see she was 
 
 354
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 355 
 
 not frightened of the intelligence that he handled with such 
 masculine timidity. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 He had expected, after her first show of recklessness in 
 flourishing the truth, some further show of bravery with that 
 formidable weapon. Instead, she moved swiftly forward, 
 dropped on the chair that so shortly before he had offered 
 to her once-betrothed, and sank into tears. Before the sight 
 of the flooded cheeks and heaving bosom he stood silent for 
 a space, remorseful, self-accusing. 
 
 " Forgive me, Jane. I spoke too clumsily." At that she 
 raised a swift, serpent-like head. 
 
 "Do you think I cry for him?" 
 
 The accent laid upon the pronoun was quivering with 
 suppressed scorn. 
 
 " See." She held out her hand. " I have taken off his 
 ring already. I should have given it back to him this morn- 
 ing. The coward ! he dared not face me. He was afraid 
 of me in the hall." 
 
 She bit her lip with swift vexation. " Now he will never 
 believe I meant to ask back my freedom. What did he say ? 
 Why is it ? " She saw the momentary hesitation in the 
 Doctor's face. " You need not tell me. I am not good 
 enough for him." 
 
 " No, no. That is not the reason, Jane." 
 
 " It is the reason. I can see it in your face. And I have 
 known it all along. When I have spoken of my childhood 
 and my mother, he has told me : * I think we might try and 
 forget those unfortunate days, Jane. They might be mis- 
 understood.' He was ashamed of me." Some of the old 
 Jane rose rebelliously within her bosom like a sob. " Num- 
 phy, I believe I could hate him." The tears, repressed, 
 started afresh with the invective, and coursed passionately 
 down her cheeks. " I never want to see him or speak to
 
 356 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 him again. I'm glad it's all over. I didn't love him a bit. 
 I should have given him up a year ago but for Bertha, 
 and Uncle Horace, and you." 
 
 " Me ! " The Doctor, looking blindly about him, asked 
 whether this protracted ordeal was not a dream. 
 
 " Yes, you. I felt how terribly disappointed you would 
 be. You seemed to think so much of Berkeley. Every- 
 thing he did was right. You never gave me a single bit of 
 encouragement when I tried to tell you I was uncertain of 
 myself. At times I was almost angry with you. I felt you 
 would be glad glad to be rid of me." 
 
 "/, Jane! Glad to be rid of you ?" 
 
 " Just at first . . . you used to say you could not bear 
 the thought of parting with me. But after that you grew so 
 cheerful about it I could have cried. You said you would 
 be able to get on all right without me . . . and I wasn't 
 to worry about that. You had done it before . . . and 
 you could do it again. I'd thought you would never have 
 been able to spare me, but you said you could, quite easily. 
 You told me you had Anne, and Hester, and Holmes, and 
 the garden, and all your patients, and plenty of things to 
 keep you occupied and happy. But when Berkeley came 
 this time . . . and wanted to take me away in June, and 
 showed me the photographs of that horrid house, I couldn't 
 bear it any longer. I felt I must speak at all costs, Num- 
 
 phy." 
 
 Strange hopes, or fermenting fears his heart could 
 scarce tell which began to work beneath the outer daze 
 in which her confession enveloped him. How inexact and 
 faulty are these vaunted organs of our mortal discernment. 
 The object of his love and envy had been suffocating all this 
 latter while in the atmosphere he deemed so fresh and dear 
 to her. Even now, inspired by these newly stirred emotions, 
 his countenance mistranslated him to her.
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 357 
 
 " Don't look so stern and horrified, Numphy," she begged. 
 " If you only knew what I have gone through. I am not 
 fitted for a clergyman's wife. I feel as though for all 
 my trying I could never be really good. Often and often 
 I have jumped into bed at night and forgotten all about my 
 prayers until the morning. And I have done worse things 
 than that. I have laughed in church. At first my pride 
 kept me up ; I thought how glorious it was to be engaged to 
 a real clergyman and keep him all to myself, away from the 
 rich parishioners' daughters that wanted him, and worked 
 slippers for him. But after a while oh, Numphy! it is 
 the truth, he bored me. He put great sneering M's before 
 every word he said: M'yes! M'no! M'probably; as though 
 he could scarcely condescend to speak to me. And when he 
 was vexed, he only grew red, just here, and said nothing 
 when he meant ' Damn ' all the time. And he used to sulk 
 if anything did not please him ; he would never quarrel with 
 me, like you. He used to say, ' I prefer not to discuss it, 
 Jane ! ' as though I were a housemaid. Everybody gives in 
 to him, and somehow I used to give in to him too. Bertha 
 begged me. ' Don't vex him, Jane,' she said. ' He feels 
 these things so.' But once ... I will tell you. I bit 
 a hole in a new lace handkerchief. How do you spell ' re- 
 ceive,' Numphy?" He told her. "Well then, I spelt it 
 the other way in a letter, with the i first. And he showed 
 it me with one of his horrid M's, and said that he was a little 
 surprised at the mistake from me. And I said : ' I have 
 spelt it that way to Numphy lots of times, and Numphy 
 wasn't surprised.' He folded the letter and said, ' Oh ! If 
 you do not care to be corrected for your faults, we will 
 not discuss it, Jane.' And he tore up the letter and put it 
 on the fire, saying, ' It will be wise to burn it, I think. I 
 should be sorry for it to fall into the servants' hands.' And 
 for a long time after nearly an hour we did not speak.
 
 358 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 I went up-stairs and lay on my bed, and put a corner of 
 my handkerchief between my teeth, and made up my mind to 
 break all off with him, and pulled till I tore the lace. And 
 then I thought of you . . . and I came down and told 
 Berkeley I was sorry, though I wasn't a bit. He just looked 
 up and said, ' So far as I am concerned, I shall never refer 
 to the matter again, Jane.' We were not a bit like sweet- 
 hearts. He seemed such miles above me. I never got to 
 know him any better, and yet I tried my best the whole time. 
 I was always trying. O, Numphy ! " The cried name came 
 torn from a full heart. " You don't know how I feel. It's 
 like a load off my back. Once I was all the while sighing 
 to leave Sunfleet, and thinking how I hated the rough roads 
 and grass lanes and country people, and how grand it would 
 be to live in a vicarage and meet Berkeley's rich friends, and 
 go out to dinner-parties. But now I just feel as though I 
 were home again after years of absence, and scarcely know 
 how to enjoy it enough. It seems too good to be true. I 
 don't want ever to leave you any more. I want to stay here 
 with you and keep house for you as long as I live. Of 
 course," the tears for the thing to be expressed overcame 
 her and delayed it, " I shall never marry now, Numphy. 
 My mind is made up on that score. It is no use. I am not 
 really a marrying girl. I know it." 
 
 He said, " I should be sorry to think that, Jane. Some 
 day I hope, you may change your mind." 
 
 She nipped her lips and shook her head to an emphatic 
 " Never. Not to go away . . . and leave you, Num- 
 phy. I want to stay here now until I die. Last night 
 Why do you stand? It hurts my neck to look up at you. 
 Won't you sit down close here, by me. There are such 
 lots of things I have made up my mind to tell you." He 
 seated himself, dazed but responsive, on a chair facing her. 
 At once she stretched out her hand, and his own closed over
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 359 
 
 it. " Last night," she recommenced and forthwith poured 
 out all the history of their siege and horrors, that made the 
 meaning of the vicarage assault the clearer to him. Clasp- 
 ing her fingers, and punctuating the recital with words of 
 suitable surprise and sympathy, he yet dared not tell her by 
 what close links of kinship she was bound to their so-dreaded 
 assailant. He let her pour out all her troubled treasury of 
 thoughts: her past night's fears for his safety; her hopes 
 and prayers ; remorse and resolutions ; all those sacred 
 thinkings consecrated in grief to be offered by her lips to 
 him should he be spared her. And when she cried out at the 
 conclusion, " Numphy . . . after all, there is nobody in 
 the world I care for . . . like you. I would rather 
 stay here and keep you company than marry a hundred 
 Berkeleys," he reached for the second hand with quaking 
 courage, and held them both. 
 
 " Jane ! " Some desperate energy seemed driving him. 
 " Do you care for me well enough to to " The energy 
 that had impelled him so far failed suddenly there, and left 
 him looking into her chill blue eyes. 
 
 " To what, Numphy ? " He looked at her still ; her gaze 
 never abated, but her fingers pressed his all at once, very 
 tightly. 
 
 " To marry me, Jane." Her eyes fell. He drew a long 
 breath, as if he had emerged by a hair'sbreadth from some 
 dreadful danger. For a while he thought the abruptness of 
 the declaration had driven back all her sympathies upon her 
 heart; that this love of his, expressed and unexpected, had 
 cost him his high place in her affections. 
 
 " I know I have no right to ask you," he went on. 
 " There is a great difference in our ages. Over twenty 
 years. Strictly speaking ... I suppose I am growing 
 an old man." 
 
 The dormant fingers tightened upon his fiercely in reproof
 
 360 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 and protection. " Don't, I shall cry again. You can never 
 be too old . . . for me. If you care for me . . . 
 now that Berkeley Hislop has cast me aside ... I 
 think this is what I prayed for last night, Numphy." 
 
 He drew her hands and pressed them to his breast. 
 
 " God bless you." 
 
 She wept a while, he holding her, and then she offered him 
 her lips, shaped to surrender and appeal. The movement 
 recalled him curtly out of his momentary dream. He drew 
 back his head; put her away from him. 
 
 " No, no, I must not yet, Jane. My kisses are dangerous 
 this morning." 
 
 A shiver shook him and the hands he held as he said the 
 words. More than once since his return the chill message 
 had been traced over his body, but this one was more vio- 
 lently inscribed. Jane's eyes leaped to a startled scrutiny. 
 
 " Numphy ! How strange you look. You are shivering. 
 What is the matter?" 
 
 " Nothing," he said, and smiled upon her. " I got no 
 sleep last night. I am tired." But a voice long stifled 
 within him seemed to cry : " Put down the cup of happiness. 
 You have sipped your appointed share. Now another 
 darker cup confronts you." For last night, to save a life, 
 in embittered disregard of his own that he deemed so worth- 
 less and unwanted, the Sunfleet Doctor had perpetrated an 
 act of foolish heroism. Twice he had lent his lips to suck 
 a breath-way in the clogged throat of Thatcher's child.
 
 XLIII 
 
 IF there is anything by which the Sunfleet doctor may be 
 purged of his truthfulness and obtain a title to the he- 
 roic, it is surely his conduct now, beneath the dark brow of 
 death; that shrouded figure, half visible in the gloom of his 
 thoughts, holding forth the cup in muffled hand. Before, he 
 had done some brave enough things under the spur of one 
 emotion or another: had lied, in lip and countenance, for 
 love's sake ; had put his life in peril through the courage that 
 comes of bitterness, when, as it were, we add the last touch 
 to the scorn that others have laid on us. But now he rose 
 free of all distorting passions, either for weakness or bravery, 
 and touched the highest point his conduct had attained. As 
 the sickness gained on him he put his house in order; did 
 smaller things in this great hour than an untroubled mind 
 can condescend to think of; wrote down such directions as 
 might be necessary for Jane's help and guidance, and made a 
 brief will in holograph that only fell short of being a proper 
 legal instrument by the perspicuity of its phrasing, and the 
 fact that it allowed no possible scope for litigation. Then, 
 feeling the enemy already breaking through his physical de- 
 fenses, he sent Holmes for the Peterwick doctor, who drove 
 back with him, and cried when he knew what had brought 
 him 
 
 " Good God, man! You were never such a fool! " 
 
 " Yes, yes. I know all about that," the sick man told him. 
 
 " But I had to do something. I'd brought her into the 
 
 world ... I couldn't let the bairn die, with her father 
 
 and mother looking at me. I'd operated against their wish 
 
 361
 
 362 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 I was bound to justify the knife. Anyhow, here are all the 
 cases. You'd better go round to Kenham at once." He ran 
 through the list of ailments on his books. " Ask to see Mrs. 
 Painter's tongue, and be sure and tell her it's a bad color, 
 or she might be offended. Oh, here's the carrier. You 
 know him, of course. It's his back again. He says mus- 
 tard and turpentine are children's remedies; you want some- 
 thing different for a man close on seventy. Try acupunc- 
 ture, or cup him. You might say, by the way, that I'm a 
 good enough doctor, but far too fond of administering 
 strong drugs. I can't make him believe it. And here's the 
 miller's wife. She's a bit overdue, but that's her way. Pat 
 all the children on the back, and if you leave a penny for 
 the bairns it won't go against you. ... I must swab 
 this throat again." 
 
 The two men had scarcely been on the very best of terms 
 during recent years, for no particular reason beyond, per- 
 haps, the Peterwick man's opinion, born maybe of jealousy, 
 that his Sunfleet rival spread too far afield, and was a scarce 
 close enough respecter of boundaries. Also, by a curious 
 kind of mental reflection, it was a fact that the Sunfleet doc- 
 tor had come to acquire a reputation for some aloofness 
 since Jane's advent. The Peterwick man had daughters of 
 his own, and Miss Alston's complete detachment and inde- 
 pendence of her local sex were apt to be rather aggravants 
 of shy feeling. But five minutes of our hero's candor put 
 an end to that in so far as it touched these two. 
 
 " If I can't get this throat down," he said, " why ! you 
 might do worse than think of this place, Farrant. You could 
 work it all right with an assistant." An unstudied state- 
 ment that made Farrant quite husky at the time, and led to 
 their partnership during the course of the next year. 
 
 For the Doctor did not die. Life went very dark for him 
 indeed, and there was weeping beneath the chimneys of the
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 363 
 
 big brick house; but after a brief tussle with the adversary, 
 wound up for a while in the garments of death, so that he 
 seemed almost become a part of what he contested, he came 
 back to sunlight, and to Jane. And in these hours of re- 
 covery he added infinitely more to the perplexing wisdom 
 of the heart feminine ; was admitted by Jane into those 
 countless intricacies, as into a catacomb. Even with her to 
 guide, he felt gloriously lost within its labyrinth; marveled 
 at its immensity ; wondered where it all led to whether 
 the clear truth of heavenly daylight was somewhere reach- 
 able at the end of it ; and shuddered with many a thought of 
 what his case would be were the taper-flame of the girl's 
 affection that lighted him a way through it to be extinguished 
 now. Not that he feared that, but the apprehension of it 
 offered a whetstone for the next joy to sharpen its blade on. 
 This dissection of the human heart was a subject dear to 
 Jane; she never tired of it; she could cut up sentiment in 
 sections as a cook slices orange peel strip after strip, 
 shaved as fine as you please ; a hundred slices or more out of 
 one orange, and dozens of fresh oranges to follow that. 
 And the woman in Numphy, that he had inherited from his 
 mother, stood him in good stead with her in this domain. 
 Time and time she apostrophized him belaudingly : " How 
 different from Berkeley you are, Numphy ... I could 
 never have talked to Berkeley like that. You don't know 
 how happy I am. Are you happy too ? " 
 
 " The happiest man in the world." 
 
 Now that this miracle had made her his (sometimes the 
 convalescent could scarcely credit the truth of it) he loved to 
 hear her thoughts audible, hopping nimbly from prose to 
 poetry, and back again, like a cage-bird on its perches. The 
 thing that had aroused his horror when she was nominally 
 Berkeley Hislop's awakened now his keenest joy. " Num- 
 phy . . . Life just feels like a glorious Sunday morn-
 
 364 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 ing. Of course we shall have the drawing-room properly 
 finished. I've been thinking a primrose paper would look 
 lovely with a deep ivory white frieze. And oh, Numphy ! 
 If only we could have French windows thrown out ! " 
 
 " We could, Jane . . . And we will." 
 
 " Numphy ! Do you mean it ? " 
 
 " And a new pianoforte for you, Jane." 
 
 " No, no. You must not, Numphy. You are going to 
 ruin yourself for me. You promise me everything I think 
 of." ' 
 
 " You are worth it, Jane." 
 
 By the light of their present relations she led him deeply 
 back into the subject of Bertha, and his feelings towards 
 her. 
 
 " Tell me ... You never cared a bit for her, Num- 
 phy. I mean, in this way." 
 
 He said, " I never did, Jane." But for his conscience' 
 sake he told her how his heart had hovered at one time 
 about the thought of it, and why. And now he was to learn 
 the curious pioneer part that Bertha had played towards his 
 present happiness. For, but for her and her confided ad- 
 miration of him, Jane's eyes might never have been educated 
 to perceive him in that dear coveted light. With her intro- 
 spective candor she told him so. " I had never, never 
 thought of you once in that way, Numphy," she confessed, 
 " until Bertha began to tell me : ' O, Jane, isn't he splendid ! 
 Don't you just love him? I should.' And first of all (for- 
 give me, Numphy) I used to laugh at her and say : ' I 
 thought you loved tall men, Bertha? Numphy's quite 
 small.'" 
 
 " About five feet eight, Jane," the Doctor told her meekly. 
 " Still . . . not a great height, I admit." 
 
 " The right height, Numphy," Jane assured him loyally, in 
 her dearest voice of championship. " I wouldn't have you
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 365 
 
 half-an-inch taller . . . Well, perhaps half-an-inch, or 
 a little more if you like. That wouldn't make very much 
 difference." 
 
 And she described with minute fidelity and amazing pa- 
 tience all the processes hidden from him that had led up to 
 her love. How, in the first pride of pertaining to Berkeley, 
 she had been magnanimous enough to try and win him for 
 Bertha; to make Bertha a present of him as a token of her 
 affection. But how, even while she acted mediator for her 
 friend, filled with longing to be generous, the contemplated 
 gift grew bigger than she felt she could bestow. When she 
 probed his sentiments toward Bertha, she did so with a 
 quaking heart, fearing the mischief of her intercession 
 already wrought within him. She thought how dreadful it 
 would ultimately be for her to come to Sunfleet as a visitor 
 and find Bertha occupying her place in Numphy's home and 
 bosom ; all her shyness gone ; laughing and talking with him 
 in such dreadful freedom ; showing Jane over the house for 
 all the world as if it belonged to her; pointing out the im- 
 provements with pride and condescension, and perhaps 
 . . . perhaps seizing both Jane's hands behind some 
 newly-painted bedroom door and confiding, with tears in her 
 eyes : " ' Jane ! I am so happy. I can never thank you . . . 
 enough for all you . . . you know.' " And she, Jane, 
 would take her leave at the visit's end and bear back her 
 leaden heart to the dry and smileless Berkeley. ' M'yes. 
 M'No. I prefer not to discuss it, Jane.' O, Numphy! 
 Numphy! How dreadful that would have been. 
 
 " I know my faults, Numphy," she went on humbly, re- 
 tailing these faster than he could check them against his own 
 inventory. " I know, of course, that I am mean, and rather 
 vain, and quick-tempered, and jealous, and don't like anybody 
 to contradict me but you. But I ... I want to make 
 a good wife, Numphy, and keep our expenses down. Prom-
 
 366 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 ise me you'll be strict and firm with me, and won't give in to 
 me too much. Of course, there are some things in which 
 the wife should have the chief say. That's only right." 
 
 " There's just one favor I would like to ask of you," he 
 told her. She cried " A dozen, Numphy." He said : 
 " When I am quite well and strong, and we are married and 
 settled down ... I hope you will not allow them to 
 dust the surgery too regularly. Once every quarter would 
 be enough. I may be wrong." 
 
 The capacity for promises, expanded inimitably over her 
 brow in expectation, contracted to a sorrowing negative at 
 that. " I ... I could not promise such a thing, Num- 
 phy," she said. " It would not be fair ... to either 
 of us." 
 
 He begged forgiveness for asking too much of her. 
 
 There was speculation, with fluttering surmise, in Sunfleet 
 when the strange reversal of Jane's affection became known, 
 and the news of her betrothal to the Sunfleet doctor circu- 
 lated. There were some challengings of the truth in sundry 
 places, but none knew for certain the cause of the change. 
 Pridgeon was heard to say he would give a five-pound note 
 (without specifying from whom it would be borrowed) to 
 know if yon blind-eyed chap had aught to do with it. He 
 himself favored the notion, being the author of it, but Julian 
 Alston bitter with the knowledge that the precious vase 
 of silence was irrevocably shattered, and that he had noth- 
 ing further to hope or look for passed out of Sunfleet by 
 dark, as he had come into it. Anne, her perspicacity for 
 once at fault, saw nothing of the hand of their blind-eyed 
 assailant in all this upheaval of circumstance. For her, 
 there was no element of astonishment. 
 
 " Folks mud 'a foreseen it," she said. And told her mis- 
 tress, " Well, you've gotten him at last. Noo mebbe you'll 
 rest content, and we shall sattle down a bit. I never could
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 367 
 
 reckon up what you seed i' yon other fellow. He'd a face to 
 turn milk sour when he looked at you. All times he's been 
 i 1 house he never gied me a word. I will say old vicar's 
 different frev yon." She spoke frankly as to the Doctor. 
 " Pie's older than you by a good bit," she said. " Though 
 what by that? You'll look as old as him nobbut you've a 
 bairn or two tugging at you." 
 
 " Anne ! " her mistress expostulated hurriedly. " I really 
 . . You do say some dreadful things. It is not every 
 one that has a family." The last sentence was tendered sug- 
 gestively, for encouragement; which Anne was quick to see. 
 " Syke nonsense," the elder woman cried. " You've as good 
 a chance of one as anybody. For mercy's sake don't waste 
 time about it. What use will bairns be to me when I'se 
 in my grave and can't nurse 'em? I took him fro' doctor's 
 hands when he was born. I'd like to hold one of his before 
 I die." 
 
 Berkeley wrote Jane a letter characteristic of him; per- 
 fectly Christian, equable, dispassionate ; cool as marble in the 
 shade. And on that letter Numphy tenderly admitted her 
 to partnership with him in the truth of the past. At first 
 her pride, stung to the quick, rose up to accuse the kindness 
 that had thus laid her open to Berkeley Hislop's scorn. But 
 that kindness was Numphy's. Pride, as it reached the qual- 
 ity, melted; reproaches became tears; she needed him too 
 dearly; he was her breast-armor against Berkeley Hislop 
 and the world ; the ocean in whose broad bosom her hurrying 
 stream of shame could plunge and lose itself. She said: 
 " If I am not worthy enough for him ... I am un- 
 worthy of you, Numphy. Are you marrying me for pity? 
 You shall not. Let me go and be a governess somewhere." 
 And she said : " How proud I have been all this time. What 
 must you have thought of me ! It was wrong of you. You 
 should have spoken when I was younger and could bear it
 
 3 68 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 better. I feel I ought not to wear any more silk, or bright 
 colors. That last nainsook blouse is far too showy. All 
 my things ought to be unpretentious." 
 
 And lastly she raised her supreme objection. 
 
 " Anne said . . . was saying that it was possible 
 (Don't look at me, Numphy) . . . Some people had 
 families of their own. If they did ... I couldn't bear 
 to think they might one day grow up to be ashamed of their 
 mother, Numphy." 
 
 All these arguments were poured into the broad sea, and 
 the broad sea embraced them all, and the tranquil vastness 
 of it showed no perturbation for their influx. She drew, 
 after a while, her own calm from his; the injured vanities 
 repaired themselves ; their secret, of these two, was a further 
 bond between them, linking their affections. Also, the Doc- 
 tor had dealt somewhat kindly with the stern lineaments of 
 truth, and they grew less formidable as she gazed on them. 
 
 The vicar, a frequent visitor to the big brick house during 
 the Doctor's illness, shed, through sympathy and his own 
 loneliness, all residue of estrangement. When he realized 
 that Jane was substituting " Mr. Farebrother " for the erst- 
 while " Uncle Horace " his lips twitched, and he took her 
 hand, on going out, with the old smile. 
 
 " I hope we are Uncle Horace still," he said. " To you, 
 Jane. Dear, dear ! I declare I felt quite hurt when I heard 
 you using the other name. After all ... I sometimes 
 think there's a providence in these things. It's difficult to 
 account for them otherwise. I suppose I'm a selfish old 
 chap, like most men when they get to my age. Perhaps I 
 ought not to say it ... but I'm glad things have turned 
 out as they have. God bless me! What would Sunfleet be 
 if you were all to go away and leave me. You'll come and 
 see me, Jane, I hope just as you used to do, and take pity
 
 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 369 
 
 on my solitude. Life grows very lonely for an old bache- 
 lor. I declare the vicarage has felt like a hearse all the time 
 since Berkeley left. Yes, yes. I missed my chance when I 
 had it two chances, I ought to say; for I believe I was 
 rather an attractive young fellow in those days though it 
 was the first one I thought the most of. Every man ought 
 to marry. I see it now." 
 
 To the Doctor he gave hand of fellowship renewed, and 
 said 
 
 " Forgive an uncle's feelings. It's possible I spoke too 
 hastily at the time. But it behooves me to be done with 
 quarrels at my time of life. I've been thinking . . . 
 You were to blame, of course ; still, I sympathize with you. 
 After all, perhaps Berkeley took it rather too much to heart. 
 Poor noble fellow. Well, well. Let's hope providence sends 
 him a good sensible wife, with plenty of money. For my 
 own part, I doubt very much if he'll ever find a girl like 
 Jane. He might have done worse than stick to her, when 
 all's said and done. I declare I become very democratic, 
 Dr. Bentham, as I grow older. If I'd my time to come over 
 again, I dare say I should shake hands much more than I 
 have done." 
 
 He took his leave, radiant with the beams of reconciliation 
 and the inward powers of perfect understanding, but came 
 back again to ask 
 
 " When are you . . . When is it to be ? " 
 
 The Doctor said, " In June if Jane agrees. We are to 
 have six weeks abroad. Farrant is going to take my work 
 on with an assistant. Sometime we may combine there's 
 a talk of it. It will make matters much easier." 
 
 "You'll be married in Sunfleet?" 
 
 " Why, yes, vicar ! To be sure. Where else ? " 
 
 " God bless me ! " cried the vicar. " I declare I begin to 
 
 34
 
 370 THE DOCTOR'S LASS 
 
 feel young again. You'll have all Sunfleet at the wedding. 
 And the prettiest bride," he added, turning his smile indul- 
 gently on Jane, " that has ever passed under the old porch." 
 Jane said : " Do you think so ... Uncle Horace ? " 
 
 THE END
 
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